by Claire Adams
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you want to go swim or something?”
“The whole resort is buzzing by the way.”
“People like to gossip.”
“Especially about their hot young boss,” Emma smiled sweetly. “Who apparently drove off a woman that everyone loves.”
“She chose to quit,” I said. “I never asked her to leave.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, fixing me with a curious expression.
“What?” I demanded, growing impatient.
“Would you like to tell me why she quit?”
“Obviously, it wasn’t working out between us,” I said, with a shrug. “And she couldn’t very well continue working for me after we broke up.”
“And you just let her go?”
“I told you,” I said. “She was just a temporary distraction.”
“You are an asshole,” Emma said pleasantly. “And a liar.”
“Why would I lie?” I asked calmly.
“Because you’re a coward,” she said simply. “You’re scared of how you feel about Molly, and instead of owning up to it, you’re running from your feelings.”
“Fuck,” I said, running my hand through my hair. “Who do you think you are? My shrink?”
She gave me a wide smile. “I’m starting my doctorate next year,” she said. “Psychology.”
“Fuck,” I repeated.
This time, Emma didn’t smile. Instead, she stood up and walked over to me in a manner that was so pronounced that it was decidedly intimidating. “Apparently, the rumor running around the resort is that Molly stormed into your office because she found out something.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “I’d really like to know who’s behind these salacious rumors.”
Emma rolled her eyes at me. “Is it true?” she demanded.
“She was mad about something,” I admitted at last. “Yes.”
“Which was what exactly?”
“She wanted me to give her a commitment,” I said, skirting around the real reason she had stormed into my office. “And, I wasn’t prepared to make her any promises.”
“Because you’re a coward,” Emma nodded.
“No,” I said defensively. “Because it’s what’s best for her.”
“Says who?”
“Me!”
“Oh yeah,” she scoffed. “Because you know what’s best for everyone.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Come on, Tristan,” Emma said, matching my annoyed tone. “You’re holed up here in Hawaii working so hard that you forget to actually live your life. You realize you’re not even thirty yet, right?”
“Your point?” I demanded.
“How are you qualified to know what’s right for Molly when you don’t even know what’s right for yourself?”
“I can still kick you out of that suite you’re in,” I threatened.
“Go ahead,” she said calmly. “I’ll just pack up my stuff and move right in here with you. Of course, next time I’ll be sure to lock the bathroom door in case another one of your girlfriends walk in and gets the wrong idea.”
She knew about that, too. I groaned inwardly, both infuriated and amazed at how accurate all her information was.
“What?” Emma asked, looking me in the eye. “You’re not going to deny that that’s what Molly was upset by?”
I sighed and collapsed against the single seater. “Our relationship would have ended at some point. This gave us both an out… It’s better this way.”
“You’re a coward,” Emma snapped.
“You said that already,” I said callously. “So if you’re going to circle back around to your greatest hits, I’d suggest you take your leave and leave me to my misery.”
“So you admit you’re miserable after Molly left?”
I groaned loudly and buried my face in one of the throw pillows. “Please,” I begged. “Please just leave me alone.”
“Oh don’t worry about being alone, Tristan,” Emma said, as she moved towards the door. “You’ve got the rest of your life to be alone…especially if you keep running from all the people that love you.”
The moment she left, I felt a keen surge of relief. And on its heels came the thick choking discomfort of knowing that Emma was probably right.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Molly
I was lying in bed in my sweats and an oversized t-shirt that I’d owned since I was twelve years old. It had a picture of Calvin and Hobbes on the front, and it made me nostalgic for a time before I knew Tristan Dubois. I was brooding over the sad turn my life had taken when I heard a knock on my door.
“I’m fine, Mom,” I called, throwing a pillow over my head. “I don’t want pie.”
“I’m not here to offer you pie,” Jason said, barging into my room without my consent. “In fact, I’m pretty happy you have no appetite at the moment…more pie for me.”
I rolled my eyes and sat up in bed as Jason closed the door behind him. “You were always a glutton for peach pie.”
“No arguments there,” he said, sitting at the edge of my bed.
“When did you get here?” I asked.
“Fifteen minutes ago,” he replied.
“Did you make the trip just for me?”
“I may have.”
I groaned and collapsed back onto my bed. “I knew Mom wouldn’t be able to resist calling you.”
“She was worried.”
“She doesn’t need to be.”
“Oh really?” he said as he lay down next to me. “Because it seems to me like you’re depressed about something.”
“I’m not,” I lied. “I’m just broody.”
“Broody?”
“That’s right,” I nodded. “A period of mourning is customary after you’ve lost your job.”
“Except you didn’t lose your job,” Jason pointed out. “According to Mom, you quit.”
“What has she told you?”
“That’s basically it,” he said. “She told me you arrived yesterday without warning with all your bags. You refused to eat anything and refused to talk about anything except to say that you quit and were home for good.”
