No Nick. I paced. I fussed. I checked for texts. And then, suddenly, I knew he was there, felt him with my extrasensory Nick perception.
I peered out my peephole. Yes, there he was, doing the same thing as me on the other side of the thick slab of wood. I couldn’t open the door, though, or he would know I was standing there watching him.
He raised his hand to knock. He lowered it. He turned to walk away; he came back. He clawed his hand in a scrubbing motion through his hair and closed his eyes.
He knocked. I held my breath while I said a quick prayer. “Please God, help me not screw this up.” Probably not the most well-conceived or -crafted prayer I’d ever uttered. I opened the door.
Neither of us spoke. I stepped back and he walked in, clutching a bar napkin in his left hand. His right hand raked through his hair again, a nervous tic I had never noticed before this evening.
I sat down on the bed. He sat in a chair by the window.
“You said we needed to talk,” I prompted.
He focused on his crumpled napkin for a long time. When he looked up, he motioned back and forth between the two of us and said, “My life is way too complicated right now. I’m sorry, but this can’t happen.”
These words were not the ones I had hoped to hear. Maybe they were approximately the ones I’d expected to hear, but I’d remained hopeful until he said them. My face burned. Countdown to meltdown.
“By ‘this,’ I assume you’re referring to some kind of ‘thing’ between you and me? Of course it can’t. I’m a partner at the firm.” I heard my voice from far away. Superior. Distant. “I know I can come across as a flirt, but I’m this way with everyone, Nick. Don’t worry. I’m not coming on to you.”
I could almost see the handprint on his face from the slap of my words.
“I heard you talking to Emily on your cell phone when you got here this afternoon.”
This sounded ominous. “What are you talking about?”
“I walked past your room. Your door was propped open. I saw you. I heard you.”
I protested, “How do you even know it was me?”
“I know your voice. You were talking about me. I heard my name. I’m sorry I eavesdropped, but I couldn’t help it. I stopped and listened.”
I started to cut in again, but he plowed on.
“You said,” and, oh, how I didn’t want to hear what came next, “that you couldn’t believe how attracted to me you were. That you felt guilty because you thought about me more than work or what happened to your parents . . .” Nick stumbled over his words, struggling to get something out. “You told Emily you couldn’t help that you were in love with me.”
Oh God. Oh my. All that hot blood drained out of my face. I had said that on the phone to Emily. She’d called to make sure I was coming straight down to the session, and I’d turned the conversation to Nick. It was such a normal thing that I’d forgotten about it. Hell, it was so normal that she’d probably tuned it out. Suddenly I knew how drunk I was, and the room teetered.
I forced a glass-breaking laugh. “Yes, I mentioned your name, but that isn’t what I said.”
“Yes, it was,” he interrupted. “I’m not a moron. I know what I heard.”
“Well, you’re misinterpreting it,” I insisted. “I’m not after you, Nick. For all I know, you’re still married. And we work together. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I’ll try to not to do it again.”
“You didn’t make me uncomfortable.” He stopped and dragged his hand through his hair a third time, staring down at the napkin again. The damn thing had writing on it. “It’s just . . .” He sighed, and didn’t go any further.
“Just what?”
No answer. I wish it was only alcohol that made me lash out with sarcasm next, but it wasn’t.
“Why don’t you consult your magic napkin to see what you should say?”
His face darkened. “That was rude.”
I was just gathering steam. “Well, it seems like you came in here with your speech all written out. ‘Put poor lovesick Katie in her place.’” I sucked in a breath and spat out, “I can’t believe you had to make notes on a bar napkin.”
“I’m not as good as you with words, Madam Lawyer. I wanted to get this right. Don’t make fun of me for taking it seriously.”
“Sorry for making you go to so much trouble.” I wasn’t sorry at the moment, and I suspect my tone made that quite clear. “By all means, finish reading your napkin.”
He stood up. “There’s nothing else on my napkin that we need to talk about.”
