I get no response as she locates her missing shoe under the sofa, takes a seat, and slips it on.
I go to her, lowering myself into the spot beside her. “You don’t have to go.”
“No, I should,” she finally speaks. Standing, she takes a look around at my now-immaculate apartment before eyeing her purse on the back of a dining chair.
“That military school my father sent me to,” I say. “It was brutal. And those years were some of the worst ones of my life. I guess all the order and organization set me off. I shouldn’t have snapped, Keane. I’m sorry.”
She makes her way to the door, leaving me standing in a shallow puddle of my own self-pity.
I’ve never felt so low, never felt so vulnerable.
Turning to me with the softest eyes I’ve ever seen, she says, “It must have been awful for you, growing up thinking nobody wanted you. And now you’ve grown into an adult who doesn’t want anyone. It’s a vicious cycle, and I hope someday you find someone who can break that for you.”
I let her words sink in.
“See you Monday, Calder.”
And I miss her before she’s even gone.
EIGHT THIRTY COMES AND GOES.
Nine AM too.
By ten o’clock Monday morning, I still haven’t heard from Calder, so I make my way around the offices, casually peeking in and searching for the six foot Greek Adonis with lush dark hair and a permanently broody look on his face.
When I get to Mr. Welles’ office, I find the double doors already open, so I stand in the doorway and knock twice.
“Ms. Keane, come on in,” he says when he notices me. “Can I help you with something?”
“I was just wondering if you’d heard from Calder yet this morning? I tried texting him, but he didn’t respond …”
We haven’t spoken since Saturday morning, when I organized his apartment and he responded by telling me to leave. I get that he has issues. We all do. But his might run a little deeper than I originally realized, and I can’t handle the hot and cold, not when I have eighteen days left in the city.
Mr. Welles checks his phone. “I don’t see any missed calls. Then again, he’s not exactly thrilled with me right now.”
He chuckles, as if his son’s frustration is a silly little matter.
“We were on our way to lunch on Friday, and I made a comment that just set him off for whatever reason.” Welles rolls his eyes. “So temperamental, that boy. I thought he’d grow out of it with age, but it turns out it’s only gotten worse. And I’ve never understood what made him that way. He had a dream childhood. Everything he could ever want was right at his fingertips and what did he do? Couldn’t stay out of trouble. I had to send him away. I was working long hours, couldn’t keep an eye on him. He was outsmarting the nanny left and right. So I found one of the top boarding schools in the country, thought it could square him up a bit, give him the discipline I couldn’t. Sometimes I think it did more harm than good.”
If he only knew.
“Anyway, I’m just rambling.” He stands, sliding his hands into his suit pockets. “One of these days, I hope he meets a nice young lady, someone who can bring out a softer side of him. I know it’s in there somewhere.”
“I’m sure.” I nod toward the door. As soon as I get back to my office, I’m grabbing my things and making a house call. “Well, I’ll let you know if I hear from him.”
Before I head out, I fire off one last text.
WHERE ARE YOU?
Thirty minutes later, I’m standing outside his apartment.
“Calder?” I press my voice against the wooden door before knocking. “You home?”
No answer.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING here, Keane?” I yank the earbuds from my ears and let them dangle from my shoulders. My hair is damp, matted with sweat, and my shirt clings to my back, but I feel like a million bucks. It’s amazing what a jog can do to clear your head.
“Why aren’t you at work?”
I slide my key into the lock and give it a twist. “Because … I took a personal day.”
“And when were you planning on letting me know?”
“I emailed you. Six o’clock this morning.” I push the door open.
She stands, feet planted in the hall. “No, you didn’t. I checked my email multiple times this morning.”
I jut my chin forward. “Weird.”
Sliding my phone from my armband, I see a handful of missed phone calls and text messages—all of them from her.
“That’s cute, Keane. You were worried about me,” I say before checking my email. It only takes a second for me to locate the message I’d typed in a blurry haze this morning—and neglected to send.
“Why’d you take a personal day?” she asks.
“It has nothing to do with you,” I lie. “If that’s what you’re getting at.”
Actually, it has everything to do with her.
I’ve got a meeting this afternoon with my attorney to go over her employment contract. He’s spent the better part of the morning poring over it in search of loopholes—something, anything that will make it possible for me to fire her.
“YOU GOING TO COME in or you just going to stand there?” he asks, glistening with sweat.
Just when I thought Calder Welles II couldn’t possibly get any hotter, he goes for a jog and comes back looking like this.
I can’t even go to the gym without leaving looking like a drowned rat.
“I should probably get back to the office,” I say. “If I come in, I know what’s going to happen. You’ll shower. I’ll get the urge to organize again. We’ll have hot, angry sex, and I’ll leave feeling fifty shades of confused. We have a pattern, Calder, you and me. I don’t think it’s good for either of us.”
“What are you confused about?” he asks, hands hooked at his hips and the hem of his sweaty shirt lifted just enough to give me a peek of his Adonis belt.