I sighed. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Too bad,” he said unsympathetically. “Cause we’re going to talk about it.”
“No thanks.”
“Okay then, I guess I’ll have to call Tristan.”
Jason reached for his phone, and I groaned and smacked it out of his hand. “Fine, fine,” I said, in frustration. “I’ll tell you what happened.”
“Excellent,” he said triumphantly.
“But you have to promise me one thing.”
“Which is what?”
“Don’t give me a hard time about this, okay?”
He frowned. “Oh boy…”
“It’s not anything terrible,” I rushed to tell him. “It was just…poor judgment on my part.”
He raised his eyebrows. “This would all make a lot more sense to me if I knew what you were talking about.”
“Right,” I said, biting my lip. “Well… I just want to start off by saying I loved the job. The people were great, and the interaction I had with the staff was… Well, let’s just say I made some friends.”
“Okay, so you obviously didn’t quit because you hated the work.”
“No.”
“Has this got anything to do with Tristan?” he surmised.
I stayed silent, and that gave Jason his answer. “I see,” he nodded. “Well, if you’re worried I’m going to take Tristan’s side over yours, then you have nothing to worry about it. He may be my closest friend, but you’re my sister.”
I smiled and gave Jason a kiss on the cheek. “You’re a good big brother.”
“Stop stalling.”
I gave him a small smile, and then I sat up in bed and Jason mirrored my movements. “I should preface this conversation by making a confession.”
“Okay?”
; “I have been in love with Tristan since I met him,” I said quietly.
“Whoa,” Jason said, as his expression changed into one of surprise. “That’s… Whoa…”
I smiled. “Does that freak you out?”
“I… Well… No,” he said slowly. “It doesn’t freak me out. It’s just… I mean, when you were younger we suspected you had a crush on him—”
“Who’s ‘we?’” I demanded.
“Mom, Dad, and I,” Jason admitted. “But as you got older, you seemed less…aware of Tristan, and we all assumed you’d gotten over him.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I just got better at hiding it.”
“Ah…”
“In any case, when I went down to the resort, everything was great, and I had a really good time. Tristan and I didn’t see much of each other, and that was expected, but upsetting to me at first. I started dating casually, and Tristan seemed to get jealous of that. Then the night of the resort Christmas party—”
“You slept with Tristan?” Jason interrupted, his voice going up an octave.
“Uh… Well…. yeah.”
“Fuck.”
“It wasn’t just sex, okay?” I said. “We had a relationship… We were in a relationship.”
“For how long?”
“Since Christmas.”
“What?”
“Yeah…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.
“I didn’t tell anybody.”
“Is that your excuse?”
“I wanted to tell you,” I said. “But… Tristan insisted that he should be the one to tell you. But he obviously never did because he didn’t really intend for our relationship to be long term.”
“But you thought it would be?”
“Things were going so well between us,” I said. “Tristan was amazing—”
“Of course he was amazing, Molls,” Jason said, sounding frustrated. “That’s how he is with women. He’s charming and charismatic and a whole heap of other things besides. It’s how he lures them in. Did you actually believe he would be different with you?”
“Well, yeah,” I said defensively. “It was different between us.”
“Oh,” Jason said, with obvious disbelief.
“Scoff all you want,” I said. “It was different. I felt it. I’ve seen Tristan with old girlfriends, and I know how he behaves around them. With me, he was…more like himself.”
“Okay, then what happened?” Jason asked. “There’s a reason you’re here brooding about something. Something must have gone wrong to make you quit.”
I sighed. “He became distant with me suddenly,” I said, unable to bring myself to tell Jason the whole truth.
I didn’t want this little thing between Tristan and me to destroy the relationship that he had with my brother. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to preserve that friendship, but I felt like it needed to be done. A part of me also knew that when I told Jason, he would definitely be pissed off enough to cut Tristan off, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready to let go of him that completely. At least this way, I would still hear about him through Jason.
“Distant?” Jason repeated.
“He just… He was working all the time,” I said. “He didn’t have time for me.”
His expression relaxed a little. “Is that the reason you quit?”
“I was angry and emotional,” I admitted. “I made a split-second decision.”
“So…you didn’t quit because…”
“Because what?” I pressed.
“Because you saw him with another woman or anything, right?”
I gulped inwardly. “No,” I said, hoping that I sounded convincing enough. “No, that wasn’t it.”
“Oh, okay,” Jason nodded. “Because if that had been the case, I would have flown down to Hawaii just to kick his ass.”
I smiled. “Thanks, big bro.”
“Anytime,” he said willingly.
I nodded and looked down at my hands, feeling slightly more depressed than I had this morning. Talking through the whole thing had made me realize how rash my decision had been at the time. I had been impulsive, and I remembered what Meryl had told me on the flight back home. Should I really have let a man get in the way of my career? I loved my job independent of Tristan, and I should have stayed at it, for no other reason than to prove to him that he didn’t have power over me.
