by Wendy Vella
He was rattled, like she now was. What they’d just shared had rocked him like it had her… at least she hoped it had, because she was seriously unsettled. Hope had had sexual partners, okay, only two, but still, this was off-the-scales by comparison.
“You think.”
He blew out a frustrated breath, and she wondered how they had gone from bliss to this in a matter of minutes.
“Look, just go. You’re probably freaked out because you just had sex with someone who doesn’t know a Prada bag from a grocery sack.”
“That’s insulting.”
“But true.” Hope climbed off the bed. “It’s been a tough day, what with this Jay business and then Mikey’s grandmother. Let’s put this down to momentary insanity and forget it.”
“Can you?”
“What?” Hope looked at him, and refused to acknowledge how hot he looked all mussed and riled.
“Forget what we just shared?”
“Of course,” she lied, turning away so he couldn’t tell. “Just like you do with every notch on your bedpost.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He came at her, so Hope used the only thing she had left in her arsenal… she ran. Reaching the bathroom, she slammed the door in his face and locked it. Luckily, her mother didn’t believe in flimsy, cutesy locks, as she called them. No, this was a bolt, and Hope threw it home.
“Open the door, Hope.”
“No. It’s done, we scratched the itch. Now go away, and we’ll both forget this happened.”
“Just open the door, Hope. Let’s talk about this. I don’t like the insinuation that you’re just another notch on my belt.”
She leaned against the door, and then slid down it as her legs gave way.
“Let’s not pretend I was anything else, Newman. Someone like me could never be anything to someone like you. So just go.”
“I’m not having this conversation through wood,” he said quietly. “But we will have it, Hope.”
She heard the door slam seconds later, and knew she was alone. Turning on the taps in the shower, she stood under the water and let the tears flow.
“Stay,” Newman said, holding his cards up so Buster couldn’t read them. He then picked up his beer and downed half a bottle. He couldn’t get the memory of Hope out of his head. They’d had sex three weeks ago. Hot, and extremely pleasurable sex. Why couldn’t he move on? Even the beers he was downing like water weren’t helping. They were just making him meaner.
Since that day in Hope’s bedroom, they’d pretty much avoided each other. On Newman’s part, that was because he’d had no idea how to deal with whatever the hell this was between them. She tied him in knots, there was no other way to describe it. She wasn’t like other women, and didn’t fall into the Paul Newman handbook of how a woman worked. He just couldn’t get a good read on her, and that really bugged him.
“That’s your sixth.”
“What?” Newman looked at Jake, who wore his hat pulled low over his eyes.
“That beer is number six. You usually only have four.”
“I have more than four!”
“Nope,” Tex said. He had a Texan bandana around his head. The man never missed an opportunity to show his true colors. “We get drunk, you stay sober, them’s the rules, bud.”
“Who made those rules!” Newman felt his anger rising.
“No one, it’s just always been that way, no matter how many times we’ve tried to get you drunk.”
“True that.” Buster raised his bottle. Newman couldn’t see his eyes because he wore dark glasses.
“You gonna play a card, pencil dick, or wax on about nothing,” Cubby said peering through one eye. The other he’d closed so he could concentrate. He’d had more than six beers. His sheriff’s cap was on backward, which declared he was off duty.
“You’re an officer of the law.” Newman glared at him. “You should be the one to drink less.”
The eye turned his way.
“Give me a break, I look after you wieners every day.”
“It’s your thing, Newman. No one means anything by it,” Patrick McBride said from the kitchen. He wore the faded pink cap that his children had once given him, as he had every poker night for the many years they’d been having them. He and Declan were cooking hot dogs.
“Even I know that, bud, and I haven’t been here all that long.”
Newman looked at Brad, who was squinting at the cards in his hand.
They’d been playing for several hours, and for once it was Jake who was winning.
“She said that.”
“Who?”
“Hope.”
“What’d she say?” Tex asked.
“I have to be in control all the time. Which is BS. Plus, she said I need to help people or some shit.”
Silence settled around the table, and his friends all tried to look busy. Not easy, when they were holding cards and sitting still. Beers were lifted, and chips crunched. No one looked at him.
“Whose turn is it, for fuck’s sake?” Tex said, sounding desperate.
“Yours, you loser,” Jake replied.
“Damn sad about Mikey’s grandmother,” Brad said. “Nearly broke my heart seeing him crying like that. Gonna be tough for those boys.”
“We’ll get him and Connor through,” Declan said from his kitchen.
“Are you all really ignoring what I said?” Newman stood and slapped his hands on the table. “Because I didn’t think that was how this friendship stuff worked?”
He was feeling unreasonable, a rarity for him. Newman was usually everything that was reasonable. He could be mean, even intimidating when the moment called for it, but he was rarely unreasonable.
“What’s the problem here, pretty boy?” Buster said, lowering his glasses to look at Newman over the top. “You want us to tell you you’re a control freak who has a really decent side to him, because he’s the first man we go to when we want help?”