“I don’t know—everything? What we’re doing. Where I stand with you. How you feel about me?” I could go on, but I stop myself because it doesn’t matter. “I’m leaving at the end of this month. You’re inheriting a multi-billion-dollar empire. Our priorities are going to be wildly different the second I step on that plane once my contract is up.”
“Says who?”
“You know it. I know it. We owe it to ourselves to be realistic about this.”
“I missed you this weekend.” He shrugs. “I don’t have all the answers you’re looking for, but I know that I missed you and that was the realest fucking thing I’ve felt in a long time.”
My eyes water for a second. I glance down until the sensation passes. Those words coming from that man mean everything, and I want so badly for them to be true because if they’re not? If he’s just saying them because he’s caught up in the moment? It won’t just break me. It’ll shatter me into a million pieces.
“I should get back,” I say.
“To do what? You’re all caught up on summaries.”
“I’ll figure something out. Maybe Marta needs help with something. Or maybe I’ll organize your office.” My eyes flick onto his.
“Do it and you’re fired, Keane.”
“Ugh, let’s not joke about that,” I say. “I have plans for that money. Life-altering plans. And I’m almost halfway done.”
He studies me, the playful smirk that reached his eyes a moment ago is lost. “Still running your countdown?”
“Eighteen days …” I stand in the doorway, resting my head against the jamb, wondering what my life would be like if I stayed a little longer.
Would this, could this work?
But maybe more importantly, should we even try?
The idea of uprooting my entire life for a man I’ve known all of two weeks goes against every principle I’ve ever established. Frivolous and free-spirited has never been my style.
“Your father wants to get to know you,” I say.
“Where’s this coming from?” he asks.
“But he
wants to do it through me,” I continue. “He wants me to tell him everything about you. What you like, what makes you happy, what you do for fun.”
His nose wrinkles. “What? Why?”
“I think he’s realizing he worked his life away.”
“Please, don’t feel sorry for that bastard for one minute. Let me guess, he gave you some speech, some heart-rending sob story?”
I laugh. “Yeah.”
Calder rolls his eyes. “Then please tell me you saw through it.”
“I did,” I say. “But my point is … I told him it made me uncomfortable, and he said it was part of my contract, essentially. And I read it over. He’s right. I had my brother’s lawyer friend look it over, and I did agree to do whatever I was asked as long as it was legal and within the scope of my abilities.”
He’s quiet.
“I would never betray you, Calder,” I say, “but if I don’t tell him something, he could fire me and I could lose out on half my contract.” Closing my eyes, I add, “I know he’s a selfish, vile human being. But maybe, for my sake, you could throw him a bone? Maybe tell him your favorite color, I don’t know.”
When I open my eyes, Calder is scratching at his temple, staring off to the side, lost in thought. I don’t dare ask him what he’s thinking about. When he comes to, he peels his shirt off and makes his way toward me.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
Reaching for my hand, he pulls me in and closes the door behind me, and before I have a chance to protest, his mouth is crushing mine and my back is against the wall. The taste of salt and mint mingles from his tongue to mine, and his fingers curl around the nape of my neck.
“What’s this for?” I ask.
“For being loyal,” he says, his lips grazing mine. Sliding his hand over mine, he leads me to his room. “Take off that dress.”
Calder steps into the bathroom, and a moment later I hear the spurt and spray of the shower. When he comes back, he’s completely naked and I haven’t removed a single stitch of clothing.
“Need some help?” He presses his body against mine, his hot mouth against my neck and his hands working the side zipper of my pencil skirt.
My body is already surrendering, heart in my teeth, warmth between my thighs, lungs gasping with tiny, anticipatory breaths.
I peel out of my blouse and lay it neatly on the edge of his bed, working my bra next. When I’m completely stripped down, Calder slides his hand in mine and I follow him to the shower.
Rivulets of hot water slide down my body, creating streams between my breasts as he lowers to his knees. I brace myself against the tiled wall as his fingers tease my clit before the velvet wetness of his tongue follows.
It’s funny how far we’ve come.
I’m going to miss this.
I’m going to miss my time with him …
I WRAP A TOWEL around my waist as Aerin searches under the sink for a blow dryer. The shower completely obliterated her hair and makeup, but she didn’t complain once, and I’m certain that if I asked her, she’d agree it was worth it.
Passing my nightstand, I glance down at my phone out of habit.
Six missed calls.
All of them from Marta.
She’s probably looking for Aerin on my father’s behalf, so I press the number to call her back.
“Calder?” she answers in the middle of the first ring. “Oh my God. They just took your father to Lenox Hill. He had a heart attack.”
I can tell from her voice she’s shaken.
“Thanks for letting me know, Marta.” I end the call, numb.
“Was that Marta?” Aerin asks, voice far too chipper for this strange little moment. “I can’t find a blow dryer, by the way, which means I’m going to look like a poodle by the time this thing dries, which means I can’t go out in public, which means—”
“My father just had a heart attack.”
She gasps, lifting her hand to her mouth. “Calder.”
Aerin goes to me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders and pressing her cheek against my chest. I don’t move, don’t hug her back.
