Prima Donna

by Drewry, Laura

  “I don’t,” he said. “I’ve never thought that, but Regan, sweetheart, it’s just money.”

  “That’s easy for you to say, you’ve always had it.” She wrapped her arms around her waist and lifted her chin up a little. “You’ve never lived off saltines and Cheez Whiz for a week at a stretch, you’ve never had to improvise when the money that should have gone for things like heat or rent…or toilet paper…went to keeping the tab running at O’Malley’s instead.”

  “Regan—”

  “I don’t begrudge you for always having money, Carter; I’m happy for you. Really. But I learned two things from growing up without it. One was how to make a budget and stick to it, which is really coming in handy these days.”

  She snickered a little, but Carter didn’t so much as crack a smile. And if he didn’t think that was funny, he really wasn’t going to think this was funny.

  “And the other thing I learned was to never count on someone else’s money to pay my bills. The only person I can depend on for my responsibilities is me, and all things considered, I think I’m doing an okay job so far.”

  “We could give you a raise.”

  “We?” she repeated. “I don’t know that Rossick and Julia would be happy to hear you’re throwing their money around like that.”

  “It’s my money, too.” Arms crossed, he slumped back against the door frame. “I bought into the clinic last week and was just waiting for the lawyers to finish up the paperwork before I said anything.”

  So the whole time she’d been yelling at them about how they should’ve trusted Carter’s investment in them, even if he wasn’t a partner…the two of them had just stood there and let her yell. Well done, Regan. Well done.

  “Congratulations,” she said. Hell, she even smiled—and it wasn’t a fake one, either. “That’s great, Carter. Really.”

  “But you still won’t come back to work?”

  “No, I don’t think that’s going to happen. You guys can’t pay me what Griffin can, and frankly, after yesterday—”

  “Yeah, what happened?” Carter pushed off the door frame and stepped closer. “And why am I supposed to tell you Rossick’s sorry?”

  “They said they’d tell you.”

  “Tell me what? That they’ve been sneaking around for the last three months? Hell, Regan, I’ve known that from the get-go and I don’t give a shit about any of that.” He gripped the edge of the breakfast bar until his knuckles whitened. “All I want to know is what Rossick did that made you quit and what I have to do to get you to come back.”

  Did it really matter? She was going to be gone in a few days, so what good would it do to tell him and cause an uproar between him and Rossick? Besides, he’d said it himself; Rossick was family, and family sticks. She was…what? She was someone he slept with once in a while.

  “He didn’t make me quit,” she said, pushing her hair back from her face. “I was going to hand in my notice anyway, but then things got a little heated, and…I overreacted is all.”

  “To what?” he pressed.

  “It doesn’t matter.” She pried one of his hands off the counter and tugged gently on the tips of his fingers until he finally sighed and let his other hand fall away, too. “I’m really tired, Carter, all I want to do is go to bed, and I’d prefer it if you came with me.”

  He scuffed along for a few steps before tightening his hold on her hand. “When you say ‘go to bed,’ does that mean to sleep?”

  “That was the plan.” With a lift of her shoulder, she shrugged out of her robe and tossed it on the end of the bed. “Unless you’ve got other ideas.”

  Oooh, boy, did he have ideas. Really good ideas, too. Long, slow, full-body-quaking ideas that had her threatening his life if he didn’t hurry up. His only response to her threats was to smile at her with that cocky teasing grin of his and to slow down even more until she ninja-flipped him onto his back and finished it herself, taking him fast, hard, and deep.

  Collapsed on his chest, with his arms around her like that, tight, safe, warm, she couldn’t think of a single place she’d rather be. They didn’t laugh like they usually did afterward, they didn’t talk, and they didn’t even move, as though doing any of those things would shatter the moment.

  The moment would end on its own soon enough; they both knew that, but when it did, Regan still wasn’t ready for it. They made love again, slower this time, ending only when Carter cupped her face between his hands and kissed her with a softness she never knew he possessed.