Too late, I saw how awful I was acting. “Nick, I’m sorry. Forget I said that. I’ve had too much to drink. Shit, I drink too much lately, and I’m totally going to cut down. I hope this won’t set our friendship back, and that we can go on normally at work. You know how I am. I’m way too forward, and I have a big mouth.” I trailed off from my useless babbling and fought to keep eye contact with him.
My thoughts jumbled. How had I misread him so badly? I had always believed that deep down he was as attracted to me—not merely on a physical level—as I was to him. That if I gave him the right opening and nudge, he would sweep me off my feet and into his magic carriage, away to happily ever after.
How ridiculous that was. I wasn’t Cinderella. I was Glenn Close with the boiled bunny. And he was Michael Douglas searching for a way to escape.
I didn’t know how to make it better. His eyes grew more hostile by the second. Without another word to me, he stomped out with that damn wadded-up napkin.
Chapter Three
I woke up with a vicious hangover that was as much from humiliation as Amstel Light and mini-bar wine, and remembered Nick in my room, and the way I had acted. It seemed unlikely that it could have gone much worse, but at least I hadn’t met him naked at the door with a rose in my teeth. I would get up and pull myself together. I would be alluring in my moss-green Ellen Tracy sweater set. I would fix this.
But first I would check my texts because my phone was buzzing. At this early hour?
“Where the HELL r u?” It was Emily.
“?? Getting ready.”
This stretched the truth, but the cardinal rule of texting is to keep it short, so I omitted the telling details.
“We started. Hurry your azz!”
Maybe it wasn’t as early as I thought. “On my way.”
Well, beautiful and together were out of the question now, although I don’t know if I could have achieved them under the circumstances, no matter how much time I had. I scrabbled myself together in accordance with hygienic and aesthetic minimums and joined the teambuilding session, day two of two. I hoped I could fake it well enough to fool my co-workers.
I paused outside the open door to the conference room and listened to the presenter. The firm had hired a touchy-feely consultant to help us resolve any issues we had with each other in a positive, constructive way.
“Good luck with that,” I thought. I wondered if he’d help me with my “I want to sleep with my possibly-still-married co-worker who oh yeah by the way hates me” issue.
This was not a kumbaya type of session, though; the consultant was actually quite good. Today we were learning how to talk about what we needed more of and less of from each other. He instructed us to partner up with the person with whom we most needed an effective working relationship.
I breached the entrance to the garishly floral conference room. Within seconds, the pairing off was almost complete. I scanned the room for Emily’s big blonde Texas hair, hoping she had waited for me, but she was with the lead paralegal, taking the activity way too seriously. I glared at her and she shrugged with eyebrows raised, as if to say, “It ain’t my fault if you stand me up and then can’t drag yourself out of bed until noon.” I harrumphed and searched the room for a partner.
As I scanned the space, Nick’s flat eyes slowly locked onto mine. Not good. I, too, kept my face expressionless, a gargantuan effort considering that last night’s mini-bar trail mix want
ed back out. I started to turn away, then realized he was walking toward me. I expected him to move past me, until he didn’t.
He said nothing, so I spoke. I couldn’t help it. I always led. No wonder my big brother told me I pushed men away.
“So, you want some more of this?” I tried a self-deprecating smile.
He didn’t smile back. “It seems like the best way to get ‘this’ cleared up, so we’ll have an understanding before we get back to the office.” He waggled his hand back and forth between us. It reminded me of last night, and not in a good way.
We took a seat. The flowers on the wallpaper and the floor weren’t doing a lot to cheer me up. The vines in the carpet suddenly reached up and bound me to my chair by the ankles. No, you blockhead, that’s your imagination and too much booze. Ugh. Unnerving. I rubbed my hands on my forearms, trying to smooth out my goose bumps.
Nick read the instructions aloud. We would take turns going through a list of exercises. First, we would tell each other the things we appreciated; next, the things we needed more or less of; and finally, what we were committed to do more or less of for each other. In case we forgot these instructions, they were block-printed in bold colored marker on flip charts all around the room. I appreciate you, posters, for breaking up this flowery nightmare, I thought.
