Sugar and Spice by Mari Carr Page B

under her shirt.
    Allie rolled her eyes. “What a lame excuse! I’ll bet you were quiet as a mouse the whole time you were making your escape. Why the hell did you run?”
    Ginny took a deep breath and considered the question. Truth be told, the same one had been haunting her since she’d asked the doorman to call the taxi for her. “I just didn’t want to have to endure his ‘morning after’ routine.”
    Allie narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
    “Travers and I have been friends for a very long time. I think I’ve heard every ridiculous excuse he’s ever made to escape after a roll in the hay with some woman. I didn’t want to be yet another victim of his fuck-and-run routine. I didn’t want to be left lying in that bed, naked and alone.”
    “So you made sure he was naked and alone,” Allie said.
    “You think I was wrong?”
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    “I think you owed it to your best friend to give him the benefit of the doubt.
    Regardless of his past relationships, you are different and I think you should have stayed. My sister, the one I’ve spent my entire life emulating, would have stuck around.”
    Ginny quickly swiped away a wayward tear. “I couldn’t,” she answered, her voice breaking on the words.
    “Why not?” Allie asked, grasping Ginny’s hand tightly between her own.
    “Because I couldn’t have taken it if he’d walked out. Dammit, Allie! I love Ryan.”
    “Of course you do. He’s your best—”
    “No,” Ginny interrupted. “I’m in love with him. I think I always have been.”
    Allie’s face gentled into compassion incarnate. “Oh Gin. That’s exactly why you should have stayed.”
    *
    Ginny tried to concentrate on Anderson and Taylor’s story about their weekend, giving them a fake laugh every few minutes so they’d think she was listening, but she repeatedly felt her eyes roaming toward the front door. How would Ryan— Crap!
    Travers —she really needed to remember to call him Travers—react when he got to work?
    She was convinced now that Allie had been right and she’d been wrong to sneak out the way she had. She should have stayed, let the scene play out. If she had, she wouldn’t be facing this awkward situation now—in front of two unsuspecting friends.
    Somehow the idea of playing the tongue-tied, “so what do we do now” game with Travers had seemed too hard to face at the time. Shit, she’d give anything to go back in time and get this first conversation over with…in privacy.
    He’d given her a hell of a birthday, but she wondered if—for him—that’s all it was.
    Travers was a love-’em-and-leave-’em kind of guy. She’d wanted to experience a night in a sex club and he’d given her that experience and then some. Never once during the 72
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    night had he mentioned what would happen the next day and, as Ginny relived the night over and over in her mind during the weekend, she’d convinced herself that could only mean that there wasn’t going to be a next day. Travers didn’t know her feelings had changed and, even if it killed her to keep the secret, she sure wasn’t going to drop a bombshell like love down in the middle of their friendship. The foundation of their whole relationship, after Friday night’s affair, was bound to be shaky enough as it was.
    Despite Allie’s insistence that she face her fears, she’d hidden out at her sister’s townhouse all weekend, claiming she’d needed time to think and clear her thoughts.
    She’d actually thought perhaps the distance would shake loose her notion of being in love with Ryan.
    Fat chance.
    When she’d returned to her own home late last night and checked her answering machine, she’d been shocked to find Travers had left fifteen messages, each one a bit more tense and angry than the last. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised by the number. He’d called Allie’s place twice, but when her sister’s caller ID flashed Travers’
    name, Ginny had forbidden her