Rainey's Song Ch. 07

"I didn't expect to see you up before noon."

From his slouched position at the cherry oak kitchen table in Jean's leased house, Aidan squinted open one eye and scowled at his friend.

He felt like hell. His head was pounding and he had the worst case of cottonmouth in recent memory.

Taking in Aidan's disheveled state, Jean laughed good-naturedly. "Too much champagne, I take it?"

Aidan snorted. "Who the hell gets a hangover from champagne?" He ran a hand over his face and groaned deeply as he felt the night's growth of stubble on his chin. "I may or may not have taken a few shots of vodka from the liquor cabinet in the library last night."

Jean watched him with an amused crook of the mouth as he sipped a glass of orange juice near the refrigerator. "Ah, so that's why you ended up passed out in the guest room. Any particular reason for this rather uncharacteristic show of...overzealous alcohol consumption?"

"Jean, for the love of God, why are you talking like a college professor?" Aidan groaned. "Small words. Short sentences." Lowering his head to the cool surface of the table, he mumbled out a muffled, "That's all I can handle at the moment."

"Fine," Jean put his glass down and opened the fridge, removing a package wrapped in white butcher's paper and a carton of large, brown eggs. "Short sentences then," he said, as he began preparing breakfast. "Why did you get drunk last night? My guests couldn't have been that dull."

Aidan snorted derisively, as he recalled the inane conversation he'd had with bottle-blonde Collette Fitzroy. Sure, she was attractive, but the more she'd tried to entice him with her mascara-caked eyelashes and blood red lips, the more he'd been turned off—repulsed even.

He didn't generally have a type when it came to women since beauty came in every imaginable form, but the entire time the socialite was going on and on about the fashion in Milan and her stock holdings in some of the nation's Fortune 500 companies, he'd been thinking about Rainey and how she'd caught his attention that first night at the club just by talking about a part-time summer job.

The more Collette had talked, Aidan realized, the more she bored him in comparison to Rainey's depth. He enjoyed Rainey's mystery and shy personality—it was like a breath of fresh air compared to Collette's...wide-open display.

Judging by the size of the slit in her dress and the low-cut of its neckline, she had no problem advertising the goods. The only problem was that Aidan hadn't been interested.

"Aidan? Hello?" Across the kitchen, Jean was standing in on the other side of the counter, waving a spatula at Aidan to get his attention.

Aidan had to blink several times to clear his thoughts. "Huh?"

"I asked why you felt the need to get drunk last night. Anything interesting happen?"

It was Jean's sly tone that finally caught Aidan's attention. How much did he know about what had happened between him and Rainey the night before?

"Why do you ask?" Aidan's voice, still gravelly in the midst of his hangover, was cautious.

"Hmm," was all Jean said as he tore open the papered package he'd retrieved earlier and began dicing up thick slices of bacon. "Do you want an omelet? I have tomato, rosemary, green onion...les champignons. Oh, wait; you don't like mushrooms. Well, you have your other choices."

"I don't want an omelet."

"Orange juice?" Jean asked, not looking up as he minced garlic with practiced ease. "Or would you like to indulge your English ancestry with some tea?"

"I don't want juice or tea," Aidan replied shortly. He knew he sounded like a testy six-year-old, but he didn't care.

"Fine," Jean threw back just as concisely, "then do you want to tell me what happened between you and Rainey last night?"

Sitting up straight for the first time all morning, Aidan shot his friend a wary look. "Mind your own business, Jean."

Meticulously slicing tomatoes into thin wedges, Jean kept his attention on his task but his voice was steady and clear. "Hey, no need to get angry. Besides, it is my business: you're my friend, it was my party, this is my house—at least until the lease is up."

Jean finished the tomatoes and started chopping mushrooms. "Come, Aidan, you remember last night. Rainey came inside. You followed. About twenty minutes later, she came back out looking...disheveled, found her friend Karen, and they left. Rainey wouldn't even let me have my driver take her home. Said she'd already called a cab." He paused to rinse his cutting board. "So, I have to assume that, in the interim, something happened between the two of you."

Aidan cast Jean a nasty look. There was the pulse beating at his temple again. Vaguely, Aidan worried that he was developing some kind of a condition from all the strain he'd been under during the past two weeks.

