Rachel Gibson: I’m In No Mood For Love

“Now, that’s a real shame. You told me I was the best sex you’d ever had in your life.” He smiled and dropped the towel. “You couldn’t get enough.”

He obviously hadn’t outgrown the habit of dropping trow, and she kept her gaze pinned to the bird painting on the wall behind his head.

He turned his back on her and reached for his jeans. “At one point you were so loud I thought sure hotel security was going to beat down the door.”

She’d never been loud during sex. Never. But she knew she wasn’t in a position to argue. She could have been yelling like a porn star and wouldn’t remember.

“I’ve been with some aggressive women…” He shook his head. “Who would have thought that little Claresta would grow up to be so wild in bed?”

She’d never been wild in bed. Sure, she wrote about hot, steamy sex, but she never actually lost control enough to have it. She’d tried a few times, but she was too inhibited to scream and moan and…

She lost the battle and her gaze slid down the smooth planes of his back and slight indent of his spine as he pulled his Levi’s over his bare butt. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she muttered, and bent to retrieve her purse from the floor.

“Do you need a ride home?” he asked with his head bent over his task.

Home. Her heart squeezed and her head pounded as she straightened. What she faced at home was an even bigger nightmare than the one standing across the room from her. The one with those rock-solid abs and a really nice butt. “No. Thanks. You’ve helped enough.”

He turned and his hands paused over his buttoned fly. “Are you sure? We don’t have to check out till noon.” One corner of his mouth slid up and his wicked smile was back. “Wanna create some memories you won’t forget?”

Clare opened the door behind her. “Not a chance,” she said, and walked out of the room. She’d made it about ten feet before he called after her.

“Hey, Cinderella.”

She glanced over her shoulder as he picked up her pink sandal and tossed it to her. “Don’t forget your slipper.”

She caught the shoe in one hand and hurried down the hall without looking back. She raced down the stairs and rushed through the lobby, afraid she might run into out-of-town wedding guests staying at the hotel. How could she possibly explain her appearance to Lucy’s great-aunt and uncle from Wichita?

The hotel doors whooshed open, and with the cruel morning sun stabbing her eyes, Clare walked barefoot across the parking lot and thanked God her Lexus LS was exactly where she recalled leaving it the day before. She gathered up her dress, shoved herself into the car, and fired it up. Popping it into reverse, she caught a glimpse of her face in the rearview mirror and gasped at the sight of black mascara under bloodshot eyes, wild hair, and pale skin. She looked like death. Like road kill. And Sebastian had looked like he belonged on a billboard selling Levi’s.

As Clare backed out of the parking space, she reached into the console for her sunglasses. If she laid eyes on Sebastian again in this lifetime, she thought, it would be too soon. She supposed his offer to take her home had been nice enough, but then in typical Sebastian style, he’d ruined it by offering to create unforgettable memories. Putting the car into drive, she covered her eyes with her gold Versace’s.

She supposed he was staying with his father, just as he had as a boy when his mother used to send him to Idaho from Seattle for the summer. Since she didn’t plan to visit her own mother anytime soon, she knew there wasn’t a risk she’d see Sebastian again.

She drove out of the parking lot and headed up Chinden Boulevard toward Americana.

Sebastian’s father, Leonard Vaughan, had worked for her family for almost thirty years. For as long as Clare could remember, Leo had lived in the converted carriage house on her mother’s estate on Warm Springs Avenue. The main house had been built in 1890 and was registered with the Idaho Historical Society. The carriage house sat at the back of the property, half hidden by old willow trees and flowering dogwood.

Clare couldn’t recall if Sebastian’s mother had ever lived in the carriage house with Leo, but she didn’t think so. It seemed that Leo had always lived there alone, overseeing the house and grounds and playing chauffeur from time to time.

The traffic light strung across Americana connecting Ann Morrison and Katherine Albertson parks turned green as Clare blew through. She hadn’t been to her mother’s house in more than two months. Not since the morning Joyce Wingate had told a room full of her Junior League friends that Clare wrote romance novels, just to spite her. Clare had always known how her mother felt about her writing, but Joyce had always ignored her career, pretending instead that she wrote “women’s fiction”-right up until the day Clare had been featured in the Idaho Statesman and the Wingates’ dirty secret was out of the closet and splashed across the Life section. Clare Wingate, writing under the pen name Alicia Grey, graduate of Boise State University and Bennington, wrote historical romance novels. Not only did she write them, she was successful and didn’t have any plans to stop.

Since the time Clare had been old enough to put words together, she’d made up stories. Stories about an imaginary dog named Chip or the witch she’d always believed lived in her neighbor’s attic. It hadn’t been long before Clare’s naturally romantic nature and her love of writing melded and Chip found a poodle girlfriend, Suzie, and the witch in the neighbor’s attic got married to a warlock that looked a lot like Billy Idol in his White Wedding video.

Four years ago her first historical romance novels had been published, and her mother had yet to recover from the shock and embarrassment. Until the Statesman article, Joyce had been able to pretend that Clare’s career choice was a passing phase, and that once she got over her fascination with “trash,” she’d write “real books.”

Literature worthy of the Wingate library.

In the cup holder between the seats of her car, Clare’s cell phone rang. She picked it up, saw it was her friend Maddie, and set it back down. She knew her friend was probably worried, but she didn’t feel like talking. All three of her best friends were the very best women to have around, and she’d talk to them later, just not right now.

She didn’t know how much Maddie knew about the prior evening, but Maddie wrote true crime and would probably put some kind of psychotic killer spin on it whatever it was. Adele was just as well-meaning. She wrote fantasy and had a tendency to cheer people up by relating bizarre stories from her personal life, and Clare didn’t feel like being cheered up at the moment. Then there was Lucy, who had just gotten married. The rights to Lucy’s latest mystery novel had recently been optioned by a major studio. And Clare knew that the last thing Lucy needed was to have her own problems steal an ounce of her happiness.

She turned onto Crescent Rim Drive and continued past houses that overlooked the parks and the city below. The closer she drove toward her home, which she’d shared with Lonny, the more her stomach twisted. As she pulled her car into the driveway of the light blue and white Victorian she’d lived in for five years, her eyes stung with the painful emotion she could no longer hold back.

Even though she knew it was over with Lonny, she loved him. For the second time that morning déjà vu tightened the back of her skull and settled in the top of her chest.

Once again she’d fallen in love with the wrong man.

Once again she’d given her heart to a man who could not love her as much as she loved him. And like those other times in the past, she’d turned to a stranger when it all fell apart. Although she supposed that technically Sebastian wasn’t a stranger, it didn’t matter. In fact, it made what she’d done worse.