The Last Plus One

by Ophelia London

  When they’d first met, she’d been fresh out of Stanford and a stint at a successful startup in the Valley. She’d been kind of a hippie, which suited Austinites just fine, and he’d never thought of her as a woman who’d grown up in some compound on the Eastern Seaboard. She’d just been Maggie.

  And then they were there. Bursting through the tree cover. Leaving a dirt road to one graveled with bits of stone—shell? Arriving at a gabled cottage that was all shingled, historic charm.

  “All that to get to this?”

  She didn’t respond. He was afraid to move on his seat lest the static electricity set off a conflagration. But he’d always been a risk taker.

  Reaching out, he snaked his hand under the heavy length of her hair and worked the rigid muscles on the long column of her neck. “Hey. It’s gonna be fine.” She instantly deflated, head bowed, breaths evening out. Until a long moan escaped and she shrugged out from under his hand.

  He followed her lead and got out of the car, grateful to unfold himself from the tin can. Knees crackling like he was eighty. They’d have to do something about the way back to Boston. Another five hours in that car might kill him. He pulled out his phone to dictate a memo and reached out to her as he rounded the hood of the car.

  “See,” she said, ducking from his touch. “This is what I’m talking about.”

  “Uh, what?”

  Maggie gave the arm he’d casually slung around her shoulders a withering stare.

  “Oh, come on. First, no biz talk. Now no—friendliness?” He honestly didn’t even know how to categorize it. He was just Cruz being Cruz, and Cruz Griffin held doors open for women, and touched their backs, and smiled at his friends, and… “You want me to be a robot this whole week?”

  “You can’t just go around touching me like you normally do. This isn’t Texas.” He’d never heard the word spat like that. Except maybe on certain news stations. “This isn’t the happy South. I’ve been trying to tell you that Uptight Yankee Land people will think…”

  He had to laugh at “Uptight Yankee Land.” Ah, there, she cracked a smile. There was his Maggie.

  She waved her hand. “Oh, you know what I mean.”

  He did, and he’d try to be more aware of it if it made her uncomfortable. But still. “Is that so bad? That people speculate?”

  She didn’t answer. Didn’t matter. He knew her answer.

  What he didn’t know was why that answer bothered him so much.

  “Come on, Maggie, I’ve spent my entire life under the lens—who on earth hasn’t? As for speculation, nothing we do—or not—changes anything. It’s just life.”

  “Right. But it’s super important that it doesn’t happen now. Especially here.”

  It had been a long time since someone made Cruz feel small. He’d never been small, physically, but he’d been made to feel small. And sure, over the years he’d developed a deceptive outer shell of water-rolls-off-my-back. But this change in Maggie over the past month or so had revealed a leak in his doesn’t-bother-me exterior.

  He didn’t like to turn introspective. Was a waste of time when he could be working on implementing ideas and strategies that could change the world. But that steady drip, drip of doubt and uncertainty had left behind something dank and ugly.

  “Are you ashamed of me?”

  “Cruz, no—”

  “We never exactly talked about your family. I know you don’t see them a lot. I don’t know why. But the don’t talk to anyone rule, the don’t give people the wrong idea…” He shrugged, trying to shake some of that damn water off his back, but the moisture was everywhere. Filling his lungs when he breathed. Sticking to his skin as he stood there on the driveway in front of her parents’ house. “I’ll go if that’s what will make it better.”

  But it wouldn’t make him better. And it certainly wouldn’t make their relationship better.

  “Of course not.” In her rush to reassure him, she forgot her own no-touching rule. He’d feel the warm imprint of her hand on his forearm all afternoon. “You’re my business partner.”

  Yeah, he’d feel the sting of that, too.

  “And you’re just about my best friend. I trust you. And I admire you. Am so freaking proud of all you’ve accomplished. I could never be ashamed of you.” Her hand now gripped his arm. “If it seemed like I was—”

  “It’s cool.” This time he was the one shrugging off the touch. He was determined to make this week easy for her and play by the rules.

  “No, it’s not cool. Cruz. I like you.” She blew out a breath. “I probably even love you a little bit. But I don’t naked-love you. You know?”