And now that Jean knew something was up, he really didn't have a choice but to give him some sort of an explanation.

He sighed. "I kissed her. Are you happy now?"

Jean's left brow shot up, but he didn't say anything. He was clearly waiting for more detail.

Closing his eyes, Aidan began to rub his temples, hoping the throbbing would ease. "She spilled champagne on her skirt and I was trying to help her. We were in...the bathroom and, well, one thing led to another and I ended up kissing her..." He let his arms fall away and he rested his head against the back of the chair. "God, this is definitely going to complicate our whole arrangement. I mean, I really don't think this is what Lynn had in mind."

He waited for Jean to respond, but long seconds passed with no sound from his friend.

Turning his head, Aidan found the Frenchman watching him speculatively. "Don't look at me like that," he said on an exasperated sigh. "It was just a kiss."

Well, that was mostly true, Aidan mused; he didn't want to hear what Jean might have to say if he told him that kissing Rainey was only the beginning of what had happened last night.

"Aidan," Jean began slowly. "In America, the French are viewed as...lovers, am I right?" Aidan nodded, and Jean continued. "Well, I think the Italians are the true lovers, but why argue with such an enchanting belief, n'est-ce pas?" he smiled mischievously.

"Is this going somewhere, Jean?"

"Oh. Right," the Frenchman sobered a bit as he made his point. "What I mean to say is that, although we French are not artisans of love, I know that a simple kiss doesn't put the look on someone's face that I saw on Rainey's last night. It was confusion and anxiety, yes, but she was—forgive the cliché—glowing." Jean held up his hand before Aidan could interrupt. "And you, well, I've hardly ever heard of an innocent kiss leading to a man drinking himself into a near stupor. So, again, I have to ask, qu'est-ce que tu as fait?"

The wrought-iron legs of Aidan's chair scraped across the floor as he shoved away from the table. " I told you, already; I didn't do anything!" He stalked over to brood in front of a large bay window, his hands shoved deeply into the pockets of the dress slacks he'd worn to the party and slept in last night.

"Forgive me if I prefer to assume otherwise, mon ami," Jean said calmly. The sound of eggs sizzling in a frying pan was the only noise in the room.

"You're a real bastard, you know that?" Aidan said at last.

"That would be news to both my parents," Jean quipped nonchalantly.

Aidan released a heavy breath as he let his shoulders relax. "It was more than a kiss."

"I see," was all Jean said.

"No, you don't." Aidan's kept his back to his friend, sightlessly taking in the sparkling, rain-kissed gardens visible through the window that was nearly the height of the wall. "I didn't sleep with her. I just...afterward...I felt like I'd taken advantage of her. She's so young and she was drinking. And I practically just met her, but she's driving me insane. The vodka...that was definitely a bad idea," he admitted, "but I had to get my mind off of her."

He swore colorfully, turning around when he heard Jean settling himself at the table with his breakfast. "I can't stop thinking about her, Jean. The way she smells. Her smile. Her eyes. The way she chews her lower lip when she's concentrating. I just...I don't know what to do."

"You know, you're really making this more complicated than it needs to be, Aidan. It's really just a matter of whether or not you're attracted to this girl, and, " Jean continued, "whether or not she's attracted to you. Judging from her flustered exit last night and the fact that you're practically pulling your hair out over this, the attraction question is clearly a non-issue."

Aidan sat down again and stared across the table at his friend. "It's not that easy, Jean. Part of me wants it to be, but the other part keeps counting all of the reasons why I should stay the hell away from her and stop thinking with what's between my legs."

"You're just full of excuses, aren't you?" Jean stabbed a piece of omelet with his fork and chewed thoughtfully.

"They're not excuses," Aidan protested. "These are valid problems that're—"

"Bullshit," Jean countered, the mix of his French accent with the purely American curse made his statement all the more pronounced.

"If you were thinking with what's between your legs, as you put it, you'd have just slept with Rainey last night and that would've been the end of it. If you were as caught up in the age difference and working situation as you keep saying you are, you wouldn't have let things get this far and you know it. Would you like to know what I think your problem is?" Jean's asked, pointing his fork at Aidan.

"Does it matter? You're going to tell me anyway," Aidan said, resignedly.

"True," Jean conceded. "I think you're afraid."

