She spun around and shot me a death glare. “You know exactly what happened. Don’t pretend like you don’t know what happened.”
“But after your mom passed-“
“You mean after she poisoned herself with alcohol?”
I sighed and shoved my hands in my pockets. When we were kids, everything was so easy. We had the same dreams and hopes for our lives. But making those plans play out were a completely different story, and a major part of that was my fault. Then she came back here and had to deal with her mother’s funeral. While she had nobody to support her, I had a family that loved me and wanted to see me succeed.
“You could have gotten a different job. You could have moved into the city or something.”
“Okay, first, do you know how many jobs there are around here? I waited years for the job your brother was offering to become available. Dick didn’t even need me at the gas station. He kept me on because he knew that there were no other jobs available. I don’t have a college education, and with what I was making, I couldn’t even afford night classes until the past few years. And you think moving to the city to look for a better job would have been an option?”
I ran a hand angrily through my hair. “Why didn’t you call me? I would have helped you. Did you really think that I went off to college and forgot about you?”
“Yes,” she snapped angrily. “I think that’s exactly what you did.”
“Well, you’re wrong. There hasn’t been a single fucking day that I haven’t thought about you.”
“Yet in thirteen years, you never once managed to pick up the phone and call me or see how I was doing. Yeah, that really sounds like you were thinking about me.”
I hung my head in shame. “I thought you hated me. I hated me. Anna, what happened…everything happened so fast. One minute you were here and the next you were gone. What was I supposed to do? Was I supposed to wait around for you to come back? You didn’t reach out to me either.”
“You know what? I don’t want to talk about this anymore. We have a job to do and then we’re done. You go back to your life and I’ll go back to mine.”
I sighed and set the food on the table in the living room. “If that’s what you want.”
“That’s what needs to happen, Robert. What happened between us was a long time ago. Neither of us needs to be reminded of what happened back then.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure I felt the same way. I knew we were different people. I knew that walking back into her life was ridiculous. But seeing her again and spending time with her, even if it was only a small amount of time, brought back some of the best memories of my life, and I found myself wondering if those feelings were still real, or just something I was hanging onto.
“So, I had everyone write down what they could provide for the wedding and asked them to fill out a form to meet at a later time. It looks like pretty much everything we could possibly need is covered.”
“If we decide to go with them. I’m not sure Kat would ever forgive me if we served chili at her wedding,” I said.
“I need to get in touch with Kat and see if she wants me to take over with all this or if she wants to be there for the meetings.” She sighed heavily as she looked at all the paperwork. “This is such a mess. I would never want all this fuss at my own wedding.”
“Really?” I asked curiously. “It’s not like they’re planning a big wedding.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I always pictured having a small wedding, something really intimate.”
“Did you picture that with me?” I asked. Man, I was asking for trouble. I never should have said that.
She looked up at me, almost like she was unsure she was going to answer. “I pictured it being just you and me and our families. But now we’re not together and my family is gone, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.”
She stared down at the paper, a small tear appearing in the corner of her eye. I brushed it away with my thumb, but when she turned to me, I couldn’t move my hand away. I was touching her. I had her with me right here. It was just like before. I could feel the steady beat of her pulse as I slid my hand down to her throat, and saw how her eyes dilated as she looked at me. The air was charged around us as we sat locked in this moment in time. It didn’t matter how much time had passed between us. I wanted her and I was going to have her.
Anna
There was no doubt in my mind what was about to happen. He was looking at me like he used to. I couldn’t deny that there was still a spark between us, but the things that we shared thirteen years ago no longer applied. We were different people. We wanted different things out of life.
He leaned in and pressed his lips to mine, but just the taste of his lips brought back all the betrayal I felt after he left me. I shoved him away from me and stood, disgusted that I had allowed him to even press his lips to mine.
“What the hell are you doing?”
He shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“I know exactly what you meant. Do you really think it’s that simple? You can waltz back into my life and pretend like nothing happened between us? We’re over and we will never be what we used to be.”
“Anna-“
“No! Don’t you get it? That time in our lives is over. It’s been thirteen years and you just decide one day that you want me? Where were you?”
“I was right here,” he said earnestly.
“No, you weren’t. You built a new life for yourself, one that didn’t include me. You didn’t come home when you heard my mother died. You didn’t come home when I was here for years, struggling to-“
I cut myself off, not wanting to say anything more. He didn’t deserve to hear about what my life had been like. What we had was over, and the sooner he understood that, the faster we could both move on.
“Struggling to what?”
I stomped over the door and yanked on it, but it refused to open. I pulled harder and harder until I screamed in frustration and banged on the door. “Goddamnit! Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
He slowly walked over to me and put his hands on my shoulders, trying to comfort me. “Anna, we were just kids.”
