by Crespo, Nina
“Very.” Alexa set her container next to her wine on the ottoman. “But I was so nervous. You know how judgmental my mom can be, but Rafe showed up with her favorite flowers and a bottle of whiskey for my dad.” A huge smile lit up her face. “He’s so damn wonderful. I don’t even know how to describe him with words.”
“How about hot as hell?”
“For starters…” Alexa launched into an animated explanation of how the visit went.
Alexa had a glow about her that didn’t come from makeup or merlot. She was clearly in love.
A pang of envy hit Natalie, and she took another sip of wine. Alexa deserved to have happiness again. She’d had her chance, too, with Rome, but she’d messed things up.
Alexa’s silence alerted Natalie to the fact that she’d zoned out on the conversation. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Alexa set down her wineglass, then settled back on the couch. “I didn’t come here to talk about me and Rafe. Actually, I’m here about you. I heard you may have been seeing someone…and now you’re not.”
Had Cori told her? But wait, Cori knew about Rome, but she hadn’t told her they’d broken up. “Who told you that?”
“I have my sources.”
“Was one of them Cori? I’m going to strangle her the next time I see her.”
“Yes, it was, but don’t be too mad at her. I forced her to tell me. Honestly, I should be the one strangling you for not filling me in yourself. You were acting strange and avoiding talking to me, but I didn’t understand why.” Hints of hurt came into Alexa’s expression. “I made her tell me because I was concerned that something was up with Dorian and the divorce, but when she told me you’d hooked up with a bartender at the Bash, I was glad for you, and then…” She shrugged.
Natalie set her wine on the ottoman. She couldn’t be mad at Cori or Alexa for caring about her. “So, Cori told you I was with someone, but how did you find out that I wasn’t anymore?”
“Yesterday, Rafe said one of his best bartenders had left Escapade. He’d wondered if he could have done something to keep him on. Xander, his head of security, knew the guy and had mentioned he was surprised about him leaving, because the guy had started seeing someone he was serious about. But Xander said, supposedly, it hadn’t worked out because she was into her job and not the relationship.”
Is that what Rome had thought? Hurt welled up inside her. But it wasn’t like she’d done anything to make him think differently. Unshed tears stung in Natalie’s eyes. She blinked them back.
Alexa scooted closer. “I came here on a hunch. I wasn’t sure he was your bartender until just now.”
“I…” Emotion gobbled up Natalie’s words.
Alexa wrapped her arms around her. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“You had just gotten back with Rafe.” Natalie sank into the tight hug. “I didn’t want to burden you with it.”
“You’re not a burden to me. I always have time for you.” Compassion filled Alexa’s gaze as she leaned back and looked at Natalie. “I’m here now. My overnight bag is in the car, and, whether you like it or not, you’ve got me for the entire night. Cori would have been here, too, if she could have.”
But what was the point of rehashing what happened? Rome was gone. He didn’t want to see her again. He’d been serious about her? That was what Alexa had said she’d heard. Natalie’s heart ached. And she’d been head over heels about him. She still was.
Words tumbled from her lips before she could hold them in. “Well, you probably already know his name is Rome.” An unexpected rush of tears came with a ragged breath. “But what you don’t know is that I fell in love with him.”
After multiple tears and a long confession about everything, Natalie dried her eyes with paper napkins. She felt lighter, but a vacant space she didn’t know how to fill still existed inside of her.
Alexa shook her head. “First of all, I don’t know if I should be mad at you or not for keeping the robbery a secret. But I guess I can’t be, since I didn’t exactly make myself available right after the Bash.”
“You had a good reason, and at the time, I had Rome.” Just saying his name brought a lump back into her throat.
Alexa squeezed her hand. “Remember what you told me when I was in your shoes? You told me not to give up on Rafe. That I should find a way to patch things up with him.”
“But how?” Still weepy, Natalie blew her nose in a fresh napkin. “He won’t even talk to me.”
“He can’t.”
“What? Why?” Concern quickly dried Natalie’s tears. “What happened to him?”
“He’s fine. Do you really think I’d just sit here calmly eating kung pao chicken if something bad had happened to him? He’s involved in some kind of intense training, so he’s incommunicado until it’s over.”
Intense training? Was he overworking his leg while doing it? But Rome was the strongest man she’d ever known. He could handle it. Relief settled into Natalie, along with resignation. “Even if he could talk to me, he wouldn’t. He doesn’t want anything to do with me. I don’t see how I can fix this.”
“There is a way, but first, you need to figure out why you sabotaged the relationship.”
“What do you mean? I didn’t sabotage anything. At least not on purpose.”
“Well, let’s start with why you left that file at his house for him to find.”
“I didn’t.”
Alexa released an exasperated breath. “The Natalie I know is meticulous and cautious. You’re an impenetrable vault when it comes to information, and you’re never careless with it.”
“But I was here with you, handling the boxed-wine crisis. I planned on being home before he arrived.”
“Oh please, stop.” Alexa stalled Natalie’s forthcoming objection with a direct stare. “Think about it. You brought a file to his house, one you claim you hadn’t wanted him to see. Yet, you not only brought it to his house, you were careless enough to leave it out in plain sight? On what planet in the universe does that make sense?”
