by Finn, Emilia
His smirk says it all.
“Something colorful and fun,” Kari continues. “I don’t need fancy roses or anything. I was actually thinking more along the lines of tulips, or even daisies.”
“I might know someone who can help you,” I offer.
Grinning, Kari digs into her yogurt. “I know! I heard the owner is nice as hell.”
Shaking my head, I do as Luc does; watch the fight, and try not to act too entertained by Kari’s yammering.
But the thing is, we are entertained. Kari is the quiet girl, the humble one with a somewhat tough childhood. She’s never imposing, never pushes herself or her opinion on anyone who didn’t ask for it first. To hear her giddy for something as boring as flowers does a man’s heart good.
“The owner,” I drawl, “being my baby sister? Work’s gonna be awkward as hell if Ab denies your business and doesn’t make time for you.”
“Oh hush! She won’t deny us. We have time, though.” She looks to Luc and smiles the smile of someone whose soul is free and happy. “Jess is getting married first, then she’ll need time to adapt to being a mom. I want to be around for that. I’m going to be an aunt again, so I want to help.”
“My sister is ready to burst with those Bishop babies,” Luc says. “It’s giving me the heebie-jeebies.”
“So stop thinking about the details,” Kari laughs. “You don’t have to think of all the sex they had.”
“Bear!” Luc’s eyes whip away from the television and stop on his girl. “Shut it!”
Teasing, and enjoying it, Kari only chuckles. “So much thug sex, Lenaghan. She made twins. I bet that takes extra thrusts.”
“Fuck this!” Luc drops his feet to the linoleum floor and pushes to stand. “The fuck is wrong with you, huh?”
He comes around to stand behind his fiancée, grabs her ponytail, and yanks her head back until they meet eye-to-eye, but upside down. Pressing a rough kiss to her lips with so much passion that I have to look the hell away, he pulls back with a huff, then he storms out of the room and goes back to work while Kari only fans her face and looks to me with a blush.
“He’s never mad,” she breathes out. “So when I push right, he kinda explodes.”
“Pretty sure that was a euphemism for something I don’t care to think about.”
“I needed him to leave the room.” Finally, her blush makes way for glee. Then cunning. “Mitchy?”
“No,” I declare. “Whatever you want, the answer is no.”
“He needs a bachelor party.”
I scoff. “Absolutely not my problem.”
“But, Mitch!”
“He has a million friends!” I push up from my chair the way Luc did. “He has best friends. He has an almost-brother-in-law. He has the dudes from his band, and six billion other people who would want to do this more than I would.”
“I don’t want you to organize it,” she counters quickly. “I just want you to be there for him. He would be so touched, and all you have to do is turn up and drink with him.”
“I’m busy! I have work.”
“We work at the same place, dummy.”
“Exactly, and since he’ll need to take off so he can attend, it’ll be super important that I work to take up the slack.”
She only rolls her eyes. “You can’t work alone. Would you rather be rostered on with Fester? Or do you think it might be a good idea to get in fast, ask for the time off, and instead spend the night with your friend?”
“If my options are to work with Fester or take time off, then I’ll take it off, sit my ass on my couch, and chill the fuck out for the night.”
“Perfect! Which solves your ‘I’m busy’ conundrum. It was lovely doing business with you.” She pushes up to stand, collects her yogurt paraphernalia, then crosses the room and tosses the trash into the can. “My brother will organize the party, so I’ll make sure he gets your number. Then you just have to be wherever he wants you to be, on the date he wants you there.”
“Pipsqueak! No.”
“Marc will be so pleased.”
“Does Marc even know he’s this party’s host?”
She scoffs. “Not yet. He’s still processing the fact there’s a wedding at all. But he’ll come around soon enough, and by the time he does, he’ll be glad I did a lot of the grunt work on the party.”
“I take back all of the nice things I ever said about you. All of them!”
“I can live with that.” She flashes a sweet smile and exits the room knowing she’s the master of all men.
