At Wits' End: An Enemies To Lovers Romantic Comedy

by Kenzie Reed

  She barrels on ahead. “Right now, we need to talk about exactly what you think you’re doing with all of this butting your nose into Mr. Ferguson’s business. You’re going to mess up the land deal!”

  “Oh, how’s that?” I keep my tone mild.

  “Don’t you play coy with me. I’ve heard from Mr. Ferguson and I know what you’re doing.”

  A breath of air whooshes from me in shock. “Wait. You heard from Liam Ferguson? How did he know how to get ahold of you when I didn’t?”

  She’s been in touch with Mr. Ferguson. Wheels are turning in my head. Puzzle pieces clicking into place.

  She’s sleeping with Liam Ferguson – if that’s even his real name. He’s giving her a giant kickback to make sure this deal goes through. It’s the only possible explanation. That’s why she arranged this whole deal in the first place.

  She’s probably holed up with him right now. Or stashed away in some hotel room where he can visit her.

  The rental car…that’s how she afforded it. He paid for it, so she could hang around town and spy for him. It says a lot about him, and his intentions for her, that he didn’t just buy her a car. If she weren’t so blind when it comes to men, she’d see that.

  She barrels ahead, ignoring my questions. “You’re being incredibly selfish, and the only thing I can think is that because you’ve run into some problems with Donovan, you’re taking it out on everybody else. You want to hurt the Witlockes. I get that. But do you realize how much you’re going to be hurting your own family? There is a lot of money riding on this.”

  “A lot of money for whom?”

  “You!” she screeches. “Who do you think? You’re all I care about! I’m trying to ensure your financial future!”

  “No, you’re not. You’d never get this upset if it were something that benefitted me.” The words drop from my lips like lead weights, heavy and final. “If the trust fund had money again, you’d get your fee for managing my portion, but that’s not a lot, so there’s got to be something else going on.”

  She sucks in a sharp, bitter breath and lets it out in a hiss. “I knew the family would poison you against me. They’ve always hated me. Always.”

  “Actually, I’m coming to realize just how much they’ve covered for you over the years, to avoid hurting me.”

  “Do you know why I’m broke right now?” Her voice rises to a martyred wail. It’s the Linda Patterson Theater Show, performances held daily at six p.m. and eight p.m. Matinees on Saturday and Sunday. “Because I gave up my divorce settlement for you and your ungrateful old bitch of an aunt! And I’ve never recovered financially! Never!”

  “First of all, don’t you ever let me hear you speak about my aunt that way again. And as for the settlement, Donovan told me everything.”

  There’s the briefest of pauses and then she regroups. “I don’t know what he told you, but I would have thought that you’d have learned from Simon not to let a man’s lies blind you when it comes to money.”

  “It wouldn’t be that hard for me to trace where that money really came from. It just didn’t occur to me at the time.”

  More silence. I can almost hear the wheels whizzing in her head.. “You realize that, as the manager of your trust fund, I have the legal right to give you no money at all?”

  “No, actually, you don’t, but you bring up an excellent point. It’s time for me to review not only the terms of the trust fund, but the payments that were disbursed to you over the years, and to compare that with the amount of money that you sent to me. If I find discrepancies, I can petition to have you removed as manager.”

  “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare, or I’ll never come home again!” Her voice rises high and wild.

  “You’re never coming home again anyway.” My voice is sad and heavy with finality. “Because when I finish investigating what you’ve done with my trust money, I suspect you’ll be facing fraud charges.” My heart is a leaden weight in my chest, but this has been a long time coming.

  The silence stretches so long, this time, that I think that she’s hung up and I just didn’t hear the click. Finally my mother starts speaking. And once again, she’s dismissed everything that she doesn’t want to hear.

  “If this property deal fails, both families will be subject to lawsuits and will go bankrupt. You’ll all be out on the street. I have assured Mr. Ferguson that this was all a big mistake and you will not be making any further inquiries.”

  “Well, then you’d better call him back and tell him what everyone else already knows about you. You’re a liar. And I’ve read that contract up, down, and sideways, and so has Pamela. My investigating Ferguson Property Holdings isn’t grounds for them to back out of the sale. Don’t call here again, Linda.”