I slowly turned around with tears in my eyes. “We were just kids, but I had to grow up a lot faster. While you were out partying with friends and getting an education, I was halfway around the country. I had no friends. I had no one to rely on.”
“You were with your aunt and uncle.”
I snorted. “They took me in out of some sense of obligation. They didn’t want me there.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
I crossed my arms over my chest, shaking my head slightly as I looked away. “Everything was so broken. I was shipped off to my aunt’s house and you never called.”
“What are you talking about? I called you.”
My head snapped to his. “No, I never got a call from you.”
“Your aunt said that you weren’t taking calls.”
“How many times did you call?” I asked curiously.
He swallowed hard. “Just the once.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Wow, talk about putting in the effort. One whole call before you walked away.”
“Anna, I was a kid.”
“So was I,” I snapped. “Only one of us had to live with what we did.”
“You’re acting like that didn’t affect me at all. Do you think I wanted to be torn away from you?”
“I don’t know, because I never heard from you again. And you know what’s funny? I’ve lived in our hometown for years. I know you come home every weekend, yet it’s taken you this long to actually approach me. Why do you think that is?”
He looked away, and I could tell he didn’t have a good answer for that. The truth was, if Robert really loved me back then, he would have found a way to be with me. He would have fought for me, even if it was when I came home. But he was enjoying his life and he didn’t want to mess with something that was going so great for
him.
“I think you should leave.”
“Yeah,” he said, snatching his keys off the table. “I’ll ask Eric to pick you up in the morning.”
“Thank you.”
I was in a grumpy mood the next morning. Having Robert in my space again was enough to drive me insane. He and his judgmental attitude could take a hike. It was bad enough that he was shoving his way back into my life, but then he actually tried to kiss me! What was he hoping for? A quick lay? Or did he actually think that we would get back together?
Eric’s car pulled down my driveway and I hurried outside, locking the door behind me. When I got in, Eric looked at me funny.
“What?”
“Are you going to tell me why Robert called me last night and told me I had to pick you up this morning?”
“Because he’s an asshole,” I grumbled.
“He’s an asshole because you needed a ride?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I snapped. I was on edge. Why did I have to work for his brother? It made everything more complicated, and I was not interested in complicated these days. I was about laying low and living life without complications.
“Alright, I guess that means it’s a donut and coffee kind of day.”
“No, it’s not a donut and coffee kind of day, because if it was, that would mean I had the extra money to spare. But I don’t, because some asshole sold me a car that’s not even worth a quarter of what I spent on it.”
“Did you have a mechanic look at it first?”
I turned and glared at him. I didn’t need him pointing out the flaws in my logic.
“Okay, so what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”
“Do you need money?”
“No,” I sighed. “I have money, I just don’t want to spend it until I figure out what I’m going to do about this car situation.”
“You know, I have an old truck you could borrow until you figure stuff out.”
“I don’t need it. I’m not a charity case.”
He laughed. “You do realize that people do things to help each other all the time, and it has nothing to do with charity. They’re just being neighborly.”
“Like your wedding,” I pointed out.
“No, that’s different. That’s interference.”
“Right, because after all that you and Kat have been through, they just want to stick their noses where they don’t belong.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“Wrong. They want to help because they all know you and think it would be fun to be involved. So, if we’re going off the premise that you would lend me a car to be neighborly, then we could also conclude that they want to help out to be neighborly.”
He mumbled something under his breath and pulled down Main Street, past the office. “Where are you going? You passed the office.”
“I’m going to get you donuts and coffee.”
“I don’t need you to buy me food.”
“Believe me, I do. Because if you don’t have it, I will kill you, and then you won’t need my truck, and I won’t need anyone to plan my wedding because I’ll be in jail.”
“Whatever.”
An hour later, Eric was heading out on a job and I was just getting settled in for the day. I had answered all urgent emails and checked in with all the different crews to make sure that they didn’t need anything. By the time I was done going through the bills and making sure that the invoices were up to date, it was lunch time. I usually walked down to the deli for lunch, but today I packed a sandwich. Part of me had kind of hoped that Robert would still come down today to help me sort out my car, but fifteen minutes went by and he still hadn’t shown. Maybe I shouldn’t have kicked him out before allowing him to help me.
I ate my sandwich and tried to come up with a plan to get my money back. Now that the engine was dead, there wasn’t much of a chance that I would get anything for the car. If I paid for the repairs, I would drain even more of my savings, and I had no idea if those were the only issues with it. But if I bought a new car, I could face the exact same issues. I had figured it would only take me another year of saving to get the house I wanted. I had allowed for minor extra expenses, but nothing like this. This would set me back quite a ways.
