by Sara Whitney
For similar reasons, he rejected calling Trip and Ash to see if they wanted to grab dinner or seeing if he could swing by the Chilton house to keep Dave company on daddy duty. He’d be terrible company for anybody, so he might as well drag his sorry ass home the way he’d been doing all month.
Of course, nothing improved once he was parked on his couch with his feet on the coffee table. Instead, he glared around his living room, irrationally angry at the boring gray walls and copper light fixture. He’d done all the work himself, and he hated every part of it because it wasn’t Thea’s house. Maybe it was time to list this house and start looking for another one to flip. Anything—fuck, anything—to keep his hands busy and his brain occupied and his body too tired to long for Thea’s touch.
He hadn’t gotten any further than plopping his computer on his lap and pulling up a browser to start looking at local real estate listings when a pounding started up on his front door. He wasn’t expecting anyone, but that didn’t stop him from tossing his computer aside and flipping on the outdoor lights. He pulled open the door to find Faith Fox on his doorstep.
“What the hell did you do to my best friend?” She pushed past him into his house, shoving a bottle of whiskey into his chest as she stormed by.
Without missing a beat, he cracked it open, took a long pull, and asked, “What the hell did your best friend do to me?”
Faith whipped around and ran judgmental eyes down his body. “Clearly you broke each other. When was the last time you shaved?”
He scratched his jaw self-consciously, grimacing when his fingers rasped along several days’ worth of stubble.
“And when was the last time you did something other than drink your dinner?”
He curled the whiskey into his chest, and she rolled her eyes. “Good God. Where’s your kitchen?”
Feeling distinctly sulky, he pointed the way, and she charged ahead. By the time he joined her, she’d located a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter.
“Sit.” She pointed to the kitchen island, and he did as instructed with a grumble.
“How do you even know where I live?”
“Like it was hard,” she scoffed. “I know people who know people.”
She slid a plate in front of him with a sandwich that she’d cut into four triangles as if he was a child. He picked up the first wedge and crammed it into his mouth, mechanically chewing and swallowing. It landed in his hollow stomach, and dammit, she’d been right. He’d spent most of the time since he’d slammed out of Thea’s house at work, and when he was home, most of his self-care was of the alcohol variety.
“Thanks,” he mumbled as he ate, and as soon as his sandwich was gone, she whisked away the empty plate and dumped it in his sink.
“I didn’t do it for you.” She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the counter to glare at him.
“Were you this mean in high school?”
“No,” she snapped.
That tracked, at least. She’d been in Thea’s class, but surely he’d remember a freshman girl with white-blond hair storming around the hallways and scaring the shit out of everybody.
She stared him down for a long moment, then the starch leaked out of her spine and she steepled her fingers, inhaled deeply, and spoke in a slow, patient voice. “Sorry. Okay. Let’s have a conversation.”
“Must we?” Now that he had a layer of food in his stomach, he reached for the whiskey again, but she moved it out of his reach and rummaged through his cabinets. She pulled down two rocks glasses etched with the Murdoch Construction logo, a companywide gift from his mom a few Christmases ago, and poured a finger for each of them.
“We can at least be civilized.” She handed his drink over. “Now. Explain to me why the nicest person I know has spent the past two weeks in tears while refusing to explain why.”
He brought the glass to his lips and drained the contents, but the burn in his throat didn’t make the answers flow any easier.
“I had a damn plan,” he finally said.
“Yeah. The fake relationship. I warned her that shit would blow up in your faces.” She held up her glass in a smug salute and sipped.
“Not that plan. That plan went great, thank you very much.” He reached for the bottle to pour another round, and when she slid it out of reach, he gestured impatiently. “You’re the one who barged into my house. You want me to talk, you keep pouring.”
She raised her brows but uncapped the bottle and tilted it into his glass.
“The fake relationship was great. Best relationship of my life actually.” He stared down at the amber liquid. “I wanted to make it real. She didn’t. The end.”
