The Rush

by Piper Westbrook

  Once she was within the safe confines of the restaurant, she fanned herself with her clutch.

  “Veronica, are you feeling all right?” Joan asked as she approached. She reached as though to press the back of her hand against her daughter’s forehead, and Veronica was about to smile at the tender gesture until she realized that Joan was only attempting to smooth her windblown hair. “Freshen up in the ladies’ room, why don’t you?”

  Beside her, stately Willa Smart added, “We’ll order you tea.”

  “I’m fine. I was just outside watching the fountain show.” I’m lying. I’m not fine. I’m about to claw out of my skin because I’m so hot for a man I can’t have.

  “That was senseless. We’ll have a lovely view of the lake right from our table.” Joan gave Willa an exasperated look before she held Veronica at arm’s length for an inspection. Concern dimmed her usually vivid eyes as they inspected one arm then the other. Was she searching for something? “Always think sensibly, Veronica.”

  Veronica watched Joan greet the hostess with her perfect smile, perfect posture, perfect not-a-strand-out-of-place hair. Never would she measure up to her mother. Continuing to try would only make her a wannabe Joan Greer. But what was wrong with being an original Veronica Greer?

  Joan strode back to her. “Come to the table,” she said under her breath. “You look like a lost puppy just standing here at the hostess’s station. Men are staring as if they want to take you home.”

  Veronica opened her purse, her ears hot and her palms damp. “Just have a call to make.”

  “Go, then. Want the tea or wine?”

  “Wine.” A bottle ought to get me through this dinner….

  Veronica chastised herself for the bitchy thought. “Thank you, Mom. Be right back.” Joan was already sashaying off to join Willa.

  Outside the restaurant, Veronica dialed slowly, giving herself every opportunity to change her mind. If it rang three times with no answer, she’d hang up and let that be the end of it.

  Simon answered on the first ring.

  “That night at the art gallery…” Closing her eyes, she blocked out everything but the truth. “That night, in my bed…I missed you. With my fingers. Three of them.”

  Veronica hung up, not giving him a chance to get a word in edgewise. Let him untangle the undertones of what she’d said, the magnitude of what she was capable of wanting. Doing. Wanting to do again.

  In the restaurant, Joan waved her over to the empty seat next to her. “Why is it, Willa, that my girls insist on vexing me?” She finally turned to Veronica. “I had assumed you’d take an opportunity to fix your hair and makeup. You look feral tonight.”

  “Oh.” Veronica picked up her wineglass. And smiled.

  Feral. She liked the sound of that.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Veronica hadn’t planned to skip work. The shrill beeping of Alarm Clock 1 woke her early on Saturday, and Alarm Clock 2 quickly joined in.

  Her phone rested next to her tablet on the nightstand, along with a neglected bonsai tree and a heavy lamp, which she’d left glowing all through the night when she powered off the phone, tossed her stuff down, and collapsed on the four-poster bed in a state of stress-induced exhaustion.

  With last night’s makeup smudging her sheets, and the day’s list of to-do items funneling through her mind, she emerged from her burrow under the covers at the foot of the bed to stare bleary-eyed at the clocks.

  Motivated by the challenge to dress and hurry her out the door on schedule, Veronica showered, wrapped herself in a towel and, with her phone in tow, padded barefoot to her home office to coordinate her calendars.

  But, leaning over her desk chair, confronted with calendars on the wall, on the desk, on her computer and her phone—square after square dictating where she was expected, dividing the precious moments of her life—she felt something inside her give way.

  Dialing feverishly, she connected herself to the HR after-hours answering service. It wasn’t in her contract to regularly report to the admin building on Saturdays, but she’d stumbled into the routine of haunting the place, living like a recluse in her office. All because she’d rather be alone at the stadium than alone in this house.

  For good measure, she texted her assistant.

  UNAVAILABLE TODAY.

  If necessary, Heather, who almost never worked on Saturdays, would report directly to J.T. and Joan.

  Not once since accepting the GM position had Veronica made herself “unavailable.” Doing so filled her with a strange rush of giddiness that she knew was only temporary and would come crashing down in a matter of time.

