At Wits' End: An Enemies To Lovers Romantic Comedy

by Kenzie Reed

  After a while, he turns his head and smiles down at me. He quirks an eyebrow. “After that, I think it’s time for me to do something I’ve never done before. It’s going to be a new experience for you too…but if you just relax and let me take control, I think you’ll be surprised how much you like it.”

  I give it a bit of thought, but in for a penny, in for a pound. “Butt stuff?” I say. “I guess I’ve always been curious…”

  I swear he almost swallows his tongue. “No!” he chokes. “I mean yes. Definitely. Any kind of stuff you want. Later. For now, I’m going to cook you an entire meal, from soup to nuts, and you’re going to sit here and let me, and not lift a single finger.”

  I ponder again, then I grin. “It’s a deal,” I say. “After all, it sounds like I’m going to have to keep my strength up. For…stuff.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  DONOVAN

  May drifts into June, blessedly cool. The heavy rains have stopped. In the morning, the hillside vineyards are wreathed with fog that melts by afternoon. The vineyard owners of Greenvale have smiles on their faces; this weather couldn’t be better if it had been ordered from a catalog.

  If only ninety years of bad decisions weren’t hovering in the air like a foul smell, ruining what should be a perfect evening.

  Unfortunately, history can’t be undone so easily. Both of our families are gathered together for dinner in the private banquet room at Le Gourmand, at the request of Murray, and shockingly enough, it’s not going well.

  That’s why we booked the private room. Fewer witnesses.

  Linda is our waitress today, and in keeping with the new leaf she’s supposedly turned over, I notice that her makeup is more low-key and her white shirt is buttoned up to the very top button. She moves swiftly around the table, taking our orders.

  I put my hand on Sienna’s knee and whisper in her ear. “At least Jamie isn’t wearing her– Aw, hell.”

  Jamie’s sitting across from my family, between Cesare and Sara, looking sulky. She’s wearing her deely-bobber headband. She flashes me a look of defiance, takes a healthy sip of her gin and tonic, and taps her headband to make the penises quiver. Dance, little dickies, dance.

  “She wasn’t wearing those when she came in,” I complain. “How did that happen?”

  “Smuggled them in her purse.” Sienna shrugs. “Where there’s a Witlocke, there’s a way.”

  “I knew I should have searched her.” I shoot a laser-sharp glare of fury at my sister. “Next time we all get together, I’m going to make everyone pass through a full-body scanner.”

  “They don’t have body scanners that detect penis deely-bobbers.” Sienna’s forehead wrinkles in thought. “I think. I mean, when I go through the airport I don’t think that’s what they’re looking for.”

  “I can invent one. I’m that good.” I am, too. I’m not sure how Graham would feel about me diverting my time and mental energy to a project that isn’t technically an emergency, but if Jamie doesn’t stop wearing those damn things, someone in my family is going to have an aneurysm, so it kind of is an emergency.

  Sienna twists around to face my sister. “Jamie. Just for this dinner, could you please take those off?” she says calmly. “We’re here for a reason. And having you wearing headgear that makes you look like a demented novelty shop escapee isn’t helping. I say that with love.”

  “Wow, I shudder to think what it would sound like if you said it with hate,” Jamie grumbles, but she snatches the headband off her head and stuffs it in her purse.

  “She’ll listen to her, but not her own father?” My father says loudly to my mother. He’s taken to not addressing my sister directly, and my sister is responding in kind. “How much longer do we have to sit here like this?”

  “Well, you’ve been here for two minutes, so longer than that,” Rocco’s wife Katherine says irritably from across the table.

  “I was talking to my wife, not you,” my father says snidely.

  “What did you just say to my wife?” Rocco leaps up, clenching fists the size of small hams, and his father Vito shoves his chair back and leaps to his feet. “What did you say to my son’s wife?” he snarls.

  Before it turns into a full-blown fight, the door flings open. “Surprise!” Murray cries out with false cheer, walking in with Liam Ferguson and a couple of his suited assistants.

  No, it isn’t a surprise.