She’s sweet enough that no one would suspect she’s capable of such atrocities. But shit, here I am, knowing I’m going to put in for time off the second that Marc—or, more accurately, Kari—texts me with a date and venue.
Shaking my head, I walk by the TV and hit the power button to switch it off. Then, leaving the room, I go in search of a distraction.
I still have twenty minutes before my break is over, and though I love my job, I don’t feel particularly giving toward Harrison Best these days. If he sees me in those twenty minutes, he’ll make me do shit for him, and I don’t much feel like helping the prick out.
I’m back on the job, back helping people and doing what I do best, but that doesn’t erase the anger I feel every time I so much as think of my boss, nor the news article I caught this morning over my breakfast and coffee.
Cady’s father is still squawking, and he’s found the seediest, shittiest ‘news’ reporters in the country to run the story for him. He wants to make noise about how my department failed him, and unfortunately for me, Best has enemies who take pleasure in feeding on that negative publicity, and are just waiting to shit on the guy.
They’re like leeches on a healthy human body.
It just sucks for me, despite my feelings about the guy, I’m still a part of that body, and my name is being slung to hell and back.
Cady was gone. Unsavable. She’s in a better place.
I have to tell myself that, a daily mantra, or risk losing my mind from the guilt and what-ifs that plague my dreams.
Walking the halls of the hospital I grew up knowing, since my sister spent so much of our childhood in a room here, I head to the elevators and hit the button for the oncology ward.
I shouldn’t come up here, I shouldn’t torment myself, but I’m certain Abby is here—she always is—and seeing my sister healthy and happy is how I get through my day. That’s possibly something I should talk to a therapist about, but… fuck, not this year. I’m too busy dealing with every-damn-thing else.
Reaching the correct floor, the elevator dings, and the doors slide open, but before my brain can process stepping out, my eyes stop on Nadia’s, and widen.
She’s as surprised to see me as I am her; there’s that, at least. But she recovers faster than I do.
“Mitchell.”
Curt and cold, she steps in with her purse clutched close to her ribs. Shoulders back, nose in the air, long hair hanging loose so the tips brush the middle of her back, Nadia ignores me and hits the button for the parking garage.
Instead of stepping out, like I should, I back up and lean against the wall as the doors close. “Nadia.” I can be cold too. I can be curt. Have fun with your numerous booty calls this past week? “You here to see Abby?”
“Nope. I just enjoy the smell of antiseptic and tears.”
“Insensitive,” I growl. “You think I enjoy hearing people in that ward cry?”
“You’re projecting,” she shoots back. “I literally did not say that. Ever considered talking to a professional about your issues?”
“Heh.” Every fucking day. “Abby in there, or no?”
“Yes,” she huffs quietly. “She’s visiting with her friend, and I needed her to sign off on some stuff.”
My eyes narrow to slits. “What stuff?”
My worst-case-scenario brain says Nadia’s placing horrible contracts in front of my sister. Transfer of assets, changes in wills, mortgages that will benefit the villai
n in this story while my sister will be saddled with the bill.
I know it’s irrational and stupid, but still, my bitter ass isn’t done pouting about Nadia’s callers, then her thoughts on Troy.
For the first time in my life, I’m not wishing for him to come home faster. My brain, I suspect, will implode if there’s some kind of cosmic love-at-first-sight bullshit the second he walks in. And it’s not like he won’t first visit the shop; he’s as obsessed with Abby as the rest of us are. The second he’s in town, she’ll be his first stop.
And Nadia will be there, front and center for him to sample.
“Flower orders,” Nadia answers in short, sharp snips. “We have a couple of weddings coming up, and any orders over a certain amount, I make sure Abigail signs. Ya know, for accountability and all that shit.”
Responsible plan, I have to grudgingly admit. Works for me. “Enjoyed your first full week in town?”
“Mm.”
The second the elevator doors open on the ground floor, she blows through and leaves me in her dust. And because I still have unresolved things a therapist would enjoy unpacking, I follow her out at a trot.
