Clicking the home screen, I left the jobs site and browsed through the headlines. Another ‘Missing Plane over the Indian Ocean.’ ‘Missing Mother of Two Found After Two Weeks in Forest.’ ‘Stocks Spiral.’ ‘Former Child Star: I Am Not Insane.’ Sucker that I was, clicked on the latter. Nothing like a little Hollywood dirt to overshadow the drama of my own life. It reminded me I could have it worse. I could have seven billion people gossiping about my past.
When the page finally loaded, the story fell second fiddle to a photo along the sidebar. What caught my interest was the grainy photo of Tate holding Coop in his arms, her in her wedding gown, standing just outside the small plane that had flown them home from Vegas. Without bothering to read the headline, I clicked on the photo and waited impatiently for the next page to load.
“Oh, Merda.” I covered my mouth to muffle the oath. The headline read: ‘Third Time’s a Charm, or was that Sixth or Ninth?’ Below their photo was a small grid of strawberry blonde bombshells allegedly from Tate’s past.
As Amanda Keller prepares for her defense in the alleged attack on Cooper Hale during a November concert in Missoula Montana, a startling pattern has been exposed in Tate Watkins’ sexual repertoire. Women from several states, spanning from Washington to Pennsylvania, are coming forward, claiming to have been the victims of the rock star’s focus. Two claim to have borne his lovechild, a third and fourth claim to have contracted STDs from the rock star, and a fifth claims that she wasn’t a willing participant at all. She has requested her identity remain undisclosed for the privacy of her family. At the end of the day, one question remains: How many other victims are choosing to remain silent?
Victims…they were calling them victims.
Cooper was probably beside herself.
“Apparently he has a penchant for Venetian blondes,” said Meghan, beside me. She worked at the shop, but was on break. I think she was best buds with Ashley Lemming at the ice cream shop. When I glared in her direction, she blinked uncomprehendingly. “What?”
“He’s completely besotted with Cooper.”
Megan snorted, her freckled nose wrinkling. “You act like you know them personally.”
“I do.” Fishing my cell phone from between the cushion and my thigh, I pressed the quick call button. The phone rang once, twice.
“Sure,” Meghan said, “Whatever.”
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s rude to listen over someone’s shoulder?”
“I wasn’t listening, I was reading. Besides, it’s not like you were doing anything personal.”
“Actually, I a—”
“When are you coming back?” Tate asked, appearing on the screen. I had dialed Cooper’s phone, but she obviously wasn’t carrying it with her. “Please tell me you’re on your way.”
“Where is she?”
“OH MY GOD!” Meghan shrilled. Her body coiled like a spring, strung with excitement. “THAT’S TATE WATKINS! YOU’RE TALKING TO TATE WATKINS!”
“Don’t you have work to do?” I snapped, cutting a scathing glare in her direction. The girl flinched and rose from the sofa. She ambled a few steps and then ran into the kitchen to spread the gossip.
“Em…?”
“I’m here. How’s she holding up?”
“She says she’s fine, but she’s being awful quiet. With her parents here, I don’t think she wants to argue. She doesn’t have anyone else to talk to, Em.”
“That’s why I’m calling, Tate.”
“You’re three thousand miles away.”
“Can you please put her on the phone.”
“I would if she were here,” Tate grumbled. “But she’s avoiding me. She might not realize she’s doing it, but she is. She’s going to leave me, Emily. If you don’t come the fuck here and talk to her, she’s going to leave!”
“She’s not going to leave you,” I promised. “She’s crazy about you, Tate. She’s just…” I searched for the right word. Afraid? Freaked out? Angry?
“Disgusted,” Tate offered. “She’s fucking disgusted with me.” Whatever Tate was doing, the camera was all over the place. “Do you see this?” Tate asked. He tilted the camera. He panned down to his knees, perched on the tile floor, and panned back up again, his eyes pleading. “This is me on my knees, Em. I’m fucking begging. I can’t live without her. You need to HELP me!”
“Like you said,” I snapped, losing my cool. “I’m three thousand miles away. What is it that you expect me to do?”