  So until that time came, there was only Veronica, and anyone else she let into her world. At six o’clock in the morning, there wasn’t a minute to waste.

  With a daring intake of breath, she flicked open her towel and let it puddle at her feet. Naked, alone in her house with all its ghosts of memories that were quiet for now, she marched out of the office. Fixing an omelet and savoring each bite au naturel was paradise compared to her usually rushed muffin and coffee from Starbucks.

  But as she ate standing at the counter with the television on mute, a plan pieced itself together. She would get dressed and meticulously clean the entire mansion.

  But she had gotten only as far as the dressing part, throwing on a sweatshirt over jeans, before she’d spontaneously decided to contact her home security team.

  Supervising the gate reset took the better part of an hour, and by the time the technician gave her a refresher walk-through of the cameras’ connections to the centralized computer, she was all but shaking with relief to send him on his merry way.

  Veronica closed the front door behind the technician, then rested her forehead against the wood. No more of Chance Kershaw getting past the gate…or her defenses. It was another ending, another piece of finality tumbling into place. But this time, wistfulness didn’t take her by the shoulders and rattle her.

  There were no tears. No hard feelings. Nothing but acceptance.

  Treat yourself. Pushing away from the door and thundering upstairs in the palace of a house to ransack her walk-in for a change of clothes, Veronica promised herself she’d do just that. “I’m going home.”

  ◆◆◆

  Home was on East Poplar Avenue, snuggled between the city’s housing authority and Hadland Park. Sprawled on a generous lot, garnished with professionally manicured grounds, Faith House’s two-year-old main building rose three stories into the sky. Cast in sunlight, the front lawn’s fountain glimmered even from the street. The youth outreach center was a beacon, a lighthouse calling to the soft side of Veronica’s heart.

  Tucking her car between two trucks, she muscled three paper bags stuffed with groceries from the car and greeted the doorman. “Morning, Mr. Hawkins.”

  “In all my days watchin’ this door, I’ve never seen you here on a Saturday morning,” he observed, allowing her into the lobby. “It sure is a nice treat.”

  “The treats are in here.” She jiggled the bags as one of the volunteer tutors came forth to lighten the load. “I thought Raoul and I could offer the kids a baking lesson later. Cupcakes. A batch with the original recipe, and one that’s low carb. Don’t want to leave out anyone particularly wonderful.”

  Mr. Hawkins’s face split into a smile. While most people Veronica knew made demands as effortlessly as they blinked, Mr. Hawkins dependably worked his shifts without ever requesting anything, not a raise or an extra break or time off. Even something as everyday as a cupcake he wouldn’t ask for, which was why Veronica had kept the fifty-something diabetic gentleman in mind as she’d shopped for ingredients.

  As president of Faith House, Veronica often spent her visits to the center in the third-floor conference room, laboring over executive details with the board of directors. Veronica knew from the PR and financial departments, as well as volunteer staff, that children as young as eleven walked through Faith House’s doors in search of a hot meal, a person to listen, some pos
sibility of escape from gangs, homelessness, drugs, prostitution, and violence.

  Rarely did Veronica see those children’s faces. Since agreeing to head up her parents’ football team, she’d run the outreach center from a distance. It was a distance she resented. She’d rather spend more time on the first and second floors, working side by side with the staff, volunteers, and the people they were committed to rescuing.

  In fractions of moments when Veronica stopped to just take a breath, she’d think about the teen who had slinked into her life with the intent to cause her harm. Instead, Veronica had saved her life—only for it to be cut short anyway.

  When Faith Rivera, a sixteen-year-old dropout with a rap sheet, had died in an auto explosion, she’d been treated as a statistic. A blip in a news report of yet another Vegas degenerate youngster who’d met an early demise.

  Until Veronica had devoted herself to changing that. Now anyone who discovered Faith House would know the girl’s story. They’d know Faith Rivera’s life mattered.

