by Stacy Eaton
At ten, Sadie headed to her bedroom, and I curled up on the couch and tried to sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Roan on the back of my lids. When my alarm went off at three-thirty in the morning, I felt as if I had sawdust in my eyes as I rubbed them. I might have slept for an hour or two, or I might have just gone into a memory trance as I relived my time with Roan for the fiftieth time.
I pulled my shoes on and gathered my things in a daze. It was going to be a really long day. I was just glad that I was going to be spending it in Middletown and wouldn’t have to worry about seeing Roan, Rye, or Autumn today.
The cool morning air was welcoming as I walked to the café. It would have been better if I hadn’t been lugging two duffle bags and a laptop case, too, but whatever. There were two other cars parked in the rear when I arrived, and I let myself into the building and then stowed my bags in Robin’s office. I pulled out a change of clothes and my toiletries bag, too. The catering side had a small bathroom with a shower.
“Hey, Monica, how are you?”
“Morning. Damn, girl, you look like hell.”
“Yeah, I need to grab a shower and a cup of coffee. I slept on Sadie’s couch last night.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain later. Give me ten to shower.”
“No hurry. Stewart is running late; he had a flat this morning. Take your time. I got in a little early so we’re ahead. I’ll get you some coffee.”
“Thanks,” I rushed to the bathroom and was actually glad that I was as tired as I was. It was hard to think, so I couldn’t afford the energy to dwell on the mistake I’d made with Roan. Over the long hours of last night, I realized how much of a mistake it had been to sleep with him.
I’d had a taste of the finer life, not the glamour and glitz, but a taste of the sweet, sensual love that some people are lucky enough to have, but not me. I was never that lucky.
* * *
It was three in the afternoon and our gig was ramping up to start. Unfortunately, most of the menu that the law office had selected for their banquet tonight had to be prepared on-site. Stewart, Monica, Bella, and I had spent four hours doing prep work this morning for the corporate event. We loaded up what was left to load and drove two hours to Middletown. It took us another hour to get things unloaded. We’d brought not only food, but serving utensils and table coverings.
It was noon before we really started to get down to the dirty grind of cooking, and I was bouncing back and forth between the kitchen and the dining hall. This was normally Robin’s part on a big gig. I usually helped in the kitchen until it was time to serve, then I changed and started carrying the trays. Today, I was doing it all, and I wasn’t sure how I was still standing upright.
At four, the attorneys, law clerks, secretaries, and other support staff that worked for the Kelly & Marshall Law Firm were beginning to wander in. Alcohol was being poured by the gallon, and appetizers were devoured the minute they left the room. We had four people working in the kitchen, one behind the bar and six were serving: three with drinks, three with food. We could have used another two people on each side of the serving, but we were working with what we had.
Around five-thirty, four of us backed up to the kitchen and began to do the final preps for dinner. Two people remained on the floor to make sure the guests had alcohol in abundance. The nice thing about this was that the tip jar on the bar was overflowing, and we would all reap its benefits at the end of the night.
I sidled up to the bar. “Josh, when they head into the dining room, let’s cull the tip jar. With all their drinking, they will probably forget they have left us one already.”
“You got it, Finley.”
I dragged my exhausted ass back to the kitchen. “Guys, I need to sit down for, like, five minutes. I’m going to go to the restroom and collapse into one of the chairs. If I’m not back in ten, send a rescue squad.”
There was laughter around the room. We had all been working hard, but I’d been everywhere, plus sending text messages to Robin to let her know things were going smoothly. I slipped the phone into my back pocket and pushed out the opposite door from the banquet area to head down the long hallway.
As I approached the corner, I heard hushed whispering and slowed my steps. My shoes didn’t make a sound on the tile, and I stopped at the corner to make sure I wasn’t walking in on something.
“I told you that you can’t be here,” a man said harshly.
“But I had to talk to you, and you weren’t answering my texts or calls,” the woman whined.
Chills zipped along my spine. I was more awake now than I had been all day.
“It’s been a crazy day, sweetheart. I’ll call you later. I need to get back in there. I’m getting an award, you know that.”
“I know you are, but this can’t wait.”
“It has to.” He sighed. “Look, Rebecca is in there and I need to get to our table.”
“I thought you said you were separated.” Her voice was a little shrill, and I wanted so badly to peek around the corner.
“We were, I mean we are, but the people I work with don’t know that.” I rolled my eyes, liar—man, what a douchebag. I almost felt sorry for the woman—almost. “Look, just go to the apartment. I’ll try to get away later.”
“Tom, I need to tell you something.”
“Autumn,” my heart nearly exploded out of my chest when he said her name. I’d known it was her, I recognized the voice, but now that he said her name, there was no doubt. “I have to go.”
“Tom, I’m pregnant.”
My jaw dropped, and my hand slapped over my mouth to keep any sound from bursting out.
“What? How do you know it’s mine?”
“I just do.”
“I don’t have time for this, Autumn. I’ll come see you later tonight.”