  I hang up and vomit into the office wastebasket.

  I just said that. I said those words to the woman who gave birth to me.

  And I meant them.

  I heave and heave until there’s nothing left inside me. I want to call Donovan, because he’d know just what to say, but Donovan betrayed me too. I can’t work any more today. I can barely breathe. So I just grab my purse and barrel out of the office, past surprised employees. As I stalk out the door, I see Sara coming towards me, carrying a basket of cheese. I’ve been buying up Ribaldi cheese to give out as samples at our wine tastings.

  “What’s wrong?” she says, searching my stricken face.

  I cast a grim glance at her. “I heard from my mother. Surprise, surprise, she’s been fine all along.” My voice is thick with humiliation.

  Her face puckers in sympathy. “Oh, Sienna. I’m sorry.”

  I don’t answer, because I’m on the verge of dry-heaving. I just make my wretched way home, climb the steps to the loft, and fall into bed.

  Aceto trots up and sits down next to me, patting my head gently with his paw.

  He meows a sad, “Wow.”

  “Wow, indeed,” I mumble into the pillow.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  DONOVAN

  "You sure there’s no poison ivy in these bushes?” Graham asks me for the dozenth time.

  “I already told you, no, there isn’t. You know what poison ivy looks like, for God’s sake. Leaves of three, leave them be.“

  “I am not so sure of this plan of yours,” Constantine grumbles.

  We’re crouched in the underbrush near the barn-house, waiting for Fernanda to leave. With a lot of wheedling and persuading and groveling, I managed to convince Angus to tell me that Fernanda leaves the house every day at noon to walk around the vineyards.

  “It will be much easier for me to try to talk to Sienna if I don’t have an insane old woman beating me about the head and shoulders with a frying pan. So, we wait.”

  Sure enough, right on time, Sara Ribaldi walks up the pathway and fetches Fernanda. Sara holds Fernanda’s arm, and Fernanda leans on a cane as they make their slow way towards the vineyards.

  I flew in this morning, via Constantine’s private jet. He and Graham are here for moral support. I’m coming to regret that decision. Graham’s jumpier than a fox at a hound convention. Constantine keeps piling wise Greek platitudes on me. Also, I brought Cleocatra, and she’s meowing pathetically from her carrier. Like I’m not stressed enough.

  We wait until Fernanda’s out of sight. I still hesitate, crouched low.

  “Go on,” Constantine urges me.

  I came because Constantine, the Love Guru, insisted that enough time had passed and I needed to make my move. Also, the Fall-fest starts Thursday, four days from now, and that’s a big deal for my family. I should be here for that. I’ve barely spoken to them since my blowup with Sienna, and both Graham and Constantine are on my ass about it.

  Graham says he wishes he had a family to be pissed at. Constantine says family is everything.

  “Go to her,” Constantine urges me.

  “I’m going! You’re making me nervous!” I snap.

  “Bok-bok. Bok-bok.” Graham makes chicken noises and flaps h
is arms.

  “Oh my God! Is that Bigfoot?” I stare behind him and gasp. “The legend is real!”

  “Where? Where?” he cries in a shrill voice. He leaps to his feet, looking around wildly. Then he whirls back around to look at me as I howl with laughter.

  He kicks dirt at me. “You puke-breath shithead! I can’t believe you’re my best friend. Screw you, you’re demoted. Constantine is now in first place and you are a very distant second.” Constantine beams in delight.

  “You have made a wise decision,” he informs Graham.

  “Excuse me!” Sienna’s voice makes us all start.

  Oops. Apparently we weren’t quite as stealthy as we thought we were.

  “Sienna!” I clear my throat and flash her a nervous smile. “Hey, uh. Hi.”

  She stares at the three of us, crouched in the bushes, and then at my cat carrier and the package I have tucked under my arm, and then at me. Constantine and I stand up sheepishly, brushing dirt from our knees.

  “Sienna, this is Constantine Galatos and Graham Buckley.”

  “Hi, Donovan’s wife,” Graham says, waving at her.

  “Hi, Donovan’s friend. I have so many questions.”

  Constantine speaks up. “She is every bit the vision you said she is.”

