Victoria Dahl - Real Men Will

They’d specifically agreed that their night together would mean nothing. Just because Beth wasn’t so good at holding up her end of the bargain didn’t mean that Jamie had any problem with his end.

She pressed her hands tight together and told herself that she wasn’t hurt. Still…thank God she hadn’t been here. There would’ve been no denying the pain of watching him wander through her store with another woman, holding her hand, picking out items to use together later in the bedroom.

Beth drew a sharp breath at the thought of it. Had it not even occurred to him? In the brief hours she’d spent with him, he’d seemed considerate and kind. Or hell, maybe he was just more sexually evolved than she was.

But last night, he’d looked downright sneaky. It didn’t make any sense.

She retreated to her office and shut the door. And suddenly she was pissed. She’d felt guilty as hell being at his brewery with another man. And he’d dared to bring someone here? What kind of an asshole was he? And when exactly had he acquired this girlfriend? All the sneaking around that had seemed so exciting at the expo suddenly took on a new, sinister light.

“That bastard,” she growled.

She should drop it. Leave it alone. Now, six months later, it hardly mattered anymore, but Beth found herself overwhelmed with the urge to confront him. She turned on her phone, but that was hopeless. She’d deleted his number from her phone two weeks after she’d met him. She’d had to delete him from her life because the memory of that encounter had become its own aphrodisiac, and she’d known she would get to this point sometime. She’d known the temptation would rise up and swallow her.

“Damn it,” she muttered.

Maybe it would be easier for her to contact him through the brewery anyway. Less privacy, less intimacy. And no memory of the night her phone had rung and he’d said two simple words. “Room 421.”

The hair on her arms prickled as electricity zinged through her body.

Beth cleared her throat and shook her head. She shouldn’t call him. She knew that.

But maybe she could find out the truth another way. Between Facebook and Twitter and everything else on the web, people’s private lives were no longer private.

“It doesn’t matter,” she told herself. If he was some sort of creepy two-timing cheat, that wasn’t Beth’s fault. But she gave in to the weakness and searched his name on Google anyway. Thousands of hits appeared, all of them seemingly about beer and awards and the brewery. Looking for something more personal, she clicked on a link to Twitter. The account said Jamie Donovan of Donovan Brothers Brewery, but the picture was wrong.

Frowning, she clicked on the photo to enlarge it. The guy definitely wasn’t Jamie. As a matter of fact, he looked a lot like the blond man she’d seen tending bar at the brewery the night before. “What the hell?”

Thoroughly confused, Beth clicked back to Google and hit the Images tab. The first picture was the young blond guy again. She clicked back to the results page. Most of the pictures were of the blond guy. The only ones she saw with Jamie were group shots. Clicking on the largest of the group shots, she looked at the caption. Wallace Hood, Eric Donovan, Tessa Donovan, Jamie Donovan, Chester Smith.

This didn’t make any sense. She clicked through to the next page of images, but they were mostly Donovan Brothers logos and pictures of mugs of beer.

Then she noticed there were two video hits and clicked on that tab, light-headed with anticipation.

The first video linked to a local news channel. Beth pulled it up and waited, holding her breath.

The news theme song played, and then the camera focused in on a tight shot of a perfectly coiffed blonde reporter smiling widely. “Today we’ve got big news from an iconic local establishment! I’m coming to you live from Donovan Brothers Brewery in Boulder, Colorado, and I’ve been joined by one of the actual Donovan brothers.” The camera pulled slowly back, revealing first an arm, then a shoulder, then the man with the dark blond hair whom she’d seen in the bar. Beth frowned.

The reporter beamed up at him. “This is Jamie Donovan, one of the famous brothers.” He winked at the reporter while Beth’s mind reeled.

Jamie Donovan. Jamie. But not the man she’d slept with.

This made no sense. The man and the reporter were still talking, their words jangling around in her head like broken glass scraping against her skull. Jamie. But not Jamie. She stared at the name that hovered beneath the man as he spoke: Jamie Donovan of Donovan Brothers Brewery.

Her hand shook as she reached for the mouse and clicked the pause icon.

A weight grew in her throat. Not tears or illness or emotion. It felt as if her actual flesh was swelling up and pressing her throat into a smaller and smaller space. She tried to swallow and couldn’t.

The man worked for Donovan Brothers. He’d been at the brewery. He was in the pictures. But he wasn’t Jamie.

Beth clicked frantically back through the pages until she pulled up that group picture again. She opened another window and tried querying every name, but she didn’t get any good image results. Just picture after picture of the Donovan Brothers’ green logo and photos of the awards and labels of the various beers they sold.

Who was he? Was he Wallace or Chester or Eric?

Beth stood up so quickly that she banged her thigh hard into the desk, but the pain barely registered. She stumbled out from behind her desk and into the cheerful brightness of the shop.

“Cairo?”

Cairo popped up from behind the cash register. “Yes?”

“What does Jamie Donovan look like?”

Cairo shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s cute. Pretty preppy-looking. Straitlaced, but he’s got a sweet smile.”

“Dark hair?” Beth made herself ask, even though her throat tried to close over the words.

“No, not dark. Sort of gold. Not super blond. Why?”

“Just… We…” All that blood pounding in her brain was doing her no good at all. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t even feel. Her body had gone numb. “No reason,” she managed.

“Are you okay, Beth?” Cairo started to reach for her, but Beth backed away.

“I’m fine. I just…I’m not feeling well. Are you still willing to cover for me for an hour? I think I’d better head home.”

“Of course, but…”

Beth rushed back into her office to grab her purse and her phone. She shut down her computer and cleared the history, not quite sure why—all she knew was that she felt ashamed. Ashamed because she’d been tricked. Made a fool of. And, my God, that was an awful, familiar feeling she hadn’t had to deal with in years.

She started hearing the words in her head that she’d absorbed over years of studying sexuality and women’s history. Someone else can’t bring you shame. Shame means you did something wrong. You did nothing wrong. But how else was she supposed to feel after being tricked and lied to?

Tears sprang to her eyes, but she growled her frustration as she blinked them back.

She wasn’t seventeen this time. She didn’t have to simply sit quietly and take it. This time, she’d confront it head-on, and give the shame to the one who deserved it.

When she stalked out of the office, Cairo was helping a customer, dusting a sample of honey body powder on the woman’s arm, but she looked up with concern in her eyes as Beth passed. Beth watched the customer bring her arm up and tentatively touch her tongue to her wrist. The sight would have made Beth smile on any other day, but today she simply watched in blank confusion.

Her body was still numb, her head still beating like a pulse. It occurred to her that she probably shouldn’t drive, but she pushed through the doors and headed straight to her new cherry-red Nissan 370Z. The engine roared to life with the barest turn of the key. She’d purchased it for herself five months before, because she’d wanted it, and she was trying to train herself to take what she wanted. Though right now all she wanted to do was kill someone. Someone whose name she didn’t even know.