If You Want Me Read online

  Sara just shook her head as Kyle finished laughing and carrying on. “He’s in the car,” she told him.

  “So the trip is going all right?”

  “You know I can’t tell you specifics. They’re party plans.”

  “I know…but you’re having a good time?”

  Sara rolled her straw wrapper between her thumb and forefinger, pensive but trying to sound optimistic for Kyle’s sake. “We’re fine.”

  “That’s great news, Sara. I knew all you guys needed was a little time together to hit it off. I know Ben’s not your favorite guy, but he really likes you. He asks about you all the time. And remember how you were starting to become friends when he used to come home with me on holiday breaks from school? Just think of the fun the three of us used to have, and it won’t be so bad. I swear he’s not who the papers make him out to be.”

  Oh God. She wished a semi truck would careen into the café and put her out of her misery. This just sucked! Sara could hear Rayna’s voice in the background, and she and Kyle sounded so stinking happy. The playful lilt in his voice had been dying after too many years under Kenton Ashford’s heavy hand. Since he’d met Rayna, it was back again.

  No matter what had happened between Sara and Ben all those years ago, it was time to let it go. Kyle was family—even more than he knew.

  “Everything is going great,” she told him. “We may be gone for a few more days, but I’ll be checking my e-mail in the evenings, and of course you can always contact me by phone. How’s the new acquisition coming? Do you need me to—”

  “Sara.”

  “What?”

  “What I need you to do is to pack up your tablet and your computer and take a few days off. I promise the world will keep spinning.”

  “Kyle—”

  “Sara Bo-bara Castillo! This is your boss speaking. Take a few days off, and that’s an order!”

  She rolled her eyes and groaned. “My middle name is not Bo-bara. Jeez…”

  He laughed and said in the background, “We got her. I feel her caving as I speak.” And then to Sara, “Rayna says have fun. Don’t rush back.”

  “Kyle.”

  “Gotta go! I can’t hear you. The line is breaking up.” Then she heard the sound of Kyle breathing into the phone and making fake crackling noises. “By-y-ye…” And then he hung up.

  Lovely. Her ten minutes were almost up before Ben left Vegas, and Kyle and Rayna were back in New York thinking she and Ben were becoming fast friends. How did it come to this? Sara still wasn’t sure if she’d made the right decision keeping her and Ben’s relationship from Kyle all those years ago. With all the sneaking around she and Ben had done, it was a shock they’d actually fooled anyone at all.

  They’d been planning to break the news to Kyle that they were in love…then the pregnancy had happened, and Ben thought Kyle might kill him. But after the miscarriage and Ben’s trip to France, it hadn’t mattered anyway. Of course, these days, there were even greater secrets she was keeping from Kyle Ashford. But all of them were for his own good.

  Kyle had always treated Sara like part of the family, even when she was simply the daughter of the pretty culinary chef and the head of household transportation, living in a little house on the far corner of the grounds. She couldn’t hurt Kyle or Carolyn by revealing the catastrophic decisions Kenton Ashford and Sara’s mother, Lina, had made before she was born. If that news ever got out, what would it do to her older brother, Javier? He and Sara had just lost their father last year, and Javi might feel as though he’d lost a mother and a sister, too.

  She sucked down the last of her carrot juice with a grimace. She’d been an idiot to rehash past hurt with Ben when there were so many other concerns taking precedence in her life. She was a grown woman now and she needed to put it behind her. Sara was a force to be reckoned with when she put her mind to something, and she could do this.

  Sara paid the cashier, carefully maneuvering her wallet past the heap of sex toys Ben had loaded into her bag. She’d rather die than put her purse through the x-ray machine at the airport once this crazy excursion was done, so she was going to have to ship these playthings to herself before she flew out of Madison and hope like hell no one opened the package back in New York.

  Clutching her heavy purse to her side, Sara made her way to the yellow Ferrari parked on the corner. Ben was already preparing to take off. The convertible top and the windows were down, and the engine was purring like an overfed cat.

