Return to Me

by Farrah Rochon

  “Yes?” he asked.

  She stood with her hands folded in front of her, a pensive expression distorting her lovely features.

  “I’m not sure I can continue to do this,” she stated.

  He frowned, taken aback. “I thought you said the work was going well?”

  “I’m not talking about the work, I’m talking about this.” She gestured to the space between them. “It feels as if I’m walking on eggshells when I’m around you and I…I don’t want to feel this way.”

  Jonathan slipped a hand in his pocket as he took a step toward her.

  “Are you saying you want to quit?” he asked, apprehension tightening his chest.

  “No.” She shook her head. “No, I just—” She released a frustrated breath. “Forget I said anything.”

  “Ivana—”

  “I’ll get back to work.”

  She tried to brush past him, but Jonathan caught her by the wrist. Her eyes shifted from his face to where he held her, but he didn’t let go.

  “When has walking away ever solved anything between us, Ivana?”

  She flinched. Jonathan hadn’t meant for the words to sound like an accusation, but he could tell that’s how she’d interpreted them.

  “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable while working here,” he explained. “Talk to me. Maybe we can figure something out.”

  She gave a brief nod, and Jonathan let go of her wrist.

  She backed up, assuming the pose he’d previously held, clasping her hands in front of her as she leaned against the counter.

  “I knew this would be difficult,” she started. “I was so sure I could handle it, but I don’t know.” She pressed her lips together. “Being here, seeing you every day—it’s a constant reminder of one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made.”

  He studied her for a moment. “Which do you consider the mistake?” he asked, his throat suddenly tight. “Leaving me, or being with me in the first place?”

  Her delicate, regretful smile tore at his heart. “You know better than to ask that question,” she whispered.

  He fought the urge to reach for her, to go to her. He wanted to forget the past three years had ever happened and just go back to loving her. His world was a richer, happier place when he let himself love her.

  But he couldn’t do that. Just the idea of leaving his heart so exposed scared the hell out of him.

  “But, once again, I’m reminded that this isn’t about me, or about us,” Ivana said with exaggerated buoyancy, her smile overly bright, as if she was trying extra hard to hold on to it. “This is about those thousands of people who need our help.”

  “It is,” he said with a nod. “So, how do you propose we get past this…awkwardness?”

  She lifted her shoulders. “You didn’t respond all that well the first time I suggested this, but I think it would help if we tried to be friends?”

  “This again.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and huffed out a derisive snort.

  “Would it really be that much of a hardship, Jonathan?”

  He arched a brow. “You do realize you were never my friend, don’t you?” She opened her mouth to protest, but he stopped her. “It’s the truth. You hated me from the first day you met me.”

  “Hate is a very strong word,” she said, lifting that regal nose in the air. “Disliked, maybe?”

  “Intensely disliked,” Jonathan said. His gaze dropped to the delicate hollow at the base of her throat. Memories of how he would caress that spot with his tongue ravaged him, reminding him of a time when he couldn’t get enough of this woman. “But that dislike quickly turned to lust. And then to love.”

  He studied her reaction, observing the way her chest rose and fell with her shallow breaths.

  “Friendship?” He shook his head. “The concept is too bland, too unexciting. I’m not sure it could ever work for us, Ivana.”

  Palpable awareness pulsed between them as she searched his face, her eyes locking with his. His heart banged against his chest, the sudden need to go to her overwhelming him.

  “But we can try,” Jonathan said, taking a step back. He cleared his throat. “I’m willing to go along with it if you think it will make this easier. Send along that summary when you have a chance.”

  He left the break room and took off toward his office, his hands shaking so badly he had to stuff them in his pockets to avoid LaKeisha possibly seeing the tremble and asking questions. He made it to his office and closed the door behind him, resting his head back against the smooth wood.

  “Her friend,” Jonathan whispered. “Yeah, good luck with that.”

  Ivana read over the same paragraph three times before recognizing the futility in pretending to work. Her output had been dismal since just after ten o’clock this morning, when she’d approached the slightly ajar door to Jonathan’s office and overheard him on the phone.

  It wasn’t the fact that he’d been on the phone with another woman that had caused this particular knot to form in her stomach—he spoke with women all day long. It was the ease and familiarity she’d heard between them that had been such a difficult pill to swallow. She couldn’t help but compare the relaxed tenor of the phone conversation to the tension that still seemed to dominate the room whenever they were together, even now that they were “friends.”

  Was this what she had to look forward to if she moved back to New Orleans permanently? Sitting around wondering about the women on the other end of his phone line?

  The more difficult question: which would she rather wonder about? Whether he was casually dating several women, or in a serious relationship with just one?

  Neither.

  “You don’t get a say,” Ivana reminded herself. As Jonathan’s “friend” she should root for his happiness, even if he found that happiness with someone else.

  She snorted. She strove for kindness in just about everything she did, but her benevolence only went so far.

  The messenger app popped up on her computer.

  Just heard back from Serena. Want to come into my office?

  It had galled her to ask his friend Serena for help yet again, but Ivana couldn’t deny that the woman knew her stuff. If circumstances were different, she could imagine herself befriending the immigration attorney.