  No, he didn’t know.

  “Boys.” She smiled. “Say the L-word and they totally freak.”

  “I’m not freak— Okay, fine. I’m still trying to work that statement out in my head.” He ran a hand through his hair, shook his head, but it didn’t make the pieces come together. “Might take a while. Especially since you threw the naked part in there.”

  “Please. All I’ve been trying to say is”—oh boy, here it goes—“it’s an important distinction to me. I don’t want to be that girl who just slept her way to the top.”

  Cruz was immediately insulted. Maggie was brilliant and capable, and he’d crush someone with his bare hands if he even heard a hint of that. “Seriously, nobody who knew you would think that.”

  “Gee. Thanks.”

  “Maggie, I didn't mean it like that.”

  She held her hand up. They needed to finish this conversation without her ego getting bruised. Any more than it already was. And they needed to do it fast. She knew her mom had to be up at the main house, and Dad was probably running around like a lunatic somewhere on the grounds—frustrated by all the independent contractors on site mucking up his careful order. When Scott Michaud hadn’t even recognized her, and then did that whole weird interrogation of Cruz thing, she knew their time alone was limited.

  Time to sew up this treaty.

  “It’s fine. I brought it up; we need to talk about this.” Thank you, Wedding Weekend, for bringing one more stressor. “It wasn’t a big deal because you’ve always been the face of SD9, and you’ve been an incredible one. Mad thanks for taking on that responsibility and deflecting the spotlight off me. But now that we’re launching the women’s line? And I have to stand up at this wedding, and all the pictures, and—” Ugh, just saying it out loud made flickers of hot panic race up and down her spine. “I feel like the eyes of the entire universe are on me, and it is not a sensation I relish.”

  She waited for him to put two and two together. Professional stress and personal stress of coming home—coalescing in epic proportions. Maggie willed him to understand. She’d already put so many messy emotions out there today. She had to buckle them back up for the duration of her time at Virtue Cove or she’d be sunk.

  “So,” she continued calmly, trying to regain her footing, “it’s important to me that we maintain a distance. I just don’t want anybody to look at me—is that so hard…”

  Maggie’s voice shook.

  So much for buckling up those emotions. She just spilled them out. Like upending your purse in public with tampons and stray pens and that weird stress ball you picked up at a conference going everywhere, it was just as mortifying. And it was mortifying that she felt relieved when Cruz grabbed her up in a hug. That she was relieved he’d broken the rules and she could smush her face into his solid chest and breathe in his familiar, comforting scent.

  Maybe she’d made a big mistake. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if people thought they were together. If people thought they were together, then she could spend most of this week with her face buried in him and she wouldn’t have to deal with—

  “We expecting company?”

  She felt the words like surround sound. A low rumbling that vibrated through her.

  “Some guy on a quad?” he clarified.

  Oh, that’s what that sound was.

  She stepped back, shading her
eyes with her hands, thinking it must be her dad riding in. But, of course, it couldn’t be easy. Thank you, life, for continuing to make things not easy.

  The quad stopped feet from them. She could feel Cruz tense behind her, and she wanted to take three steps away from him, but that would only bring her closer to the quad and to…

  “Margaret.” His voice was all schmoozey and hey-long-lost-friendly, and she had never wanted to sic Cruz on someone more than she did at this moment.

  “Cinco.” She returned the greeting, but there was no hey-old-friend in hers.

  Maggie didn’t make introductions even though she knew that was going to make Cruz question everything—especially since he had some ridiculous notion she was ashamed to bring him home—but she was not ready for this.

  “Your mom and dad aren’t here.” Those words. She couldn’t let him see how they made her want to retch in the flowerbeds. “Radio said you were coming through the servants’ entrance.”

  Oh, so he wanted to play it like that, did he?

  “Yes,” she replied, boardroom ice princess voice firmly in place, even if she was in black capris and a travel-rumpled oversized denim shirt. “It is the road that leads to my parents’ house.”

