by Kat Cantrell
“So what you’re telling me is,” he drawled, “that the worst thing about you is that you went through an incredibly traumatic series of events as a child and clowns were in the middle of it. And now they freak you out. Stop me when I get to the part where I’m supposed to cast the first stone.”
She rolled her eyes. Miraculously, the fact that he was cracking jokes allowed her to reel back the emotion and take a deep breath. “Yeah, okay. It’s not on the same level as adultery. But it’s still real and scary and—”
“Something we need to deal with,” he cut in, his gaze heavy on her with sympathy and tenderness. “And we will. You know what most people do with fears? They run really fast in the other direction. You started an extremely worthwhile charity while trying to deal with your fear. I don’t think I’ve ever been more impressed with a human being in my life than I am with you right now.”
Okay, not so much with reeling back the emotions then. The tears started up again as she stared at him. “It’s not working, though, in case you missed that part.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll try something else. What matters is that you’re amazing and you can’t erase that by throwing down your failures.”
She hadn’t done anything special. But he had. She felt hollowed out and refilled all at the same time, and Hendrix was the reason. That scared her more than anything else that had happened today. “I don’t think I can go back in there.”
Which wasn’t the biggest issue but the only one that she could reasonably be expected to address at this point. It was also the most critical.
Nodding, he squeezed her hand. “That makes sense. The problem is that you want to.”
How did he see the things inside her so clearly? It was as frustrating as it was extraordinary. It meant that she needed to watch herself around him. If she wasn’t careful, he’d pick up on the way her insides were going mushy as he sat with her in the corner of the children’s ward holding her hand when he had a multimillion-dollar business to run.
“The problem is that I need to,” she corrected. “This is my charity. Your mother is helping me enormously by bringing credibility to my organization.”
And it was doubtful she needed to explain that her credibility was lacking. He understood how scandals affected everything—regardless of whether you deserved it—far better than anyone else in her life.
“Here’s an idea,” he said casually. “Why don’t you be a clown?”
“Say what?” But she’d heard him and the concept filtered through all the angst and fear and found a small snippet of reason, latching onto it with teeth. “You mean with makeup and everything?”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “Maybe you haven’t been able to fix your fear because you’re too far away. You can’t just get near your fears. You need to be inside them, ripping the things to shreds, blasting them apart internally.”
“Oh, sure, because that’s what you do?”
The sarcasm didn’t even faze him. He cocked his head and stared straight down into her soul. “Married you, didn’t I?”
Before she could get the first of many questions out around the lump in her throat, one of Helene’s staffers interrupted them, shattering the intensely intimate moment. Good. They’d gotten way too deep when what she should be doing is creating distance. The last thing she wanted to hear was how freaked he’d been to lose his independence and how great it was that he had an imminent divorce to keep his fears of commitment at bay. It wasn’t hard to imagine a player like Hendrix Harris with a little calendar in his head where he ticked off the days until he could shed his marriage.
It was very hard, however, to imagine how she’d handle it when that day came. Because losing him was a given and the longer this dragged on, the harder it was going to be to keep pretending she wasn’t falling for him—which meant she should do herself a favor and cauterize the wound now.
Ten
Hendrix didn’t get a chance to finish his conversation with Roz. Helene’s stint as a clown ended faster than anyone would have liked when one of the patients took a scary turn for the worse. Hospital personnel cleared the area and a calm but firm nurse assured Helene that someone would update her on the little boy’s status as soon as they knew something.
A somber note to end the day. Hendrix couldn’t stop thinking about how short life was, the revelations Roz had made about her childhood and how to pick up their conversation without seeming insensitive. But his own fears that he’d mentioned were as relevant now as they had been before he’d agreed to this marriage.
Even so, he wanted to take a chance. With Roz. And he wanted to talk about how rejection wasn’t something he handled well, air his fears the same way she had. But she insisted that he go back to the office with his mom so she could take her car to Clown-Around’s tiny storefront and finish some paperwork. He wasn’t dense. He’d given her a lot to think about and she wanted to be alone. What kind of potential start to a real marriage would it give them if he pushed her into a discussion before she was ready?
Distracted, he went back to work but he couldn’t concentrate, so he drove home early. The expressway was a mess. Bumper-to-bumper traffic greeted him with nothing but red taillights. Of course. Probably because he wasn’t supposed to go home.
It didn’t matter anyway. By the time he got there, Roz wasn’t home yet. He prowled around at loose ends, wondering when the hell his house had turned into such a mausoleum that he couldn’t be there by himself. He’d lived here alone for years and years. In fact, it was extremely rare for him to bring a woman home in the first place. Roz had been unique in more ways than one.
By the time Roz finally graced him with her presence, he’d eaten a bowl of cereal standing up in the kitchen, chewed the head off of his housekeeper because she’d dared suggest that he should sit at the empty dining room table, and rearranged the furniture in the living room that he’d used one time in the past year—at his engagement party.