  She approached Jonathan’s open office door and knocked twice on the door jamb.

  “Come in.” He motioned for her to enter.

  The moment she sat, his cellphone rang.

  “Busy as always,” Ivana commented, folding her hands in her lap as she sat.

  “This won’t take long.” He answered the phone in speaker mode. “Hey, did you need something else?”

  “Just you,” came a female voice. Ivana stiffened. It was the woman he’d been on the phone with earlier. “My meeting was cancelled, so I have an unexpected free hour that I am generously giving to you. Can you meet me here?”

  Okay, no. She could not do this. Ivana started to stand.

  “Sure,” Jonathan answered. “I have few things to discuss with Ivana, but then I’ll head right over.”

  “Ivana? Ivana Culpepper?”

  Ivana wasn’t sure which rattled her more, the woman’s surprised voice or the fact that she knew her name.

  “When did you get back in town?” the woman asked.

  She frowned, then in a cautious voice, asked, “Indina?”

  “Yes, it’s me! It’s so good to hear your voice,” Indina Holmes said. “You should bring her along, Jonathan. She can give us some insight into—”

  “Ivana’s busy with another project,” Jonathan said.

  “This won’t take long. And I want to pick her brain. Based on what you’ve told me about your inspiration for this place, I think Ivana should have some input. Don’t you?”

  A glimpse at Jonathan’s embittered expression caused Ivana’s curiosity to shoot through the roof. What could this possibly be about?

  “We’ll be there in a few minutes,” he said before disconnecting t
he call. He looked to her. “You up for a road trip?”

  “A road trip?”

  “A ten-minute road trip,” he said as he gathered a sheaf of papers from his desk. He slipped them into a tan envelope and closed the metal clasp.

  “Sure,” Ivana said. “I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  She returned to the office she’d been provided and uploaded the documents Nicolas had forwarded to the cloud drive. She would review them at home. When she made it to the lobby, she found Jonathan waiting at the edge of LaKeisha’s desk. The receptionist, whose frosty feelings toward Ivana had thawed quite a bit in the last week, looked back and forth between the two of them, a curious smile edging up her lips.

  “Going out for lunch?” LaKeisha asked.

  “I have to meet with Indina Holmes,” Jonathan said. “She requested I bring Ivana. This shouldn’t take long.”

  “Your afternoon is clear. You can take all the time you need.” She wiggled her fingers, mischief dancing in her eyes. “See you all later.”

  Ivana caught the agitated look Jonathan lobbed his receptionist’s way before gesturing for Ivana to proceed him out the door. She walked down the porch steps and over to the passenger side of his car. She reached for the door handle, only to discover there weren’t any.

  “Here you go,” Jonathan said, reaching around her and pressing an indention she hadn’t even noticed. “The door handles retract,” he explained.

  “Oh,” Ivana said. “Does it fly as well?”

  He laughed. “Not yet.”

  She slipped inside the car and ran her hand along the smooth leather seat. Of all the changes he’d made since she left, Ivana was certain the new car was one of necessity. They’d gone car shopping right before the wedding that never took place. He’d wanted style. She’d demanded fuel-efficiency. Based on everything else she’d witnessed since returning home, Ivana was surprised he hadn’t bought a gas-guzzling tank of an automobile just to spite her.

  “This is a very nice car,” she said, once he was seated behind the wheel.

  “Thanks.” He started the car by pressing a button on the dashboard display screen. He glanced over at her, his smile wry. “I’ll save you time from having to Google it. It’s one hundred percent electric. I’m reducing my carbon footprint.”

  A sudden laugh burst from her lips. “You knew I planned to look it up the minute I had the chance, didn’t you?”

  “I know you,” he said, amusement shimmering in his eyes.

  Ivana held his gaze as they sat in the idling car, a sudden sense of longing overwhelming her. In a soft voice, she said, “I could always count on you to make me laugh.”

  The instant rush of nostalgia that permeated the air was both powerful and potent. It suffused every inch of the car’s interior, thrusting recollections of happier times into the forefront of her mind. Would she ever be able to look at him without recalling those memories they’d shared? Without being pummeled with memories of what she’d had and lost? Did he suffer the same every time he looked at her?

  Maybe he was right. Maybe it was impossible for them to just be friends.

  “We should get going,” Jonathan said.

  “Yes,” she said with a startled jerk. She smoothed her hand along her skirt, but then tucked it against her stomach when she realized her fingers were trembling. “Where exactly are we going?”

  “The Warehouse District.” He backed out of his reserved parking space. “I bought a building there. Indina is helping me renovate it.”

  “Into what?”

  “A new club.”

  Ivana nodded. For the sake of her sanity, she had tried to put her most recent visit to his other nightclub out of her mind, but since they were on the subject…

  “It seems as if things are going well at The Hard Court. Sienna said the area’s residents really appreciate the parking garage you built.”

  He shrugged and nodded. “Just trying to be a good steward to the neighborhood.”

