Anna
I looked around my trailer and tried to decide what was worth keeping. Honestly, there was a lot of stuff here that I didn’t want to take with me. I started in the kitchen, packing up pots and pans that I could take. They were all garbage, but I could get new things over time. The first thing I really wanted to get was new living room furniture, and maybe a new bed.
After packing up anything that could be taken with me from the kitchen, I moved on to the bedroom. Pulling out my suitcases, I packed up clothes and shoes that I wanted to keep. There was a lot of stuff that I had kept over the years that I just didn’t wear anymore.
I pulled out a box that I kept at the back of my closet and sat on the floor as I went through everything. There were pictures of Robert and I in high school. We were so in love back then. I came across some pictures of me with my mom and dad from when I was younger and I stared at them, wondering how life might have turned out had my dad stuck around. Would my mom have still become an alcoholic? Would my life have been different? I would never know. I tossed the pictures back in the box and shoved it to the side. I couldn’t go through all those pictures right now. It brought back too many memories, and my life now was all about moving forward.
A knock at the door had me glancing at the clock. Three hours had passed awfully fast, and I still wasn’t ready to move yet. I got up and walked to the door, pulling and yanking on it until it opened. Robert grinned at me, stepping inside as he pulled me in for a kiss.
“Did you convince him?”
“What do you think? Are you ready to go?”
“I just have to grab my bag.”
He followed me back to my bedroom and took in the chaos. “Did you make a lot of progress?”
I sighed. “Honestly, I’m not sure what I want to bring with me.”
“I think you should start over. New house, new things.”
“Yeah, but I don’t want to spend a ton of money when I’m just moving in.”
“Well, you want to redo the house, so it’s better if you don’t have a lot of stuff in the way. You really just need the basics. Everything else will fall into place with every room you finish.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Of course, I’m right.”
“Oh! Wait, I need to grab the stuff for Kat and Eric’s wedding.”
I ran back to the couch and started gathering all the papers on the table in front of it. I had everything laid out in a specific order so that I knew exactly what still needed to be done.
“We don’t have much time until the wedding. I’m freaking out a little. I’ve never had to plan a wedding before.”
“I don’t think Kat and Eric really care. I may have fucked them over when I sent out that message on the Facebook town page.”
I huffed out a laugh. “You and your brothers cause so much trouble.”
“We just like to keep things interesting.”
“If that’s what you want to call it.”
I shoved the papers into a folder and then into my bag. “Alright, I’m ready. Wait, you talked to your brothers, right?”
“About?”
“About helping me move?”
“Why would I do that? I’ll just show up and tell them to help me.”
“That’s not the way you do things.”
“That’s the way my family does things,” he grinned.
“If they show up next weekend and they’re pissed at me-“
“Relax,” he assured me. “Everything will be fine. Besides, by next weekend, Eric will just be happy to have you back at the office.”
I hoped he was right. Despite being thrilled about the prospect of moving into a new house, I was concerned how this was going to play out for Robert and me. I was happy that we seemed to finally be on the same footing, but I couldn’t help but wonder how this would go from here on out. I just bought a home in the country, but he was still living in the city. He even said that he was too busy to come down this week to visit. What did that mean for the future? Were we going to take turns staying at each other’s places? That seemed exhausting, especially since we were an hour apart.
It bothered me the whole ride into the city, and I found that the further we got from home, the more restless I became. I didn’t particularly like coming to the city. I didn’t like his apartment, no matter how much I tried to enjoy myself there. But I couldn’t tell him that. He would just say that I wasn’t trying, and since we had been together for only two weeks, I couldn’t say I blamed him for feeling that way. So, I sucked it up and tried to enjoy myself. After all, I was with him, and that was really the only thing that mattered.
It was the first time in two days that Robert got home before I went to sleep. He had been working long hours on Rebecca’s case, making sure everything was in order and he wouldn’t be thrown off by anything that might pop up. Not to mention, he had taken on another client, that was dealing with a nasty divorce involving kids.
He wrapped his arms around me and kissed my neck. “What should we do with the rest of our night?”
I glanced at the clock. “You mean, with the whole forty-five minutes I have before I need to get to sleep?”
“Are you an old lady now?”
I slapped him on the arm. “Hey, I need my sleep or I just don’t function properly.”
“Then I’d better make sure that I wear you out so you’ll fall fast asleep,” he murmured, slipping his hand down my pants. I gasped at the contact, but when I heard a buzzing noise, it distracted me.
“Is that your phone?”
“Fuck it, if it is. I’m done for the day.”
But the phone kept buzzing and I couldn’t ignore it. I pushed away from him to check his phone, but it wasn’t his. I picked up my phone and answered when I saw it was Eric.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
“Do you have those contracts ready for me for tomorrow? I didn’t see them in my inbox.”
I chewed on my lip as I tried to remember any contracts I would have had to do. “What contracts?”