“And that was your whole damn plan? ‘Make it real’?”
“Well, yeah.” He pushed the glass away with the liquid untouched. Whiskey wasn’t going to magically fix this. “The plan was to just… stay together. We make a great team.” He rolled his head from side to side to stretch out the muscles he’d strained during his wall-removal session earlier.
“Wow. Is that how you tried to sell it to her?”
“No. I asked her to come work with me at Murdoch Construction too. And…” Was he really going to spill everything to this person he barely knew? Then again, it wasn’t like he had anything else left to lose. “I told her I love her, okay? And not only did she not say it back, but it clearly pissed her off. So yeah. That’s what your best friend did to me.”
If he was expecting sympathy, he’d missed the stud with his drill because Faith’s eyes widened in horror. “You offered her a permanent job? My dude, do you even know her?”
“Yes,” he snapped. “I know her really fucking well. Enough that I thought…”
“Thought that she loved you too.” Faith’s voice gentled, and she tilted her head to swallow her last mouthful of whiskey, a purr rolling through her throat as the liquid hit her tongue. A year ago, he’d have asked her to stick around for another drink to see how the night might progress. She was tall and blond and thick in all the interesting places. But even if she hadn’t been Thea’s best friend, the thought held no appeal for him anymore.
“She made me think I could be more than my reputation,” he said softly, staring into his glass. “And the more I opened myself up to the idea, the more I realized that my parents, my brother, my friends, they all believed I could be the guy in the relationship. I even let myself believe it. But in the end, she didn’t.”
He pressed his fingers to his eyes, pushing back against the searing emptiness as he considered his life without her. Once he’d wrestled himself under control, he glanced up to find Faith watching him with a pitying expression. But the instant his eyes met hers, her jaw hardened, and she set her glass down on the polished concrete countertop with a click.
“Here’s the thing. I’m not here to spill her secrets or give you some kind of pep talk. I only came here to kick your ass if it needed kicking, but you’re just… kind of pathetic actually.” She swept her gaze over him, clearly confident in her ability to throw down against a guy who’d strained his rotator cuff working a sledgehammer earlier in the day. “And it sounds like you were arrogant enough that you kicked your own ass the last time the two of you talked. So I guess you and I are good.”
“Arrogant?” He’d been a lot of things in that last conversation, but arrogant?
She looked at him incredulously. “Um, yes. Did you think declaring your love was enough to cut through twenty years of Thea’s relationship aversion and abandonment fears?”
His jaw worked back and forth as he considered her words. “I assumed…”
The words died in his throat. Oh, had he assumed. He’d assumed all over the place. Assumed that Thea loved him back. Assumed she wanted him, wanted to be with him for the long term. Assumed the privilege of his company would be enough to get her over her lifelong fear of commitment. But in the end, whatever misplaced hero worship Thea had for him at the beginning of the deal hadn’t matured into anything approaching the overwhelm
ing love he felt for her. And he’d selfishly only considered the ways the relationship would make his life better.
“Now you’re getting it.” Faith set her empty glass in the sink next to his plate. “Okay then. You can keep the rest of the bottle.” She turned and left the kitchen as briskly as she’d entered it fifteen minutes earlier.
“Wait!” He followed her to the door. “That’s it?”
“Yeah,” she said impatiently as she rooted through her bag for her keys. “I’m not your fairy godmother. I’m not here to fix things for you.” And with that, she was gone.
“You’re a shitty fairy godmother,” he muttered, wandering back to the kitchen. He replaced the cap on the whiskey bottle and stashed it with the rest of his liquor collection as he turned Faith’s words over in his head.
He’d fallen in love with a funny, beautiful woman who made him want. A future, a family. A life with her. And when she didn’t love him back, he’d gotten pissed at her for filling his head with those dreams. But that wasn’t Thea’s fault; she hadn’t asked him for any of those things. She’d just been so perfect for him that the dreams grew on their own.
