Meant for You Read online

  At the rough timbre of his voice, another shiver passed through Jenny. When they’d previously been together, she’d had the upper hand with Owen and they’d both known it. She was the one who set the pace and the one who’d made a mess of things when her feelings for him had become too much for her.

  But now she was off-kilter—left of center and out of her element. She didn’t like being in the position of owing anyone, but there was a sexy note of promise in Owen’s voice that a secret part of her reveled in.

  When she didn’t immediately answer, he crouched down so he was at eye level with her. “I think you like the thought of it, too.”

  “Nope,” she answered, grabbing her purse, then pushing past him and shoving a key in the front door. “But I will admit, Owen Dalton, you give good diamond.”

  Owen pulled onto the interstate a few minutes later, trying not to let his gaze fall to the expanse of Jenny’s bare leg visible on the other side of the console.

  “If you ever want a second career,” she told him, “you should hire yourself out as the perfect revenge date. A diamond ring and a Porsche? Hell, I don’t even need to show up at this reunion to prove to everyone that I hit the jackpot.”

  He chuckled despite himself and kept his eyes on the highway, maneuvering the sports car through weekend traffic. “I’m probably not necessary to the equation. I can just hire out the car and jewelry.”

  “You’re necessary,” she murmured, and those two words made his heart stumble a beat. He was used to people wanting him for what he’d created and built with Dalton Enterprises—his reputation or connections. The way Jenny said it made him think she found him necessary for something more.

  At one point, he’d wanted to be her something more.

  Of course, he knew better than to read too much into it. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be a fool for this woman ever again.

  “How’s Cooper doing?”

  “Awesome, as usual,” she answered, and he loved the note of pride in her voice. “He’s at a sleepover tonight. It’s weird with him not in the house, though. He’s going to sleepaway camp the last week of June, for the first time ever.” She made a face that was both cringeworthy and adorable. “It’s going to kill me not to have him around. I don’t know how the universe managed to bless me with such an amazing kid. He studies when he’s supposed to, does chores without asking, and manages not to freak out about anything life throws at him.”

  “Like his mom being fake engaged?”

  “I prefer the word pretend, but you’re exactly right. He even gave me a rationale for how I got myself into this in the first place.”

  “Maybe he’ll have a career in politics. I met with the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation last week. They could use someone to help them come up with more convincing arguments for some of their plans.”

  She didn’t answer for several moments, and he finally glanced over. “You were on Capitol Hill? You say that like it’s no big deal.”

  He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “It’s what I do, Jenny. You know most of my work now is focused on the foundation. We have a chance to make a real difference in using technology in both the environmental and public health sectors, but the amount of red tape and bureaucracy is mind boggling.”

  “You should sound more impressed with yourself, Owen.”

  He chuckled.

  “I mean it,” she insisted. “You’re impressive. You’re a catch. You’re smart, handsome, funny, and—”

  “Stop. You sound like my grandmother.” He shook his head, not sure what to think about Jenny reminding him of the woman who had shown him the meaning of unconditional love when he was a kid. “I’d spend weekends at her house when the rest of the family went on camping trips. She was an aging hippie and used to make me stand in front of the mirror and recite positive affirmations to myself before I went to bed. She was very much the school of ‘if you can believe it, you can achieve it.’”

  She held up a hand. “I want to talk about your awesome-sounding grandma, but first tell me why you were left behind when your family went on vacation.”

  Damn. He hadn’t meant her to pick up on that part. “They weren’t exactly vacations. They were camping trips around the area—state parks and over near the New River Gorge. Mostly long weekends.”

  “Which still doesn’t explain why you didn’t go with them.”

  “I wasn’t much of a hiker,” he admitted. “I had allergies and asthma as a kid.”

  “But you run and bike now, right? Kendall mentioned that you and Ty did a triathlon last year.”

  “I’ve grown out of most of my symptoms, but back then I was . . . sickly. I wouldn’t have been able to keep up. My dad was a marine, and he set a grueling pace.”

  “Did you ever try?”

  “Not really.”

  “Did you want to?”

  He felt his fingers tighten around the steering wheel and forced himself to relax. “It wasn’t an option.” He held his breath, hoping she didn’t press him for more information.

  “How often did these trips take place?”

  Damn.

  “My parents liked to camp,” he said, slanting her a glance. “So they went at least once a month in the summer. I was fine at my grandma’s. She was an amazing cook and baked the best pies.”

  “You shouldn’t have been left behind,” she murmured.

  Owen took the exit off the interstate into Boulder faster than necessary, pushing the sports car in a way that had Jenny gripping the door handle. He wanted to be done talking about his family, hating how much not fitting in as a boy had shaped who he was as a man. “I don’t know how we even got on the topic of childhood vacations.”

  “Me giving you a compliment reminds you of your grandma.” She bit down on her lip as if she was resisting the urge to say more, then asked, “Is she still alive?”

  He shook his head. “She passed away a few years ago, but before that lived in an assisted living facility in Hastings and practically ran the place.”