I tossed my brown paper sack in the garbage and drank the last of my water, ready to get back to work. I was just opening up a new account that Eric wanted me to look into when the door to the office swung open and Robert walked through. He tossed a set of keys on my desk and grinned.
“I had your car towed back to the dealer, and I got your money back. Outside is a car that’s actually worth what you paid for the other one. I had this one looked over by the mechanic in town, and he said it’s in good condition. Everything is being transferred into your name and when you’re ready, you can go sign the paperwork.”
I stared at him, slack jawed. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I figured it would be easier if I took care of it myself. I mean, it may not be your dream car, but it’s in good shape and you won’t have to worry about any problems.”
“What about my things?”
“I grabbed them out of the car before it was towed back.”
“But…but how did you get my money back?”
“I threatened to have the attorney general’s office look into his business practices. He backed off right away. Of course, the attorney general’s office is still looking into his business practices, but that will take some time. In the meantime, you have a vehicle downstairs waiting for you.”
I stood and walked over to the window, looking down at the street below.
“It’s a Toyota Camry. It’s like twelve years old, but it runs really well. The interior is still nice too.”
I was speechless. I had been sure that after I threw him out last night that he wouldn’t show his face down here again. Well, not around me anyway.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I told you I would help you.”
“Yeah, but that was before last night.”
He sighed and slid his hands into his suit pockets. “You know, I’m not the terrible person you make me out to be.”
“So, you did all this and you expect nothing in return.”
“Nope.”
I thought about it, not sure what to say. He leaned back on his heels and grinned at me.
“Thank you is the word you’re looking for.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I was thinking more along the lines of overbearing jerk.”
That wasn’t really how I felt at all. He had been very nice to me. But I had a hard time dealing with this side of him after I’d built him up in my mind for so many years as being this terrible person. And just because he did one nice thing for me didn’t make him a good person. We still had unresolved issues and those wouldn’t just go away with one simple gesture.
“Look, I told you I would help, and I have. I’m sorry about last night. I shouldn’t have presumed that you wanted me to kiss you. I just…hell, I don’t know. It’s ridiculous. It’s been too long. There’s too much baggage between us,” he mumbled.
The door opened and Eric walked in, stopping when he saw Robert in here with me. “Am I interrupting something?”
“No,” I said at the same moment Robert said yes.
“Uh…what are you doing all the way down here from Chicago?”
“I was helping Anna out with her car issue.”
“I could have helped her out with that.”
“You could have, but I did it first, so what the hell does it matter?”
“Uh…just the fact that you two don’t even get along. I’m surprised that you would get off your phone for five fucking minutes to take care of this.”
The door opened again and this time Carter walked through. I sighed in frustration. Could this get any more awkward?
“Hey, Eric. I just stopped in to see if Anna wanted to go to lunch.” He turned to Robert an
d gave him a chin lift.
“Actually, I was just dropping off Anna’s new car. I was going to show her everything.”
“I’m sure she knows how to work a car. They’re pretty basic,” Carter grinned.
Eric looked between the three of us and shook his head. “Do I have any mail?”
“There’s a stack for you to look at,” I said, gesturing to the inbox.
“Why don’t you go ahead and…” he waved his finger between the three of us, “figure this out.”
I glared at him. I was perfectly happy kicking all of them out, and now he was throwing me under the bus.
“Fine. Carter, I’d love to go to lunch.”
“What?” Robert said in surprise. “But I just took care of your car for you.”
“And I appreciate that, but there’s no need for you to stick around.”
I slid my arm through Carter’s and headed out the door with him and down the stairs. I didn’t know if this thing with Carter was going anywhere, but I definitely knew that anything with Robert was out of the question.
Robert
“Seriously, what did you do to make that woman hate you so much?”
I watched her walk out the door and then I moved to the window to watch her get into Carter’s truck. She should have been going with me. Last night when I got home, I started thinking about what Anna said to me. She was right, I had no right to walk in and pretend that everything was fine. But there was still something between us. I could feel it. I just had to warm her up to having something with me again. I had hoped that my grand gesture of helping her out with her car would do the trick, but that didn’t seem to work. Maybe I needed something bigger. I just needed something that would allow me more time with her.
“Hey, is this going to happen very often?”
“What?”
“The whole showing up in the middle of the day.”
“No, I took the afternoon off.”
He stared at me and then snorted in laughter. “You thought you were going to spend the afternoon with her?”
“No, I just…” I ran my hand through my hair, something I was doing a lot of lately. “I just thought that we could find some kind of common ground.”
Collateral Damage: A Small Town Romance Page 7