by Jessie Cooke
80
Bella found herself fighting back tears.
“I feel so stupid right now,” she confessed to Reece. She was standing at the front door of the apartment, her hand resting on the handle of her rolling suitcase. “Why am I getting so emotional?”
Reece wrapped his arms around her. “It’s understandable. This is your home now; I am your home now. You don’t want to leave.” He wiped away a tear that had spilled onto her cheek. “I think it’s sweet,” he smiled into her face.
“I think it makes me look like a pre-teen dweeb,” Bella said, laughing at herself.
Reece kissed the top of her forehead. “You’ll be back here before you know it. Friday is only five nights away. You’ll get everything in order, talk to the agent at the apartment complex, and see what it takes to get out of the lease. Who knows? By next week, you may be calling yourself a commuter.”
“I just wish I could be calling myself a Dallasian,” she replied. “Or is it Dallas-ite? What do you call people who live in Dallas?”
“Snobs,” Reece replied with a laugh, and Bella rolled her eyes.
“I’d rather be a snob living with you that miserable living in Fort Worth.” Though she was obediently heading back to Fort Worth to fulfill Rita’s wishes, her heart was most definitely still going to be in Dallas. They had spent the morning talking over their plans. Bella had decided to still follow through with the move as soon as she could get out of her apartment lease. Reece had offered to pay the fee for breaking the lease, but she had told him that she wanted to handle it on her own.
“I feel like you’ve made so much in my life happen for me,” she had said. “Don’t get me wrong: I’m very grateful, but . . . well, I think I need to do some of it on my own. You know, be an adult that isn’t too terribly co-dependent.”
Reece had protested, but she had stood firm on her position, and he finally relented.
“You’ll respect me more if I can handle more for myself,” was her argument. “Not to mention the fact that I’ll respect myself more.”
He didn’t want to take that from her.
And now, as she drove the forty minutes back to Fort Worth on this Sunday evening, she felt a sense of satisfaction that she was doing the adult thing: honoring her commitment to Rita while still pursuing her heart’s desire to live with Reece. She’d found a way to compromise. And besides, with the money she saved from not having a rent payment, maybe she could start that design company with Christo that she kept dreaming about.
Reece frowned as he looked at the caller ID on his phone. Luke Berringer. Now what in hell did he want?
“You’d better have a good reason for calling me, Berringer,” Reece greeted.
“What, no friendly ‘hello’?” Luke returned.
“We’re not friends,” Reece replied. “The last time we talked was supposed to have been the last time we talked. So, I’m not exactly thrilled to be hearing from you.”
“Well, you can rest assured that it’s no thrill ride on my end,” Luke responded. “Especially having to talk to the one man who is standing in the way of my happiness.”
Reece guffawed. “Me? Seriously? You give me way too much credit . . . and power. One man standing in the way of all your happiness. Do tell.”
“Bella.”
“We’re back to that, are we?”
“Did she tell you we had lunch this week?” Luke asked.
Reece felt himself narrow his eyes at the news. “No, she didn’t, but see, we don’t work that way. We don’t feel the need to keep such close tabs on each other. She has friends and a life that doesn’t have to involve me every second. It’s called trust. You should try it sometime,” Reece said smugly.
“I should, except I know these sad stories—of people, in particular this one woman, who trusted the man she fell in love with. Trusted that he was honest and good and true. Only to find out that he was nothing like he said he was. He didn’t truly trust her, nor did he trust in his love for her. What he trusted in was money, and he used that money to manipulate her situation. To insure she wouldn’t find anyone else, he hired a man to befriend her, to keep other men away from her. He thought he was hiring a gay man. What happened was the gay man, unbeknownst to himself, was actually bisexual, and he learned this by—you guessed it—falling in love with this woman he was hired to befriend. Now he found himself in a dilemma: his heart was involved. He loved her and wanted her to know the truth, but the man who hired him made his life miserable—most likely had him fired—and our bisexual hero had to rely on this man to relocate, giving up the woman he truly loved to save her from heart ache.”
Reece interrupted. “This story is already getting to be long and quite boring. Besides, I’ve heard it all before.”
“I don’t think you’ve heard the sequel. Where our hero, riddled with guilt and broken-hearted, meets up with the girl for lunch, where he finally tells her the truth about his sexuality, and she tells him she’s not in love with him, but with the villain of the story—how she could never truly be in love with someone she had to share anyway, and how there has to be a certain level of trust, which she isn’t sure she has with our hero anymore because he wasn’t completely honest with her about who he was. ‘Oh, the irony!’ our hero thinks, and he almost tells her all about the villain—how he’s manipulated her and created this scenario for her to fall in love with him; how he isn’t the wonderful, upstanding man she thinks he is.”
“You said ‘almost’. What stopped you?” Reece asked.
“My own integrity,” Luke answered, which drew a snort from Reece.