  I struggle not to break into a huge idiot grin at the sight of my gorgeous Sienna. She’s wearing jogging shorts, a Ribaldi Winery T-shirt, and sandals, and the sun gives her a backlit halo.

  “She’s not too hard on the eyes,” I agree.

  Constantine makes a guttural noise of disgust. “Is that the best you’ve got?” he scoffs at me. “For a woman like that? No wonder she cast you aside.”

  Graham is still nervously scanning the woods.

  “What is he looking for?” Sienna asks, looking puzzled. “We haven’t had a coyote sighting here in ages, and they don’t come near humans.”

  I sigh. Graham’s my best friend, but it can’t be denied – he’s a little...special, when it comes to certain things. “Bigfoot. He’s looking for Bigfoot.”

  “Again…so many questions.” She looks at Graham. “There are no Bigfoots in these parts. Bigfeet? What’s the plural? Anyway. Nothing in these woods is huge, hairy and legendary.”

  Cleocatra meows again, sounding increasingly frantic.

  “Oh, by the way, this is Cleocatra.” I gesture at the cat carrier. “She could be Aceto’s girlfriend, if he likes much younger women.”

  “We also need to ask her if she likes much older men.” Sienna nods at my T-shirt. It’s the “Team Rilocke” shirt she got for me in the spring. “Looks good on you,” she says, and my heart thunders with hope.

  “Go on,” Constantine urges me. “Say something spectacular! Speak your heart!”

  “Yeah, start wooing her, doofus.” Graham sticks his hands in his pockets, waiting expectantly.

  Sienna’s laughing so hard her shoulders are shaking. She tries to hide her laughter behind her hand, and fails.

  “Can I please talk to you in the house, without these two kibbitzing?” I glance at Graham and Constantine. “Thank you for coming and for putting up with me when I was a real ass. Run along, now. There’s plenty of nice restaurants and shops on Main Street. I’ll see you in town later.” I’ve booked them rooms at the town’s best hotel.

  “I certainly hope we won’t see you again today,” Constantine says. “You have so much lost time to make up for.”

  “Constantine!” I bark, mortified. “Too far!”

  “I speak from the heart, my friend. When you find love, grab it, hold it tight, and never let it go.”

  God spare me from helpful friends. “But could you go? Away? Please?”

  He gestures at Graham, and the two of them head off down the driveway. We parked on the road so we could sneak through the woods on my very poorly executed spy mission.

  I start walking towards the house, and Sienna falls into step beside me.

  “So that was Constantine. Your friend certainly says what’s on his mind. Are you blushing?” she asks me.

  “Nope. Definitely not. I do not blush. I do, however, grovel and apologize and even beg if necessary.”

  When we get in the house, Aceto rushes over and rubs up against my ankles without a single angry hiss, and damn if I don’t get a little teary-eyed.

  “Wow, wow, wow,” he yodels.

  “I know! It has been much too long.” I bend down and pet him, and he sniffs curiously at the cat carrier.

  “First things first,” Sienna says. “Let’s get your cat settled in. We’ll let them get used to each other gradually, in case Aceto decides to go psycho on her. Or vice versa.”

  She scoops up Aceto and puts him on the back porch with Ducktape, and shuts the screen door that separates the porch from the house. I release Cleocatra, who leaps from the cat carrier as if it were on fire. She shoots me a deeply mournful look of betrayal, and scurries over to the screen door and sniffs at Aceto. They make questioning little meow sounds. So they don’t want to kill each other. That seems like a promising start.

  “So. You’re here,” Sienna says.

  I clear my throat. “I have something for you. I hope you like it.”

  Suddenly I’m fourth-grade me again, all full of false bravado and hope. I hand her the package. It’s wrapped in brittle yellowing wrapping paper and tied in yarn string. She opens it, and the paper falls apart, drifting in little pieces.

  Under the wrapping paper is a small spiral notebook with a hand-drawn picture of Christina Aguilera taped to the front.

  “My mother had me get thank-you gifts for everyone who came to my tenth birthday party. I got everyone else the same thing, a bag of mini chocolate bars, but this was your present.”