“Nadia!”
“You don’t have to do the small talk, Mitchell.” She doesn’t slow her steps. Doesn’t even turn around to speak to my face. “I don’t enjoy it, and neither do you. Everything is fine, okay? You do you, I’ll do me and promise not to rip your sister off, and if we see each other in the street, we can even pretend to be nice.”
“Why pretend?” I quick-step to keep up with her. “You can’t handle being a nice person?”
“Ha. Pot, meet kettle.” She beeps an old car open with her key fob, swings the door wide, and flings her purse inside. Turning around, then stepping back when she realizes how close I’ve come, she plasters her back to the frame of her car and tries to maintain the nose-in-the-air snootiness. “Back up, Rosa.”
“Why are you mad at me, huh? I did nothing wrong.”
She scoffs. “I never said I was mad. I’m just trying to live my life without drama, Mitchell. Sleeping with my boss’ brother was somewhat of a bad business choice for me. Now I’m doing exactly what we both agreed to; no strings, no tomorrows, no bullshit.”
“Easy for you to do, huh? You regularly jump from one bed to another?”
“Asshole,” she spits. “And for the record, it was my bed we used. Therefore, you are the bed-hopper, not me. But hey, let’s not let truth and a slice of misogyny ruin a good story.”
Spinning fast and making sure that her hair whips me in the face, Nadia drops down into the driver’s seat of her worn-down car. She tries to grab the door and slam it closed, but I step in the way, and take the corner of the door against my calf for my troubles.
“Go away, Mitchell. Abby’s upstairs. I bet she’d enjoy a visit from her straitjacket while she’s here.”
“Straitjacket?” I snarl. “You speak of my family like you get an opinion.”
“Just because you won’t listen or care about my opinion doesn’t mean I don’t have one. Please move out of my way, Mitchell. I have places to be.”
“Who is Arlo?”
“You—” She jolts back in her seat, and gasps in shock like I popped her in the mouth. “What?”
“Arlo,” I repeat. “Who is he?”
“Are you some kind of psycho stalker? What the fuck?”
“So you admit Arlo is real? Someone you know?”
“I admit nothing except that I slept with a certifiable creep. You gonna try to smother me the way you smother Abby? You think I’m gonna heel like a good little dog, just because you said so?”
“No.” I match her temper with my own. “I think you having Arlo, and Drew, and David all call you in one morning means you’re not at all containable. It would be useless for me to try.”
“And you want to, huh? Contain me? Place me in a cute little box and train me to sit and stay on demand? That’s the kind of woman you want at your disposal. Not a commitment, not a wife, but someone convenient and meek.”
“If I liked meek women, then I’d have never looked at you twice.”
“And how lucky am I,” she tosses right back, “to have a stalker-slash-phone-checker-slash-control-freak look at me twice? All of my dreams, wrapped up in one man.”
“More convenient than maintaining three men, I suppose.”
“You’re an asshole,” she hisses. “You look at my phone for two seconds, see a name and missed call, and make assumptions about me and my life? That’s why you left, isn’t it? Couldn’t handle the competition.”
“It’s not that I can’t handle it. I choose not to.”
“Oh! So Mr. No-Commitment doesn’t want to share. You poor baby. The emotional trauma you must have suffered, spending the night with the mooch whore.”
I scoff. “Now who’s projecting?”
“What I’m doing is wasting my time.” She tries again to slam the door. “I’ve already given you an out, Mitchell. No drama, no bullshit. All I want is to live and work in peace. We had fun, you rocked my world, and now we go back to the lives we had before that. I won’t ever tell Abby if you don’t, and when you inevitably find and box up your bore, I won’t even tell her the things you can do with your tongue. She’d be scandalized, and I’d hate to ruin a good thing for you.”
“And when Drew comes to town?” I challenge. “Will you bring him to family dinner?”
“Depends. Will this dinner include the rest of your brothers?” She knows my achilles. She knows how to piss me the fuck off. “That would be like bringing a meal to McDonald’s, no? There’s no point making those snacks feel unneeded.”