Silence fell as Jean put the last of his omelet in his mouth.

Aidan's mind couldn't seem to take in what Jean was saying. "What're you talking about? Why would I be afraid of Rainey?"

Jean shook his head. "Not afraid of her. Scared to hell of the fact that she's all you think about. Afraid of—"

"You're not making any damned sense, Jean," Aidan said.

"Look Aidan," Jean said. "Considering your past with Julia...well, you and I both know that you haven't had the best experience with relationships. I think—"

"Okay, we're done talking about this," for the second time that morning, Aidan shoved out of his chair, only this time he had no intention of sticking around to listen to Jean's psychobabble.

Jean's brow rose, but he didn't make a move to detain him. "Okay, we're done," he said, "but can I say one more thing before you storm out of here?"

Aidan was already headed toward the stairway that would take him to the guestroom he'd slept in so he could get his things and go home for a change of clothes.

"What?" he asked warily.

"Whether or not I'm right about this whole thing with Rainey, you have to admit that this is the first time, in a long time, that you've been distracted by something other than work or university. And even if I'm wrong—which I don't think I am—but, even if I am, you should think about holding onto her for as long as it lasts because, in the end, you might end up wishing you'd taken a chance—even a temporary one."

Aidan stared at his friend, his lips pursed with frustration and thoughtfulness. "Au revoir, Jean," he murmured.

"Au revoir," Jean returned, sipping his juice as Aidan disappeared up the stairs.

*********************************

"Oh. My. God." Karen said, pronouncing each word slowly and deliberately. "In the *bathroom*?"

Rainey was lying on her bed with her face buried in her pillow. She nodded slowly, easily able to imagine the look of dumbfounded shock on her friend's face.

Shock pretty much summed up the acute disbelief that Rainey was experiencing in the light of day, as well.

Last night when Rainey had made her way back from her encounter with Aidan, Karen was still surrounded by a bevy of admirers, but one look at the bemused expression on Rainey's face had Karen murmuring her excuses as she made her way to her friend's side.

She'd try to pry information out of her while they were still at the party but Rainey, in a steady voice, had simply asked if Karen was ready to leave.

Jean-Philippe appeared from the house and, when Karen told him that they were leaving, he'd offered to find someone to give them a lift but Rainey, speaking for the first time in several minutes, politely refused, and announced that she'd already called a cab.

Once they'd settled themselves into the back of the taxi fifteen minutes later, Karen smoothed out the folds of her dress and looked at Rainey's serious profile. "Alright, spill," she'd said into the darkness.

But Rainey, still whirling inside at the utterly surreal nature of what had happened between her and Aidan, just shook her head and said, "I'll...I'll tell you in the morning," and Karen had to be grudgingly satisfied with that.

Rainey had simply leaned her head against the cool window of the cab, staring out at the gold and yellow lights of the Seattle skyline as the driver traversed the residential lakeside road at leisurely speed.

Now, morning had come and she'd recounted the previous night's events and as Karen sat in astonished silence, Rainey was wondering the same thing she'd wondered the night before: What the hell had happened to her?

One minute she was downing what had to have been her sixth glass of champagne, the next, Aidan was towering over her like some blue-eyed apparition and then...then...

She bit her lip and felt her cheeks flush as the still swelteringly hot memory of what she'd let Aidan do to her came flooding back. Part of her, some distant and increasingly less prominent part of her knew that, technically, she should be upset, but another more adventurous part of her urged her to see where this new path led.

"Okay...okay..." Karen was mumbling, "I think...you need to start from the beginning, please."

Rolling over to her back, Rainey stared at the ceiling. "There's really nothing else to tell," she said. "I mean, I pretty much just told you everything from beginning to end. I just...I just don't know what to do about it."

On the one hand, Rainey considered, she could accept this...situation...at the barest points. She and Aidan were attracted to each other and he'd taken an opportunity to give a physical outlet to that attraction: nothing more nothing less.

In that case, she should just forget the whole thing, right? It wasn't like she was overly experienced when it came to *almost sex* in any shape or form, so it'd be better if she just chalked it up to the candlelight and the alcohol, right?

Her thoughts scattered when Karen hopped off her bed and started pacing, her fingers tugging at the hem of a white t-shirt that said, in black letters, 'I'm Not With Stupid Anymore.'

