Ruin Me

  Ruin Me

  Cara McKenna

  In her head, Robin wants to marry her boyfriend. Everything about her relationship with Jay makes sense—makes her happy—but she can’t bring herself to accept his proposal. Her body has unfinished business with Patrick, the man who saved her life six years ago. For a long time she assumed her potent feelings for Patrick were born of fear, wrapped up in the night she was attacked, but now she’s realizing it’s far simpler than that. She wants him. Always has, always will.

  More attached to Robin than the idea of her being faithful, Jay gives her the green light to go after Patrick in the hopes that it will demystify the man and get him out of Robin’s system. It begs the question—if you’ve got permission, is it still cheating? And which will ultimately sway the heart—reason or attraction?

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Ruin Me

  ISBN 9781419927430

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Ruin Me Copyright © 2010 Cara McKenna

  Edited by Jaynie Ritchie

  Cover art by Syneca

  Electronic book publication June 2010

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Ruin Me

  Cara McKenna

  Dedication

  For the fictional residents of Dereham, Vermont. And for Ellen, who loves lumberjacks.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank my editor, Jaynie Ritchie, for continuing to polish up the weird rocks I keep dumping on her desk.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Bailey’s Irish Cream: R & A Bailey & Co.

  Bowflex: Nautilus, Inc.

  Carhartt: Carhartt, Inc.

  Chuck Taylors: Converse, Inc.

  Dartmouth College: Trustees of Dartmouth College DBA

  Detroit Pistons: Detroit Pistons Basketball Company

  Dumb and Dumber: New Line Productions, Inc.

  Dunkin’ Donuts: Dunkin’ Donuts USA, Inc.

  Jeopardy!: Jeopardy Productions, Inc.

  Jerry Springer Show: Universal TV Distribution Holdings LLC

  Los Angeles Clippers: LAC Basketball Club, Inc.

  Prozac: Eli Lilly and Company

  Saab: General Motors Corporation

  Sam Adams: BBC Brands, LLC

  Speedo: Speedo International B.V.

  Tupperware: Dart Industries Inc.

  Wired: Condé Nast Publications

  Chapter One

  When Jay proposed, I immediately began to cry.

  And these weren’t tears of joy, mind you. These were frustrated tears because I really, really wanted to toss my arms around his neck and say yes, but I couldn’t.

  I bet Jay wasn’t surprised. I bet if I had tossed my arms joyously around his neck and screamed my affirmations the euphoria would’ve lasted a day or a week, but soon enough the giant asterisk that hovers above our relationship would’ve popped the happy bubble.

  I’ll say right off that the problem isn’t Jay. Jay is awesome. He’s my age—thirty-three—and he’s funny and smart and patient and I’m definitely attracted to him. My name is Robin. Jay and Robin. I mean, that’s so obnoxious it just has to be right.

  Jay’s the only guy I’ve ever suspected I might want a child with, which is huge, since I’d always assumed I’d take a pass on that. He’d be a great dad. A stay-at-home dad, since he works out of our little house, writing reviews and articles about techie stuff. I like that he gets free smart phones and gaming systems before they’re released and he plays with them for a few days and types up his verdict in his hilarious, trademark style. I like it even more that as soon as the clock hits five thirty he tosses aside whatever toy he’s playing with and starts dinner. I like that he runs or swims every morning and that there’s one of those Bowflex contraptions in his office, and he actually uses it, three days a week. He doesn’t look quite like one of the guys from the ads, but he’s not far off. For a guy you might run into at the drugstore in our little town in Vermont, he’s a total babe.

  What I’m saying is, I love Jay. The trouble isn’t him, so process of elimination points a big fat finger at me. I’m not afraid of commitment and I sowed my wild oats enough to know if I’m missing out on anything, and I’m not. Jay’s even better at sex than he is at fixing things, and that’s saying a lot.

  When Jay proposed, he didn’t get down on one knee. We were sitting on the couch watching Dumb and Dumber, which is what we watched on our very first date four years ago. We watch it every six months or so because Jay can’t get enough of how I start convulsing when Jeff Daniels whacks Jim Carrey in the back of the knees with a walking stick. This time when I caught my breath again and opened my streaming eyes, I found Jay turned toward me, holding a little polished wood box. I stared at it for a while and when he opened it, I started crying for real. Eventually he closed it and I’m pretty sure I ruined that movie for us forever.

  The way Jay puts it, our problem is “that asshole”.

  Personally, I don’t think the guy’s an asshole. I can’t, because he may have saved my life. I call our problem “the Patrick issue”. Patrick is the name you’d see typed in fine print next to that hovering asterisk I mentioned earlier.

  Yesterday, the day after Jay proposed, he made us breakfast as usual before I left to go to work. We’ve always been good at keeping our disagreements out in the open and not stewing over things, but we hadn’t talked about the proposal since it happened. Twelve hours is about our limit, elephant-in-the-room-wise, and Jay cracked first.