  Murray texted us earlier, because Mr. Ferguson was in town. That’s why we’re all uncomfortably crammed in here, prickling with rage and itching for a fight.

  Murray wants to reassure Mr. Ferguson that everything is going smoothly. He decided that we needed to get together for dinner, both families, and then he and Mr. Ferguson would crash our get-together and “catch us in the act” of peaceably socializing with each other.

  If he’d been five minutes later, he’d have caught us in the act of eviscerating each other.

  “Mind if we join you?” Murray says. He’s already pulling out two chairs. He and Mr. Ferguson plop down in their seats.

  “We won’t impose on your dinner,” Mr. Ferguson assures us. “Maybe just one drink. I’d like two fingers of your Macallan’s twelve-year-old sherry oak single malt. Linda, is it?” He winks at Linda, and a look of resignation flickers across Sienna’s face.

  Mr. Ferguson’s the kind of man that Linda would normally swarm over like a hive of bees starved for nectar. He’s wearing a flashy sharkskin suit and a chunky Rolex, and he flashes enormous white veneers every time he smiles. Handsome, slightly older, very wealthy, and inappropriate – he’s wearing a wedding ring. Absolutely perfect for her.

  But Linda just nods pleasantly. “Coming right up,” she says.

  “I’ll have the same!” Murray calls out to her.

  “Got it.” She glances at Mr. Ferguson’s two hulking assistants. “Can I get you gentlemen some water?”

  They both shake their heads.

  The two of them give off a vaguely menacing air, which is a little off-putting but not unheard of for a man of Mr. Ferguson’s means. I’ve dealt with plenty of the uber-wealthy in my time, and bodyguards are common.

  Linda strolls away without a backward glance at Mr. Ferguson. Not a single hair-flip or flirtatious simper. Could it possibly be that she’s really turned over a new… I shake my head. “Nope,” I mutter to myself.

  “What’s that, babe?” Sienna puts her hand on my knee.

  “Nothing, hon.” I lean in and kiss her on the cheek, but brush her hand off. The last thing I need is to treat everyone at the table to the sight of my raging hard-on when I stand up to go to the bathroom. “Stop that,” I whisper to her. “Bad. Naughty.”

  “You have no idea.” She winks at me.

  My lips curve up in a slow smile. “Oh, I have some idea.”

  Sara clears her throat. “Ahem. We have ears.” She makes a gagging motion with her finger in her mouth. “We all know you’re on an eternal honeymoon. Please can we make it through the dinner without the play-by-play?”

  “Right?” Jamie nods at her and shudders in sympathy. “So rude.”

  “Well!” My mother says loudly. “It’s so very nice to see you, Mr. Ferguson. We haven’t had a chance to chat much lately. So, will you be starting on your project as soon as the property sale goes through? We have pretty mild weather here – I would imagine you could do construction for most of the winter.”

  “Absolutely.” He flashes his big fake teeth in a smile. He does that a lot. “That’s our plan. We should be done by the summer of 2022.” He’s got a faint accent, and I cannot for the life of me place it. He wasn’t born in the U.S. Ferguson is a Scottish name, but the accent sounds as if it might be Eastern European.

  “We’ve got plenty of contractors and suppliers we can refer you to,” my father says.

  “I appreciate that. We tend to work with our own crew, though.”

  We sit there making idle chit-chat about the weather, the Mariners, and how the vineyards are progressi
ng so far this year. Finally Murray seems satisfied that he’s proven to Mr. Ferguson that the Witlocke and Ribaldi families are just best buddies and that silly old feud is dead and buried.

  They say their goodbyes and head out. I let out a long sigh of relief. I kept surreptitiously watching the door, expecting Carrie and Tonya to fly in and screech, “Lies! Lies!” even though we’d given the restaurant manager strict instructions to keep them out. But apparently they had some other graveyard to haunt this evening.

  After they leave, we still have to sit there and endure the rest of the meal, because there’s always the chance that Murray and Mr. Ferguson are sitting at the restaurant bar, and it would look weird if we all went barreling out of there.

  To get through it, we agree to eat without speaking to each other. That makes for a fun meal. Pasta primavera soaked in hatred, with a garnish of suppressed rage.