“Fly here! I’ll book you a flight right now! You can be here in less than a day!”
“Tate.”
“I’m worried about her,” Tate pressed, lowering his voice. “This stress…it can’t be good for the pregnancy.”
Fuck. There. He said it. The one thing I couldn’t brush off. “Book the flight.”
“You’re a lifesaver, Em! Just…hold on a sec. I’m going to get on my computer right now.” Again, the phone fell askew as Tate rose from the floor. At the same time, the bell on the door jingled. Shane and Carter stepped into the coffee shop, the former of the two grinning shyly upon recognition.
Carter went to stand in line at the counter, but Shane headed in my direction. He bent, took my mouth in a kiss that had my head hugging the back of the sofa. I didn’t know whether to push him away or pull him toward me. Before I could decide, he pulled away, pressed a few teasing kisses to the corner of my mouth.
“What’s shakin’?”
“You can’t just come in here and kiss me like that, Shane.”
“Do we really need to start from the beginning each time we see each other, Emelia?”
“Who’s Emelia?” Tate asked, though the screen to my phone remained empty.
“Who are you talking to?” Shane asked, plopping down on the sofa beside me. Grasping my hand, he turned my wrist and stared into the screen of my phone.
“Shane!”
“Shane?” Tate repeated. His face appeared on the screen. He split into a smile. “Dude!”
“Hey, Bro,” Shane continued, ignoring my objection to being manhandled. “What’s happening on the homefront?”
“Your girl is saving my ass,” Tate explained. “There’s a flight with a seat open tomorrow night. You gotta make sure she’s on it.”
“No can do. Storm’s coming through tomorrow.”
“No way!”
“Afraid so.”
“Fuck.” Anxiously, Tate scrubbed his chin, dragged a hand through his hair. Yet again, he left me staring at what I presumed was the ceiling. I could hear his fingers tapping at the keyboard. “Fuuuuucccckkk! Everything’s booked until after the holiday. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
“Have you talked to her?” Shane asked. “Can’t you just do that ‘Coop’ thing you do when she starts freaking out?”
“She’s not talking to me! How can I cut her off when she’s not even talking to me, man?”
“Tate,” I spoke up. “Listen to me. This is what you’re going to do. You’re going to hang up right now and you’re going to delete this call from her history, so she doesn’t know we talked. Then, Shane’s going to call from his phone. But don’t answer it. He’s going to keep calling until she picks up. Make sure she picks it up. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, but why?”
“Why am I calling her?” Shane inquired, perplexed.
“Because the best way to take her mind off of her own problem,” I explained, “is to overshadow them with someone else’s.” Screw it. If it worked for me, it would work for Coop, too.
“I don’t have any problems, and if I did, why would I call Cooper?”
“Jesus, you’re dense,” Carter swore. Plopping down on the chair across from us, he kicked his feet up on the coffee table and bit into a biscotto. I winced as he crushed it between his teeth much like a horse would grind a mouthful of grain. “Emster’s issues are your issues; you’re in love with her, you idiot. Who besides her bestie would you call if you were concerned about her wellbeing?”
Shane
stared at Carter and then turned to me. “You want me to tell her what happened the other night.”
“Bingo,” Carter sang. “Boy’s a genius.” He was lifting the biscotto to his mouth again when he noticed I was watching him. Perhaps my stare unnerved him, because he dropped his hand back down. “What…?”
“Do you know anything about biscotto, Carter?”
“Biscotti?”
“Biscotto; biscotti is plural.”
“Who gives a shit? They’re hard as fucking rocks. I think my gums are freaking bleeding.”
Making the sign of the cross, I said, “Sorry, Papa, I do this only to spare his teeth. You dip them, Carter, in coffee, or in your case, cappuccino.”
Carter looked at the biscotto in his hand. “Dip them.”
“Usually in a dessert wine called Vin Santo. My father considered anything else to be a sacrilege, but here in the US, most people tend to use coffee.”
“Wine, huh?”
“Using coffee would be like putting ketchup on pizza and calling it tomato sauce.”