  “You want to talk about what happened?” he asked, buttering toast.

  I shrugged.

  He put the knife down and made an exasperated noise. “You showed me which ring to get.”

  “I know.”

  “Is this ever going to go away?” he asked. “I mean, are you ever going to be able to say yes to me?”

  I pushed my chair out from the dining room table and walked over and squeezed him. He smelled nice, like always. I wondered what was wrong with me that this wonderful man wasn’t enough.

  “I want to say yes,” I mumbled into his shoulder.

  “We’ve got to figure this out soon.”

  “It’s my problem,” I said.

  I felt him stroke my hair, heard him swallow. “Maybe we should move,” he said. “So we just don’t run into him anymore.”

  I pulled away. “I don’t want to move. I love this town. And my store and our neighbors. We’ll never find another neighborhood in this country and this century where people
still drop by to borrow things. I like lending things to people.”

  Jay shook his head. “I can’t keep going like this.” He looked older in an instant, his hazel eyes framed by fine lines, those half dozen gray sideburn hairs stark against their brown cohorts. “If you won’t move,” he said, “then I don’t know what else there is we can do. Except, maybe…”

  I gave him a puzzled look because I sure as hell had no clue what else we could do.

  “Maybe you should… Maybe,” he said again through a huge sigh, “you should just go ahead and sleep with him.”

  I felt my face go numb and I snaked my arms across my chest, as if I were naked and trying to hide my breasts. “No way.”

  “We both know you want to.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to want to though.”

  It’s no secret I’m attracted to Patrick Whelan. It goes beyond a lack of girl-friendly diplomacy to what I can only describe as an allergic sexual reaction. I can’t control or conceal it. When I see him, I start sweating, my whole body starts buzzing and I can’t not look at him.

  For the first few years I thought I was having flashbacks—fearful physical reactions to the memory of the guy who held a knife to my throat in the parking lot of Dereham, Vermont’s only bar, before Patrick Whelan spotted us and kicked the living shit out of him. That was the only time I’ve ever touched Patrick. I’d been shaking uncontrollably and before anyone even called the police about the man still lying on the asphalt, twitching and bleeding from his mouth and scalp, Patrick held me. He pulled me down to sit beside him on the hood of my old Saab, and he wrapped his big arms around me and rocked me until I could breathe properly again. Then he told to me to go inside and phone the cops. Twenty minutes later Patrick and I got taken to the station to file a report, and the man who attacked me was taken to the emergency room. He spent a couple nights in the hospital and was released without charges in time to get back to Dartmouth for Monday classes. Seven months after that, Patrick got released from prison, where he served an aggravated assault sentence for having the misfortune of beating the holy hell out of the sheriff’s step-nephew.

  This happened more than a year before I met Jay, but despite Patrick and me both being single and becoming friends when I drove up and visited him at prison once a week, we never got together. After he was released, when we’d run into each other at the diner or the bar or a store, we’d just wave politely. I’d work hard to hide the somersaults my stomach was doing, the ones I thought for ages were some kind of PTSD from the attack… It took me a long time to admit I just plain wanted to fuck Patrick’s brains out.

  “I can’t sleep with him,” I said to Jay, then bit my lip. “I love you. Plus I really like the idea of monogamy.”

  “We’ll never move forward if this doesn’t get resolved. I can live through you sleeping with another man, Robin.”

  I blinked a few times, feeling slapped. “Can you?”

  “Well, I’m pretty fucking sure it’ll suck worse than anything I’ve ever gone through, but…I know you’d never do it behind my back. You don’t want to hurt me.”

  I shook my head vigorously.

  “I want to be with you and that might just be a price I’m willing pay to get us there,” Jay said.

  I was crying again and the sobs blended into tiny laughs. “Sometimes I can’t figure out if you’re the most rational person I’ve ever met or a complete sociopath.”

  He smiled and hugged me and sent me back to the table with some toast and scrambled eggs. “Well, I’m your sociopath. Think about it for a few days. I don’t want to go anywhere, but you need to figure out a way to move forward. So we can move forward.”

  He said that yesterday, and when I kissed him goodbye to head out to open my shop, I thought it was the worst idea ever. Now…

  Now I’m not so sure.

  Chapter Two

  I know where Patrick Whelan lives. Everybody in our little town knows where everybody else lives and for how long and with whom.

  Patrick lives alone toward the end of a long dirt road that winds into the woods, just on our side of the town line between Dereham and Riverdale. I’ve never been to his house but I find it easily. There’s a bank of mailboxes at the foot of the road and the one labeled fourteen says Whelan on the side. I take a right at the long, anonymous driveway just after the one marked twelve, my old navy hatchback bucking in the dry potholes.