  “You cared enough to find out what I really liked, and you saved it all this time,” she marvels. She looks up at me with shining eyes. “So what happened back then? I mean, what the hell, Donovan? You went out of your way to befriend me, and then you were an absolute bastard to me when I showed up. You humiliated me in front of everybody. Why?”

  Horrible memories swirl up and wash over me, making me feel filthy and unwanted. I wouldn’t relive this for anyone but Sienna. She needs to know, though.

  “The morning of my party, my mother sent me to look for place cards for the birthday table. I was rooting around through all of the stationary and I found some old baby announcements that she’d never gotten around to throwing away. Apparently, when she got pregnant with Toni, the sonogram wasn’t that clear and she thought Toni would be a boy. The invitations said ‘Montgomery Witlocke the Third’.“

  I glance at her sharply. Her eyes sparkle with sympathy. She gets it.

  “And then Toni was a girl. And then she had to have a hysterectomy, so there was no chance of her giving birth to a son, so they adopted me. But I wasn’t a real Witlocke. I wasn’t my father’s real son. They didn’t love me enough to name me after him.”

  “Oh, Donovan. I’m so sorry.” She takes my hand in hers, a small gesture that means the world.

  “I mean, I’m over it by now, but I was devastated then. I’d already seen the signs. The way they hovered over Toni and Jamie and were all overprotective and never even let them play soccer because they were afraid they’d get hurt. Me, I could play football, lacrosse, I could run around downtown all by myself. They didn’t worry, because they didn’t care about me like they did their actual children. They tried to, but they just didn’t.” I smile wryly. “It’s okay.” It isn’t, but what can you do? “So that’s why I freaked out at my tenth birthday party. Every time I tried to let myself like you, I’d get scared that my family would just send me back to the orphanage or whatever. It was stupid.”

  “No, it wasn’t. I don’t know why they didn’t name you Montgomery, but they love you, Donovan, I know they do. Are you aware that Jamie and Toni both think that your parents love you more because you’re a boy? They’ve always thought that. Jamie told me. And as for them letting you play sports and walk aroun
d by yo urself, it’s because they’ve got extremely anachronistic ideas about child-rearing. They just treat boys differently than girls. As proof, I offer you Jamie, working for me and still wearing those damn penis deely-bobbers. Because your dad won’t let her handle heavy equipment.”

  “Wow.” I let that churn around in my head. “I never knew Jamie and Toni thought our parents loved me better.”

  “Well it’s about damn time you all sit down and talked it out.”

  “I guess it is.” An ocean of strange feelings sloshes inside me. I’m happy and devastated and so, so in love. I lean against the kitchen counter and stare at her, drinking in the sight of her. “I’ve missed you so much I was sick, Sienna. I hope I didn’t take too long to come back, but Angus told me to stop calling you, and I thought you maybe needed some time. But you know all of my secrets now. You know why I was such a little asshole on my tenth birthday, and you know the truth about me giving your mother that money.”

  “Oh, right, Linda.” Sienna lets out a small, bitter chuckle. “She’s fine, by the way. She called me up, spewed out a bunch of unbelievable lies, and we had a final blow-out.” She makes a sour face. “I think she’s involved with Liam Ferguson, like literally involved. Having an affair with him. Also, I think I overreacted when you told me what you’d done. I know you were trying to help me, and I’ve never said thank you for bailing us out. You really, really should have told me as soon as we got fake-married, and certainly as soon as we started sleeping together. But we’ll talk about that later. There is one last secret you’ve been keeping.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why the heck did you really marry me, Donovan?”

  “You have to ask?” I smile and shake my head in bemusement. “Sienna Verona Witlocke, you’re usually smarter than that. I married you for the same reason I’ve kept tabs on you all these years and the same reason I paid for your college tuition. I’ve been in love with you since the day I first saw you. You were five, and we were on the playground at Greenvale Park. I knew then that I was going to marry you. I told my dad. You can imagine how well he took it. But my feelings never changed, and somehow, no matter how badly I screwed things up between us, I could never truly let you go. That’s why I reached out and told you about Simon. The thought of you marrying another man? It made me homicidal. Maybe if he’d been a good man, I’d have…I don’t know. God forgive me, but I’m glad he was a douchebag.”