“Point taken.” Shrugging, he dipped his biscotto into his coffee and swirled it around.
“Hellooooo…?” Tate said, garnering our attention. “Does anyone care to enlighten me on what you’re all talking about?”
“Nothing,” I answered. “Carter’s just cracking his enamel on biscotti.”
“I heard that much; I’m talking about whatever this is you’re all going to tell Cooper. Is everything all right?”
“Coop will tell you about it,” I assured. “Like I said, let it go to voicemail a few times, and then take the phone to her.”
“You sure?” Tate pressed. “If you need anything, anything at all, you’ll let me know?”
“You’ll be the first.”
“You’re a lifesaver, Em! I really owe you one!” The screen went blank as Tate disconnected the call.
“What do you want me to tell her?” Shane inquired. Staring down at me from beneath his dark brows, his reluctance was perceptible.
“Whatever’s necessary to make it convincing.” I lifted my espresso and sipped at it, holding Shane’s stare. He was bound to tell her the truth about my past, even if he meant well doing so, and especially after he realized I truly didn’t intend to return to Seattle. “Besides, it’s not as if you haven’t thought about calling her for advice anyhow.”
Shane flushed, his gaze dropping to the floor. Before Carter could taunt him, he rose from the sofa and stalked out the door. I watched through the plate glass window as he paced outside, dialing and redialing his cell phone.
“These are actually really good.” Using the biscotto as a spoon, Carter scooped the foam from the top of his cappuccino and took a large bite. “Mm, really fucking good.”
“They pale in comparison to my nonna’s.” I glanced around to make sure the girls didn’t hear me. Though the biscotti was prepackaged, it was bad taste to insult someone’s product in their own shop.
“Nonna, that means grandma, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, absently. The larger part of my attention was watching Shane pace as he talked. For a moment, he met my gaze. His eyes held mine briefly before turning his back to me and walking a few steps away.
“You’re Italian then.”
“Half. My mother isn’t.”
“Maybe your father married her for his green card. It would explain why he would’ve married such a cold bitch.”
“It would make sense, but no, my great grandfather brought my nonna here just before Italy entered World War Two.”
“So, did she hand you down her recipes?”
“Pretty much. What she didn’t teach me, my father did.”
“You should open your own restaurant in Seattle. Give your mother the big FU, you know?”
I shook my head, though the notion was appealing. “I’m not moving to Seattle.”
“Cause you have so much going for you here.”
“I have ties here.”
“You shouldn’t allow her the satisfaction of seeing you struggle,” Carter continued. “I mean, wouldn’t that just piss her the fuck off if you succeeded? You could tagline the name, ‘The Original Osteria’ or ‘The Way Italian Was Meant To Be Eaten; With Family.’ You know—something to rub it in.”
“Rub it in?” I snorted. “I’d like to stick a shank in her kidney and break it off.”
Carter belted out a laugh. “Whoo! Now we’re talking! I knew you had a little fight in there somewhere! I like it!”
Hiding my grin, I sipped at my coffee. “Nonna’s: Bringing the Mm Back to Family Dining.”
“That’s it! You have the name! Now you have to open the place. You can start with these things.” He held up the last bite of his biscotto. “If you can make biscotti better than this, that’s something I need to see.”
“You do love food, don’t you?”
“Almost as much as sex.”
I snorted my disagreement. I’d stick with the former. “Food’s less complicated.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You?” I laughed. “What could you possibly find complicated about sex, besides choosing whether you want red, blonde, or brunette?”
“Not too long ago, I might have disagreed entirely, but lately…” Carter cocked his head to the side in uncertainty.
“You want more.”
“Fuck no. I just don’t want the fucking media lambasting me like they’re doing to Tate right now. Fucking chicks coming out of the woodwork lying through their teeth just to have their face in the papers. It’s bullshit. That freakin’ bitch nearly killed Cooper, yet Tate’s the one on trial here. It ain’t right.”
“It’ll pass as soon as they find the next circus act.”