  Sara came to the driver’s side and rested her hand on top of the door. Ben glanced up, but wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Can I drive, Ben?” she asked quietly. All the fight had drained out of her. “Please.”

  With a shake of his head, Ben got out and walked around to the passenger seat, getting in and shutting the door behind him with a decisive thunk. “Head north,” he told her. “The 15 to the 93 to the 318.”

  And that was all he uttered for the next two hundred and twenty miles.

  Chapter Four

  Two-hundred-and-something miles and Ben didn’t open his mouth, but that didn’t mean the words weren’t bubbling in his gut like an expired can of alphabet soup. “You’ll want to take Highway 6 east, but pull over at the next gas station, will you? I have to pee.”

  “Sure,” Sara answered.

  For the first hundred miles of the journey, Sara had kept herself busy by switching from one talk-radio station to another and mumbling commentary under her breath, but when the radio stations had become more sporadic, she’d linked her playlist from her phone to the Ferrari’s sound system and had gone silent alongside Ben.

  If he never saw another dry landscape of sand and scrub brush, it would be too soon. Though if he was honest with himself, he figured it wasn’t the landscape that was getting him down as much as this time with Sara. They’d been crazy in love, and now she acted as though she didn’t even know him.

  They pulled over to get gas, use the facilities and grab some snacks. “You want me to drive?” he asked when they returned to the car.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  He shook his head. Did she think he was sneaking booze in the bathroom or something? Would she even believe him if he told her that he rarely drank anymore?

  She walked to the driver’s side. “I think I’m ready to get out of the sun for a while. Mind if we put the top up?”

  “Of course.”

  He helped Sara put up the top on the convertible and they pulled onto the road. She held a Slurpee between her legs, tucked tight against the V of her denim jeans. He figured there was a joke there somewhere about her cold-as-ice crotch, but he doubted she’d think it was funny. And being objective, even through the bitterness he couldn’t label her body as anything other than smoking hot. How fucked up was it that if she so much as crooked her finger, he’d take her in the car right then, probably on his knees, spewing his gratefulness like a thief granted a pardon by his queen?

  Ben pressed his lips together as he berated himself. No more thinking of Sara. He would think of anything other than Sara. He wouldn’t notice her seductive scent, compare it to his memories of her. He wouldn’t steal a glance at the sleek outline of her thigh and remember what it felt like to have those thighs spread before him, those ankles crossed behind his back. He cleared his throat with a little shake of his head.

  “Bless you,” she said awkwardly, as though he’d sneezed.

  “Thanks.” He shot her a disgruntled glance and peeled the wrapper on his candy bar as Sara brought the Ferrari to a halt behind a semi truck at the stop sign to enter the highway.

  Sara grabbed her drink and took a sip, creeping up as the semi pulled away. Just as she brought the straw to her mouth, Ben cursed. The truck had stopped for some reason but Sara kept going.

  “Sara!” he called, but before he could say more, the Ferrari rolled into the fender of the truck with a jolt.

  “Oh shit!” Sara’s red Slurpee covered her lap before sloshing onto the Ferrari’s carpet at her feet. Amazin
gly, the semi started up again, punching the gas and merging onto the highway.

  Sara pulled the car to the side of the road and laid her forehead against the wheel. “Oh my God. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.” She’d hit the truck after accelerating from a stop, so he and Sara weren’t the injured parties. The Ferrari, however…

  Ben opened the passenger door and went to inspect the damage. It was totally drivable, but the car would need a new bumper and floor mats, at least. The man who’d rented him the car was going to be pissed.

  Sara met him at the head of the car and knelt down, running her hand over the yellow paint. “Oh shit.”

  “Yeah, you said that.”

  She put her palm to her forehead, her cheeks flaming pink. “I’m so sorry, Ben. It’s insured, right?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. It looks like it’s just superficial. It’ll still run. Are you okay?”

  She sniffed. “The only thing injured is my pride.”

  Sara went to retrieve her cell phone from the floor of the car and wiped the sticky red juice from the screen. “I’ll call the police and the insurance company. I need to report the accident.”