“Integrity? The moment you reached your grubby little hand out for my money was the moment you relinquished all rights to that claim,” Reece resounded. “You have no integrity, my man. In fact, you are no different than I am.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say,” Luke countered. “I love her. You claim to love her. If either of us truly does, then we should tell her. I can’t keep living all these lies, and I can’t keep the truth from her. Even if she won’t be with me, she deserves to know why she chooses to be with you. She deserves to know the real Reece Hamilton, so that she can make an educated decision, so she knows exactly what she is signing on for. That part is on her. The revelation is on us.”
“Let’s get one thing clear: there is no ‘us’. There’s you, and there’s me. If there is any sort of an ‘us’, it is comprised of me and Bella. Sorry, fella.”
“I’m dealing with that,” Luke said. “I know that I can’t make her love me, and I’m not going to try. What I can do is make sure she knows the truth. As a gentleman, I just thought I should let you know.”
“Well, I appreciate your kindness, but it doesn’t matter. I am going to tell her anyway. Incidentally, I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t just a ploy—a play you’ll make so that she’ll come running back into your arms. Do you really think she will want you, knowing you were getting paid for what you did?”
“What I did was fall in love with her,” Luke clarified.
Reece countered, “But there’s someone else you’re in love with, isn’t there?”
“How do you know any of that?” Luke asked.
“I have my ways,” Reece answers. “See, I’ve been talking to Andrew. It’s really quite sweet; seems he loves you quite a lot. I think instead of threatening me that you should be thanking me. I’ve done you quite the favor.”
81
Luke hit the button on his phone to disconnect from Reece, the words playing over and over in his head: “I’ve done you quite the favor.”
That snide, manipulating bastard, Luke thought, though he wasn’t one hundred percent sure how he’d been manipulated. There’s only one way to find out, he decided, and he walked back into the bedroom where Andrew lay naked and sprawled across the queen-sized bed, face down in the lamplight.
Luke sat beside him on the bed and nudged him awake. Andrew opened one eye as a slow smile spread across his face.
�
��Well hello, lover,” he mumbled. “Ready for round two?” He turned towards Luke, his muscles flexing with the movement.
“We need to talk,” Luke said, and he watched Andrew’s face fall, ashen with the words.
“How do you know Reece Hamilton?” Luke asked. Andrew swallowed hard and pushed himself up to a sitting position in the bed.
“He knows Chet,” Andrew began. “Apparently they go way back, fraternity brothers or something in college. He came in to Zippers one evening, went straight to the back for a meeting with Chet. Soon, I was summoned. Chet explained what Reece wanted: a convincing gay actor who could provide a newbie with some extra attention. They told me a little about you—that you were thinking you were bisexual and had fallen in love with the woman of Reece’s affections. It was my job to pull you away from her, help you remember what it was like to be with a man.”
“He hired you to fall in love with me?” Luke asked horrified.
Andrew shook his head vehemently. “No, the falling in love happened on its own. That is the by-product of this sordid arrangement, and something I didn’t count on. He hired me to turn your head away from Bella, Luke. I know; it was wrong, but I needed the money. My mother’s treatment was costing us so much, and I hated seeing my father in all of his illness trying to take care of my mother. Reece actually explained the entire situation—how you had been hired as well—and I guess I kind of used that to justify my involvement. The player was being played sort of became my logic, and besides, you know how we gay men love the challenge of the bisexual.”
Andrew smiled, hoping to alleviate some of the tension in the bedroom at the moment, but Luke’s face told him the attempt at humor had fallen short. He took Luke’s hand in his, brought it to his cheek, and then moved it to his lips for a kiss. Luke slowly reclaimed his hand from Andrew.
“I had no idea,” Luke whispered. “All this time, I thought it was too good to be true. I was right.”
“You weren’t right,” Andrew corrected. “The timing may have been too good to be true. Our meeting and the way our friendship began, that was the only part that was manipulated. The rest was fate, Luke. I love you. I can’t imagine my life without you—don’t want to. My feelings for you are completely genuine; all me. I understand if you’re angry with me, but before you write me off, just remember: you, too, fell victim to Reece Hamilton’s charms. You too have been in my position, and you too know just how hard it is to say ‘no’ to that dark charm he holds.”
Luke stood from the bed and walked towards the full-length mirror in the corner. He stared himself in the eyes, noting the figure of Andrew in the background behind him. How many times could his heart be broken in a week, he wondered. How much of his life could one man truly control?
He noticed movement behind him reflected in the mirror, and Andrew rose from the bed and approached Luke from behind, snaking his arms around him to rest on his belly. Luke watched the mirror grow with Andrew’s approach. He shifted his eyes to Andrew’s image in the mirror, meeting his gaze in the reflection. Andrew’s chin rested on Luke’s shoulder.
“I know I have no right to ask you not to be angry,” Andrew said.
Luke’s lips spread into a fine line. “I have less of a right to be angry,” he replied.
“We’ve both succumbed to the siren call of money,” Andrew said, “but we’re owning up to it.”
“Were you going to tell me? Ever?” Luke asked.
Andrew nodded, his chin slightly digging into Luke’s shoulder with the movement. “I’ve found myself on the verge of telling you a dozen times, but . . . I was ashamed. I thought that perhaps it didn’t matter the ‘how’ of our meeting; just that we did meet, and that I do love you. Just like it is with you and Bella.”