  After putting away the groceries in the center’s industrial-style kitchen and charming Raoul, the cantankerous, set-in-his-ways chef, to let her invade his haven for a cupcake-baking extravaganza later, Veronica dug right in wherever she was needed. The morning was spent assisting in tutoring sessions, and then she was tugged away to meet with one of the crisis shelter execs, who’d gotten word of her presence at the chief building and insisted on meeting with her to iron out details about this year’s holiday fund-raiser.

  On her way out of the crisis shelter’s executive building, she checked her cell.

  Among voice mails from colleagues that all began with some variety of “I know you’re not working today, but…” and texts from friends inviting her out and private social media messages containing NSFW content, was a text message from Simon.

  STILL MISSING ME?

  Veronica stared at the phone until the display darkened. Finally, she pushed through the doors of the exit and dialed his number. When he picked up, she swiped a hand over her abdomen, as if the motion would net the butterflies taking flight in her stomach. “Calling you the other night, telling you that I touched myself thinking about you, was a crazy impulse—”

  “Figured you’d try to take us a step back,” he murmured over the line. “Problem with that is, telling me or not telling me doesn’t change that it’s true.”

  “So, are you going to let me finish saying what I was going to say?”

  “Yeah. Go ahead.”

  “I shouldn’t have called you,” she said, meandering to her car in the lot. The butterflies in her stomach had metamorphosed into a dangerous heat dipping low inside her, licking unforgivably at her flesh. “I should’ve told you to your face. Maybe even shown you.”

  Simon groaned a curse, and the filthy word all but thrilled the Goth purple polish off her toes. “Veronica…”

  “That can still happen, Simon. But not now.” She fished her key chain from her purse. “I’m at Faith House today. It’s sanity that I’ve really been missing lately.”

  Ending the call and sliding behind the wheel of her car, Veronica sighed. She was free-falling, right into trouble. Should she trust Simon to catch her when she reached the bottom? And if he did, would she want him to ever let her go?

  You and I are greedy, selfish people, and sex might not be enough.

  Or would she only be setting herself up for another heartbreak?

  She brushed that heap of complication from her thoughts like grains of sand and returned to the outreach center. The on-site counselors, tutors, and a sprinkle of potential sponsors all competed for her attention.

  The first real snag came when she and one of the kitchen volunteers rounded up the teens for a lesson in food prep.

  “Cooking? As in, home ec? That shit—I mean, that stuff—is for females,” a boy protested as the group trickled into the spacious dining room.

  “Is that so?” a girl fired back. “Then I don’t want to see your caveman ass eating a cupcake. You’re just wimping out because for once you can’t show off.”

  Veronica intervened. “Gentlemen. Ladies. Cupcakes shouldn’t be an emotionally charged subject. To be accurate, though, plenty of men are happy to cook—and extremely good at it.”

  The boy twisted his mouth in a “Yeah, right” expression.

  “Men like Bobby Flay and Guy Fieri,” the volunteer put in. “And all those YouTube chefs.”

  “Naw, I’m talkin’ about real-world dudes.”

  “Like me?” Raoul, in his signature head scarf, jeans, and the khaki uniform shirt that was strikingly plain in contrast to the colorful abstract tattoos on his thickly muscled arms, held open the kitchen’s double swinging doors.

  Now, there was a “real-world dude,” and if the boy’s resigned sigh and sheepish look to his peers was anything to go by, he figured so, as well.

  “Wash hands, everybody,” Raoul, captain of the kitchen, commanded, “and let’s get to it.”

  A benign lesson in cupcakes turned into a fiercely competitive bake-off. Veronica couldn’t have wished for a better result. Batches of creatively frosted cupcakes beautified the center’s kitchen, before one by one the treats started disappearing as the kids rushed to eat their handiwork. No flaring tempers or injuries—just an entire pan of batter hitting the floor and decorating the shoes of the few teens standing close.

  As five o’clock loomed, the demands began to thin. Closing time was in another hour. Veronica was passing the receptionist’s desk when she heard Nellie shriek, “Oh, my freaking God!”

  Approaching the desk, Veronica looked through the glass interior doors toward the lobby…where Mr. Hawkins stood shaking hands with Simon Smith.