We fell silent, equally concerned about our friends. We sipped at our coffee, listening to the girls behind the counter whispering and giggling as they cleaned and rearranged the same display case they had cleaned only a half hour earlier.
I was no less guilty. I caught myself watching Shane through the window again. My thoughts wavered between Coop’s mental health and the perfection of Shane’s ass. Today he’d foregone the skinny jeans for a pair of straight legs and black leather boots, and lord if he didn’t rock them. Slowly, he spun around. I found myself checking out his equipment as thoroughly as his rear. The fit of his pants left little to the imagination. The guy was seriously hung. I wondered how I hadn’t noticed it before. I mean, it was difficult to miss.
To my mortification, Shane reached down and grasped his cock through his jeans, adjusting himself. When I looked up, he was staring, a wicked grin playing at the edge of his lips. He winked at me, palming it as if he weren’t on a public street in the middle of the afternoon. Blood flooded to my face in a mad rush.
Quickly looking away, I found Carter smirking at me from over his cappuccino. “Complicated, right?”
“Unequivocally.”
“I call bullshit. You’re attracted to him. He’s bent over backwards for you. There’s nothing standing between you except your own inflexibility.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but the sound of footsteps overhead stopped me short. My head tilted upward, following the sound. Someone was walking around in my apartment. I glanced outside. Not someone, Shane.
“What the hell?” Jumping up from the sofa, I exited the coffee shop and entered my apartment. The stair lift still sat on the floor by the door where Carter had crash-landed. I stepped around it and jogged up the stairs. I found Shane rooting through my closet. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Packing.” He came out with my luggage and laid it on the bed. “Coop made me swear that I wouldn’t let you spend Christmas alone, and the weather’s supposed to start tomorrow morning, so you’re coming with us now.”
“Shane!” Ignoring me, he started emptying my laundry baskets into my suitcase. They’d only come out a day earlier when I’d taken them to the Laundromat. “Shane!” I said again. It was of little effect.
“Do you have other plans?” he asked. Of course not. Coop was in Seattle, and I’d rather eat shards of glass before spending the holiday with my mother. “That’s what I thought.” He dropped another stack of clothing into my bag.
“Damn it, what I do on Christmas is none of your business!” I moved to stand in front of him, blocking my laundry baskets. I widened my stance by placing my hands on my hips. Evidently, my indignation was far from intimidating, because Shane stepped closer, until his toes butted against mine.
“Even I don’t spend the holiday alone, Emelia.”
My mouth pulled into a frown. “Why do you insist on calling me that?”
“It’s your name.”
“I hate when people call me that.”
“I like it. It fits you.” He coiled a lock of my dark hair around his finger. “You’re like this little Mediterranean gypsy girl.”
“Oh, please.”
“Just come,” he pressed. “We’ll hang out with Carter’s family. They’re cool.”
“Since when are you the socialite? You’re usually off holing up somewhere on your own.”
A dubious smile spread across his face. “Maybe I was hoping you would hole up with me.”
“Then you’re running on an exorbitant amount of optimism.”
“When’s the last time you spent the weekend in bed with a man and a bottle of anything intoxicating?”
“About five years ago, give or take. I’d rather not do it again.” I regretted it the second it came out. It was facetious and hadn’t gone unnoticed. Mixed emotions scattered across Shane’s face, settling inevitably on regret. Shit.
“Fuck,” he sighed, raking a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. That was a stupid thing to say.”
“No, it was a stupid thing for me to say. I’m sorry.”
“Can we quit with the games now? I’m not asking you to marry me, Emelia, just to spend the holiday with some friends.”
“Ok,” I ceded. “Fine.”
Dropping his head, he pressed a kiss to my lips, jumped back when I swatted him away. “Friends,” I qualified, “and not the kind with benefits.”
I was so going to regret this. I just knew it.
Chapter 8
I should’ve brought something,” I voiced, stepping out the door of the carriage house. “A bottle of wine, or some sort of dessert.” I hated going places empty handed. Papa never let me go anywhere without a platter of some sort. I felt like I was failing him miserably.
Breaking the Habit Page 8