“It was when you flew to New York for your friend Mark’s bachelor party,” she said, her gaze still on her salad.
“I was only gone for three days. What the hell happened?”
“That first morning I got the call from John saying that Abrams wanted me for the female lead in Primitive. That it would mean spending three months on Maui filming, and I would have to drop out of the running for the part in Midsummer Days. The first thing I wanted to do after I hung up with John was call you. Not to tell you the news, but to ask if you were okay with me being gone for three months and if you thought Primitive would be a better move for me than Midsummer Days. I didn’t know what to say on my own.”
“El, y—”
“It was my decision, my career. You were still a lawyer and really knew shit about Hollywood back then. But it was like I came second in my own life. In my own head.”
Brian looked at her. When she’d called him that day, she’d sounded a little nervous, but then she’d told him about getting Primitive and working with Daniel Craig, and he’d figured that had been the reason for any anxiety. And she’d later used the beginning of that three-month absence to call off the engagement, even though she’d hired him as her handler four weeks later.
“You made the decision, though. Without my input.”
“Yeah, after I first decided that I couldn’t marry you. That I could use Primitive to escape the relationship.” She shrugged, a tear running down her face. “I guess you were right. I am a coward. But then I’ve always been a coward, haven’t I?”
Things had definitely felt different when he’d returned from New York, but he hadn’t been able to put his finger on why, at least not until she’d basically said she couldn’t marry him then boarded a plane for Hawaii. Agreeing to work for her had both changed what had become a set path for his life and had given him what he hoped was the opportunity to figure out what the hell had happened.
“Don’t punch me,” he said slowly, “but I think you weren’t used to having a man in your life, and the idea that you could be adding one back in there for life did scare you. I mean, I’m not a psychologist or anything, but I know you adored your dad. Most of us as we get older go through the ‘my dad doesn’t know anything’ stage before we realize he’s actually kind of midway between superhero and stifled jerk.”
“I think it’s more that you’re too perfect,” she countered, her face completely serious, as far as he could tell.
That stopped him for a second. “Dude, you’re kidding, right?”
El shook her head. “You always know what to say, and you always know what I need before I even know, and you’re funny and smart and kind and gorgeous. I’m a mess. I totally know that.”
“Eleanor Grace, I’ve been in love with you for a little over four years. That’s a lot of time to figure out what you like, what you want, and what bothers you. I don’t want you to be sad or scared, and so I do what I can to keep those things away from you. That’s what love is, you know. Doing your best to protect your partner and help them be happy and successful.”
“But then what does that make me? You were an up-and-coming law superstar, just about to become a junior partner, and I hired you to be my handler. Like a dog handler only with a phone.”
Brian snorted. “My dad’s a lawyer, and my granddad’s a lawyer. Yeah, I figured that’s what I would do, and I was pretty good at it. Then you dumped me. When you called me again it only took me about ten minutes to decide to quit and go work for you. I haven’t missed it for a day, and it’s been handy here, knowing lawyer stuff.”
“So you don’t regret anything since you met me?”
“The luckiest day of my life was when that sign fell off that truck and nearly totaled your Tesla.” He stabbed at his lettuce, already halfway to hating himself but knowing it would be worse if he stopped there. “But if you’re just grateful or you just see me as a bodyguard or your shopping buddy or something, you need to tell me, El. The truth. Not what you think I want to hear or what makes things easiest on you.”
Their eyes met for a moment, and he wanted to swat everything off the table and reach over to kiss her. At the same time, he felt like he had that first day they’d met, that he was the high school math nerd and she was the most popular girl in school and he had no business even talking to her, much less asking her to prom.
“I need to go take another walk,” she announced. Eleanor pushed away from the table, took another swallow of her lemonade, and headed off the porch.
Brian sat back. Dammit. They still had that connection. He could feel it. But if she wasn’t willing to risk herself that far, what lay between them wouldn’t matter. It would just wither and die.
“Coming?” she asked from the foot of the steps, stopping to face him.
He shot to his feet. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You ticked me off, making me get my own breakfast and stuff,” she said, starting off along the pond.
Their last walk hadn’t ended well. He hoped this one went a little better. “I was feeling abused.”
“I decided I liked it, though. I didn’t hire you to be my step-and-fetch guy, anyway. I just always knew you would do whatever I asked, and I started to abuse it. I needed a shake-up.”
“This isn’t just a shake-up or a ploy for a raise, you know. I totally wouldn’t go to this much trouble for a raise.” Brian kept up with her, resisting the urge to reach for her hand. He could still get punched—figuratively at the least.
“I know.” She sighed. “I was trying to make you into an employee, I think. So I could respect you a little less. Like you a little less. Fire you, eventually, and not hire you back again.”
“You fired me this morning, as I recall.”
“And I meant it. But I didn’t fire you because I stopped respecting you. I fired you because you were right, and I wanted to run.”
He stopped in the shade of an old, bent oak tree. “I was right about what, exactly?” he asked.