  “Is he coming in?” Nellie asked hopefully, glancing at Veronica. “I want an autograph for my sister. Wait—uh, don’t the Villains people consider him persona non grata?”

  “There are no hard feelings. Why don’t I see what I can do about getting you that autograph?”

  Nellie nodded enthusiastically, but the ringing phone slapped her professionalism into place. “Good afternoon. Faith House.” The crisp, attentive tone was a stark difference to the infatuated-girl-on-the-prowl shrieking of a few moments before.

  Veronica made it through the interior doors as Mr. Hawkins let Simon past the front entrance. They met in the middle of the atrium lobby. Fingers of late-afternoon sunlight penetrated the glass, streaking over his mussed hair and the shoulders of his simple yet exquisitely fitted dark shirt. In a romantic film, this would be the moment that they’d be wrapped up in each other. But since this was reality, and their reality included rules, expectations, and, of course, security guards scrutinizing them behind opaque sunglasses, Simon shook her hand in the same fashion that he’d greeted the doorman.

  The contact jolted her, calling to life a billion little sensations that danced with anticipation. “I’m beginning to think you enjoy catching me off guard,” she whispered. “When I said that I’d be hanging out here today, it wasn’t a roundabout way of asking you to come see me.”

  “Think about the place I care about and go there—that’s what you told me at the Bellagio. I want to see the place you care about.” His mouth—oh, God, his beautiful mouth—quirked into a private smile. “And hell, yes, I like you off guard.”

  “What’s with that hungry look in your eyes?”

  “I’m off guard, too, Veronica. I wasn’t expecting you to smell like dessert.”

  And you’d devour me if I let you…. “We had a bake-off. Think Cupcake Wars, teen edition.”

  He smiled, and her heart karate-chopped her ribs. “C’mon in,” she said, raising her voice for security’s benefit. “The receptionist tells me she’d like an autograph.” She escorted him inside, where a flock of gawking teenagers were already stationed around Nellie’s desk.

  Veronica stood a safe distance from the mob of kids who were assailing Simon with praise for his athletic prowess and prying questions about the investigation. It wa
sn’t every day they met a professional athlete. The group trip to a Villains home game at the start of the season had been a onetime treat. Though she was the founder and president of Faith House, and the general manager of the Villains, they were still two entirely separate entities.

  “There’s a football in the equipment locker,” Kiefer, a boy with a pierced eyebrow and impressive cupcake frosting techniques, said. A victim of physical abuse, he’d come to the center reserved and quiet, but now he was settled in a new foster home and more outspoken. “Can you give us some pointers?”

  “Outside,” Nellie added, appearing a bit concerned at the thought of an indoor scrimmage.

  “I’m always ready for football,” Simon said. Competing with the raucous cheers, he hollered to Veronica, “What about you? Want to get in on this?”

  “Not in these shoes.” Valentino slim-heeled pumps weren’t made for loping in the grass. Neither were the tuxedo-style blazer and calf-length trousers she’d spiced up with Goth-inspired jewelry, smoky makeup, and a sheer pink top.

  Veronica designated herself cheerleader on the makeshift sidelines while the others lost themselves in practicing passes. The hour rolled much too soon, and she was sorry to see Nellie trek out to announce closing time.

  “I wish I could freeze this day, hang on to it, you know?” she confided in Nellie as the two brought up the rear of the group.

  The receptionist nudged her companionably. “You’ll just have to come by more often. Will we see you at the free brunch the crisis center’s hosting? Oh, wait. Football time, isn’t it? Big game tomorrow.”

  “If only I could add a few more days to the week.”

  Nellie smiled, subtly pointing to Simon. “He was a nice surprise. Did you put him up to dropping in?”

  “No, that was all on him. He’s exactly that. A surprise. Preconceptions, they trip us up.”

  “Whoa, that’s heavy. What do you mean?”

  Veronica spied Simon up ahead, handing the football to Kiefer, who jogged ahead to the main building. “Take Simon. Before I met him, I was sure I had him figured out. He’s more than the Blue-Eyed Badass. More than and his reputation. He’s…a good person.”