"You have a point," Karen said, slowly. "I mean, you've got the option of just, you know, acting cool and calm like it never happened, or," she continued quickly when she saw Rainey's brow knit, "you can kind of see where things go from here."

Rainey sat up, crossing her legs as she began to chew her thumbnail. "I don't think that's a good idea."

Karen stopped pacing. "Why not?"

Rainey opened her mouth to respond but found that she couldn't come up with a single good response.

A week ago, even a day ago she would have been full of reasons and rationalizations as to why she should be calling Lynn right now to tell her that her she was absolutely done working with Aidan, but today she couldn't formulate a single reason why that was the best thing to do.

"So?" Karen urged. "What's the problem with a possible relationship?"

And there it was. That word: relationship. Rainey groaned inwardly.

Yes, Aidan was pretty much her male fantasy come to life, but that didn't mean he felt the same about her.

'But what if he does,' a stubborn inner voice questioned.

Squeezing her eyes closed in frustration, she leaned forward and buried her face in the pillow she had cradled in her lap. From her semi-sheltered position, she opened her mouth and admitted her fears in a flood of words that were strung together into an unintelligible garble.

"Rainey, I have no idea what you just said," Karen pointed out.

She raised her face from the pillow. "I said: it's a bad idea because I don't know if he feels the same."

From a few feet away, Karen stared at Rainey as she played with a lock of hair that had fallen over her shoulder. "Rainey, from what you just told me—and I'm sure you gave me the tame version—I don't see how you can even think he isn't attracted to you."

"That's not the point. I mean, I know he is," she could feel herself blushing but she forced herself to say what she was thinking. "I just...I don't know if that's *all* he wants."

"Ohhh," Karen said, understanding Rainey's dilemma. "You're not sure if it's all about the physical stuff for him, huh?" When Rainey nodded, Karen sat down on the bed next to her. "Okay, then it looks like the ball's back in your court. The only way to find out is to go see him."

A tiny shiver of panic ran up Rainey's spine. "Go see him?"

Karen nodded. "Look, it only has to be as weird as you let it. If you're cool and calm about it, he'll be, too. You really have more control over this situation than you think, Rainey."

"It doesn't feel like it. Lately, it's like I'm watching things happen and I have no control over them."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" Karen's voice was soft, probing.

Rainey thought for a moment. "I...at first, with Aidan, it was...scary and strange, you know? I mean, here's this incredible guy who's, for some reason I can't fathom, interested in me. It...well, it terrified me. But now, I just..." she paused as she searched for the right words.

Last night when she'd looked into Aidan's eyes and saw the unmasked passion in their depths, she'd known that he was attracted to her, but she'd thought she'd seen a shadow of need, as well.

Even though a large, yet silent, part of her had always hoped that the pull she felt constantly tugging between them would finally overcome both their restraints, she'd been wary, anxious, and nervous about when that time would come.

She'd expected to be overwhelmed and apprehensive of her innate awkwardness, but he'd made her feel graceful and beautiful and confident.

Vaguely, in the midst of her thoughts, Rainey realized that Karen was waiting for her to finish her sentence.

She cleared her throat. "Before...I was afraid, but now...I want him." A frisson of excitement ran through her even as she said the words.

They were the absolute, undiluted truth.

She wanted more of the confidence he gave inspired in her. She wanted the knowledge that Aidan *wanted* her. She wanted that power; that joy; that satisfaction. The fulfillment.

While she knew that, ultimately, the true changes would have to come from within, she knew instinctively, that Aidan was the key. Even if it turned out that he wasn't in the market for a relationship, she'd deal with that when the time came.

She promised herself that she would be reasonable about her expectations since she was about to take this bold step forward with her eyes wide open.

For once, it was a risk she was ready and willing to take.

With deliberate precision, Rainey put her pillow down on the bed and got up. "Karen," she said, turning to her friend with a look of determination on her face, "for once I'm going after what I want. And I want Aidan."

Leaning back on Rainey's bed with a huge grin, all Karen had to say was, "Hallelujah."

*********************************

After popping two Tylenol PM to combat his headache, Aidan was sprawled across his couch in a semi-sleeping haze that reminded him again why he disliked vodka.