by Zoe York
He couldn’t.
Rage rose inside him, hot and fast. “You tricked me.”
“You came here, man.”
“To talk.”
Evan laughed. “Sure.”
“You set a trap—”
“If I did, you walked into it willingly. Here’s a tip: don’t lie to yourself. That will make it a hell of a lot easier to stop lying to others. Me, Jessica, anyone else you might want to fuck at some point.”
Brent’s jaw flexed as he ground his teeth together. “Don’t talk about her like that.”
“Jess?” Evan’s eyes glinted dangerously. “You don’t like the idea of me with her, do you?”
“No.”
“Why not? She’s a gorgeous woman. She doesn’t deserve to be treated well?”
“She’s my—” He cut himself off, but it was too late.
“We’ve been over this. She’s not your fucking wife anymore, because you left her. Because you broke her, and made her think she wasn’t desirable. You don’t like me talking about her in that way? Too fucking bad. She does. And unlike you, I’m not lying to her about who else I might want to screw. I’m not going to lie to her about who I’ve kissed, or what it felt like.”
“It’s not that easy.” He didn’t have the words here. “I don’t know what to tell her.”
“What do you tell yourself?” Evan looked at him, his eyes narrowing. “Have you even figured it out for yourself?”
Brent felt his face flame up. “I guess I’m gay.” It was a wild thing to say out loud. He’d typed it into internet search bars often enough. How do you know if you’re gay. Coming out as gay in your thirties. Gay porn. Gay orgies. Gay gay gay gay—
Evan nodded. “Cool.”
Brent swallowed. “Thanks.”
“Do you want your secret membership card now?”
He laughed out loud, part relief, part confused desperation. “Shut up.”
“But seriously, welcome to the queer club,” Evan said, one corner of his mouth jacking up into a half-smile. “If you want some recommendations on places to go—on the internet or in real life—I can point you in the right direction. It’s hard at first, before you have friends who are on a similar path.”
“There’s a club in London. I’ve been thinking about going.”
“Do you know anyone who is out at work?”
“Not at my station, but yeah.” That was a whole other layer. “It’s hard to imagine coming out there. I’ve been with Jess for so long.”
“Take it one step at a time. You don’t owe anyone any explanation about your past.”
“I wasn’t the best husband. I don’t want to compound that by starting any kind of rumours that she wasn’t…that we weren’t…”
“Love is complicated.”
“It wasn’t with her,” Brent said. The confession slipped out of him. “Not for a long time. She was perfect.”
“Nobody is perfect, but I see your point. If you were into women, your marriage would’ve survived.”
Brent frowned. “I—”
Evan blinked at him slowly.
Brent swallowed hard again.
Evan waited.
“What?”
“What, what?”
“You’re staring at me.”
Evan blinked again. “You’re standing in front of me.”
“Stop fucking playing games,” Brent yelled, suddenly furious again. “You know what you want to say, so just fucking say it. I don’t know what I’m doing, I know that. How can a man make it to thirty-five and not fucking know himself, right? It’s embarrassing.”
“Yeah, you should talk to someone about that. But I’m not a trained therapist, so that’s not going to be me,” Evan said dryly. “Okay, let’s do it this way. Are you still into women as well?”
“I’m not into anyone other than my own fist right now.”
“That’s not an answer to the question.”
Brent scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know. How the fuck am I supposed to know how I feel about anything when everything I’ve thought about myself was some kind of lie fuelled by repressed fantasies I didn’t want to look at?”
Evan stalked toward him. “Your wife took me home the night of the gala. She crawled into my lap and begged me to—”
Brent knew better than to throw a punch. He did. But he threw it anyway. Hard and fast, clipping Evan on the jaw. A glancing blow that bruised his knuckles and probably rang the other man’s bell.
Evan charged, slamming him against the door. “You still want her,” he growled.
“It’s complicated.” Brent’s voice cracked. “I love her.”
“She wanted me, not you.”
That hurt. That sliced hard through his heart. “She deserves you. I wasn’t good enough for her.”
“Because you kept secrets from her.”
“I had to.”
“No you didn’t.” Evan hit his fist against the wall beside Brent’s head. “No you fucking didn’t. Go to her. Tell her the truth. Tell her you like men, that you jerk off to gay porn on the internet, that fantasies get you off, but that she turns you on, too. Tell her that you thought you were gay, but maybe you’re bi, and you want to go to couples counselling to sort that out.” He gripped Brent’s jaw in his other hand, sending sparks skittering under his skin. “Tell her the truth, and I think your wife will surprise you.”
Bisexual.
Brent’s mouth opened and shut without any sound coming out.
Against him, Evan’s whole body pushed at him, big and hard. It was hot and scary, and then it was over.
He stepped back, and this time, Brent was glad he had.
Bisexual. I’m bi. He rolled it around in his head. “Is that…” He licked his lips. “Are you bi?”
“I’ve used that label most of my adult life, yeah. Kids these days sometimes call it pansexual, which I like, too. Honestly, I’ve been attracted to a lot of people in my life, and there’s no rhyme or reason to why.” He did a once-over on Brent and shrugged. “No reason at all, sometimes. Just chemistry.”