  My heart starts to hammer when I spot Patrick’s ancient pickup in the driveway. It’s Sunday morning and I wish I were religious so I could remember I’m supposed to be at church like a good person and get the hell out of here. Instead I park my car behind his truck and slam the door as loud as I can—a warning. I trot up a path of slate flagstones to the door of his small red house and I push the bell, contorting my face into an imitation of casual cool.

  But Patrick doesn’t come to the door. He appears around the side of the house with an axe in one gloved hand. This deviates from my script and I falter.

  “Hi!” I say, way too perky, and wave like a moron.

  “Robin.”

  Goddamn, he’s so tall. I always manage to make him shorter in my mind’s eye. He doesn’t smile but that’s not surprising. Patrick Whelan’s not a smiley guy.

  “Can I interest you in the word of Our Lord, Jesus Christ?” I ask and grin.

  He grins back, cautious. That’s what I always used to say to him when I’d sit down at the table in the correctional facility’s visiting room. It freaked him out the first time but broke the ice once he realized I was kidding. Then it became our greeting. This is the first time I’ve said it since he got released, over five years ago now.

  He leans his axe against the side of the house and crosses his arms over his chest. I should mention Patrick’s an honest-to-God lumberjack. That’s probably not his actual job title, but he spends four months of the year in northern New Hampshire, logging. It must pay well because it’s exceedingly dangerous. The rest of the year he works at a lumberyard here in Dereham. I think he does some contract carpentry too, because every once in a while I’ll see his truck in some random driveway, its bed full of two-by-fours. A couple times I’ve been tempted to call him up to do some carpentry for me, but I can never think up a project. Not one that Jay couldn’t probably do a decent job of, anyway. God, there’s a metaphor if I ever heard one.

  “Can I help you with something, Robin?”

  “Maybe.” Being close to him makes me shake, as always. “Can I talk to you for a few minutes?”

  He thinks a second and nods. “You talk, I chop,” he says and grabs his axe and heads around the house again. I follow, watching his ass. You would too, if you were here.

  There’s a mountain of firewood at the edge of his backyard. He must have just had a couple cords delivered.

  “Don’t mind me,” he says and starts splitting logs at a stump. “You just do your talking.”

  I don’t want to launch into the meat of the matter right off, not after we haven’t had a real conversation in half a decade. I toy with the fringe at the end of my scarf. “How have you been?”

  “All right.” His brown eyes meet mine. He’s got several days’ worth of stubble and is a couple months overdue for a haircut. I want to run my palms over his face and neck and devour him.

  I clear my throat and point to the wood. “Why do you do this by hand?”

  “Relaxes me.” He splits a log down the middle with a whack then adds another to the stump. It’s so unselfconsciously manly I have to stifle an urge to tear my clothes off and tackle him.

  Instead I ask, “How’s your mom?”

  He shrugs. “’Bout the same.”

  Despite all those visits, I don’t know a ton about Patrick, but I know his mom lives a few towns away and she’s some kind of compulsive hoarder. I think about Patrick whenever I see a show about people with that problem. I know he worries about her and that she drives him up the wall. Or she would, if you could get to her walls through all the s
tacks of moldy old catalogs and magazines Patrick said she’s got herself barricaded behind.

  “I don’t suppose you could invite me in for a coffee?” I ask. “It’s not really a wood-chopping conversation I’ve come here to have with you.”

  He thwacks the blade into the stump and mops his brow. Snow starts to drift down, the first of the season. The flakes land in his dark hair for a second before dissolving. He nods and I follow him to the side door.

  His house is small and as soon as I step inside I’m struck by how cool it is. He’s got tons of recessed shelving built into the walls and a handsome granite counter running along one side of his kitchen. Everything feels Spartan and organized—a poorly hidden filial rebellion.

  We don’t talk and soon a kettle’s whistling. He puts grounds into a little metal basket and steeps me a cup of coffee.

  “Milk?” he asks.

  “Please. And sugar if you have it.”

  He hands me the mug, royal blue with the logo of his lumber company. I take a sip even though it’s way too hot and pretend it doesn’t hurt, and he sits down opposite me at his little scrubbed pine table, looking patient. He’s got way more grays than Jay, mostly in his temples and his not-quite-a-beard. I think he turned thirty-eight or -nine last January.

  “So,” I finally begin. “I want to apologize in advance, about this. It’s really weird, what I have to say. You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  His gaze darts around the kitchen—scouting for escape routes, I suspect—then settles back on my face. “Okay.”

  “I, um… I was wondering if maybe, sometime…if I might possibly…kiss you,” I mumble. “Maybe not just kiss. Maybe more. I’m not sure. And not today, just sometime.”

  His mouth twitches behind his stubble. His dark eyes widen, which is a strange look for him because normally they’re sort of squinty. He’s got hooded eyes, I think they’re called. They make him look a bit Slavic, like a moody Russian exile from Romanov times, with an Irish name. I realize I’m staring when I should be elucidating.