  “Yeah, okay.” He wasn’t sure if that was necessary, but she seemed pretty shaken up and he figured it was best to just let her do her thing.

  Car after car passed them, slowing to ogle the Ferrari’s cracked bumper. Some laughed, some offered expressions of condolence. After about thirty minutes of sitting beside Sara on the hood, waiting for the cops to show, Ben reached a hand out and laid it on her shoulder. He wasn’t sure if she’d welcome it, but she looked pretty damn dejected. “Accidents happen, Sara. It isn’t the end of the world.”

  “Thanks. And…I’m sorry.”

  He knew this was no declaration about past regret—only guilt over the fucking car—but still, his idiotic heart heard the soft, vulnerable tone in her voice and it clenched in his chest.

  He returned his hand to his lap. “I’m not sure the police are going to come take a report. Nobody was injured and the guy you hit is long gone.” She simply nodded in response, her shoulders tucked and her head low.

  “Sara…” Oh, shit. Don’t do it, man. Don’t go there. But in spite of his better judgment, he was indeed going there. “Remember my accident…in France?”

  She slid him a look. Of course she knew the accident. “Uh-huh.”

  “I know it doesn’t matter anymore, but I still want you to know the truth.” He had no reason to seek her approval after what she’d done to him so many years ago. And yet, he had to set the record straight, and he doubted he’d ever have this subdued version of Sara beside him again.

  “Okay…”

  “I wasn’t driving that night.”

  She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, her pretty bare feet flat on the hood. Cars passed, their engines buzzing like bees on a warm, lazy day. The dusty expanse of the desert stretched out before them, and he held his breath, suspended in this surreal moment as he waited for her reply.

  “I saw the photos. I read the articles, Ben.”

  His jaw clenched at the censure in her voice, but he hadn’t gone down this path to turn back now. “Ian was driving. He’d had too much to drink and wouldn’t give me the keys. When he crashed the car, he begged me to say I was driving because I’d only had one beer. The girl in the photos…that was Ian’s girlfriend, not mine.”

  Sara went still. “But the way she clung to you, her hand on your chest…” she whispered.

  “She thought her boyfriend was going to die. Even after the accident, we weren’t sure he would walk again.” He blew out a breath and gazed into the distance. “I hadn’t planned on being gone for more than a few weeks. But with the court appearances and the time it took Ian’s family to pay off the proper people…”

  Damn it, if she would have answered his calls, she would have known this. But it was too late to rewrite the past, no matter how much he wished he could go back in time. “If I could do it over, Sara, I never would have said I was driving, but you try saying no to a buddy who might not make it.”

  Her forehead was pressed to her knees and her long brown hair fanned around her legs, moving gently in the wind. She raised her face and stared straight into him. “Are you telling me the truth?”

  He almost couldn’t meet her eyes—the same almond-shaped eyes that haunted his dreams to this day. He had regrets, sure. But he was also mad as hell at her utter disloyalty. Sara Castillo had gone from being the mother of his child to another man’s woman all in the space of a couple of months. And in doing so, she had wrecked Ben beyond repair.

  It took everything in him to hold Sara’s gaze. “It’s been eight years, and whatever we had has long since died. Why would I lie to you now?”

  She was quiet for a long time, and he would have paid his last dollar to know what was going on in her head. After a while, she simply uncurled from the hood, slipped on her shoes and held out the keys to him. “You drive.”

  They stopped in the next town and Sara changed into fresh jeans and a clean shirt, stuffing her sticky clothing into a grocery bag that had just minutes before contained a tray of cut fruit. She slipped back into the passenger seat, and Ben pulled onto the road.

  Her mind couldn’t fully process what Ben had said. Would she have forgiven him for taking off after her miscarriage if she’d known that he hadn’t caused the accident that night or been with that girl? And even if he wasn’t with that particular girl, that didn’t mean he hadn’t been sowing his oats with others, right? Still, it nagged at her and pricked a small hole in the balloon of righteous anger lodged under her ribs.