In other words, nothing constructive. He had it bad and he wasn’t happy about it.
Her key rattled in the lock and he pounced, swinging the door wide before she could get it open herself. Cleary startled, she stood on the doorstep clutching the key, hand still extended.
“I was waiting for you,” he explained. Likely she’d figured that out given his obvious eagerness. “You didn’t say you’d be late.”
A wariness snapped over her expression that wasn’t typically part of her demeanor. “Was I supposed to?”
“No. I mean, we don’t have that kind of deal, where you have to check in.” Frustrated all at once for no reason, he stepped back to let her into the house. “You weren’t late because of me, were you?”
She shook her head. “You mean because of our earlier conversation? No. You gave me advice that I appreciated. I appreciate a lot of things about you.”
Well, if that didn’t sound like a good segue, he didn’t know what would. “I appreciate a lot of things about you, too. On that note, my mother told me earlier today that things are looking really good for her campaign. She thinks the marriage did exactly what it was supposed to.”
Roz swept past him to head for the stairs, scarcely even pausing as she called over her shoulder, “That’s great.”
A prickle of unease moved down his spine as he followed her, even though he probably shouldn’t. She’d come home late and didn’t seem to be in a chatty mood. He needed to back off, but he couldn’t help himself. This conversation was too important to wait.
“It is. It means that everything we hoped this marriage would do is happening. Has happened. Her donations are pouring in. She helped your charity, and while I guess we don’t know the results of that yet—”
“It was amazing,” she said flatly and blew through the door of the bedroom to sink onto the bed, where she removed her shoes with a completely blank ex
pression on her face. “I had calls from three different hospitals looking to form long-term partnerships. Helene’s already agreed to do a couple more go-rounds for me.”
“Wow, that sounds...good?” Her tone had all the inflection of a wet noodle, so he was flying blind.
“Yeah, it’s good.” She shut her eyes for a beat, pointedly not looking at him. “Things are going well for her. She told me that too when I called her. So we should probably talk about our exit strategy. It may be a little premature, but it’s coming faster than I’d assumed and I’d really like to get started on it.”
Exit strategy? “You mean the divorce?”
The word tasted nasty in his mouth as he spit it out. It reverberated through his chest, and he didn’t like the feeling of emptiness that it caused. A divorce was not what he wanted. Not yet. Not before he’d figured out how to step through the minefield his marriage had become. He couldn’t fathom giving up Roz but neither did he want to come right out and say that. For a lot of reasons.
The pact being first and foremost. It weighed so heavy on his mind that it was a wonder his brain wasn’t sliding out through his nose.
She glanced up at him for the first time since walking through the door. “I was thinking it might be safe for me to move back to my loft. I miss it. This house is nice but it’s not mine, you know?”
He nodded even though he didn’t know. Hell, if she’d wanted to live at her loft while they were married, he would have accommodated that. They’d chosen his house for their marital experiment because it had historical significance and there was a possibility they’d do a lot of entertaining.
That possibility still existed. This conversation was extremely premature, in fact. They couldn’t get a divorce tonight.
But all at once, he wasn’t sure that was his biggest problem. The divorce was merely symbolic of what was happening faster than he could wrap his hands around—the end of his marriage. “You’re thinking of moving back to your loft soon?”
She shrugged. “Maybe tomorrow. No one is really paying attention to us anymore now that we’re a respectable married couple. It would hardly raise eyebrows if anyone realized I didn’t live here anymore.”
“It might.” The first tendrils of panic started winding through his chest. Roz was already halfway out the door and he hadn’t had one second to sort through what he hoped to say in order to get her to stay. “I think it would be a mistake to split up too early. We might still be called on to attend one of my mother’s functions. It would look weird if we weren’t there as a couple.”
“I don’t know.” Roz rubbed at her forehead again as if this whole conversation was giving her a headache. “I got the impression from your mother everything was fine. Maybe I don’t need to be there.”
Maybe I need you there.
But he couldn’t force his tongue to form the words. What if she said too bad or laughed? If she really cared about him the way he cared about her, she wouldn’t have even brought up the divorce. She’d have left that conspicuously out of the conversation. For the first time, she wasn’t so easy to read and he was definitely paying attention to her, not her panties.
He’d had enough practice at it over the course of their engagement and marriage that it was second nature now to shove any physical needs to the background while he focused on what was happening between them. He didn’t need the ache in his chest to remind him that what was happening had all the hallmarks of the end.
Because he’d taken public sex off the menu of their marriage? Surely not. The ache in his chest intensified as he contemplated her. What a not-so-funny paradox that would be if he’d ruined their relationship by attempting to remove all possibility of scandal. Actually, that was irony at its finest if so. They had a marriage built on sex. Only. Just like he would have sworn up and down was perfect for him. Who wouldn’t want that? He was married to a hot woman that he got to sleep with at night. But apparently that wasn’t enough for her to stick around.
What would be? The continued irony was that he wasn’t even talking to her about that. Couldn’t even open his mouth and say I’m falling for you.