“Anna, I sent you an email about them this afternoon. It’s for a job that starts tomorrow. I can’t start the job without those papers.”
“Okay, hold on,” I said, opening my laptop and going to my email. There it was, right in my inbox. “It must have come through after I finished for the day.”
“See, this is why I need you in the office. If I had known you were done for the day, I would have called you,” he said in frustration.
“I’ll take care of it right now.”
He sighed heavily, making me feel like shit. He had other things to worry about and with me not being there, it was putting more pressure on him. This was what he hired me for. I couldn’t run things as smoothly from the city.
“Look, I’ll be home on the weekend and back in the office on Monday.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”
“I promise.”
I would not screw up this job. Eric had taken a real risk hiring me. I had no experience running an office, but he put his faith in me and got me out of that gas station. I wouldn’t let him down now.
“Give me a half hour and I’ll have everything sent over to you.”
“Alright. Thanks, Anna.”
“No problem.”
I hung up and got to work on the contracts while Robert went to the kitchen and poured me some wine. “Problems?”
“I need to get these contracts done for Eric. He sent them after I was done for the day, and since I’m here, he had no idea that I hadn’t seen them.”
“It’s no big deal,” he shrugged. “You’re getting them to him now.”
“It is a big deal,” I insisted. “If I was at the office, none of this would have happened. He relies on me to make sure this stuff is taken care of, and we don’t work as well when I’m up here.”
He grunted and sat down beside me. “You make it sound like you don’t want to be here.”
I sighed and looked up at him.
“Robert, this isn’t about you. I have a job, and whatever you did to make sure I could come up here for the week, it’s not helping me make sure that things are running smoothly.”
“I handled a lawsuit for him.”
“A what?”
“Destin Properties. They wanted to sue him. They were trying to say that he inflated the price after the work was completed, but they didn’t disclose all the issues the building had. I worked it out for him,” he shrugged.
“Well, I’m sure he’s very grateful, but that doesn’t mean that you can make trades with my job.”
“It was one time,” he insisted. “Is it really so terrible that I wanted you here for the week?”
I smiled slightly at him, shaking my head. “No, it’s not terrible, but this isn’t a long term solution.”
“You’re right. It’s not.”
He shoved up from his seat and pressed a kiss to my mouth. “I’ll be waiting for you in bed when you’re done.”
“Okay.”
I got back to work, but I kept thinking about our situation. How were we going to make this work between us? I couldn’t keep coming up here, which meant that I would either have to come up on the weekends, or he would have to come down to me. And since I was just about to move into a new house, I didn’t really want to spend all my time in the city. I couldn’t see a way to make this work, but I also wasn’t ready to give up on what we had.
Robert
“You’re sure you want to leave now?” I asked, watching her pack from the doorway of my bedroom. I hated that she was leaving today. I wanted her to stay tonight with me and then tomorrow go move her out of her trailer.
“I need to get some stuff done.”
“What stuff?” I asked, shoving off the door frame and walking over to her. “Is there someone you need to see?”
She looked up from her packing and frowned. “What does that mean?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. You just seem to be rushing out of here when you could be spending time with me.”
“Robert, the only person I plan on seeing is the clerk at the grocery store. I need to get groceries for the week. And in case you’ve already forgotten, I need to finish packing so I can move.”
“But you could do that tomorrow.”
“And I need to do laundry.”
“You could do it here.”
She tossed a shirt she was folding down into her bag and turned to me with a scowl. “I’ve been here for a week. I could have been slowly moving into my new house. A house that you got for me. Do you really expect me to stay here when I could be moving? Besides, is it too much to ask that I have just a little time to myself?”
“Why would you need time to yourself?”
“Robert, I love spending time with you, but I still have things to do. I have a life of my own an hour from here. I like to go to Mary Anne’s bakery and get her coffee and donuts. I like to see people from town and say hello.”
“What people?” I asked irritatedly. “Does this have to do with Corduroy?”
“Seriously?” she asked, her eyes bugging out.
“Okay, it doesn’t have to do with Corduroy,” I muttered, feeling like I had just stepped in a huge pile of dog shit.
“Why would you think I want to go see Carter?”
“You showed up with him to Thanksgiving,” I argued, even though there was no point in arguing. She already gave her answer.
“Carter invited himself along. I didn’t invite him, and I wouldn’t have even been there if you hadn’t had some weird rivalry with your brother. Which I still haven’t forgotten about, by the way.”
“Why did you let him kiss you that night?”
She sighed and turned back to her folding. “I can’t believe you’re jealous of him. Yes, he kissed me, but I didn’t know he was going to do it, and then he outed us to your family. Why would you even think that I want him?”
It didn’t make sense. I knew that. But she would be in town with him during the week, where he could see her and talk to her, while I was in the city, an hour away. I couldn’t just drop by to see her or even see her every night if I wanted. I worked late some nights, and driving an hour down just didn’t make sense.
“Just promise me you won’t see him.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t want you seeing him.”