  “I wish my mom was adjusting so well to the memory care unit in the nursing home.”

  He stopped at a red light near the hotel and turned to her. “How is she doing?”

  Jenny smiled, but it was strained. “Some days are better than others. She still knows Cooper and me, but she occasionally thinks he’s her younger brother who was killed in Vietnam. It makes it a challenge when we visit, although Coop is a trooper, like always.”

  She took a small breath, then added, “The worst times are when she’s aware of what’s happening. My mom’s whole identity was based on taking care of other people. The fact that she’s now dependent and understands that the disease is stripping away not only her memory but also the very fabric of who she is as a person is difficult to handle. Alzheimer’s sucks balls.”

  “Succinctly put.” He reached out a hand and traced one finger over the delicate bone of her wrist. “How are you holding up?”

  Her gaze dropped to her lap. “My mom has always been the strongest person I know, and that’s still true. She’s taken care of me for my whole life. I hate watching her slip away, but now it’s my turn to take care of her. I’m going to make sure she has the best care and her life is as easy as I can make it. But things progressed more rapidly than I thought they would, and she made some bad decisions before I realized what was happening.”

  “What kind of decisions?”

  Her head rolled back against the seat and she closed her eyes. “It was her retirement savings. Somehow a scam artist got a hold of her and she didn’t mention it to me. He convinced her he was setting up long-term care insurance and a way for her money to be put into a trust for me and Cooper. Not that she had a lot, but my mom was a saver. Then it was gone.”

  “All of it?”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “The majority. I’d just bought the new house and was working a ton of hours to set up the nursery. I wasn’t paying enough attention, and by the time I re
alized what was happening and got a power-of-attorney authorization, he was long gone. I should have realized—”

  “It’s not your fault, Jen.” Owen knew how close Jenny was to her mom and the toll Mona’s illness must be taking. He wanted to gather her into his arms and wipe away the deep sorrow etched across her delicate features.

  “Thanks,” she whispered. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember that.”

  A horn honked behind them, and Jenny immediately shifted in her seat, lifting her hand and jabbing two fingers toward the rearview mirror.

  Owen took another turn as he glanced at her. “Did you just give that car the peace sign?”

  Jenny rolled her eyes. “Cooper wanted me to stop with the one-fingered salute in traffic.”

  “So now you do a very enthusiastic peace sign?”

  “Exactly.”

  He smiled. The car ride had not been what he’d expected. He’d thought it would be difficult to be with Jenny again after how things had ended. He’d spent most of the week mentally flogging himself for not refusing her request in the first place.

  Instead it had been easy to fall back into friendship with her. Their day-to-day conversations had always been one of his favorite things. Of course, he hadn’t planned to let that bit about his grandma and the camping trips slip. But he was glad that it had led her to telling him about her mom. There was so much more to Jenny than she let anyone see.

  Owen got that—he was a master of sharing himself without really letting anyone in. Now he realized tonight might actually be fun. There were people in his life he would have liked to have recognize that he’d turned out better than they expected. It just so happened that most of those people were related to him.

  Jenny sucked in a quick breath as the hotel where the reunion was taking place came into view. The Hotel Boulderado, with its redbrick exterior and green awnings around the ground floor, was an iconic landmark near downtown and the popular Pearl Street Mall. Owen had been to several events at the popular and well-respected hotel, but never had one seemed more important than Jenny’s reunion.

  “Crap,” she muttered, “we were so busy talking I forgot to get our stories straight about wedding plans.”

  “You talk,” he told her. “I’ll follow your lead.”

  “What if someone gets us alone?”

  “Are you planning to ditch me again?” he asked mildly. “It’s still in the midseventies, so I doubt they have a coat closet at the event.”

  She sucked in a breath. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “We’ll be fine, Jenny.” He pulled the car to a stop under the hotel’s deep green awning and climbed out when the valet opened the car door. After giving the man his information and accepting a few gushing comments about his car, he moved toward the entrance, then stopped when he didn’t see Jenny waiting for him.

  “Sir,” the valet called, and Owen turned. “I . . . uh . . . your date is still in the car.”

  Another young man in the hotel’s valet uniform of a white shirt, red vest, and black pants stood next to the passenger’s-side door. “She’s locked herself in,” he said as Owen stepped closer.

  Even though he couldn’t see her through the tinted glass, he could feel the weight of her stare. Owen looked at the window and raised a brow. So much for thinking the night was going to be easy.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jenny felt Owen’s eyes on her as she watched another group of her former high school classmates walk into the hotel.

  A tap on the glass made her roll down the window. “Get in the car,” she said on a panicked hiss of breath. “We’re getting the hell out of here.”

  “I think you need to get out of the car,” Owen responded calmly. Damn him for his quiet composure.

  “I need a cigarette,” she muttered.

  “You don’t smoke.”

  “I might start.” She nodded to herself. “Hell, maybe I’ll try some of those marijuana gummy bears that are so popular on Colfax Avenue. I bet I’d feel a lot better now if I was stoned.”

