by Natalie Ann
Brian thought how neither of those dogs whined now. And they had no problem being separated if need be, but still enjoyed sleeping together.
“I can tell you that they’ve come a long way. They are growing daily. Instead of me taking them for a walk, they take me for one. They even won over my neighbors who are here today looking for their own puppy.”
“And we found one, Robin,” Livi shouted, causing people to laugh.
“I’m so happy. Now Luke and Leia will have a new friend to play with,” she said. “As you can see, there are a lot of dogs that need homes, but if you don’t have a place for them, the shelter does wonderful work here and we rely on donations to keep it running. Any little bit you can manage, we’d be very grateful for.”
Robin said a few more words and then got a round of applause and stepped down for the next person to get up and speak.
“Very nice,” Brian said. “I’m ready to break out my wallet.”
“Good. Then I managed to get my point across.”
“Oh, you did all right,” he said, leaning down to kiss her head. “Sometimes we all have to wait for the right thing to come our way.”
21
Changed Your Life
“Rick,” Robin shouted when her brother walked in the door on Monday, a few days before Christmas. She’d just gotten done taking the lasagna out. She’d received his text about twenty minutes ago that his plane had landed and he’d be there shortly. He was going to stay with her tonight and tomorrow, meet Brian first, then go to her parents on Wednesday and stay with them the rest of the trip along with her grandparents.
“There you are,” he said, swinging her in his arms like he always did when he saw her. “You are still just a tiny thing.”
“You don’t think I’m going to get taller at this point, do you? I sure the heck don’t want to grow out,” she said, laughing.
“It smells good in here. If you cook like this all the time and still look like that then you are doing something right.”
“Brian likes my cooking too. Plus I run around so much with the dogs and my job.”
Rick frowned at her. Just like he always got silent when Brian’s name came up on the phone. “He’s not here tonight?”
“No. He’s working late. He’s going to come to dinner tomorrow. But I’ve got the day off and we can spend it together.”
“I’d love that. So where are these dogs?” he asked.
“Take your jacket off. They are in my office. I didn’t want them to charge you. They are good around people, but Luke is very protective of Leia when it comes to strangers.”
“I’m not a stranger,” he said, hanging his jacket up. “Nice house. Big.”
“It is. Let me show you around first.” He picked his bag up while she showed him around the downstairs, then brought him upstairs to his room.
“This is nice. Good thing you didn’t give me the pink room.”
She laughed. “That was Livi’s room. I haven’t had the heart to change it. I just store things in there as you can tell.”
“Livi?” he asked.
“The neighbors in the back. Remember I told you they met here and married right when I bought the house. They just moved into Blair’s house in the back because her shop is there.”
“Shop?”
“Rick,” she said, resisting the urge to slap his arm. “Don’t you ever listen to what I say? I told you all about it.”
“Sorry. Work is just nuts.”
She looked at her handsome brother, saw how tired his eyes were. “When was your last day off?”
“Do Sundays count?”
“I was going to say no, but it sounds like you are working weekends too?”
“I am. I already put in close to sixty hours at Google, but I’m helping a friend out and it’s taking all the rest of my time.”
“With what?” she asked, surprised that Rick hadn’t said anything before now.
“A startup. He left Google a few years ago and wanted to go out on his own. He reached out to me a year ago with an idea he pitched. I decided to join in.”
“What is it?” she asked all excited. “Do you need investors?”
“No. Stop right there,” he said. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. We are good right now. We’ve got investors and we’ve put our own money in. Maybe we’ll get lucky, but most times it’s a flop.”
She wanted to be supportive since Rick was always there for her, but like he did when she was a kid...he kept things to himself.
“Do you want to shower before dinner?”
“Do I stink?” he asked, lifting his arm and putting his nose under his pit.
“Yes, you do.”
She walked out laughing and went downstairs to get the dogs out of the office.
When Rick came down twenty minutes later, she was setting the table and pulling the salad off the counter, then opening the oven to check on the garlic bread.
The dogs noticed someone else enter the room and picked up and ran, Luke almost knocking Leia out of the way to get there first. “Wow, you weren’t kidding about how big they were getting or that Luke was protective.”
“Just put your hand out. He’ll be fine. Leia likes men more and I think it bothers Luke. She is all over Brian.”
He frowned again and she was going to nip that in the bud in a minute. Once her dogs were settled though.
“They are good dogs,” he said. “Pretty well behaved.”
Both of them were licking his hands and Leia jumping up on his legs for more attention, then flopping and exposing her belly.
Rick got down and started to give them both more attention.
She missed him so much. The week he was here was going to go by way too fast, but he loved his life in California and she’d never ask him to give it up. Even at the lowest point in her life, she wouldn’t let him move here.
She got through it on her own just like she knew she would.
“Do you want a beer?”