Luke turned from the mirror to face Andrew. He took his face into his hands and brought Andrew to him in a tender kiss. “You’re right. If there’s anyone we can be angry with, it’s Reece.”
“Why are we angry at him?”
“At his audacity. Just because he has money, he thinks he can buy control over every aspect of his life that has not gone according to his plan.”
“Ahh, but has he, really? Look at what happened to you and Bella? He thought his money would buy some sort of insurance, but it backfired, and you fell in love, ironically with the woman he loved, costing him valuable time courting her. His plan to deal with that? Pay me to distract you, but I fell in love with you? See, he can’t control everything.”
“I threatened to tell Bella everything. That’s when he mentioned you,” Luke confessed.
“Well, I should thank him for getting that out of the way for me. Now, we have no secrets; nothing between us.”
“Are you always so optimistic?” Luke asked Andrew.
Andrew responded with a kiss, his lips settling on Luke’s with just enough weight and force to communicate a tender possessiveness. “With most things, yes,” he finally said. “So, are you going to tell her?”
Luke shook his head. “Reece says he’s going to tell her himself. I guess I’ll let him; that’s the whole reason I called in the first place—trying to do the right thing, letting him know that I couldn’t keep it from her any longer.”
“And what do you think she’ll do?”
There was a few moments of silence before Luke finally shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not sure. It could make them closer or it could break them up. I know one thing, though: no matter how much I love her, she’s in love with Reece Hamilton. She’ll never love me the same way.”
“Then she’s not ‘the one’,” Andrew said. “You’ve said yourself: you need someone who understands you, who’s willing to share you. She isn’t. She has said she can’t. She’s said she isn’t ‘in love’ with you. Even if the truth comes out and it drives her away from Reece for good, do you want someone who doesn’t love you the way you love her? Who doesn’t understand you and can’t love you the way you need to be loved?” Andrew searched Luke’s eyes. “You’ve told me—now that you understand who you are that a woman’s love is just as important to you as a man’s; that you need both to feel complete. But if she’s unwilling and can’t do it, then she’s not the one, baby.”
Luke swept his fingers across Andrew’s cheek over to his lips and fell onto Andrew’s bare chest. “I know you’re right. You’re so amazing.”
“We’ll find her,” Andrew said. “Together, we’ll find you the right girl to complete this triad.”
Leaning in for a kiss, Luke said, “I’m so lucky that you understand me and want me to be completely happy. Guess I owe Reece Hamilton an apology and a thank you. You think they make gift baskets for this occasion?”
Andrew laughed at the thought. “What would the card say? I’m sorry I was angry that I allowed you to use me to manipulate others in your life, but thanks anyway. If it weren’t for you, I never would have found this happiness?”
Luke grinned, adding to the absurdity. “Yeah, there’s a lot we can hate about Reece Hamilton, but there’s one thing I’ll grant him.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s quite the matchmaker.”
“Well, if the construction business ever dies, at least he’ll have that to fall back on.”
82
Bella couldn’t believe what she’d just heard.
“Ms. Ryan?” the voice came through the speaker on her phone again.
“Yes. Um, did she have an appointment?” she asked the secretary.
“Yes, ma’am. She’s your two o’clock. Called yesterday and asked to see you.”
“It’s my fault,” Bella said. “I got caught up in this project and didn’t check my schedule today. Give me five minutes and then send her in,” she instructed.
“Yes ma’am,” came the speaker-voice.
Nicky Martin. Her two o’clock appointment today was with Nicky Martin. What in the world did she want with her? Bella had already agreed to be Hayley Jo’s godmother; it was the easiest way for Reece to still stay involved in this l
ittle girl’s life that he’d fallen so helplessly in love with, and in spite of who Hayley’s parents were, Bella had high hopes for the little lady and all she could become. Besides, Bella’s own biological clock was starting to tick louder and louder. She was finding herself looking longingly at babies, wanting to smell their baby smell just a little longer than she used to. She’d even found herself browsing in the baby department at Macy’s dreaming of the kids she and Reece would have and how she would dress them all for a family portrait.
She shook her head trying to bring herself back into the present. Nicky would be in here in just a few moments, and Bella wanted to be in control of the situation.
A soft knock at the door indicated Nicky’s arrival, and Bella opened it, refusing to paste a fake smile on her face, but asking her politely to come in and make herself comfortable.
“Can I get you some water?” Bella offered.
“No, I’m fine,” Nicky said. Her fidgeting with her purse told Bella that she was a little less than fine, and Bella had to admit that she took the slightest bit of pleasure in seeing Nicky uncomfortable for once. It was never Nicky who felt shy or awkward when they went out; it was never Nicky who worried what others thought of her; it was never Nicky who was nervous . . . until now.
Bella settled herself behind her desk. “So, Nicky, I didn’t realize that you’d made an appointment. You could have just called.”
“I, um, well, I know that you’re moving in with Reece,” she blurted.
Bella nodded. “Okay,” she said slowly.