Natalie went to object but stopped. Alexa was right. Before that night, she’d never been careless with files and information, especially when it was related to work. Had she wanted him to find it?
“Stay with me… Don’t look away.” The memory of making love with Rome right after he’d tried on the boots emerged. With each thrust and slow roll of his hips, he’d owned her so completely. The way he’d made her feel—it had scared her.
She looked to Alexa, and regret dimmed her voice to a whisper. “I was afraid of my feelings for him and what we shared. Look what happened with Dorian. I thought our relationship was special. He was supposedly the man of my dreams. He claimed he loved me, but then he cheated on me. I wasn’t enough.”
“No.” Alexa wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Dorian was the one who wasn’t enough. Him cheating had less to do with you and more to do with his insecurities and all of the baggage he had when he met you that he should have cleared up before he asked you to marry him. More importantly, you can’t confuse the two men. Rome is not Dorian.”
“No, he isn’t.” Rome was confident, honorable, and he wasn’t intimidated by her success in the least. And now he was gone. “I just wish I would have talked to him and been honest about what happened with the mock-ups. It was a mistake, and I should have fixed it right away. Now it’s too late.”
“What if you could contact him? What would you say to him now?”
“No.” Natalie picked up her wineglass from the ottoman and drained the last sip. “I’m not going to play the ‘let’s pretend’ game for some cathartic release of my emotions. What’s the point? He’s not going to hear it.”
“What if he could hear it or, more accurately, read it.” Alexa’s gaze grew solemn. “Would you have the guts to tell him everything, including being afraid to love him, if it meant you might win him back?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Natalie lay in bed with her laptop
resting on her legs, staring at the blinking cursor on the screen. Write to Rome? The idea was silly, and no matter what Alexa had said last night, this was some dumb cathartic exercise.
Her gaze was drawn to the sticky note with the address in North Carolina. Somehow, Alexa had gotten the information from Xander about where Rome was. Admittedly, her heart had flip-flopped a little when Alexa had given it to her. It was the last and only tangible link she had to him. But pour her soul onto the page? He wouldn’t read her letters until he got back from wherever he was, if he decided to read them at all.
If she told him that she was sorry for what she’d done, if she admitted that falling hard for him had scared her because her relationship with Dorian had failed, if she shared with him about Aunt Carmen forcing her to shut down her feelings and not burden people with her problems, if she found the courage to tell him about how much it hurt to lose her mom and dad… What would happen then? Would he just toss her letters in the trash because he truly was done with her? Or would it make a difference?
Did she have the guts? That was what Alexa had asked her yesterday. She’d never backed away from anything or anyone, except Rome. Maybe she had to do this. Besides, what else did she have to do on a Friday night but face her fears?
Natalie started with the words that were most important to her. I’m sorry that I hurt you. Please forgive me…
From there, more words poured out, all the way into Saturday morning. Hours of sentences and pages that made her sweat from her confessions, weep from her regrets, and smile as she wrote about all the good things she and Rome had shared together and what they had meant to her. Finally, the need to sleep demanded she stop, and when she did, she dreamed of him smiling at her.
She woke up at noon, rested. The ache in her heart was still there, but so was a bit of peace. Okay, maybe the whole cathartic aspect wasn’t a bunch of woo-woo crap.
As she made a cup of coffee, her phone rang. It was her ex. Her first instinct was to hit ignore, but curiosity and concern for Betsy made her answer.
“Hello Dorian.”
“Hi Natalie. I was wondering if we could talk tomorrow, in person, about Betsy?”
Shit. What now? Unease sprouted. Did she need to call her attorney? But he didn’t sound angry or demanding. “Sure. What time?”
She went through another sleepless night, this time because of anxiety over what Dorian had to say. But instead of staring at the ceiling, she wrote Rome another letter, this time about her marriage, how she’d believed it would last forever. How it had hurt to watch what she’d tried to build crumble.
The next morning, when Dorian pulled up into her driveway, once again, she felt surprisingly at peace, ready to deal with whatever he had to say. She’d loved Dorian when she’d married him. Had she done everything perfectly? No. But she’d wanted to try to save their marriage. He’d chosen not to. But she honestly didn’t see those years as a waste. Important, necessary growth as people had occurred in both of their lives.
To her surprise, Dorian had Betsy with him. He snapped a leash on her before taking her from the carrier in the backseat. Dorian was naturally slim, could eat anything he wanted, and hardly ever did anything physical. He wore what he claimed was his writer’s uniform—a baseball cap, T-shirt, gym pants, and tennis shoes. His skin was deeply tanned. Had he been to Arizona recently?
Betsy leaped out of the car, and Natalie bent down and swept her up into her arms, relishing her sloppy doggy kisses. One more week and she could have her back. Hopefully Dorian wasn’t going to try and change their arrangement.
Betsy started to squirm, and Natalie let her go, giving slack to the leash and allowing her to explore.