  Dazed and more than a little watery-eyed, she just lay there and watched him get dressed. When he finished, he came around and sat on the side of the bed next to her, tucked her hair back from her face and smiled, small as it was.

  “You sure this is what you want, leaving…all of us…and going to work for Mr. Perfect Hair?”

  No, what she wanted was for her mother to be well, for her to be happy, for someone to figure out what it was that caused chemical and biological shit-storms and then fix it so it never happened to anyone else.

  What she wanted was for Carter to crawl right back into bed beside her and stay there.

  What she wanted wasn’t going to happen, and that was made perfectly clear when he nodded slowly, pressed a long, slow kiss against her forehead, and walked out of her apartment for the last time.

  —

  Regan dragged herself from one appointment to the next on Sunday, explaining to every client about her upcoming absence. Any concern she had about losing clients while she was gone pretty much vaporized when they found out who she was going to work for.

  It seemed any connection to a movie star like Griffin Carr was all they needed to equate Regan with superstardom, and wrong as they might be, she wasn’t going to correct them.

  Between appointments, she fielded texts from the girls, mostly Jayne, who felt it necessary to not only tell her that Carter was moving back in with them, temporarily of course, but who also kept Regan updated on the progress of his moving in.

  Regan did her best to sound upbeat and fine, but as the day wore on, it got harder and harder. Her one hope was her Monday appointment with Mrs. G, who would no doubt tell her she was doing the right thing, and that buying her own place was the way to go, no matter what it took to get her there.

  Instead, for the first time in the eight years Regan had been styling the woman’s hair, Mrs. G had little to say about anything, other than commenting on how the sun glared off Jarrod’s bald head while they watched Storage Wars.

  She’d nodded indifferently when Regan explained what she was doing, and who she was going to work for, her only question being when she’d be able to get another appointment.

  If it hadn’t been Maya’s Divorce Day on Tuesday, Regan would have bowed out of their girls’ night and stayed home. But regardless of what Maya said, they all knew it wasn’t going to be easy for her, so they were all there at their usual table with the first round ordered before she even arrived. Even Jayne got there early.

  Waving a stack of papers in one hand, Maya walked straight into their group hug, then chugged half her glass of wine before she’d even sat down.

  With her glass still raised, she pinched her mouth together for a second, then exhaled a long breath. “May his dick rot and fall off.”

  The guy at the next table spewed beer on his friend, but Maya didn’t so much as blink their way, just lifted her glass higher until the three of them tapped theirs against it.

  “I still think you should have let us go with you today,” Jayne said, setting her glass down and frowning.

  “No way. I’m not letting him think for one second that he broke me, or that I wasn’t able to do it on my own.”

  “Atta girl,” Ellie cheered, clinking her glass again. “Screw ’em all, I say!”

  As they’d requested, Shelley never let Maya’s glass get empty, and she kept the fresh bread coming. Knowing Maya the way they did, it was unlikely she’d eaten anything all day, and while the bread might not absorb all t
he alcohol, it’d help a little, and she’d be thankful for that come the morning.

  They let her dictate what they talked about: When she wanted to talk about Will and his affair, that’s what they talked about. When she wanted to talk about what was in bloom these days or laugh about the speeding ticket Ellie got twenty minutes after picking her car up from the mechanic, that’s what they talked about, even though it meant a sharp kick against Ellie’s shin to get her to focus on Maya, and not on the fact she had yet another one of Brett’s autographs, a fine, and three points against her license.

  Tonight was about Maya and no one else.

  The only reason Regan even noticed the guy in the suit was because no one wore a suit inside Chalker’s; he might as well have worn a sandwich board advertising his legal services.

  He walked straight past their table and she didn’t give him another thought until Shelley walked him back and held her hand out toward Regan.

  “Miss Burke?” he asked. “Are you Regan Burke?”

  “Yes.”