  When she didn’t say anything more, just watched that worm squirm on his hook while she had big, bad Cruz at her back, Cinco finally filled the silence. “Right. So I got the alert someone in a nice car was coming through the servants’ entrance and just wanted to check things out.”

  There was no way that’s what had come through Scott’s official channel. What had come through Scott’s channel had likely been something like, “Margaret Kennedy and her guest will be driving to the Keeper’s Cottage,” and Cinco had been determined to investigate.

  “Oh, isn’t that sweet?” Maggie let boardroom ice princess slip a little and faux-Texas belle come through, though it was hard to do with Cruz getting closer and closer. He practically had his hand in her back pocket. So much for The Rules.

  But at least she had someone on her side right now.

  “Did Daddy put you on security duty this week?”

  Cinco slithered out of the quad. “We’ve all got a job to do this week.”

  Suddenly, Cruz was in action, and it was a glory. She watched as he stepped forward, peeled out a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet, and held it out in the way guys did that weird handshake-money-changing thing. “Oh, hey, thanks, man. Really appreciate you coming out to help. The bags are in the trunk. Some personal items in the back seat we’ll take care of.”

  He turned to her and brandished his smile like a weapon. Lethal. “Maggie, honey, wanna unlock it for him?”

  Oh, that. That was amazing. She wanted to kiss Cruz for that macho pissing-contest display, even though it was against all her rules.

  Before she had a chance to intervene and cool things off, Cinco recoiled, his face pulling into that dark and ugly sneer she recalled (though she wished to God she didn’t), and she put her hand out to hold Cruz at bay.

  The hand she’d placed on Cruz’s thigh didn’t go unnoticed by Cinco. If anything, his sneer got uglier. Meaner. Then disappeared into the same smarmy, self-satisfied expression he’d worn for years.

  “Maggie is the help. Besides, looks like she brought her own.” And with that horrifyingly derogatory comment, he hopped up on his stupid little quad and roared off.

  “Who the hell was that?”

  “Cinco,” was all she could manage.

  “Yeah, I got that much.” He took the keys from her limp hands and thumped back around to the trunk. Opened it. Slammed it shut again. “Why is there a guy named Five giving you a hard time and being the biggest creep on the planet?”

  Maggie noticed he didn’t mention the racist comment, only focused on how Cinco had treated her.

  “Because he lives here.”

  “You’re gonna have to help me out here, Maggie. He lives here? At your house. Is he like your stepbrother? I’m so confused.”

  And of course he would be. Telling him—and everybody since college—she’d grown up in Maine and that her father was a landscaper hadn’t been a lie. Precisely. But it didn’t paint the whole picture.

  By design.

  “No. Not my stepbrother.” Thank. All. That. Was. Holy. “My parents live here, but they’re caretakers of this estate. This is our house. We don’t own it. We’ve just lived here for a few generations.”

  Oh, how to explain this? “My grandparents took care of them. My parents take care of them. And I don’t know who is going to take care of them after this because it sure as heck isn’t me. But these are my family friends. Although technically they’re not friends, because we are their employees. But. Well. It’s complicated.”

  She could tell Cruz was in the middle of some kind of crazy, mental calculation that included the words Maine, Virtue Cove, Cinco—and she knew the moment he put it all together. When them became a surname. That moment when stunned and furious and surprised battled for dominance on his face. She moved to take her keys back from his grip, but he held on.

  “You never thought to tell me you grew up on Senator Freaking Ramsey’s compound?”

  “It didn’t seem important.”

  “Didn’t seem important,” he parroted.

  Any too-late explanations were curtailed by a thundering herd of the devil’s demons off in the distance. Otherwise known as The Dogs.

  “What the—”

  She instinctively braced herself against the onslaught, but poor, unsuspecting Cruz just stood in silent wonder as big dogs, round dogs, small bouncy dogs rounded the corner ahead of the golf cart that was sure to follow.

  The Dogs thronged about them, sniffing and vying for attention. Pinned them to the back of the convertible.

  “Uh, so these are The Dogs.”

  “I can see that,” he said somewhat inanely, holding her to him and putting as much of his body between her and The Dogs as he could. As if he expected the gang of friendly mutts to turn at any moment.