  “Well, this has been awful,” I say when we’re finished. “You’ll excuse me if we skip dessert, but I can’t choke down any more bullshit. Sienna and I are going out for an actual date.”

  “We are?” Sienna says, surprised.

  I grab her by the hand. “We are.”

  “Donovan.” My mother speaks up in a loud, pleading voice. “Can I speak to you privately?” Needless to say, she’s not at all happy that my relationship with Sienna has turned real.

  Sienna’s hand twitches in mine, but her smile stays brightly plastered on her face.

  “Not right now, sorry,” I say to my mother.

  “It’s just that we’re a little concerned–”

  “Enjoy your evening!” I call out to her with forced cheer. “Talk to you guys tomorrow!”

  I hurry Sienna out of the room before my mother gets a chance to say something that she definitely won’t regret.

  We drive home in the new car that I bought and am letting Sienna drive. She tried to say no, we had a minor fight, and then we had very hot makeup sex. Maybe someday if I get lucky she’ll actually let me sign the car over to her. Right now, I count it as a win that she let me put her name on the insurance.

  When we get home, I quickly toss Aceto and Ducktape a few snacks and check their water. Then I join my wife in the living room. “Change into something woodsy,” I instruct her.

  “Ooh, mysterious.” She grins at me, and we go into the bedroom to change. She shucks her dress and heels and trades them in for jean shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and I change out of my suit and loafers and put on shorts, a T-shirt and sneakers. I gather up a blanket and grab the picnic basket I’d stashed away for us, with bottled water, Nana Sue’s chocolate-chip cookies, a battery-operated lantern, and a blanket.

  We stride past the vineyard and make our way into the woods between our properties. The hush of the night is restful here. A chorus of insects creaks from the underbrush, and the sky is a sheet of black velvet studded with thousands of twinkling diamond stars. A fat full moon bathes the woods in a ghostly light.

  Finally we reach the spot I’ve been looking for. I pull the blanket from the picnic basket and spread it out for us under the sprawling roots of an ancient oak tree.

  “Can I make a confession?” I ask her as we sit down.

  “Sure, why not? Wives can’t be compelled to testify against their husbands.” She looks around. “Whose body do we need to move?”

  “Aw, babe, that’s so sweet. I’ll keep that in mind.” I point up at the tree. “Do you recognize this?”

  She squints up at it. “I think so? I played in the woods here a lot when I was young – it looks familiar.”

  “I used to sit up there, on the branches that were on our side of the property line, and watch you when you were playing in the woods by yourself.”

  Whoops, that came out super-creepy.

  To my relief, she laughs. “Wow. Your stalker tendencies started really young. What did you see me doing?”

  “Mostly just building things with sticks. Sometimes picking up a baby bird after it fell out of its nest, to bring it back home. One day I saw you burn stuff. You almost burned the whole forest down – it was a dry summer. Don’t do that again, by the way.”

  “Oh yeah.” Her face twists in a grimace. “My mother stood me up on my eleventh birthday and I got this card from her, but I realized it was my Aunt Katherine’s handwriting. I’d gotten half a dozen letters from my mother that year, and they’d cheered me up so much, and then I realized that Katherine had written every last one of them. Later I found out my mother didn’t come to my birthday because she was married to a man who didn’t know she had a daughter. She didn’t try to contact me for an entire year.”

  I suck in an angry breath and swallow the hateful words that spring up in my throat.

  She looks at me with a wince. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “Why not? I thought we trusted each other now. Aren’t we sharing everything?”

  “It’s just…I know what you think of her, but she’s changed. She comes by the winery and works for free, just to help out the family. She won’t take a penny from me for it. She’s going to a therapist. You saw her when Mr. Ferguson tried to flirt with her – with a wedding ring on his finger, that poopweasel? She shut him right down,” Sienna says proudly. “People deserve a second chance, don’t they?”