  He took a right onto Julia Street, slowing as he came upon a smoke gray, two-story structure with tall, paned windows. Ivana spotted Indina Holmes standing beneath a small, arched awning that spanned the wide wooden and glass doors. When Jonathan pulled the car to a stop, Indina rushed over, her arms open wide.

  “Oh, my goodness! It is so good to see you,” she said, enveloping Ivana in a monstrous hug the moment she alighted from the car. “You look amazing as always.”

  “Thank you. It’s great to see you too,” Ivana said. “And I recently learned congratulations are in order. I met Griffin at Jonah’s christening party.”

  “My new hubby’s hot, ain’t he?” she said with a grin.

  Ivana burst out laughing. “Very hot.”

  “Let’s stop before this one gets jealous,” Indina said with a wink, hooking a thumb toward Jonathan.

  Ivana began to correct her, but Indina had already moved on to the matter at hand. She patted the black portfolio she held tucked under her arm.

  “I printed out a few designs for you to look over. I would have brought my laptop so you could see them in 3D, but it’s been acting up lately.” She started for the building’s entrance. “Now, these are based solely off the specs and pictures you sent me. I may get in there and decide to go an entirely different route. I just never know until I see the space with my own eyes.”

  She looked over her shoulder at Indina. “I’m happy he brought you along. Figuring out how to recreate this White’s place simply from the few pictures I’ve been able to find online hasn’t been easy.”

  Ivana’s steps faltered. “White’s?”

  “Yes.” Indina looked to Jonathan. “You didn’t explain the idea to her? He’s basing this newest place on some kind of gentlemen’s club you used to read about in novels?”

  Ivana’s breath caught in her throat.

  She remembered the day he’d surprised her at her incense stand in the French Market, walking up behind her and snatching the paperback novel she’d been reading from her hands. Even now, she could feel the heat that flushed her face as she awaited his ridicule. It’s how her ex-husband, Michael, had always reacted whenever he caught her reading her beloved historical romances.

  But Jonathan never mocked her. On occasion, he would even surprise her by having books from her favorite authors hand-delivered to her on their release day.

  Ivana was unable to keep the astonishment from her voice. “You’re opening a White’s?”

  She caught the hint of reluctance in his brief nod, as if he were ashamed to admit it.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “Well, Indina’s interpretation of it.”

  A rush of tenderness engulfed her. In a time when it appeared that he’d tried to erase everything in his life that reminded him of her, it was a challenge to wrap her head around just how much it meant to have him remember this one thing she’d held so dear. Not only remember it, but embrace it.

  “Why don’t we go inside and look around,” Jonathan said as he pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. “Maybe you can share with Indina exactly what it is you envisioned with that place you used to talk about opening.”

  Still grappling with the significance of the inspiration behind Jonathan’s club, she followed Indina around the spacious warehouse, envisioning the scenes from some of her favorite novels playing out in this space.

  They stopped in the very center of the building. Sunlight streamed through the tall windows, projecting illuminated rectangles onto the dusty hardwood floors.

  “Was this a textile mill at one time?” Ivana asked.

  “I think it was, decades ago,” Jonathan said.

  “I can smell it in the walls,” she said, soaking in the structure’s history.

  “So, what can you tell me about this White’s place?” Indina asked.

  “It’s from the romance novels I read,” Ivana said, shaking her head at her obsession with the Regency period, despite the fact that it went against everything she stood for.

  �
��White’s is a very exclusive club in London that has been around since the seventeenth century. The gentlemen of the ton—the upper crust of British society—would gather there for conversation, cards, drinks, and other gentlemanly pursuits.” She looked over at Jonathan. “Several years ago, Jonathan took me on a trip to London and I was able to see White’s in person, but only from the outside. You have to be a member to go inside, and because it remains a men’s only club, I will never be able to enter.”

  “That same day she vowed to open a club like White’s, one where everyone would be allowed to come in and enjoy it,” Jonathan said.

  She looked to him with an impish grin on her lips. “It was my own little defiant fantasy.”

  His smile was slow and secretive, and she wondered if he was recalling the magical time they’d had together while on that trip.

  “I’m liking the sound of this,” Indina said. “The thought of a men’s only club in this day and age is ridiculous.” She clapped her hands together. “So, when it comes to the ambience, we’re going for a London gaming club?”

  “Yes.” Jonathan nodded, his voice once again all business. “Think drinks and quiet conversation after work with a little jazz playing softly in the background. In the evenings, patrons can snack on light fare from the kitchen, but no huge meals. I don’t want a full restaurant. I also want a cigar lounge. Cigars are making a huge comeback, among both men and women.”

  “This is going to be very different from The Hard Court,” Indina said.

  “It’s meant to be,” Jonathan said. “In size, scope, and clientele. The people I envision patronizing Campbell’s wouldn’t step foot in The Hard Court.”

  “Is that the name you’ve decided on?” Ivana asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know if White’s is named after an actual person, but Campbell’s just feels right to me.”

  “I think it’s perfect.”

  He smiled that smile again, the one that warmed her all the way to her core.

  “I’m going to take a few pictures, and then I need to get back to the office,” Indina said. She gave Ivana another hug. “It was so great to see you again. How long are you in town?”