Teeth bared, nose pulled back in a snarl—much like the wolf on my skin, I imagine—I step away from the car door before I rip it clean off the frame, then when Nadia grins, knowing she hit her mark, I turn on my heel and walk away.
“Fuck you!” I roar.
“Fuck you back,” she shouts so her voice echoes in the parking garage. “No, wait. I already did that. It was annoyingly decent.”
I slam my palm against the elevator button and call the damn thing to me, and since this hospital isn’t a bustling hive of activity, the doors part within seconds. Attitude raging, my steps heavy stomps, I move into the steel cube and mash my knuckles against the button for the oncology ward while Nadia’s wheels squeal against the smooth concrete floor.
A moment after I step in and the doors close, they open again, and I’m met with my sister’s smiling face.
“Oh, Mitchell, hey. I was just about to come looking for you.”
I step back the same way I did when Nadia stepped in, but instead of welcoming my fury, I now try to stifle it.
“Everything okay?” I breathe. Count my heart beats. Work on evening my voice. “Were you looking for a reason?”
“No, not particularly.” Her bubbly voice is a direct contradiction to what I feel. To everything I know right in this moment. “Nadia was just here, and I know she’s having a bit of a rough day, so I was actually going to run the idea of family dinner by you. I know she’d love a Rosa family taco night.”
“Um…” I swallow and mentally plead for a reprieve from the anger I feel. “Dinner…” I rub a hand across my face. “She’s having a rough day?”
“Yeah. She’s got some family stuff going on. Legal stuff from her aunt’s estate.” Abby glances over her shoulder and smiles for me. “Nadia is in control of the trust that her aunt left behind. But that means her cousins, who want in on that trust but are not yet eligible, are harassing her and threatening to come to town if she doesn’t do as they want.”
“And her cousins…” I draw a deep breath. Fuckkkkk. “Um… what are their names?”
“Drew and Arlo,” she answers easily, quickly, and with absolutely no clue of the torture I endure inside my head. She wrinkles her nose. “It’s not really very cool that I tell you this stuff, since it’s Nadia’s business. But you’re my brother. You know how to remain discreet, right?”
“Uh… yeah, sure. I can be discreet.”
“Her aunt was a successful businesswoman,” she continues, “but her aunt’s children are a little bratty, from what I gather. Which means Nadia was made trustee until the others get their lives straight. It’s a thankless job.”
“Nadia is… the most responsible one in that grouping?”
Abby snickers and steps through the elevator doors when they ding open in the parking garage.
Turning back when I don’t move, she places her hand on the doors so they don’t close until she’s ready. “Believe it or not, Mitchell, Nadia is the best thing to ever happen to my shop. She’s smart and passionate about making it a better place. She wants to make a difference. And she’s doing it while learning a new town, renovating her home, and juggling calls from lawyers.”
And dodging my name-calling and bullshit.
“So, dinner?” she prompts. You’re not on-shift tonight, right?”
I shake my head. That’s all I can manage.
“And Nix is on days, too. Beck is available, I already texted him. And Corey said he’ll do his best to swing by.” With a satisfied grin, my baby sister spins on her heels and waves me goodbye. “Seven o’clock at Nix’s, okay? Bring something sweet, and don’t be a grump when you arrive. Nadia needs a reason to smile.”
Abigail walks away, happy and carefree and absolutely clueless to what the fuck actually just happened. And because I remain where I stand with my back to the elevator wall, the doors close again and lock me into my tomb of stupidity.
Drew and Arlo are… her fucking cousins. And they’re not even friends, according to Abby, but annoying gnats on Nadia’s heels.
The elevator doors ding open on the second floor and just so happen to reveal Luc’s goofy grin. “You fucked up!”
More than you can possibly know. “Huh?”
“That fight.” He steps into the elevator and stops beside me so our shoulders touch. “Pullen won, so you owe me fifty bucks. Also, Best wants to see us in his office.”