“And you’ve got chemistry in spades with Jessica.”
Evan’s mouth pulled tight. “Sorry about that.”
“No.” Brent nodded. “You’re right. She’s not my wife anymore. If you make her happy right now, that’s good. That’s fine. Not for me to say, either. I shouldn’t have come charging in here like a possessive monster.”
“That was just the cover story,” Evan said. He threw himself into the chair behind his desk. “You really came here to see how I knew you were queer, and I think we’ve explored that enough. I’ve got a conference call in five minutes, so unless you want to be introduced on that call, you can go now.”
“I’ll talk to Jess.”
“You do that.”
“I will.”
He just needed to find her first.
8
Jess hadn’t told anyone she was in Wardham. This wasn’t a work trip, this was a hide from the world trip.
But when she walked Evie’s boys to school in the morning, she bumped into Carrie, who dashed over from her bakery to drop off a lunch her daughter had forgotten.
“Jess!” Carrie said like they were old friends. “What are you doing here?”
“Hiding in plain sight.”
“Come hide at the bakery. I’ll make you a latte.”
She’d been perched on a barstool at the counter in Bun in the Oven when Lola Rodriguez had hustled in ten minutes before she was going to open her boutique.
So now she found herself, an hour later, dumping an armful of dresses on the counter in front of her new friend.
“Are you sure you want all of these?” Lola asked.
“That’s an interesting sales tactic.”
“Just checking.” She scanned the first one, then hit a button on the register.
“Do not give me a discount on them!”
“My sign must have fallen down,” Lola said innocently. “I have a s
ale on right now. Buy three or more dresses, get thirty percent off.”
“You are too kind to me.” Jess frowned. “Why?”
“Because you look like you need a bit of kindness.” Lola smiled sweetly.
Too sweetly. “That’s kind of true, but I think there’s more to it than that.”
“No!” But Lola—who definitely had a better poker face than Jess—couldn’t hold it together. She winced.
“Out with it.”
“Carrie may have mentioned last week that you’re going to save Wardham.”
Jess blew a raspberry. “I prefer the pity discount, to be honest. And if I’m going to help in any way, it really must stay quiet before the wrong people get wind of it.”
“Those people aren’t invited to Pilates and Muffins,” Lola said confidently. “Speaking of which, you’ve been missed.”
“I don’t actually live here,” Jess pointed out. But it was nice to be missed from a social gathering.
She didn’t have friends like that in London. Or any friends at all. Her London life was entirely wrapped up in business connections—and Brent, in the past.
He’d been a homebody, so she’d been a homebody with him. All the while missing out on Pilates and Muffins and scheming to take over small towns. Which would be easier if she wasn’t sleeping on Liam’s spare bed, working around his family’s chaotic schedule.
A wild, crazy idea popped into her head.
Immediately Lola grinned. Jess needed to work on her poker face, clearly. “What are you thinking?”
“Is there a real estate office near here?”
Lola pulled out a card and handed it over. “I’m also a registered realtor. If you’re interested in adorable cottages for powerful women, I have a few listings you might want to look at.”
Evan’s conference call turned into an all-hands-on-deck branding meeting with Beth and her husband Finn, who was a wine marketing consultant who worked for the Essex wine region as a whole.
Go West Winery had a chance to pitch a new product to a major distributor, and they’d be the preferred contract based on their reliability in the past. But they needed to move fast, because someone else had failed to deliver.
Did they have the wine? Fuck yeah, they did.
But they needed a new product name, something white label. Funny name, summery. And they needed to get it onto the shelves in eight weeks.
“You’re all insane,” Ty said when he stopped in to check on them.
Beth tossed Finn a pack of markers. “The genius kind of insane, right?”
“Absolutely,” Evan said, then shot his brother a go away look. “These ideas are all great. Can you give me something truly terrible?”
Beth rolled her eyes. It was his favourite new hack. Gimme a bad idea, he liked to say. It shook loose all sorts of out of the box thinking. It also offended his strive-for-excellence director of operations.
Finn drew a big sun, setting on a dock.
“It looks like Japanese sake from a distance,” Beth said. “Excellent for a sake label. Not so much for summery wines.”
“Adirondack chairs?” Evan asked.
“Tired,” Finn said.
At least he didn’t have to worry about his consultant being a yes-man. “And what would be wired?”
“Bikinis,” Beth said. “Bare Legs on the dock. Bikini dangling from fingertips.”
Evan thought of Jess. Would she go skinny dipping with him?
Would Brent?
“Show me,” he growled.
Finn was already sketching.
They kept working like that for another forty-five minutes, before Finn’s phone went off with an abrupt alarm.
“Shit, look at the time,” he said. “I have to go get the munchkin from daycare.”
Beth winced. “You stay. I’ll go. I’ll come back with him.”
They were riffing off each other with a contagious energy. Evan didn’t want to break that up, and his primary role in this conversation was providing more bad ideas that sparked their good ideas. They had enough of those to work with now. “I can go pick him up. And I’ll get dinner for us all?”