I put my back to the wall, hoping I could become invisible as he stalked past the entrance to the hallway. Holy crap, it was the guy from the café!
I winced. What if Autumn came this way? I clamped my bottom lip between my teeth and waited. A moment later, I heard soft footfalls on the carpet, but they were headed in the opposite direction. I peeked around the corner and saw her dressed in a black knee-length dress, her hair elegantly piled high on her head as she turned the corner.
Autumn was cheating on Rye? Well, snap, crackle, and pop! Here Roan had thought that his brother was the one cheating. I was rocking in my shoes on this. I would never have suspected Ms. Flippity-Jiggit to cheat on Rye, but then maybe her inability to choose carried over to her men, too.
What the heck was I supposed to do? Should I tell Roan? Maybe I should go directly to Rye. What if I went to Autumn and confronted her? Oh, crap! There wasn’t a right answer to this. I headed back to the kitchen, no longer needing a break because I was now wound tighter than a spring.
As if fate couldn’t be any funnier, Tom was in my table selection for serving. His wife was just as pretty as Autumn, and I wondered if she had any idea that her husband was a lying, cheating bastard. I had my doubts as they talked casually, and he held her hand on the table a few times. When it came time for him to get his award for the most billed hours, she kissed him lovingly, and I wanted to barf.
I was really tempted to pour hot coffee over the bastard’s head. By the end of the night, I was no closer to figuring out what the heck I was going to do, and when we finally got done cleaning and were heading back to Cricklewood Cove, I could barely keep my eyes open. I curled up in the backseat of one of the server’s cars.
Just as I began to drift, I realized that Roan hadn’t even tried to contact me. After what I’d seen this afternoon, I was pretty sure it was a good thing.
Chapter 26
Roan
I’d been gone ten very long days, and in those ten days, I’d flown on seven different planes to six different states, rented four cars, and stayed in eight separate hotels. I’d even had to buy some new clothes because I wasn’t anywhere long enough to have
clothing laundered, except at the five-star hotel in New York. There they had washed and delivered everything to me by six the next morning, but that had been my second to last hotel.
This morning, I’d boarded a flight from Chicago back to Philadelphia, met with my clients to assure them that I had contained their security breach, and collected my car. It was eight o’clock at night as I pulled into my driveway, and all I wanted was a cold beer, a hot meal, and my bed.
While I’d been gone, I’d barely spoken with Wade, who was still staying at the Landrys’. I wondered if they had given him his own room by now, maybe set up the papers to adopt him. He’d been with them over two weeks now.
The lights were on when I pulled up to the house and saw Rye’s car in the driveway. I groaned to myself. I didn’t have the energy to deal with the drama of my brother and his upcoming nuptials. I frowned as I put the car in park. Damn, his wedding was in four days.
I parked in the garage and let myself into the house. I could hear the television in the family room, and Rye was talking to someone. I hoped he hadn’t brought company over here. I dropped my bags at the end of the hallway and quickly realized that Rye was on the phone, thank god. I tossed my keys on the counter and grabbed a beer from the fridge, eying the shelves to see if there was anything quick to make. My eyes landed on the half-eaten plate of Alfredo that Finley had made the night I’d left. There was a science experiment going on under the Saran Wrap, but I didn’t have the energy to deal with it tonight. I shut the door and cracked open the beer.
Finley—
I’d barely had time to think about her these last ten days, but she was always there in the recesses of my mind. About halfway through my trip, I’d tried to call her, but her cellphone was turned off. I guessed Robin had given her a new one, and Finley hadn’t switched her number over, which was smart.
I’d meant to call Robin and discreetly ask for Finley’s number, but one thing led to another, and the days just kept rolling by. I wasn’t sure if Finley had told Robin anything about us. We’d never had a chance to discuss it after we’d left her house and come home. We hadn’t discussed much of anything that night. We’d let our bodies do the talking, and then I’d become a royal asshat.
She probably hated my guts now. What a way to show her that she could have a better life, that she deserved better, than to love her and leave her without a word. I wanted to kick my own ass.
“Hey, about time you got home.”
“Why are you here?”
“Autumn kicked me out,” he said as he dropped his cellphone on the coffee table. “She doesn’t want us to see each other this week since we’re getting married. Said something about making it more special.” He shrugged. “At least I’m not stuck listening to her talk about it constantly.”
I laughed. “True.”
“Hell of a case you’ve been working on, huh? Did you get it all cleared up?”
“Yeah, finally. It was a nightmare. I lost track of the number of security issues that we came across. Each time we found one, it was linked to another, and we had to send programmers in to fix them.”
“Good thing you know how to hack well,” he joked.
“Sometimes I wish I didn’t.” I took a seat beside him and leaned my head back. “What’s going on around here?”
“Nothing much. Work is work, and Autumn is being her usual neurotic self. In fact, she’s now at the stage where she cries over everything.”
“I’m gonna ask you again, are you sure you want to marry her?”
He sighed heavily, “Yeah, I do.”