  No, she couldn’t start doubting now. She couldn’t put herself in Ben’s shoes and even begin to contemplate how he might have felt returning home to a girlfriend who wouldn’t take his calls—one who’d seemingly moved on with the captain of her college lacrosse team. Ben had left her! After the single most devastating event of her entire life.

  But if she were being objective—and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be—maybe she should have at least let him explain instead of cutting him out of her life like a malignant tumor. God, she’d been nineteen years old. How could she second-guess those decisions now? It would drive her insane.

  Still, if what he said was true, then she was at least a little bit of an ass. She might have considered continuing their friendship if she’d have known, even though Ben had run like hell after he was no longer tied to Sara by their unborn child. Was it possible for them to find something like friendship in the aftermath of their destructive love?

  She rested her hand on the panel of the door and quietly cleared her throat. “Ben…I’m sorry about your parents. What happened to them…it was horrible.”

  A rush of air escaped his nose. “Don’t worry. I got your card and flowers. I never expected to see you at the funeral, so I wasn’t disappointed.”

  Two years after her and Ben’s break-up, his parents’ accident made international news. The story was tragic—billionaire husband got his pilot’s license so he could take his wife on a special trip for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. They hadn’t even made it past the county line before inclement weather and pilot inexperience resulted in a tailspin that Ben’s father couldn’t pull out of.

  The news said that an amateur pilot shouldn’t have been flying in those conditions, but as Kyle had told her, it was Mr. Swayne’s silver wedding anniversary, and the man wasn’t going to let something like weather hinder his plans.

  “And I’m sorry about your father’s heart attack,” Ben said. “Did you ever get my voicemail?”

  Oh God, Sara wanted to curl up in a ball and die. How could she have thought Kyle’s bachelor party was worth this anguish? “Yes, thank you. That was kind of you.” Looking back, perhaps she hadn’t done much to earn that kindness.

  “How’s your brother holding up?” Ben asked.

  Which one? she wanted to respond. But instead she answere
d, “Javier is doing fine. He’s working on a tech start-up in Silicon Valley, and he seems happy enough. My mom is still working for Kenton Ashford as his head chef.” And that brought Sara no small amount of shame.

  “Yeah, Kyle talks about you guys quite a bit. He thinks of Lina like an aunt, you know. He’s closer to her than he is to his own mother.”

  Sara nodded. Her mom was a good woman, kindhearted and passionate about those she loved, so it wasn’t hard to imagine Kyle would have gravitated to Lina instead of his own callous mother. “And your grandfather?” Sara replied. “Is he still in good health?”

  Ben ran a hand through his hair and glanced out the window. “He’s healthy as an ox and still working the vineyard in France. I flew back recently to celebrate his eighty-eighth birthday. He asks about you every time I see him.”

  Her gaze whipped to the left and landed on Ben’s profile. “Me? How does your grandpa even know about me?”

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Fair enough.”

  She should have been satisfied that they were even talking, but she couldn’t help wanting to know the answers to all those questions she’d secretly pondered for so many years. They let silence fall again, and the air around them grew heavy. Sara cracked the window open and leaned her head back against the headrest.

  The trip to Boise was supposed to take nine hours, but with the fender bender and their frequent stops, they didn’t arrive at the hotel until the wee hours of the morning. They talked a little more along the way, mostly small talk on safe subjects, and by the time they left the car with the valet, they’d settled into a more comfortable truce than she’d ever imagined would be possible.

  “A four-star hotel was the best I could find around here,” Ben told her, as though she was going to be offended. He’d clearly dated the wrong women for far too long. “But I got us the best suite they had.”

  “Sounds perfect,” Sara answered. “I’m just looking forward to getting some sleep.” If he really knew her, he’d know she didn’t care about those things, except for when she was making arrangements for Kyle and those of his ilk. Just give her a clean bed and she’d be fine. Well, a clean bed and a really nice pillow. Nice sheets were a plus, too. Oh crap. She was becoming one of them.