“You go first, Nick. I think you need to remember what you appreciate about me.” I said it in a playful tone.
He didn’t reciprocate, nor did he hesitate. “I appreciate that you are a professional who does a good job and works hard. You are important to the firm.” Not exactly warm.
“Thank you, Nick. Anything else? You can keep the compliments coming if you want.” I tried another smile, head tilted to the right. My best tilt.
“That’s it.”
This was going swell.
“OK, then, what I appreciate about you is . . . ,” while he was taking the strictly professional route, I refused to be so impersonal, “. . . your creativity and insight, and how well we worked together on the Burnside case.” I channeled B.S.-speak from the atmosphere, a legal version of a bad Dr. Phil episode. “And I appreciate that you don’t have a bar napkin with you today.” Hint, hint—Nick, let’s get past this.
No chance. “Now we do the next part, more and less of.” He ran his hands through his hair. Uh oh. “What I want you to do more of is let Gino know when you need support from me, and he and I will work it out. What I want you to do less of is,” he hesitated, then said, “corner me.”
Did I hear that wrong, or had Nick just dumped me? And accused me of stalking him? In so many words. Even after the difficult end to our evening, the professional dropkick seemed extreme. Was he suggesting I had sexually harassed him? I went from zero to sixty on the rage meter in less than a second. Oops.
“You don’t want to work with me anymore? I CORNER you? We have one hard personal conversation, and you refuse to work with me?”
“Can you please keep your voice down?” he hissed. I threw up my hands. He took that as a yes and went on. “I just want to minimize our contact,” he said. His voice matched his eyes.
“That’s absurd.” Nick’s hand went up, and I ratcheted back my volume. “We’re a great team. It’s a huge benefit to this firm when we work together. I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Is it all because of last night?”
One hundred eyes were watching me crumble into emotional rubble. No, that was just paranoia. My hands reached for my collar and tried to tug it open further.
“I’m not going to talk about why. I just need some space. If you’ve got a problem with me, you need to take it to Gino.”
Decision and self-control time. If I made a bigger scene, I’d embarrass him, and then I would never be able to fix it. I had spent half of last night reconciling myself to there never being an “us,” no Nick and Katie. I disliked practicing law, but in the last year, I had loved working with Nick. Working with him was better than nothing. It might even be enough. But if he took that away, all I’d have left was me and the thoughts I didn’t want to think.
I had to be realistic, too. I was important to the firm, but Nick’s soon-to-be-ex-father-in-law was our biggest client. This rift had to stay between Nick and me. There would be no “going to Gino” for me. Besides, what would I say to him? “Gino, Nick won’t work with me because he thinks I want to sleep with him. Make him be nice to me or I’ll throw a temper tantrum.”
I spoke in measured words. “I guess I have no choice. I will honor your wishes, but let me be one hundred percent clear: This is your decision. I don’t understand it, and it’s not what I want. I also promise to be honest with you. I’ll start that right now.” It seemed like a good place to start, since I’d lied to him last night and he knew it. “This hurts me. You’re treating me like you hate me. We had a regrettable moment this weekend. I think we should talk about this again back at the office.”
“I won’t feel any differently there,” Nick said. He stood halfway up, but I stopped him.
“Hold on. I get to say what I would like you to do more and less of.”
He sat back down. I ignored the stabbing pain in my stomach and spoke. “I would like you to do more keeping an open mind and less judging and making knee-jerk decisions.”
“OK.”
“OK, you commit to that?”
“OK, I heard you.”
We stared at each other for several more seconds. Then Nick got up. The feet of his chair made a horrible “shcreek” noise against the steel-wool hotel carpet. I cringed. My cringe timing was bad, based on the tightening of his lips and brows. He stalked off.
I stayed rooted to my chair.
A little while later—seconds? minutes?—Emily interrupted my impression of a block of ice.
“Earth to Katie. It’s break time. Are you coming?” she asked. Her voice was snippy, but less so than her texts earlier.