If he didn’t use the word love in that sentence, he wasn’t breaking the pact, right?
He was skating a fine line between a mutual agreement to end an amicable fixer marriage and laying his heart on the line for her to stomp all over it—and the way this was going, the latter felt like more and more of a possibility.
That couldn’t happen if he didn’t let on how this conversation had the potential to rip him to shreds.
“We don’t have to get divorced right away. What’s the hurry? Why not let it ride for a while longer,” he said casually as if his entire body wasn’t frozen.
She blinked at him. “What would be the point?”
What indeed? All at once, the ache in his chest grew way too strong to bear. Wasn’t she the slightest bit sad at the thought of losing what was great about them? The parts that were great were really great. The parts that were bad were...what? There were no bad parts. So what was her hurry?
“Because we enjoy each other’s company and like the idea of being married?”
She recoiled. “You mean sex.”
“Well, sure.” Too late, he realized that was probably not the smartest thing to say as her expression closed in. “Not solely that.”
But of course she knew as well as he did that sex was what they were both good at. What they’d started their relationship with. What else was there?
The black swirl in his gut answered that statement. There was a lot more here—on his side. But she didn’t seem overly interested in hearing about that, nor did she jump up in a big hurry to reciprocate with declarations of her own about what elements of their marriage she might wish could continue.
“I can’t, Hendrix,” she said simply.
And without any elaboration on her part, his world fell apart.
It was every bit the rejection he’d been so careful to guard against. The only saving grace being that she didn’t know how much those three words had sliced through all of his internal organs.
It wasn’t Roz’s fault that he’d hoped for something legit to come out of this marriage and ended up disillusioned. It was his. And he had to step into the role she’d cast for him whether he liked the idea of being Rosalind Carpenter’s ex-husband or not.
It was fine. He still had a decade-long friendship with Jonas and Warren that wasn’t in any danger. That was the place he truly belonged and it was enough. His ridiculous need for something real and legitimate with Roz was nothing but a pipe dream.
* * *
They didn’t talk about it again, and neither did they settle back into the relationship they’d had for that brief period after the wedding. Hendrix hated the distance, he hated that he was such a chicken, hated that Roz didn’t seem overly upset about any of it. He moped around until the weekend, when it all got very real.
While Roz packed up her clothes and personal items, Hendrix elected to be somewhere other than the house. He drove around Raleigh aimlessly and somehow ended up at his mother’s curb on Cowper Drive, where she lived in a gorgeous house that he’d helped her select. It was Saturday, so odds were good that she was at some event cutting a ribbon or kissing some babies as she rallied the voters. But he texted her just in case and for the first time in what felt like a long while, fate smiled on him. She was home.
He rang the doorbell. Brookes, the head of his mother’s security, answered the door. Hendrix nodded at the man whom he’d personally vetted before allowing him anywhere near Helene. Brookes had checked out in every way. On more than one occasion, Hendrix had wondered if there was something a little more than security going on between Brookes and his mom, but she’d denied it.
Given his reaction when Helene and Roz had lunch, he wouldn’t have handled sharing his mother in that resp
ect very well, either. He made a mental note to mention to his mother that he’d recently become aware that he was a selfish crybaby when it came to anyone intruding on his territory, and that maybe she should think about dating anyway despite her son’s shortcomings.
“Hey, you,” his mother called as she came out of her study wearing a crisp summer suit that had no wrinkles, a feat only someone as stylish as Helene could pull off. “I’ve got thirty minutes before I have to leave for brunch. Unless you want to be my plus one?”
He shrugged. What else did have to do besides watch the best thing that had ever happened to him walk out of his life? “I could do worse.”
Her brows drew together as she contemplated him. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”
“Why does something have to be wrong?”
She flicked a subtle hand at Brookes, who vanished into the other room. “Not that I don’t enjoy seeing you, but when you come by on a Saturday and start talking about a date with your mother like it’s a good thing, I’m concerned. Spill it. Did you have a fight with Roz?”
“No fight.” There would have to be a difference of opinion for there to be a fight and he’d agreed with every word she’d said. There was no point to continuing this farce of a marriage. “You said yourself that things were fine with your campaign. You even went out of your way to tell us both that. So what else would be the natural conclusion to a fixer marriage but a fast, no-fault divorce once the problem is fixed?”
Besides, he was pretty sure the black swirl in his gut that wouldn’t ease meant he’d been right all along to never have a woman in his bed twice. Better all the way around not to fight Roz on her insistence that it was over. What was he supposed to do, open himself up for exactly the same kind of rejection that had devastated Marcus?
His friends wouldn’t have an ounce of sympathy for him either, not after he’d violated the pact. Jonas at least might have had some understanding if Hendrix had managed to find someone who loved him back like Jonas had. Warren wouldn’t even let him get the first sentence out and would get started on his own brand of rejection. Hendrix would be dealing with Roz’s evisceration and lose his friends.