  “They’re harmless. Annoying,” she explained, and reached to give random heads behind-the-ears scratches. She didn’t see any familiar faces in the bunch. But it had been a long time. “Mrs. R breeds, rescues, collects dogs. And my parents don’t help the situation.”

  “Mrs. R.” He shook his head.

  If one could imagine it possible, more hounds rounded the corner ahead of a navy golf cart with a gold monogram on the front, bursting through the trees with yips and ecstatic leaps of joy. It was cinematic. Epic.

  Hysterical.

  “Welcome home!”

  Her mother’s howl blended with The Dogs’, and if anything the volume knob got cranked to eleven as various lolling and slobbering tongues vied for any patch of human skin to anoint with greeting.

  Mom set the parking brake and slid out of the cart, and it was like looking in a mirror. A funhouse mirror, but a mirror nevertheless.

  “Oh good, I see you got the wardrobe memo, meu amor.” Except her mom’s chambray shirt was trim and tailored and tucked into pants that had an actual waistband, and her popped collar rested firmly behind a carelessly knotted, dotted-red cardigan.

  She whistled, The Dogs ceased caterwauling, and all sat like little angels. Then her mother promptly burst into tears and moved forward.

  Oh, God.

  “Mom, hey.” Maggie reached out for a hug, but Mom just squeezed her hands and bypassed her for Cruz.

  Speaking in a rapid Portuguese patois, she grabbed Cruz up in a hug. Maggie wasn’t sure—because it had been so long since she’d heard the machine-gun-quick dialect—but she thought Mom was saying something about after all these years, so happy to finally meet you, something something hard (?), and finally some recrimination for Maggie for hiding everything.

  “Now, let me look at you,” she said. Again, not at Maggie, but at the big, strapping man she’d reduced to a blushing mess. She didn’t even know Cruz could blush.

  Maybe he’d figured out what the hard comme
nt was in reference to. She made a note to never ask him.

  There was a moment when Maggie was afraid Mom might make him turn in a circle so she could get a better look, but it was, fortunately, arrested when she went in for another hug.

  “Uh, Mom, this is Cruz Griffin. My boss.” She tried to infuse that with some gravitas, but looked like it was a lost cause. “Cruz, my mother, Lucia Kennedy.”

  “Of course this is Cruz! Oh, Maggie.” She turned her full force of Mom-Energy on her (while still firmly holding on to Cruz), and Maggie felt the earth quake a little. Maybe it was just the dogs. “Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing your special friend?”

  Maggie opened her mouth to speak, but Mom steamrolled right on. “Oh, this is terrible. Helen is staying in the guest room.”

  “Is Helen pretty?” The quip earned Cruz a smart smack and then few cheek kisses.

  “I like you.” Seriously, was Mom pinching his cheeks?

  “The feeling is mutual, Mrs. Kennedy.”

  “You can stop with that ‘Mrs. Kennedy’ business right now.” What the hell? Her mother was turning into Scarlett O’Hara beneath the glow of Cruz’s smile, and it was entirely unsettling. “It’s Lucia—or Lou if you’re feeling naughty. Which I suspect is most of the time.”

  “Mother.”

  “Well, Lou, if the beautiful Helen objects to sharing her room, I’m sure the couch will be just fine.”

  “No. No. The couch is much too small.” Mom took the opportunity to mentally measure him again and mutter to herself. “Oh, what are we going to do? It’s a disaster.”

  Finally, something they agreed on.

  “He can sleep on the floor. Or in the dog den.” That earned Maggie a scolding that needed no translation.

  “Of course he can’t. What would people say? And we are simply filled to the rafters in the main house and all guest cottages, too. Oh,” she exclaimed and clapped her hands. “The rafters, of course! Maybe he can sleep on your father’s old fishing cot.”

  The Dogs perked up a bit and began wiggling and whining, and then, like he’d been summoned, her father roared up on his cart, his barrel of a chest and a shock of silver hair still making him look like some kind of Irish Paul Bunyan.