Thick helplessness churned in his stomach. How was he supposed to stuff those dreams away now that they’d hatched? With a sigh, he shuffled to the sink to start washing the dishes Faith had left behind. Then a thought hit him with such clarity that he almost dropped one of the etched glasses.
Faith had asked what he’d done to her best friend. Said Thea’d done nothing but cry since their breakup. Surely she wouldn’t be that upset if she didn’t have some sort of feelings for him too.
That was enough to keep the embers of his dream alive. He’d just have to figure out a new plan.
Twenty-Seven
Thea knocked on her boss’s partially open door and stuck her head in. “Hey, do you have a—”
Her words died on her lips at the sight of Brandon Lowell with his elbows on his desk and head in his hands as a furious, tinny voice poured from the cell phone in front of him. When he looked up, the expression in his sharp blue eyes was the bleakest she’d ever seen.
“What can I do for you?” he asked tiredly, smoothing down his blond hair where his fingers had left it uncharacteristically mussed.
“Yeah, um, I can come back.” She started to edge out the door, but he pointed a commanding finger at the guest chair.
“No need. It’s just my two-minute hate.”
She dropped into the seat. “Come again?”
“Every day that I’m on the road, my father calls to let me know the many ways I’ve disappointed him.”
“Whoa.” And she thought Peter was bad.
Brandon gave a terse smile of acknowledgment. “The bad news is, it’s usually longer than two minutes. The good news is, I can mute myself and multitask while he’s shouting it out.”
At that moment, the angry voice picked up steam, and Thea distinctly heard “fucking disappointment” and “squandering my legacy.”
“That isn’t even on speaker. That’s just his voice.” Brandon sighed. “Anyway, what can I do for you?”
“No, seriously, we don’t have to do this now. It isn’t—”
“Talk,” he ordered over the rise and fall of the man on the phone.
Okay then. Thea pressed her hands on the top of her thighs, breathed out hard, and said, “I’m quitting.” Then she burst into tears.
Brandon looked at her in silence for a beat before he unmuted his phone and cut off the tirade on the other end with a firm, “Sir, I have a meeting to get to. I’ll be back at headquarters on Monday.” He ended the call, stood, and pulled off his suit coat, rolling first one sleeve and then the other. “You. Me. The Elephant.”
Thea dried her eyes with a tissue she fished from her purse and followed him out the door even though it was only ten a.m. on Friday and she had hours of phone-answering she was supposed to be doing. But Brandon apparently didn’t care because he hustled her out the door and into his sedan for the quick drive to the Elephant. Once they were settled at the long mosaic bar, he insisted they wait until they were halfway through their first drinks before he approached anything resembling a serious conversation.
“All right.” He set his old-fashioned down on the glass bar top. “What are you quitting, exactly?”
“I don’t know. The station job? The Brick Babes? Ever feeling happiness or joy ever again?” She drained the rest of her mojito in one long gulp.
He nodded and brushed a thumb over his chin. “Okay. The station’s no problem. You’re a great receptionist, but we can deal if today’s your last day.” He sipped, swallowed, continued. “The Brick Babes? Also no problem. That’s a volunteer gig, and you can bail anytime. Again, we’ll miss you, but I get it. As for that last bit—”
“Oh God, ignore that. Sorry.” She stabbed her straw to the bottom of her glass, embarrassed beyond belief that she’d gotten emotional in front of the heir to the Lowell Consolidated media empire. Brandon’s family owned more than a dozen radio stations across the country, so he probably dealt with a handful of other Theas every day who all had their own crises as they kept the wheels turning at the Paducah hot country station or the Pahrump Top 40 or whatever.
But he didn’t seem terribly bothered as he gestured at Tammy the bartender, who got to work mixing a second old-fashioned. “Another mojito?”
“I shouldn’t.”
“You were sobbing in my office twenty minutes ago.”
Thea glumly tapped her empty glass on top of the bar, and Tammy tossed her long braid over her shoulder. “I gotcha, doll.”