Beth glanced at Finn, who shrugged. “Sure, if you don’t mind.”
“Mind? It’s a treat.” Evan loved kids. They were funny in the purest of ways. And he wasn’t going to have any, and his brother wasn’t making any noises about kids, either. Beth’s son was the closest he’d probably get to being an uncle. “But I need to take your car. I don’t do sticky fingers in mine.”
Beth’s lips twitched as she tossed him the keys to her minivan. “There is an inappropriate joke there, but since you’re my boss, I’ll save it until you leave the room.”
He laughed out loud. “Please do.”
To get to the daycare, he drove along the lake and into town. He stopped at the bar to order burgers and fries for three and a half people, then headed for the daycare centre, located in the new community centre that had just been unveiled.
The one shining example of how his community had pulled together to get shit done. Well, half of it, anyway. The other half just hadn’t been able to throw up enough roadblocks. Story of his life, in more ways than one.
Some days he wondered why he’d stayed. Why he hadn’t tried to convince Ty they could go somewhere else to start their winery.
And other days—like today, where he got to work hands on with a small team to achieve a really cool project in a short period of time—he loved the freedom he’d found here to build his own business. To be a big fish in a smaller pond, even if that pond was not perfect for his social life.
He was nearly on top of one of Wardham’s three traffic lights when it turned red.
He hit the brakes, grateful he didn’t have Beth’s kid in the car yet. Focus, Evan. And then he swore out loud.
Across the road, just down the block from the new arena, was Jessica Doran. And she wasn’t alone. She was with Lola Rodriguez, deep in conversation.
Jess was right here in Wardham.
He frowned. She hadn’t called him. She doesn’t need to keep you updated on her every move. No, she didn’t. But…she had been.
If Brent was looking for his wife in London, he wouldn’t find her there.
How long was she visiting for?
Evan thought about the way Jess had fit in his lap. He thought about pushing her husband up against the wall and taking his mouth. Then the light turned green, and he stepped on the gas.
As much as he liked her—and he liked her more than he wanted to admit, even to himself—he wouldn’t get between a couple with unfinished business.
He had a kid to pick up, then burgers to collect, and a small empire to manage. And in his free time, a town to secretly take over. The marketing guru who would help him do that had to remain a colleague first and foremost. And then secondly, because he wouldn’t be able to help himself, a friend.
Not someone who would be curling up on his lap any time soon.
9
It was Brent’s own damn fault Jess left him hanging for a day and a night and then half of another day.
He called her four times, and sent her two text messages, doing his best to push through the pain it caused inside him to open the message thread with her and see all the contact attempts she’d made in the past.
He knew he was a piece of shit.
It didn’t change the fact that she was owed many conversations, and he would give them to her. He’d hidden long enough.
When she finally texted him back, it was short and to the point.
Jess: I’m back in the city. You can come over this afternoon.
Brent: I’ll be there in an hour.
He pulled up fifty minutes later. She was waiting on the front steps, her arms crossed.
It was deserved reception, and he leaned into the discomfort of it. Maybe it would be easier this way. Zero chance of impressing her with his minor breakthrough. Better to focus on what he could give her—the truth, whatever answers she wanted—an
d not get distracted by wishing everything had turned out differently for them.
He hopped out of his truck and headed up the walk. She stepped back, onto the porch, as he approached.
“Hey,” she said softly. “Third time in a week. Good to see you again.”
“Maybe it’ll become a regular thing,” he joked.
She didn’t reply.
No, no jokes. Not funny.
“Do you want to come inside?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Yes, please. Sure.”
She opened the door, and he followed her through. It was almost like stepping back in time. This had been their house together for years. Now it was hers alone. A year ago he’d gone through in a grief-rage and scrubbed himself from the space, packing everything of his into boxes that now languished in storage.
She’d filled those new vacancies with her own stuff. More of the books she liked, photos from her travels before they’d met, and a lot of soft, feminine touches. Flowers. A scented diffuser.
Get to the point, Brent. Rip off the fucking bandage. He swivelled on his heel, turning from the decor to Jess and diving in. “So, I went to Wardham yesterday.”
Her eyes went wide. “You did?”
“I went to see your…”
“My…?”
“Evan.”
“Oh.” She made a face. “He’s not my anything. Well, I guess he’s my friend. And I’m doing some work for his winery.”
“He wants to fuck you.” It burst out of him, and he groaned.
But she smiled. Smiled. What the fuck? “Did he say that?”
Uh… Brent frowned. “I thought he was just your friend?”
She hesitated a beat, then shrugged. “I’m not sure that’s your business, to be honest.”
“Fair enough.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “That’s not what I wanted to talk about, exactly.”
He looked at the couch. “May I sit?”
“Sure.”
“It’s weird being here.”
“Yeah.”
“For you, too?”
“Well, I live here, so it’s not that weird for me.” She pressed her lips together, holding in a gentle laugh. “Sorry. Yeah. We’re strangers now, and that’s weird.”