  “You don’t need an excuse for more paranoia,” Owen answered with a slight smile, and leaned closer. “Let’s go into the party, Jen.”

  She shook her head. “None of it matters, Owen. The dress . . . the car . . . even arriving on your arm. All of that is my own personal version of smoke and mirrors. It’s still me underneath it all.”

  “Thank God,” he murmured, and she glanced up at him. “I wish you believed that all you have to be is who you are. Ten years changes a lot of things for people.”

  “Easy for you to say.” She grabbed her small purse off the floor and clutched it to her chest. “You must have been the returning king at your reunion.” She knew Owen was a year older than her and assumed—

  “I didn’t go back for my reunion,” he answered.

  “Why not? It’s not like Steve Jobs was from your hometown. Who else could hold a candle to your success?”

  “Why am I always on the losing end of comparisons with other tech company founders?” He shrugged. “You know it’s not always about success.”

  “Of course it is.”

  “Sometimes it’s about having the guts to take the first step. In this case, the first step out of the car.”

  “Is that your nice-guy way of calling me a chickenshit?”

  He flashed a wide grin. “I don’t think I need to call you anything. I can almost see the words bouncing around inside your head.”

  It was true. There was nothing bad Owen or anyone inside that hotel could think about her that she hadn’t—at some point—believed about herself.

  Often when fear got the best of her she played a “what’s the worst thing that could happen” game. She’d run through worst-case scenarios in her head and figure out how to handle them. If she prepared for the worst, anything else would be a cakewalk.

  This felt more like walking the gangplank, but she climbed out of the car anyway.

  Instead of moving back to give her room, Owen crowded her a little. His hands lifted and he cupped her cheeks, his coffee-colored eyes so intense that for a moment, she forgot all about her nerves. She couldn’t remember why they were standing there. She practically forgot to breathe. All of her senses were filled with him, strong and steady. The feeling of being safe was the biggest turn-on she’d ever had.

  Then he brushed his lips over hers. The kiss was gentle but somehow still commanding, as if his easygoing image was only a mask and he’d been the one in control all along. She wanted to wrap herself around him and never let go, never lose that feeling.

  He pulled away and took her hand. She followed him up the stairs in a daze. “Hope you don’t mind the improvisation,” he said as a doorman held open the door. “There was a group watching us, and it seemed like a good idea to start the evening with a display of our affection for each other.”

  She blinked, then glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, a handful of her classmates stood at the edge of the sidewalk in front of the hotel. A woman who she recognized as Brenna Holt took a long drag on a cigarette and waved in Jenny’s direction.

  Right. The kiss had been fake, a convincing bit of pretend chemistry. The entire date was a favor. Owen might have been in control of the kiss, but there was no denying at his core he was the nicest person she knew.

  “Warn me next time,” she muttered, touching a finger to her still-tingling lips, “so I can make it seem real.”

  He chuckled. “Things get any more authentic than that, and we’re going to need a room.”

  She stumbled a step. “Stupid shoes.” Owen placed his hand on the small of her back and her body grew heavy in response. “You can’t say things like that. It’s distracting.”

  “Can’t you tell?” he asked, leaning so close his breath tickled her ear. “I’m trying to distract you.”

  Owen Dalton might be trying to kill her.

  Jenny splashed water on her face in the hotel bathroom, then dabbed at her cheeks with a crisp paper towel. She wasn’t sure
jumping headfirst into a snowbank would cool her down at this point.

  To the outside observer, the evening must look like a complete success. Owen had stayed at her side, attentive and affectionate as they made their way from the registration table to the bar. Even though Jenny understood that affection was not the same as love, and sexual chemistry meant even less when it came to true emotions, she had felt herself leaning into his touch and coming to rely on his presence at her side.

  They mingled with various classmates who had never given Jenny the time of day but were now acting like they’d been her high school besties.

  But the longer they stayed at the event, the more anxious Jenny became. It felt like her skin was a size too small again, which had more to do with Owen than anyone else. She hadn’t been thinking when she’d made the comment about having a fiancé, but she would have never guessed in a million years that a night spent pretending to be in love with Owen could make her so crazy.

  Each brush of his fingers along her shoulder, every time he wrapped an arm around her waist, the way he smelled so good she wanted to bury her nose in his neck . . . the whole of it was driving her into a frenzy of need and want that she could not seem to control.

  “You definitely traded up,” a cool voice said, and she turned to where Dina Sullivan, one of the former mean girls she’d seen last week in Denver, stood in the doorway between the bathroom and the lounge area.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jenny muttered, even though she knew exactly what Dina meant. “But I can guarantee you have more Botox than brains in your head at this point.”

  Dina sniffed and took a step closer. “Not everyone can rock the ‘rugged mountain girl’ look. Natural and outdoorsy might work for you, but some of us need a little help.”

  Jenny opened her mouth to make a retort, then snapped it shut again. Was that some kind of weird, backhanded compliment?

  “Trent hasn’t shown up yet,” the other woman said crisply. “But he played in the golf tournament this morning, so I know he’s in town.”