She continued on for another few feet, slowed, and turned around to slow walk back to him. “I didn’t think about it that way until today, but I think I did keep you around as my backup plan. So I could see you and have you in my life without doing anything brave about it.” Eleanor scowled, the expression still attractive on her face. “I play all these brave women who fling their hearts into the fire without a second thought, and I can’t do it in real life.”
“It matters in real life. In a movie, somebody else writes the story, and you take off your costume and go home at the end of the day.”
Outdoors like this, her hazel eyes looked more green than brown in the shade as she gazed at him. “Am I really worth all this nonsense to you?”
“Yes,” he responded without hesitation. “Look at it this way—I will never compete with you over a part. I will always tell you the truth, and I will never fool around on you. Hell, you know I haven’t been on a date in four years.”
“Yeah, I know. I was watching.”
“Then what happens now?” he asked, because that had to come from her. He was liking this new El, the one who smacked him back in the face with straight answers, even more than the other, more elusive one. But this one might actually walk away from him and mean it.
“The f—”
Her phone rang, and with a quick frown, she pulled it from her pocket. “John,” she muttered and lifted it. “Hey.” She listened for a few seconds then held up her hand. “John, John, wait a sec. I’m right in the middle of something. I’ll call you back in ten minutes, okay?” Another pause. “No. I mean, yes, I get it. I’ll call you back. Okay? Bye. Bye.” She tapped her phone and pocketed it again.
“Good news or bad news?” Brian asked.
“We’re still doing the movie,” she said, taking a step closer to him.
Thank God. “That is very good news. This is your Iron Man, you know. I think you’re right about that. What is th—”
“Shut up.”
Brian snapped his jaw close
d. “Okay.”
“I’m trying to find a clever way to say all this stuff in my head and not sound like I’m quoting from Romancing the Stone or something.”
The dark and worried lump in his chest melted away, just like that. Just a few hopeful words from her, and he was sane and whole and happy. “El, I’m a sure bet. Just tell me.”
At that, she smiled. The rare smile, the one that touched her eyes and shivered warm all the way down his spine. “I love you, Brian Cafferty,” she murmured, sliding her arms up around his shoulders and lifting up on her toes. “You are the most patient man in the world. Will you be engaged with me again, with the intention of that leading to a long marriage, a dog, and maybe a couple of babies?”
He looked her in the eyes, wondering if she could feel his hands shaking as he gripped her waist. “You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m all in. For good, El.” Brian lowered his head and caught her upturned mouth with his, kissing her in the way he’d missed doing for four long, long damned years. It was worth the wait. She was worth the wait.
“For good,” she murmured against his mouth and kissed him again. “And I even know where we can get married.”
Yep, they were going to become regulars at the Starlight Bed and Breakfast Inn. Hell, they might never leave.
* * *
THE END
Pasties and Poor Decisions
Molly Harper
1
Anastasia Villiers, socialite and minor reality television star, had hit rock bottom. And that rock was named Espoir Island.
Anastasia pressed her forehead against the cold window glass of the Woeful Lady, Espoir’s principal ferry to the mainland.
It would be at least another hour of rough, choppy water before Espoir came into view. More than twenty years before, back when she was still Ana Gustavsson, she’d ridden away from that sight on this same rusted, battered passenger boat, promising herself that she’d never see either again. And here she was, right back where she started, with almost nothing.
Her home was a tiny spit of rocks in Lake Superior and technically part of Michigan, though Canada and the States had a brief skirmish over the right not to claim it during the 1880s. Originally called Sans Espoir, meaning “without hope” by the French settlers, they declared it “unlivable” after a few decades, and it was established as a “treatment colony” for leprosy patients. Blessed with little more than rocky shores, thick forests and isolation, modern tourists who summered on Espoir couldn’t rent houses on the more glamorous Mackinac Island or even Sault Ste. Marie. And after one summer, they rarely came back. Anastasia certainly hadn’t planned on coming back.
Ana Gustavsson had been an unremarkable student with little discernible talent and few ambitions beyond moving to a big city for some other kind of life. She supposed that she’d done just that. She just hadn’t planned for what would come after, which had been a near-fatal error on her part.
She should have seen it coming. After all, she’d seen this sort of thing play out multiple times amongst her social circle. Her husband, Sebastian Villiers, was a self-styled “titan of industry.” And titans played fast and loose with trivial things like taxes and trade regulations. Amongst her friends (or, at least the people who had called themselves her friends up until three days ago), raids from federal authorities were just an inconvenience that came up every once in a while—like your facialist getting the flu. And sure, occasionally, that meant fleeing the country for a spur of the moment “vacation” to Switzerland or one of the islands where extradition didn’t exist, until the matter could be cleared up. (It didn’t count as being a fugitive if you flew a private jet.) Then again, her friends’ husbands were usually loyal enough to take their wives with them when they made their escape to consequence-free paradise.
But Bash hadn’t done that.