  He released his double-handed grip on his briefcase only long enough to shake her hand. “My name is Damien Sonheim. I’m an associate with Seyfarth Patterson.”

  “Pfft,” Maya snorted. “That’s Dickhead’s lawyers. Screw off!”

  Ellie stopped short of cheering, but didn’t hesitate to clink glasses again.

  The poor guy, who couldn’t have been much more than ten minutes out of law school, shifted his gaze nervously between the four of them and cleared his throat.

  “Could I please speak to you in private? Won’t take more than moment.”

  Regan arched a curious brow at her friends, then pushed to her feet slowly and followed Damien out of the pub to the lobby area that connected to the hotel.

  “Shall we sit?” He pointed toward a wooden bench near the stairs, then waited until she was comfortable before sitting next to her and propping his briefcase on his knees.

  “I should start off by warning you that there may be fallout over this, but it is perfectly legal, and once the transfer goes through, there is nothing anyone can do about it.”

  “Uh, okay,” she said. “And what is it that we’re talking about, exactly?”

  “Right.” He cleared his throat again, popped the case open, and pulled out a manila envelope with her name on the front. “It’s highly irregular for us to track people down in establishments like these, but our client was adamant that you get this before you leave.”

  “Who’s your client?” Frowning, Regan took the envelope from him and eased the sheath of papers out, then almost dropped them when he answered.

  “Edith Goodsen.”

  “Mrs. G?” She scanned the sheets quickly the first time, slower the second time, and then stopped reading completely when she was halfway down the first page again. “What—”

  “It’s yours. She’s giving it to you.”

  “She’s…” Regan couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t swallow, and she sure as hell couldn’t speak, not until after he’d run back into the pub for a glass of water. “How? Why? What?”

  “She didn’t say why, she just wanted to make sure there was no way anyone could protest it, and given that she’s mentally competent, and under no duress, legally she’s free to do whatever she wants with her property.”

  “But it’s…” Regan stared for a long time at the doorway leading into Chalker’s, then back down at the papers. “She…and they don’t know…but how…ohmygod.”

  She downed the rest of her water in one choking swallow and pressed the empty glass against her forehead.

  “Are you…okay?” he asked. “Should I go get someone?”

  “NO!” She grabbed his arm to hold him in place, then lifted her shaking hand out. “Phone. Give me your phone.”

  “I…uh…okay.” He fumbled with the screen lock for a second, almost dropping it before Regan grabbed it from him and punched in Mrs. G’s number.

  By the time the old girl answered, Regan was shaking so bad she could hardly talk.

  “M-Mrs. G,” she finally managed to choke out. “Y-you can’t do this. You just can’t.”

  And for the next ten minutes, she did everything she could to talk some sense into the woman, but to no avail. As far as Mrs. G was concerned, it was money well spent. Regan had never charged her for a single one of her appointments, had always taken her time with her, had even blocked off her Monday nights so Mrs. G had someone to watch Storage Wars with.

  No one in the entire Goodsen family even knew their grandmother liked that show.

  “Yeah,” Regan cried. “But I wanted to do those things, I didn’t do them because I expected you to…to…buy me a freakin’ house!”

  Mrs. Goodsen only laughed quietly and assured Regan it was for purely selfish reasons she’d gone out and bought Jayne’s house. She actually hadn’t even known they were going to list it, she’d simply asked the realtor to put out feelers, and when he told her they were willing to talk, she jumped at it. Without Regan around to style her hair, she’d have to start paying someone else, and she didn’t like anyone else. Regan should consider it payment for every appointment she’d not charged Mrs. G for in the past eight years, and for every appointment she was going to have in the coming years.

  “But it’s a house! There’s not enough appointment times in either of our lives to pay that off.”

  Mrs. Goodsen didn’t care. In fact, she told Regan in her best grandmotherly voice, she’d had quite enough of the conversation and she fully expected to see Regan for their next appointment when she was back in town, and once Regan was set back up in the new place, Mrs. G expected to be right back on the schedule as usual.