“I could kill a beer,” he said.
She pulled one of Brian’s out of the fridge and poured it in a glass, then brought it over where he’d just sat down. “I know it’s only four in your internal clock, but I’m starving. I don’t eat any later than six, so seven is my snack time.”
“I got up a few hours earlier than normal so that I’d be exhausted by ten even though, like you said, internally it’d feel like seven to me.”
“You did that today or have been for work?” she asked, looking him over some more. He was even losing weight and she wondered how stressed he really was.
“I do it more than I want to,” he admitted. “So I’ll probably pass right out tonight the minute my head hits the pillow.”
“Dig in then,” she said. “I’ll get the bread. It should be done.”
She pulled it out of the oven and cut the slices and then placed them on a plate. By the time she got to the table, Rick was several mouthfuls in. The least she could do was fill his belly while he was here.
“So tell me more about Brian,” he said once she was sitting and eating herself.
“You know a lot or you just don’t remember?” she asked. She was starting to wonder if all the conversations they’ve had in the past few months went in one ear and out the other.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m more preoccupied than I normally am. But you’ve got my undivided attention while I’m here.”
“Somehow I don’t buy that,” she said. “I bet you end up doing some work.”
“Not for Google. I’m on vacation. I will have to do some stuff on the other project though. But not today or tomorrow. I promise.”
“The project you aren’t telling me about,” she said, reaching for the salad bowl.
“That’s the one.” He took the bowl from her and put some on his plate. “Now about Brian?”
“You know he’s my lawyer.”
“That’s a conflict,” he said right away.
“He’s not anymore,” she clarified. “He did d
o my will a while ago, but he had one of his employees notarize it. I told him it didn’t matter.”
“But he’s smart enough to know it might.”
“Are you complimenting him?”
“I don’t know him enough to, but I will find out tomorrow.”
She rolled her eyes. “You can relax. Mom and Dad love him. He’s a great guy.”
“He knows everything about you,” Rick said. “Maybe he’s taking advantage of that.”
“He’s not. It’s actually nice that he knows about Alex and what happened. It saves me from explaining it to anyone. I’d like to put that in my past. Especially since I ran into Alex’s parents at the mall with Brian.”
“That had to be awkward. What happened?”
“Nothing. Alex’s mom misses me, but his father wouldn’t even look at me. They are embarrassed by it and I get the feeling they want to pretend none of it happened as much as I do.”
“Except you can’t pretend when it changed your life. This house,” he said, looking around. “You’d never be able to have a house like this in this development on your own if you didn’t get that settlement.”
“Blood money,” she said. She’d never said it to anyone else before either, but that was what she thought of it all. She hadn’t wanted the money. She never did. Which was why she didn’t want the prenup. To her this meant they were making plans for when the marriage ended and she’d told Alex that. That if he felt or thought that way, she wasn’t making that kind of commitment to him if he was looking for an escape hatch. She should have listened to her gut back then.
And she listened when Brian talked because her gut told her to. He actually talked her into accepting the settlement.
Well, that was wrong. He didn’t talk her into anything. What he did was bring them all together to talk and explain. The Fischers wanted everything kept quiet and so did she, but she refused to sign any documents stating she wouldn’t talk about it. Again, thanks to Brian. No use handcuffing her to silence legally.
At first Alex’s father was livid, but then she’d explained she had no intention of telling anyone what a fool she’d been. She wanted it quiet like they did.
In the end they had a mutual understanding and since it’d been almost a year she was happy with the turnout.
“Don’t look at it that way. It’s compensation for being married to a liar, a cheat, and an all around asshole.”
“I did love him, Rick.”
“Really? I didn’t get that impression. Even before you caught him in bed with someone else you confessed things weren’t great between you two.” Reminding her that she might have told Rick too much but she needed someone to talk to back then.
“They weren’t. Now I know why. And I didn’t love Alex like I do Brian. But he swept me off my feet and he was nice to me. It was a fairytale that she was desperate to believe in.”
“That you woke up from in the worst way possible.”
“Exactly. And you know what? It made me a strong person. It made me go after what I want and not waste any time waiting and wondering or worrying if someone else felt the same as me.”
“And Brian is who you want?” he asked.
“Yes. I love him. I love him more than I ever thought I could love a man. He’s everything I wanted and didn’t know. And it’d mean a great deal to me if you’d make an attempt to get to know him and get along with him.”
Her brother sighed and she knew she had him now. “Nothing like piling on the guilt.”
“Is it working?”
“Do I get dessert with dinner?”
“Peanut butter cup brownies,” she said.
“Fine. I won’t grill your new boyfriend like I want to.”
She got up and moved closer to kiss his cheek. “I love you, Rick.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said and reached for another helping of lasagna.