  Words bubble up inside me, and I struggle to think. There are things she needs to know – but they’ll hurt her. And what good would it do to know the full truth about her mother at this point? Maybe Linda really is going to stick around this time. There is the tiniest, tiniest chance that the leopard really is going to change its spots. Still…

  Before I can speak, she rushes ahead. “Okay, I’ve given her many, many second chances. I know that. But I want to ask you a favor – for me. Can you give her one last chance?”

  My resolve dies. “For you, yes. I’m sorry, I know I’ve been very snappish about her.”

  “It’s all right.” She smiles at me. “I’m not actually mad about it. In a way, I kind of appreciate it.”

  “You do?” I’m shocked.

  “Yes, absolutely. You have my back, and you’re mad at her for hurting me, and I understand that. If we’re going to be a thing, then we should take each other’s sides.”

  I frown at her. “I thought we already were a thing.”

  “I mean a…longer-term thing.” She shrugs, her smile wavery. “After the summer ends. Of course, who knows what’ll be happening then.” She looks away quickly, gnawing her lower lip.

  “At the end of the summer, I still want to be with you,” I say to her. “And in the fall. And the winter, spring, and summer. And so on.” That sounds like a weak declaration of intent, but it isn’t. I want to ask for much more than that, but after my stupid decisions ruined our chances early on, she’s a shy, spooked faun, trembling on unsteady legs. If I make a sudden move, she might vanish into the woods and leave me behind forever.

  She stares at the treeline. “But you have to go back to L.A.”

  “Well…” I do, if I want the company to keep running. “Could you ever see yourself living there?”

  Her face puckers up in a pained wince. “I kind of hate it there. I’m sorry. It’s just one huge ugly sprawl to me. The hours stuck in traffic, the smog… I’d go insane.”

  “I understand. A lot of people feel that way. I mean, I’m not passionate about Los Angeles, I don’t know if anyone is, it’s just that’s where my business is based and where my closest, oldest friend lives.”

  “I totally get that. I’m not asking for us to make permanent plans.” She heaves a sigh. “It’s such a beautiful night. Let’s not think about this right now.”

  We lie side by side on the blanket, staring up at the stars, and I don’t know or care what the future will hold, because right at this moment, life could not be more perfect. I’ve dreamed of some version of this moment from the first time I laid eyes on Sienna. She’s the one, the puzzle piece that fills my empty spaces.

  The air is warm, and the breeze ca
resses us, and I never want to move. I want this night, I want her, I want this to be my eternity.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  SIENNA

  My weekly visits to my aunt have been getting more and more tense. The rehab is right on schedule but it’s not fast enough for her. She’s gone from sad to irritable and snappish, and I don’t know how to fix it. I barely recognize the woman who raised me.

  I’ve asked my family if she’s the same with them when they visit. Is it something I’m doing wrong?

  They all kind of mumbled and shrugged in response. Nobody wants to speak badly of her, but she’s obviously being a real pill to everybody.

  I hoped that over time, as her strength returned, her attitude would improve, but it’s early June and there’s no sign of her disposition growing any sunnier.

  When I walk in, she’s wearing the same floral housedress she always wears. It’s starting to get dingy and stained. She has eight perfectly clean house dresses hanging in her closet here. I brought them for her. Her makeup lies in a tray on top of her dresser, coated with dust. I take a slow breath, then flex my mouth into a big, bright smile.

  It doesn’t help. She looks up from her knitting and fixes me with a beady-eyed glower.

  “Hello, Aunt Ferdie. I brought you some–“

  “Lies?” she interrupts me. “You brought me some more lies?”

  “I…you what now?” I choke out.

  Her eyes have gone dark with anger. “I know everything.”

  Oh God. This is the end. I’ve been praying she wouldn’t find out until she came home, and now she knows that I’ve done the worst thing I could have done, in her eyes. I’ve married a Witlocke and let him move in to her home.

  I totter over to the chair facing hers and collapse, my knees gone weak.

  “I can explain.” How can I explain a fake marriage to her late husband’s mortal enemies? The Montagues to our Capulets? Should I tell her it’s real? I don’

  “How could you?” she demands.

  All right, you’ve got this. You’re a strong, smart, capable, adult woman.

  I think I just peed myself a little.