  “Of course, but—” Regan held the phone out in front of her face and gaped at it. The old woman had hung up on her!

  Damien was still sitting where she’d left him, staring idly at the ceiling, when Regan handed his phone back. She lifted the papers, now rolled into a tight tube, and blinked down at him.

  “Can she really do this?”

  “It’s done,” he said, pushing to his feet. “It’ll take a couple weeks for the final paperwork to go through on her purchase from the Scotts, and then once that’s done, it’s just a matter of transferring it into your name.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out one of his business cards.

  “We’ll be in touch when it’s time to sign the paperwork,” he said. “But if you have any questions before then, just let me know.”

  And with that, he walked out the door, leaving Regan staring after him. She was still standing there when Ellie came out of the pub a minute later.

  “What are you doing? Are you coming back in?”

  “Uh, yeah.” She tried to blink her head clear, but it didn’t help. “I’m coming.”

  She kept the rolled papers tucked close to her side, then slid them into her coat sleeve before anyone noticed.

  “Where’s Maya?”

  “Bathroom,” Jayne answered. “What was that all about?”

  “I, uh—” She stopped, shook her head. Now wasn’t the time. “I’ll tell you later.”

  She’d just taken a swig of her beer when Maya slid back onto her chair.

  “Look who’s here!”

  Regan wasn’t sure how she managed to swallow without choking, but she did it. Barely.

  Nick and Carter pulled a couple chairs up to the table and sat down, Nick on the corner beside Jayne and Carter on the opposite corner next to Maya. It was the first time she’d seen him since Saturday night, and all it took was the corner of his mouth to tip up like that, and she was right back there, wrapped in his arms, feeling things she’d never felt before, would probably never feel again.

  Nick flagged Shelley, then turned to Maya.

  “We wanted to come buy a round, hope that’s okay.” He didn’t wait for Maya to answer, just lifted the beer Shelley brought, waited for everyone else to join him, and then nodded. “The prick never deserved you, Maya.”

  “A
men!”

  “Cheers!”

  Regan did her very best to focus on the conversations going on at the table, to even add to them once in a while, but all she could think about was Carter purposely sitting so far away from her, and how much she wanted to be alone with him, to tell him what Mrs. G had done, to tell him how much she missed him already, and to maybe, finally, find the courage to tell him how she felt.

  But what good would it do? He hadn’t so much as said one word to discourage her from leaving, hadn’t offered any ideas about how they could make it work with her running back and forth, so—

  “Hi!” Katie’s cheery voice, right across the table from Regan, snapped her out of her trance. “We were over in the corner grabbing a quick bite and thought we’d say hi before we left.”

  Great. Like Regan’s emotions weren’t already all over the place, now she had to play nice with Ben. There were some things she wasn’t going to miss. She was so busy trying to fight her way past a scowl that she didn’t even notice Katie was talking to her until Ellie kicked her under the table.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said I thought you’d left already.”

  “No,” Regan answered. “Uh, tomorrow.”

  “Where’s she going?” Ben asked as though Regan wasn’t sitting right in front of him to ask directly.

  “Remember?” Katie said. “She took that styling job with Griffin Carr. She’ll be the talk of the town now, that’s for sure.”

  “Oh, good,” he snorted. “One more thing for the prima do—”

  Carter was off his chair and in Ben’s face so fast no one even knew what happened until Ben stumbled back into the table behind them.

  “One more word,” Carter thundered. “And I swear to God—”

  “Carter!” Katie grabbed his shoulder and pulled but Carter didn’t budge until Ben lifted his hands, palms out.

  “Jeezus, man, relax.”

  Carter’s shoulder flinched but instead of punching Ben like Regan feared he would, he shoved Ben away and stalked out of the pub, leaving everyone at the table staring at Regan.

  “What the hell was that?” Ellie asked as Katie fussed over Ben.