“Come on, let’s get dressed. I’ll go with you,” she says, slicking her fingers through her wet hair and combing it into place.
I knew he was terminally ill, but the heart attack was something I never saw coming.
“What are you waiting for? Get dressed.” She shimmies into her panties. “Calder. You’re going, right?”
“I don’t know.”
“You have to go. If not for him, then for you.” She places her hand on my arm, her dark eyes laced in the kind of compassion and sympathy that makes me feel unworthy. “You won’t regret going, but you might regret not going. Choose your regrets, Calder. Choose them wisely.”
Without saying another word, I grab jeans and a t-shirt and she finishes getting dressed.
“I ordered an Uber. It’s three minutes away,” she says when we’re done.
Two minutes later, we’re dashing down the stairs. A minute later, we’re climbing into the back of a red Toyota. Twenty minutes later, we’re sitting in the ICU waiting area and she takes my hand in hers, not saying a word.
The pastel hospital walls. The nurses in thick-soled sneakers. The eerie calm mixed with the distant beep of machines. It all comes back to me at once, and just like that I’m twelve again, sitting alone in a waiting room, waiting for the nurses to tell me it’s okay to go back and see her.
I snap out of it and come back to the present moment.
I’m not alone anymore.
This time, I have Aerin.
HE’S BEEN BACK THERE almost two hours. That’s got to be a good sign. I can only imagine what’s going through his mind right now, how he’s reconciling everything in a way that he’ll be able to live with many years from this moment.
“Ma’am, your phone is buzzing.” An elderly gentleman sitting across from me in the waiting room points to the little table next to where Calder was sitting before the nurse took him back.
He must have forgotten it.
The call goes to voicemail, but I scoop up his phone and hold it in my lap, happy to keep track of it until he gets back.
Turning my attention toward the mounted TV in the corner, I try to focus on Let’s Make a Deal, though I’ve never understood the appeal of that show. My parents, on the other hand, have gone to tapings more times than they can count on both hands, and they love to tell people all about how they were contestants on the original show back in the day.
The swift vibration in my lap forces me to glance down out of habit, only the second I lay eyes on the screen, I immediately wish that I’d never seen it at all.
MY FATHER’S BODY IS covered in hospital blankets, wires and electrodes coming off of his person, machines beeping and breathing for him. The doctors were able to get his heart going again, but his brain had been without oxygen for too long at that point.
He’s literally a vegetable.
Just a shell of a man, no real substance on the inside.
Ironic.
“I just hope you know how happy it made your father when you agreed to take over WellesTech,” Lisette, my father’s wife, says as we take up the two guest chairs in his ICU room. She is, without question, several years my junior, but she keeps calling me “sweetie” and “honey.”
Her eyes are bloodshot and she’s been crying since she got here. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that she might actually love him.
“Let’s be real here. It’s not like I had much of a choice,” I say. “If I’d have said no, he was going to sell to Samuelson.”
“Who?”
“Roy Samuelson,” I say. Surely she knows of him. He’s been one of my father’s best friends since his days at Rutgers.
Lisette chuckles, lifting a Kleenex to her nose. “Are you sure about that? Your father never mentioned anything to me about it. And actually, he’d been helping Roy sort out his bankruptcy case. He just filed last week. You didn’t see? There w
as an article on CNN. Let me see if I can find it …”
She pulls up her phone and a moment later, I’m scanning an article that proves my father is and forever will be a lying, manipulative bastard.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
The room turns black for a second and when I come to, my fists are balled so tight my nails are digging into my palms.
“And thank goodness. He was always asking your father for loans. It broke his heart to turn him down the last few years. Roy just kept asking for more and more …” Lisette prattles on. “Anyway, your father’s been wanting to unload WellesTech for a while now and finally retire. But you know him. Such a control freak. He didn’t trust it with just anyone, especially since the brand is built around the Welles name. So that’s why he wanted you to carry on his legacy.”
“So it made him look good,” I muse.
“I don’t understand?” she blinks.
Of course she wouldn’t.
“Never mind.” I rest my elbows on the tops of my thighs. I can’t even bring myself to look at him now. “There was never a terminal illness, was there?”
Lisette studies me for a moment. “Sweetheart, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“He told me he was dying,” I chuff.
I can’t believe I fell for that shit.
She reaches for the cross necklace dangling from her tan décolletage. The giant diamond solitaire on her finger glimmers in the low light of the room.
“Why would he tell you that?” she asks. “He wasn’t dying. Or if he was, he did a darn good job of hiding it from me.”
Lies.
All of it.
I need some fresh air. A stiff drink. Aerin.
“You need anything, Lisette?” I ask, standing. “I’ve got to get out of here for a bit.”
“No, thanks.” She dabs a tissue under her perfectly straight nose.
“I’ll be back,” I say, heading out of the room. Reaching into my pocket, I feel around for my phone, but it isn’t there. I must have left it in the waiting room.
Crazy how I didn’t even notice.
P.S. I Dare You (PS Series Book 3) Page 12