“Couldn’t have worded it better.” Jake raised his bottle.
“I’m not a control freak.” Newman took the bottle Tex had placed before his brother, and drank. “I like order, nothing wrong with that.”
“You are not serious?” Cubby looked at him. “You don’t even walk out your door without a diary note telling you where you’re going.”
This produced howls of laughter.
“I thought I was relaxed?”
The anger had gone as quick as it had come. They were his friends, and he had no right to be angry, even if he disagreed with them.
“You appear relaxed,” Tex said. “All that running about at night, and loping through town like you have all the time in the world. But you never really go anywhere without a purpose, Newman.”
They knew him better than he knew himself. It was a humbling thought.
“She said I help people to feel needed.” He said the words before giving them too much thought, and realized this mistake when he saw the knowing looks around the table. Maybe he should have stopped at four beers; the seventh was loosening his tongue.
“Who?”
“We’re not really playing that game, are we, Cub? I mean, not after Tex saw him kissing her in the Roar,” Buster said.
“She says it’s a throwback to my childhood.”
“Is it?” Jake asked gently.
Newman shrugged. “Maybe.”
“So you gonna stop doing shit for us now? ’Cause that’ll probably break my heart,” Buster said. “I was going to ask you to run the shop next Tuesday.”
They were all laughing seconds later.
“Issues,” Brad said. “We all got them. The hell is ironing them out so you get to be some semblance of normal.”
They all lifted their bottles to that piece of wisdom from the youngest among them, and then the hot dogs arrived and everything else was shelved… for now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“ So John’s agreed. He’s arriving next week, Thursday, and bringing a few
of his people to help.”
Hope was having a soda after her shift at the Howler. Annabelle and Ethan were having dinner, and had called her over.
“Are you actually serious?”
He looked offended.
“Do you think I’d mess with you about something like this?”
Shame washed over Hope.
“No, and thanks. I-I just don’t know what to say. How is this even possible?”
“You’re good at what you do, everyone’s told us that,” Annabelle said. “And John knew who you were when Ethan told him your name. He’s keen to come and work with you.”
“Really?” Hope couldn’t get her head around it.
“Really.”
“You people are too nice,” she felt duty bound to say. “I don’t get it. I mean, I’m nothing to you. How come you’re helping me? This is not supplying two tickets to a movie, this is way more.”
“Sure, I get that. But the thing is, John’s a cool guy. Of course he’s Texan, and related, so that’s a given.”
“Can I ask you one other favor, Ethan?”
“Shoot.”
“Don’t tell him about my dismissal or what happened with Jay at Wildlife. Please,” she added, as she saw he looked doubtful. “I don’t want him to have any preconceived ideas about me, or that I could be trouble.”
“He won’t, because I’ve told him about you, and that you’re nice.”
“I don’t want his pity. Sure, you got him here, but I want him to want to work with me.”
“Honey, you don’t know much about Texans, do you?”
She shook her head.
“Lion’s my cousin. If I say someone’s a nice person he’d know it for the truth.”
“Lion?”
“He used to get about in his lion hat as a child. It just kind of stuck with family.”
She couldn’t believe they were discussing the John Finch. She’d obsessed over his work for years.
“Is he pulling out the Texan card again?”
She tried not to stiffen, but it happened anyway as Newman arrived.
“What are you doing here?” Annabelle said.
“Picking up takeout, as I couldn’t be bothered cooking. Saw your car, thought I’d have a beer.”
It all sounded simple, and likely was; the problem was, Hope felt suddenly tense because they hadn’t spoken, not seriously, since they’d slept together.
“Just letting her know that John agreed to come to Howling.”
“Nice work.”
The Texan nodded, then got to his feet and held out a hand to Annabelle.
“Sorry, bud, the wife’s tired, so we’re heading home. Hope will keep you company.”
She couldn’t ask them to stay, nor could she leave without it looking obvious, which it was. So instead, she sipped her soda and watched the beautiful Geldermans leave.
“Hey.”
She turned to look at Newman. “Hey.”
“How are you, Hope?” He leaned toward her, big hands braced on his thighs.
“Good, but I have to go now. I need to help my mother with some stuff.”
“Hope, we need to talk.”
“No,” she shook her head, “we don’t. It was a moment of madness, now we can forget it.”
“Hell of a moment, it has to be said.”
Hope swallowed her smile.
Newman pushed back the sleeves of his long-sleeved T-shirt, and she saw the gold watch.
“That really would feed a starving village in Africa.”
“Possibly, but as I got this on sale too, I’m sure it would only be half a village. Now these sneakers,” he pointed to his feet, where he wore black leather with white stripes. “They’d change the global deficit.”
“You have no shame,” Hope snapped.
“None. You eating those?” He pointed to the fries she’d been nibbling, but not enjoying. She’d lost her appetite lately.
He hummed a small tune as he ate.
“Why do you do that?”
“What?”
“Hum while you eat. I mean, it’s embarrassing, surely?”
He hummed a few more bars.