“Hey,” Jason said, calling my attention back to him.
“Yeah?”
“What’s going on in your head?”
I smiled. It was a phrase that Dad used to use on us when we were a little too quiet at the dinner table. “I guess I’m just sad,” I said.
“About Tristan or your job?”
“Both,” I said. “But with Tristan, I tried. But my job I loved, I wish that I hadn’t quit it.”
“Don’t you have a contract?” he asked.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“How long is it?”
“One year,” I replied. “I didn’t really consider my contract before I quit, though.”
“It’s not like Tristan will do anything about it,” Jason pointed out. “But it is a good excuse for you to go back.”
“What do you mean?”
“Go back and tell him that since your contract is still in play, you didn’t feel right about quitting halfway through.”
“But…”
“It’s going to be hard for Tristan to replace you,” Jason said. “He’s not going to make an issue about it.”
“But—”
“If you really want your job back, then you shouldn’t let Tristan stand in your way.”
“What if he doesn’t want me back?”
“He’ll want you back,” Jason assured me. “I know Tristan well enough to know that.”
I considered it for a moment. “It would be nice to be back in Hawaii…and the job was really good. I just don’t know if I could handle that.
“Handle what?”
“Seeing Tristan every day,” I admitted. “I mean, it’s going to be difficult seeing him with other women. How am I supposed to cope with that?”
He was looking at me carefully. “Your feelings for Tristan…they’re serious?”
I smiled. “Extremely serious,” I said. “I’ve been waiting for them to disappear for ten years now and so far, no luck. And being with him these past few months… It’s only cemented the fact that I’m in love with him and will probably always be.”
“You know, Molls… Tristan has always been like that,” Jason told me. “Work always came first with him; it’s how we were both raised. It’s why none of his previous relationships worked. He’d end up neglecting his girlfriends in favor of his work.”
“I know that,” I said, trying to pretend as though that were the real reason I had left Hawaii.
“I just never thought that would be a factor for you,” Jason observed.
I tried not to look too guilty. “Neither did I,” I said lamely. “But I suppose I just felt as though I were more like his mistress than his girlfriend. I mean, some days it was just about sex...”
“Okay, okay. I don’t need to know the details.”
I smiled. “Come on; we’re both adults.”
“You’re still my little sister,” he said. “And there are some things I never want to discuss with you.”
I rolled my eyes and leaned back against my pillows. “I need to think about this…”
“I wish you had told me how you felt about Tristan,” Jason said. “I could have warned you.”
“Warned me?” I asked. “Against what?”
“I guess I would have tried to discourage you from getting involved with him in the first place,” Jason said. “He’s a good guy, but when it comes to relationships, he’s not exactly had a high success rate.”
“It only takes one time,” I pointed out. “It only takes the right woman to change a man. Look at Mom and Dad.”
“They were a special case,” Jason said
. “That doesn’t happen very often.”
“I know I was naïve,” I said. “But I’m still glad everything happened the way it did.”
“Because you’re a secret masochist?”
“No,” I said. “Because now I can finally put my feelings for Tristan behind me and try to move on. Maybe now I’ll be open to another man.”
“Even if you work for Tristan?”
I gritted my teeth together as my resolve formed. “I shouldn’t have slinked away like some broken thing,” I said. “I should have stayed and proved to him that I could do my job, no matter what.”
“You still can,” he pointed out.
I nodded slowly, as I realized I could do that. I had given up too easily; I had let my emotions cloud my judgment. It was time to grow up and face Tristan again. And maybe in facing him, I could also let him go.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Tristan
“What’s up?” I asked as Ben walked in.
He sat down opposite me, and I passed him a glass of water. I could tell from the expression on his face that he wanted to bring up a subject that I probably would have preferred to avoid. I hesitated a moment and then sighed.
“Whatever you came here to say, just say it already,” I said, glaring at him.
“We need to hire someone to replace Molly,” Ben said bluntly.
I sighed. “I know.”
“And yet you’ve done nothing about it,” he pressed. “I can start the process, but I need your go ahead to do that.”
“I know.”
He raised his eyebrows at me.
“We’re not going to find anyone who was as competent as Molly,” I said.
“I realize that,” he nodded. “Which is probably why you shouldn’t have chased her away.”
“She quit,” I reminded him.
“Because of you.”
“It doesn’t matter why she left,” I said. “What matters is finding someone who can do the job—and do it well.”
“What do you want me to do with Molly’s contract?” Ben asked.
“Oh…”
“Legally she can’t just leave like she did.”
“I’m not going to get into legalities, especially with Molly. She wanted to leave, and I’m not going to force her to come back because of that piece of paper.”