“Why?”
He burst off the couch. “Let’s not go through this again. I’m getting married in a few days. Can’t you just be happy for me?”
“You want me to be happy for you? Fine. I’ll be happy for you, but I’ll be happier when you come tell me in a year or two that you made a mistake.”
“Why the hell do you think it’s a mistake?”
“Rye, you could do so much better. You’ve been with her for years, and I think you’re just with her because it’s easy.”
He laughed, “There is nothing easy about Autumn.”
“You know what I mean.” I stared at his stiff back as he stood in front of the window. “Can you honestly say that you love her with all your heart? That you’d do anything for her? Put your life on hold or change it because that’s what’s good for your family?”
“Dude,” he spun around and nailed me with a what-the-fuck look, “stop comparing my life with yours.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. I’m sorry that my relationship with Autumn is not as perfect as yours was with Sherry. Not everyone finds that kind of love.” I frowned, and he paused, “What?”
“What if my marriage wasn’t all that great? What if I’d been wearing blinders and made it out to be more than it was?”
“Are you shitting me? Roan, the relationship you had with Sherry was what every guy dreams about. You had a wife that adored you, let you do whatever you wanted. She loved you, and she was beautiful inside and out.”
I laughed uncomfortably. “You know, this week, I’ve been thinking about my relationship with Sherry. She let me do what I wanted because she was so lost in her own world, her own career. We never talked about anything important, not until she got sick. We barely had sex, man, and the sex we had was vanilla, not chocolate with whipped cream.”
Rye looked like I’d hit him with a ton of bricks. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying,” I pushed off the couch and stood, “that I loved Sherry, and I know she loved me, but our relationship was not as wonderful as everyone thinks it was. I didn’t realize that until recently.”
“What made you even think about it?”
I stared at my beer bottle. Did I really want to talk about this with Rye? If I couldn’t talk to my twin, whom could I talk to, right? “I slept with Finley.”
“O—kay.”
“It was incredible—the best sex I’d ever had because I felt things inside of myself that I’d never known existed.”
He looked surprised. “Wow.”
“It wasn’t just the sex, it was great, but sex is sex—you know? It was a deeper connection, like we fit perfectly from our bodies to our minds,” I walked over to the counter and set the bottle down, “and then I blew it.”
“What do you mean, you blew it?”
“I shut down after we had sex because I suddenly realized that what I’d put on a pedestal with Sherry hadn’t been real, not in the way I was thinking. When she died, I put my life on hold because I thought she was the only woman I could love, that I would forever only have her memory.”
“You know that’s not true. Sherry wouldn’t want you to be alone forever.”
“I know that. We even talked about it when she was sick. She wanted me to move on, pretty much made me promise I would.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t, but I’m ready to now. Finley opened a door in my head and my heart, and I’m ready to walk through it.”
“Does she know this?” He came over to the counter and crossed his arms over his chest as he leaned back against it.
“No, I haven’t spoken to her since right after we had sex. In fact, while I was upstairs trying to think straight, she left the house. I haven’t spoken to her since she walked out of the bedroom that night.”
“Huh,” he nodded, “that’s probably why she gave me the cold shoulder at the café the other day.”
I stiffened, “What do you mean?”
“I was in there on Saturday. She would barely speak to me. I think that if there had been another waitress working, she wouldn’t have said anything to me at all.”
“Crap. I really need to talk to her.”
“Man, I can’t believe you didn’t even at least text her.”
“I tried calling her, but her phone number has changed. Robin got her a new phone, and I don’t have the number, and I didn’t want to call R
obin in case Finley told her what was going on.”
“You need to fix this, Roan.”
“I know, Rye.”
He shook his head. “How did you get to be so lucky?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Yeah, you say your relationship with Sherry wasn’t all that great, but on the outside, it was picture perfect and everyone was always jealous as hell of you guys, me included. Now, you feel stuff from Finley that you pretty much say has opened your eyes to something totally new—and great.”
“You know that you could find that, too. You don’t have to settle for Autumn.”
“I’m not settling.” He frowned, “Okay, maybe I am.”
“I’m not saying call it off right now, but I wanted you to really think about it, Rye. I don’t want to see you get hurt. I want you to have a woman you can really love.”
“Like you love Finley?”
“I—” I paused, “I can’t say that I love her, but there are feelings there that run deep. I barely know her, and yet I want her as part of my life. It just feels right. You know?”
He smacked my back, “Yeah, bro, I know.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I guess I need to do some serious thinking.”
“I think that would be wise.”
“What are you going to do about Finley?”
“I’m gonna try to talk to her, explain to her what was going on. She was pretty understanding the night we were together. She even suggested we go to her room when I hesitated to bring her to mine.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, and after, she walked out of the room with a smile, giving me time to come to grips with things. She came down here, made dinner, but I sat upstairs for hours lost in memories. When I finally came down, she was gone and then I got the phone call about this security issue.”
“Great timing.”
“Tell me about it.” I yawned so widely that my jaw cracked.