After their alcohol had been replenished, Brandon swiveled on his stool to face her. “Have you ever noticed that I visit the Beaucoeur station pretty frequently?”
“Of course,” she said immediately. “Mabel complains about it all the time.”
That pulled a smile from him. “Ever wonder why?”
“I assume it has something to do with your terrible dad.” She raised a brow and met his eyes levelly. Last month she’d have flushed and apologized, but the part of her that worried about what other people thought of her seemed to have withered and blown away when Aiden left.
To his credit, Brandon simply raised a brow of his own and saluted her with his glass. “My terrible dad is why I drink and why I’m divorced and why I haven’t seen my dog in three months.” His eyes went unfocused for a second, then returned to hers. “But that raging narcissistic asshole actually isn’t the reason I’m a frequent flyer into the Beaucoeur Regional Airport. I hit this station about twice a month, which is roughly twice the number of visits I pay to most of our other properties in a given year.”
Thea nodded as she listened, unsure where he was headed but happy to hear him out since he seemed to want to talk and she was definitely in the market for a distraction.
“The Brick was my first solo station acquisition. I feel responsible for its success in a way that I don’t with the others. It’s something I’m helping build, and I like being part of that.” He sipped his drink, then added, “Plus Mabel’s hate keeps me strong.”
She almost sprayed a mouthful of mojito across the bar. “Don’t let her hear you say that.”
He just waved an airy hand. “Please. She thrives on having a nemesis. Anyway, you’re a woman with good ideas. Your PDF forms for one, even though Lowell Senior doesn’t want to make any dramatic changes this year.” He rolled his eyes, sipped his drink, and continued. “And don’t think I don’t know how you’ve been slowly reorganizing the supply closets to be more efficient despite Lowell HR frowning on unauthorized actions like that. You get shut down left and right because of bureaucracy, and every time I can sense you vibrating in irritation from eight hours away. You’re somebody who needs autonomy and variety on the job, I think, and the Brick doesn’t give you that.”
“How did you…?”
“I’m a people person.” He glanced over at Tammy and winked, and although his bored rich-kid affect and icy frat-boy bea
uty were out in full force, the seen-it-all bartender merely rolled her eyes.
“Best not let my wife catch you flirting,” Tammy said coolly. “Joanne’s a jealous woman.”
“Flirting rescinded,” he said with an easy grin before turning back to Thea. “Anyway yes, chase your professional dreams, wherever they lead you. With my blessing, not that you need it.”
“Thanks,” she said drily. As if it were that easy.
“So where are you headed next?”
She poked at the mint in her glass, the sharp scent tickling her nose but providing zero clarity. “I don’t know.”
“You’re quitting without another job lined up? In this economy?”
She shot him a faint smile and then just… blurted out everything. “I had a job offer two weeks ago from the guy I was pretending to date so he could smooth out some problems at work and I could buy my dream house, but he went and fell in love with me and I basically pelted him with rocks until he ran off, and I’ve regretted it every day since because I love him too but was in no way prepared to say it back to him at the time. So I don’t think I have a job waiting for me, but I do know that I can’t keep doing what I’m doing at the Brick because my soul is slowly dying. No offense.”
Brandon’s eyes had gotten wider as she spoke, and when she fell silent, he gave a low whistle. “Gotta be honest, you’re much more interesting than I gave you credit for.” He cocked his head and studied her face. “You said you’re in love with the guy?”
She nodded miserably, and he shrugged.
“Too bad. Then again, you technically are still my employee.”
“Wait, are you…?” But he was already moving on before she could suss out if he was hitting on her or not.
“Do you want the job your guy offered?”
“I do. I think I’d really love it actually.” Public interaction. Problem solving. Projects. Advice. Organization. And best of all, the freedom to make it all her own.
“Okay, then go get it.”
She snorted. “And how am I going to do that exactly? I haven’t talked to Aiden in two weeks. I’m not sure he’d take my call even if I tried.”