Her dark-haired ex-husband faced her. “Like I mentioned on the phone, we need to talk about Betsy. I’m going to Arizona an—”
Oh, hell no. “You are not taking her with you, and we are not sharing pet custody long-distance. We have our issues, but it’s not fair to her to have to go back and forth. She should be in one place with all of her favorite things and have stability. With me.”
“I agree.”
Her balloon of frustration deflated. “You do?”
“Brittany and I are moving in together, but…she’s allergic to dogs.” He shrugged. “It’s a tough decision, but this move is important.”
By important, he meant his new relationship with Brittany, aka Phoenix. As Natalie let it all sink in, the sound of digging drew her attention, along with Dorian’s, to Betsy.
She pawed furiously near one of the bushes lining the edge of the driveway.
“No, Betsy.” They both said it at the same time.
Her mind went back to when he’d arrived in a U-Haul to join her at the house they’d bought together on the other side of the city, just after they were married. Betsy had had an affinity for one of the bushes lining the driveway there, too.
His gaze met hers. What she saw in them was what she felt. A glimpse of the closeness they’d once shared with each other. And lost. They didn’t love each other anymore. It would take time to forgive him for all he’d put her through, but for her own sake, she would.
Dorian went to the car for Betsy’s bag. “This is what you sent over with her. I included the toys she played with the most at my house. The rest of the stuff I have is probably a duplicate of what you have here. I’ll just donate everything to the animal shelter near my house, unless you want it?”
“No, that’s okay.” It was weird having a civil conversation that didn’t involve him being a total dick to her and her not imagining him spontaneously bursting into flames. “Giving away what she doesn’t need is the right thing to do.”
“All right, it’s settled.” He gave Betsy a good head and belly rub, then stood. “Guess I better go. I’ve got lots to take care of before the big move.”
Was he repeating some kind of pattern with Brittany by leaving his life and the things he cared about for a relationship? He’d done that for her, and that hadn’t worked out so well. But it wasn’t her business to point that out to him.
“Hey, Dorian.”
He paused before getting into his sedan.
“Good luck.”
“Same to you.” He looked to Betsy, and a hint of remorse came into his expression. “Take good care of her.”
Betsy stared up at her with all the trust in the world in her eyes, as if she had some insight into the future.
Courage, hope, and other soft emotions opened up in Natalie’s chest. “Always.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Two weekends later, Natalie stood on her deck on Sunday afternoon, cooking chicken breasts on the grill, as she chatted with Alexa on her phone. “I’m up for a girls’ night out. Are you sure you can stand being away from that hot man of yours for a few hours without going into withdrawal?”
Alexa laughed. “I’m not that bad.”
“Yes, you are. You called him at least twice when we went to lunch last weekend.”
“Okay, guilty.”
Natalie flipped the chicken. Not that she really minded. It was fun and sweet to watch Alexa get all excited over her man. Truthfully, she was the one going through withdrawal. Rome hadn’t contacted her yet. Her letters didn’t come back marked return to sender, so she could only hope that he’d read them. She’d sent the last one a few days ago. It was the hardest one of all to write, telling him about losing her parents.
“And Cori said she’s coming this time,” Alexa said.
“I’ll believe that when I see her.” Cori was supposed to have joined them for lunch, but then she’d cancelled. Something was up with her, but neither she nor Alexa could figure out what.
“Mom’s on the other line. I’ll text you the info later on about this new restaurant I think we should check out. Love you.”
“Love you back.” As Natalie put the cooked chicken in a glass dish, Betsy sprang from the corner where she napped and ran inside.
She yapped, yowled, and barked in the house.
Natalie turned off the grill burner and brought the dish to the kitchen.
There wasn’t a garbage truck in sight, and the mailman had come and gone, but even then, she didn’t behave this way. What in the world had gotten into her?
When she went inside, she found Betsy pawing at the front door.
The doorbell rang, and Betsy became even more excited.
“Move over. Let me see who’s out there.” Natalie peeked out the frosted glass. It looked like… Was it really him? Her heart clattered in her chest.
As soon as she opened the door, Betsy leaped at Rome, greeting him like her long-lost friend.
Natalie couldn’t move, stunned that he was actually there on her porch, petting Betsy.
His face was tanned, and his jawline was clean-shaven. He looked broader and more muscular in his deep blue button-down, which had the sleeves partially rolled up, and jeans.
As Rome rose from petting Betsy, his gaze met hers.
Natalie reminded herself to take air in and out of her lungs. You have to breathe. Now wasn’t the time for her to pass out!
“Hi.” Rome gave her a small smile. “Okay if I come in? I hoped we could talk.”
“Yes.” She moved from blocking the entryway.
As he came inside, she drank in the scent of his spicy cologne. She wanted to kiss and touch him so badly, but he was keeping his distance. Her heart sank. He had said he wanted to talk. About what?
He lifted his head and sniffed the air. “Smells like you’ve got stuff on the grill.”
“Chicken breasts. Nothing fancy.” Her hands suddenly had minds of their own, making random, useless gestures and pointing to the kitchen. She stuffed them in her back pockets. “I was about to have lunch. Would you like to join me?”
“Do you have enough?”
“Of course. I’m making chicken Caesar salad. Come on.” Ugh! Why did she keep pointing like she was directing traffic?