22
A Guy Thing
Brian got out of work an hour early and he was closing the office tomorrow.
He wasn’t nervous about much in life. Not taking the bar.
Not opening his own firm.
Not even meeting Robin’s parents all that much.
But her older brother? Yeah, he was starting to sweat a bit.
He rang the doorbell and waited, then it was opened up by Robin. “Why didn’t you come right in or at least go through the garage?”
“I thought it was better this way.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, pulling him into her arms. “Rick won’t bite. We’ve already talked. He’s going to be on his best behavior and I want you to be too.”
“I don’t plan on doing anything,” he said.
She giggled and he was at least glad to know she was relaxed about this meeting.
Once he hung his jacket up, he followed her to the back of the house and saw the big man sitting on her couch. Rick stood up and came forward and Brian realized Rick was only an inch or so taller than his own six foot one. But he probably had a good fifty pounds more on him.
“Nice to meet you,” Rick said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Same here,” he said back.
“See, that wasn’t so hard, was it, Rick?”
“Robin is trying to be cute, but she wore me down today because we went to the mall. Big mistake this close to Christmas.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” she argued. “You’re the one who hadn’t finished up your Christmas shopping yet.”
“I didn’t want to have to pack it all. I had your gift shipped to Mom’s last week, but I wasn’t going to have theirs sent there.”
“You just bought Mom a necklace and a sweater that I picked out and Dad some tools.”
“I picked the tools out,” Rick said.
“Don’t feel bad,” Brian said. “I’m going to finish up shopping tomorrow, so you beat me.”
“Brian,” she said, slapping his arm playfully. “I thought you finished the other day.”
“No. I’ve got to get Troy’s gift still and then the rest of yours. I couldn’t do that when you were with me and we’ve been together on the weekends most times.”
“See, Robin. It’s a guy thing,” Rick said.
“You both have something in common then,” she said.
“My brother-in-law, Troy, would argue it’s me being late. He was done before December.”
“I hate people like that,” Rick said.
“Same,” Brian said.
“Do you remember how I told you Brian’s sister, Meena, married Brian’s best friend? Or did you forget that too?”
Brian looked back and forth between the siblings who were bickering like he did with Meena. He’d never seen Robin like this before and liked it. He liked that she wasn’t afraid to speak her mind more.
He’d seen her come out of her shell from the first time he’d met her almost a year ago into the woman he was in love with.
He couldn’t be prouder of her.
“I didn’t forget,” Rick said.
When the doorbell went off again, Robin said, “That’s pizza.”
She moved to the front of the house and he went to the fridge to get a beer. He wasn’t going to feel like he couldn’t move around in the house that he’d been staying at on the weekends, even if he wasn’t staying tonight.
No, that might be too awkward for everyone involved.
“Beer?” Brian asked when he held his up to Rick.
“Sure. I figured those were yours in there. Robin only drinks wine now and again and she wasn’t good at picking beer out before.”
“She’s pretty great,” he said. “I just want you to know that. I know you’ve got your doubts about us and how we met. I want you to know I’m in love with your sister and only her. I don’t care what happened in her past. I don’t care what happened in her marriage and I’ve told her not to be embarrassed over it. I don’t even care what is in her bank account if that is what you are thinking. I don’t have her net worth, but I’m not hurting either.”
He laughed. “Thanks, I think.”
Two days later Robin and Brian were driving to her parents for Christmas Eve.
She couldn’t have asked for a better introduction of her brother and boyfriend. Brian stayed until nine and then left after he gave her a sweet kiss by the door. She wanted to bring him to her room but knew that wasn’t going to happen.
It was bad enough that when she went back to the living room Rick was sitting there grinning at her like he knew what was on her mind.
But he kept any sarcastic comment to himself. They watched some TV and went to bed.
On Wednesday morning, Rick drove to their parents’ house while she went to work. She’d taken the rest of the week off, but she knew her parents were waiting to see Rick too.
Christmas Eve was a bigger celebration as they got older with her family anyway.
Alex’s family always had a big Christmas and she had to all but drag him to her parents that night, but he went and usually had a good time. Or so he portrayed.
“It’s not anything fancy,” she said to Brian as he drove. “It’s just us, my parents, and Rick, and my grandparents got into town yesterday too.”
“These are your mother’s parents, right?”
“Yes,” she said. “Sue and Dan. I should warn you about my grandfather.”
“Oh man. Is someone else going to want to beat the crap out of me too?”
She frowned. She’d heard Rick say those words to Brian after he declared his feelings for her to her brother. She was almost in tears over how sweet it all was and then Rick had to go and ruin it by making that statement.
When she’d turned the corner with the pizza in her hands and her mouth open to yell at Rick, Brian had said, defending her brother, “Don’t even think of it. I’ve been in his shoes before. It’s what we do. Even your dog knows it.”