Bash had always assured her that he had contingency plans in place, that there were routes planned and resources stashed away for an emergency like say, federal authorities attempting to arrest him for an impressive array of white-collar crimes. Anastasia just always assumed that she was included in those plans. She’d come home from an impromptu Tuesday brunch to find federal agents raiding her Broome Street penthouse, a penthouse she’d been given fifteen minutes to pack what personal items they didn’t consider evidence and vacate. Their homes in Miami, the Hamptons, Napa, the apartment on the Upper West Side Bash thought she didn’t know about, they were all being similarly seized and searched. Frantic phone calls to an embarrassing number of the contacts in her phone left her feeling even more alone and adrift. Bash’s number was “out of service.” His trusted legal team only responded to tell her that while her husband was their client, she was not and should not expect any help from them. Her personal banker pretended not to know who she was.
For the rest of her life, she would remember that moment when she was on her knees in her custom walk-in closet, cell phone pressed to her ear. She was shoving random clothes into a Louis Vuitton duffel bag, while a sympathetic secretary informed Anastasia that Mr. Villiers very recently sold his partnership in the investment firm his family founded. “Recently,” as in that very morning.
It was their driver, poor Mark Bingley, who met her outside their building to tell her that he’d dropped Bash and a Pilates instructor named Wren at a private airfield, bound for the Caymans that morning. And there had been a lot of luggage involved.
That was when the weasel-faced process server approached Ana on the sidewalk and handed her divorce papers. All of this had been recorded by ever-helpful paparazzi, and Anastasia could only hope that Bash hadn’t been the ones to tip them off, just to give him more time to get away.
For two days, she’d survived on caffeine, panic, and the cash she just happened to have in the handbag she chose that fateful morning. All of her credit cards were cancelled. She only managed to get her plane ticket because Bash hadn’t thought to change the login for their American Airlines account. While the credit cards were defunct, they had built up just enough reward points to cover a coach seat to the Upper Peninsula. She’d crashed on her hair colorist’s couch, for God’s sake, contemplating what life choices led to a person’s list of acquaintances who would help her out in a crisis being limited to the person who put in her fucking highlights.
Anastasia hadn’t even had time to process the emotions involved in her marriage and world falling apart. She couldn’t even think about how she felt about her husband’s betrayal or how stupidly naive she’d been. The only thing she’d been able to feel through the shock was the overwhelming humiliation. Wren—just Wren, no last name, though she was too damn young to make or understand the Cher comparison—had been her Pilates instructor first. Anastasia had been the one to talk Bash into taking sessions because he was always complaining about his weight, but he didn’t like lifting or running. She’d been so stupidly pleased when he’d taken to the sessions, even scheduled extra solo lessons with Wren during the week.
Honestly. She should have known something was up.
Anastasia felt the windowpane warm beneath her forehead and leaned away, sliding a navy U M baseball cap over her long blond hair. She angled it over a delicate oval face, as if it could shield her. The last thing she wanted was to be recognized by the dozen or so Espoir Island commuters sitting inside the ferry to avoid the frigid winds. She was still Gustavsson enough to try to find the bright side in all this. In the words of her mother, if your roof leaked, it meant you had a roof. At least she wasn’t going to jail like those poor actresses who had paid their children’s way into college. She had watched the media coverage for weeks, perplexed as to why so many people had seemed so surprised by those stories, the collective moral outrage.
The elite had access to special privileges because they were the elite. They had the money and the connections to make things happen. It was the way things worked. It was the way things had always worked. It was why she had worked so damn hard to become a memb
er of the elite in the first place, clawing her way up from discount shoe store clerk to personal shopper to Mrs. Sebastian Villiers.
Ana’s mother had also spouted wisdom about heights and pride and busting her proverbial ass combining the two.
In the distance, Espoir Island splayed up from the gray froth like an old woman on her back, trapped forever in the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” position. The waterfront businesses sagged along the shoreline, comfortable as a faded housecoat is welcoming. Graying clapboard houses sprouted from the rocky cliffs like chin hairs. The island’s primary tourist “attraction,” an enormous old hotel called the Seacliff Inn, known for its authentic Senate bean soup, stood molting on the northmost hill.
On the east side of the island, far out of sight, Ana’s late parents had lived in an old fisherman’s cottage, which had belonged to her father’s family for generations. When her parents passed, her cousin Fred inherited it, as the oldest male in the Gustavsson line, such as it was. Fred had been kind enough to pack her parents’ things away in a storage unit near Brimley, because there wasn’t any room on the island for something as frivolous as storing things you didn’t use every day.
Fred and his wife lived in the cottage now, and with four huge teenage sons, there certainly wasn’t enough room for Ana to bunk there. So even if she was coming home, she technically wasn’t going “home.”
She dialed the security code into her phone, grateful that she’d kept the same number since her single days, and therefore her own phone plan, all because she was unwilling to give up her early-adopted 212 area code. She dialed her daughters; first her oldest, Chloe, then Arden, her chest tightening painfully when both calls when to voicemail. Chloe hadn’t answered since Tuesday, insisting that she had no idea where her father had gone to, and she didn’t really have time to deal with “all the drama” when she was in the middle of an important internship with a London-based fashion label. Arden had never answered, but her roommate at Brown informed Anastasia that Arden was “super busy” with midterms and just didn’t have time to talk…or text…or email. If their posts on their social media—involving new cars and some very expensive jewelry—were any indication, the girls had chosen who “got them” in the divorce. And it wasn’t Anastasia.
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