I glanced up at her. She was all long legs, in cowboy boots and blue jeans that she had topped with a Gap denim jacket and purple cotton-knit shirt. “Um, thanks, no, I’ll meet you back in here,” I said.
Emily walked out of the conference room with a group of paralegals. I beelined for the bar. What drink was respectable at ten a.m.? I ordered a Bloody Mary, a drink I’d never tried. Who knew how good Bloody Marys were? The first one worked well for me, so I got another. With the help of my new friend Bloody Mary, I decided I could repair things with Nick. Only I couldn’t find him.
When we returned from break, I cornered Emily. “Have you seen Nick?” I asked her.
Emily sighed. “He left. I heard him tell Gino he had a family emergency.”
A bust.
The rest of the day passed. I don’t remember much of it. I think I made appropriate facial expressions and comments when required. Or maybe I didn’t. My washing-machine mind was churning with thoughts of Nick.
Sometime that afternoon, Emily drove me home in my practical old silver Accord. The day became the night, and the night became more of the day, and when I woke up the next day to the sound of my brother’s voice, I was sprawled across my living room couch.
Chapter Four
“You have any better excuse for not returning my calls than this?” Collin said in a stern big-brother tone. I forced my eyes open long enough to see him gesturing around the living room of my once-beautiful apartment. Collin was my Irish twin, my elder by eleven months. We finished high school the same year, though, because my dad, a good Texan, had insisted on holding Collin back a year to help him gain a size advantage on the football field. Thus we had been classmates as well as siblings. Even so, Collin had always acted paternal toward me, especially in the past year after we’d lost Mom and Dad.
I opened my eyes a slit, enough to see the mess. I supposed it didn’t look good. I’m usually particular to a fault about my surroundings. Collin has always called me OCD, but I don’t agree. I vacuum backwards because I don’t like how footprints look on the rug. I arrange my clothes by season and subcategorize t
hem by function and color, because who doesn’t? And while not everyone combs the fringe on their throw pillows, I think they should. Tangled fringe. The horror. Those last few weeks, though? Well, not so much.
There were—gasp—fast food wrappers on the kitchen table and a couple of empty V8 and Ketel One vodka bottles out on the counter. It wasn’t unsanitary by Dennis the Menace standards, but, if you knew me as well as my brother did, it was troubling. My PJs were yesterday’s work clothes, and the clothes from the days before lay in an undrycleaned heap beside the couch—the couch on which the throw pillow fringe was taunting me with knots and clumps. The television blared Bon Jovi’s “Runaway” over a Direct TV ’80s rock music station. An almost-drained Bloody Mary mocked me from the coffee table, where it sat by my red Vaio laptop, a bottle of Excedrin, and my iPhone.
I sat up in as dignified a manner as I could manage and smoothed out my clothes. “Why didn’t I hear the alarm when you came in?” I asked him. Collin had a set of keys to my place, but my alarm should have beeped when he opened the door.
Bluntly, Collin said, “I guess you were too drunk to remember to set it. Or maybe you had a visitor that left late?”
He looked around for a second glass, but I’d been drinking alone. Collin started picking up my mess.
“Collin, I’ll do that,” I said.
“Nope. You go freshen up,” he said. “I’m taking you to breakfast. That’s an order.”
I stared at him woefully. He was wearing his usual 501 jeans with a Hooters t-shirt, and he radiated “I’ve got no problems.” I didn’t want to go to breakfast with him. I wanted to curl into the fetal position. I wanted to sleep and be alone. I wanted to be so still that I didn’t exist.
He looked at me, motionless on the couch, and something he saw made him put down the trash and come back over to me. Taking my hand, he pulled me to my feet. He held my stiff body in a bear hug, rocking me gently for a moment. Uh oh. At first, I tried to hold it in, but then I folded and sobbed on his big shoulder. Sobs became snorts, then hiccups, then shuddering breaths. He tilted my head back with a big thumb under my chin and looked into my eyes, appraising me.
Saving Grace (Katie & Annalise Book 1) Page 2