She stared at me for a moment and then turned back to her packing, shoving things angrily into her suitcase.
“Anna, promise me.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I said no.”
She wouldn’t look at me, so I grabbed her by the arm and forced her to turn and look at me. “Why the fuck not?”
“Because you demanded it.”
“And you would do the same if you saw some woman hanging on me.”
“First off, Carter hasn’t been hanging on me. Neither of us has seen him since Thanksgiving.”
“Because you’ve mostly been here.”
“And I barely saw him before Thanksgiving,” she shot back. “It’s not like he and I met regularly for coffee or anything.”
“So, you’ll have no problem dropping him now.”
“I’m not dropping anyone,” she snarled. “If you don’t like it, you’ll just have to deal with it. We’re dating, Robert, but that doesn’t give you the right to have any say in who’s in my life.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t believe she was going to still see him. “Anna, I’m serious. I don’t want you seeing him. He wants you. He made that clear at Thanksgiving.”
“And I made it clear that I didn’t want him.”
“And you think he’ll just leave you alone now? Anna, you’re not the type of woman that a man walks away from.”
She tilted her head and glared at me. “You did.”
I gritted my teeth and held my temper. I was already losing the battle. I couldn’t say anything that would make her want to walk out that door for good.
She zipped up her bag and flung it over her shoulder. “I’m ready to leave.”
The ride home was uncomfortable to say the least. Anna refused to speak to me the whole way, and since she was angry with me, I chose to be angry with her, though I wasn’t sure for what exactly. I drove her to her house and when she got out, she didn’t even say goodbye before slamming the car door in my face and marching up to her piece of shit house. Angry, I shifted into reverse and tore out of her driveway, cursing myself for not paying attention to the potholes as I backed out.
Since I was down here, I might as well go visit my brothers. Hopefully, they were home and could help me figure out what to do with this crazy woman. When I pulled up, I noticed there was an extra truck in the driveway, and it looked very much like Derek’s.
I got out and strode up the steps of the front porch and walked in. Derek grinned as he looked up at me, though it seemed strained.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, walking around to give him a hug. He stood and patted me on the back before sitting back down. I nodded to Hunter, who was also sitting in the kitchen. I’d only met Derek’s teammate once, and it hadn’t been for more than a cursory glance since Lucy, his now wife, had just fucked Joe and she was dating, or sort of dating, Hunter at the time.
Derek scratched the back of his head and chuffed out a laugh. “We uh…just thought we’d come for a visit. That last job was rough, so,” he shrugged. “Just thought we’d take a break.”
“Yeah? What happened?”
He scoffed. “What didn’t happen. Lucy and Claire were almost taken.”
I looked around the table. Obviously I was missing something. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t say too much about it. We sort of got caught up in a gang war and…well, it all turned out fine.”
I frowned at his very brief explanation. “Are Claire and Lucy okay?”
“Are you kidding?” Hunter smiled. “Lucy is pissed and Claire is excited that she has another fantasy to play out.�
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“But neither of them were hurt?”
“Nah, but it was insane and there was a lot of cleanup when we got back,” Derek said. “So, anyway, we thought we’d get away from work for a few days and see the family.”
I turned to Hunter and held back my laugh. “And you’re okay with being here?”
Hunter narrowed his eyes at Joe, who didn’t seem at all concerned with Hunter’s glare. “He knows to keep his hands off Lucy.”
“Hey, I would have known back then had your woman actually said that she was sleeping with you.”
“We were…having issues.”
Joe snorted. “That’s putting it mildly.”
“I wouldn’t poke the bear,” Derek muttered, taking a sip of his beer.
“So, I’m assuming Claire and Lucy are here?” I said, hoping to deflect from what I had just started.
“They went into town with Kat. She had to run some errands for the wedding. Anna sent over a list of things Kat needed to do.”
“Speaking of Anna, where is she?” Joe asked. “I thought you two were together?”
I ground my teeth together, trying not to snap. “We got in a fight.”
“About what?”
“I told her to stay away from Corduroy.”
“Who’s Corduroy?” Derek asked.
“Oh, man, did you miss it at Thanksgiving.”
“Yeah, well, I was kind of in the middle of a war,” Derek reminded Will.
“Carter Roy, remember?” Will asked. “Big guy, always trying to outdo Robert when we were in school. Had a thing for Anna, but never made a move.”
“What? You all knew about that?”
Will turned to me and grinned. “Knew about it? It was common knowledge that he was waiting for his opportunity to pounce. He was always hanging around her, giving her rides when you weren’t around…Come on, you can’t be that stupid. You had to know that everyone knew.”
I glanced around at my brother’s, who were all staring at me like I was in fact an idiot. “Wait, so all of you knew about this?”
Andrew shrugged. “Hell, I was a freshman in high school and I knew that Corduroy wanted her, and I could barely figure out how my dick worked yet.”
Collateral Damage: A Small Town Romance Page 23