“You have the cheek to talk to me about embarrassing myself, when you get about dressed in my mother’s old gardening clothes?”
“I happen to think vanity is a sin.”
“Obviously,” he drawled, making Hope’s temper spike.
“You,” she jabbed a finger at his chest. “Are far too arrogant, opinionated, and… and—”
“Handsome?”
“Asshole,” she muttered, getting to her feet and storming by him, out the door and into the cool night air.
She walked several paces down the street from the Howler and inhaled through her nose. Annoying bastard. The problem, of course, was that she was so attracted to him, every time they spoke she overreacted.
“Hope?”
No, no, no!
She turned, and there stood Jay Herald. Wind ruffled his hair, and his clothes were casual, but she knew there was nothing casual about him. Everything he did was for effect.
“Excuse me, I have no wish to speak to you.”
His fingers wrapped around her wrist as she walked by him.
“Let me go, Jay, or I’ll ugly you up, and we both know how much your appearance means to you, don’t we.”
“I just want to talk to you, Hope.”
“What could you possibly have to say to me?”
He dropped his eyes, but Hope wasn’t buying that act. This man was cold and calculating. What he’d done to her had been planned meticulously for months. It had been a ruthless destruction of her life. That wasn’t a spur of the moment thing she could forgive.
“I heard about your next project.”
“So?”
“Are you really going to work with John Finch?”
“I can’t possibly imagine what the hell that has to do with you.”
“I just want to make amends, maybe help you a little. You know how I’ve always wanted to work with him. It’s been a dream of mine for years.”
He touched her then, cupping the side of her face and looking deep into her eyes. Once, she’d loved it when he did that. Now it made her skin crawl.
“You don’t seriously think I would consider doing anything with you again, do you? Now move your hand before you lose a finger!”
“Come on, Hope. We had a good thing. Maybe I went a bit too far, but we could still make it work.” He pushed her hair behind her ear.
“A bit far.” She shook her head. “I lost my job, you stole my photos and my money, and my reputation was ruined, because you set me up to look like I was using, Jay. I can never forgive you for that. The only right thing for you to do would be to come clean.” Surprisingly, Hope had calmed down. She no longer wanted to shriek or yell; inside, she felt controlled.
“I can’t do that, babe, but I could probably put in a good word, and you could come back.” He leaned in, and she shuddered at the thought of him kissing her.
Did he really believe she was foolish enough to fall for this again?
“Then you leave me no choice but legal action,” Hope said, surprising herself.
Before her eyes, his face changed, twisting into a snarl. “Surely you don’t want that video out there for everyone to see. You drunk and off your face.”
“I wasn’t. You drugged me, which if proven, along with everything else you did, would put you in a whole heap of trouble.”
He stepped closer. “Who would believe you? Everyone likes me and thinks you’re some social misfit with no friends.”
Hope itched to slap that sneer from his lips; instead, she inhaled.
“People respect me, and my work, and those photos were mine. Add to that, some of the Wildlife people saw me taking them, and a few are willing to testify about that, then I think it’s you who should be scared, Jay, not me.”
He grabbed her hand, but she shook free.
“Don’t come up against me, Hope, you
won’t win. I’ll make sure of it.”
Sheer willpower kept her eyes fixed on his, when inside she was shocked, and yes, a little scared at the rage twisting his face.
“John Finch is coming here to work with me because he likes what I do. Not you. And I would see you in hell before I ever considered working with a scum-sucking limp dick like you again.”
The surprise on Jay’s face turned to shock as she raised her knee straight into his groin, hard. He staggered backward then fell to his knees. She then stepped closer and slapped his face hard.
The clapping made her look up, and she saw Newman a few feet behind them. She hadn’t known he was there. Something made her dip into a curtsy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Hope woke early the morning of the photo shoot, which had been delayed several times due to Mikey’s grandmother’s passing. She still had the key to the cottage, but hadn’t used it, because she and her mother were managing to live in relative peace. Which surprised the hell out of both of them.
“You want some eggy bread?”
Her mother was in the compact kitchen, wearing her old dressing gown and slippers. She had a pan on the stove heating, and was whisking something in a bowl, which Hope guessed was eggs. Eggy bread was the Lawrence version of French toast.
The room had a window that allowed in morning sun, and looked over one of her mother’s flower beds. With white walls, and blue curtains, it was immaculate, like every other space in the house.
“Yes, please.”
“Kettle’s hot.”
Hope dropped a nonbleached peppermint tea bag into a cup and poured over boiling water.
“I messed up, Mom.” The words came out as she sat in the seat that had been hers for many years. Ryan had taken the one opposite. She hadn’t told her mother the truth yet, and it was wrong of her. She’d change that now.
“How?”
Hope found herself talking again. Her mother deserved to hear the story from her, and not anyone else. She then told her about Ethan’s cousin coming to town.
“And you say this Mr. Herald is here in town with the Wildlife crew?”
“He is, and I kneed him hard in the groin like you taught me, when he asked to help me on the shoot when John Finch got here.”