by Roxy Mews
They didn’t leave the tiny house for another two days. Today would be no different if he could have any say about it. They’d occasionally eat as well, but they hadn’t bothered with proper clothes for more than a couple hours since she ripped the buttons from his shirt.
It was hedonistic and raw, and frankly Brandon never thought he had it in him to be so fucking adventurous.
But after taking stock, they had to put on clothes and venture out today. They were out of condoms. And food too, but mostly condoms. Of course the most important shipment had been unable to find its way to Felicity’s door.
Felicity hopped out of her truck and spun in a circle on her way to the farmer’s market. She was wearing a knee-length peasant skirt. Brandon knew from getting dressed beside her, that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath that light fabric. The sun shone high in the sky and illuminated her. Brandon could see the outline of her legs through the material, and he shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from lifting it just a bit higher. The breeze let the skirt float just above her lower thighs and he knew she could feel the warm air between her legs.
They needed to get back home. He might be brainwashed, but he was enjoying every damn second of it.
“Did you grab the rolling cart?” Felicity already had an armful of fresh fruit and vegetables waiting to get loaded.
“Just give me a quick second to unfold it.”
One exasperated sigh shattered his sense of peace. “There you are.”
The outside world started to crack his bubble of sex haze. Brandon finished unfolding the cart and let Felicity load it up. His boss was here. Brandon didn’t want to get pulled back into things, but he came crashing back to reality when his boss’s suit shone like a neon sign among all the natural fibers around them.
“Mr. Pembrook. I didn’t know you were looking for me.”
Felicity frowned at him for the first time in half a week. He didn’t like it, but he let his boss usher him away.
Pembrook made sure Felicity was out of earshot.
The man pulled a chewed on cigar from his lips and scoffed. “How could you know? Your phone has been going straight to voicemail for the last forty-eight hours. We need to talk.”
Brandon turned and saw Felicity giving a leery look to them both, but she made no move to interrupt. Even though she wouldn’t be able to hear their words, she had to know this was about her. Brandon sure did.
“Is this about the purchase of her land?”
The look on Pembrook’s face told him this had nothing to do with buying her plot for her. His boss chewed his cheek and scoffed. This was going to be something Brandon didn’t want to hear.
“Is it something that I have to know before the month is up?” Brandon asked with his voice as low as he could make it. He didn’t want it to be over already. His mind had been able to push reality away successfully, and he had been thoroughly enjoying his ignorance. The look in Pembrook’s eyes told him those days were about to be over.
“You want me to keep information from you?” Pembrook had never been left speechless. This was no exception. “You have to want to know what kind of woman you are sharing space with.”
“I know a lot about her now. It’s true, I don’t know much about her past, but there are a lot of people who leave bad things behind.” The market didn’t seem to glitter as brightly anymore. His mind started to clear, and Brandon didn’t like it at all.
“That’s the thing. She didn’t leave anything bad behind. Quite the opposite actually.” His boss looked around. Pembrook was drawing attention and he wasn’t fond of that. “We need to go somewhere else to talk. Now.”
Brandon pushed a finger in his boss’s face. “Give me one minute. Please.”
He jogged over to Felicity, who was inspecting the same apple for the third time when he reached her.
“What’s going on?” she asked the fruit.
“Let me take this stuff back to the truck for you. I need to head out with my boss. There’s some kind of crisis he wants to talk to me about.” Brandon forced a smile that had come so easily not five minutes ago. “Probably a sketchy sales month without me at the helm.”
“Don’t lie.”
He stepped back. “I don’t know what he wants to say, but…”
She paid for the apple she’d been groping and tossed it on top of the rolling cart. “I’ll call Debbie and set up the final interview. She told me if we decide to cut the tiny house challenge short, she wanted to know.”
“I never said I was leaving.”
Even as he said the words, he realized she might not be asking if he was, but telling him to go. His morning coffee felt like acid in his gut. He didn’t want to go, but he had to. Didn’t he?
“Whatever your boss wants to tell you about me—and I know it’s something about me since he has to take you away—you’re probably not going to like what you hear. And if you do…well, you’re probably not the type of guy I want in my bed.” Felicity grabbed the cart and tilted it on its wheels. “I am perfectly capable of carrying my own groceries. I’ll meet you back at the house when you’re done.”
Felicity wheeled off, and Brandon was at a loss. She didn’t think he’d want to stay with her when he found out about her past, and his boss had braved the hippie market, as he liked to call it.
What the hell was he about to hear?
* * * * *
Brandon ordered the eggs benedict. They were at a restaurant the bank commonly used for meetings. Top of the line food, with privacy on the side. They were in a small room the bank reserved for wooing clients. Brandon didn’t feel wooed at the moment. He felt like he was getting some very heavy wool pulled from over his eyes. And what he was hearing made him itch.
“She’s rich?” Brandon wiped his mouth after nearly spitting out his food.
“From one of the richest families in the country. A couple years back, she was set to begin a reality show about her family life in luxury hills. They had her contract signed and some of the promotional work shot. Then in the middle of an awards show, she just walks out, and drops out of the spotlight.”
Brandon looked at the files, and pictures, and could not believe it. He had to look past the colored and straightened hair, but those were definitely his Felicity’s eyes. “She’s a Newowski?”
“I’m guessing the only one with a natural hair color now, but yes. I’ve been in touch with her parents, and they haven’t heard from her in over six months. They weren’t exactly the easiest people to get in touch with, but when I finally heard back from their assistants, I got the confirmation I needed.” He leaned in closer. “If you can convince Felicity to return home, they’ve agreed to move all of their local accounts to our bank. And we are talking enough money to buy and sell the city several times over. The growth bonus alone will pay for my kids’ college. In Europe.”
“You don’t want to take this to the press? You want me to convince her to go back to mommy and daddy morebucks?” Suddenly the fancy food was just a reminder of what he’d been fooled into believing. He didn’t want another bite.
“It’s always been about business, Brandon. Having you bend to this stunt request from the local reporter was good PR. But PR doesn’t translate to this kind of return. I think we need to make these people happy, because making them happy will make me very happy.”
“Won’t the news stations pick up on this anyway? They’re all invested in Felicity’s charity. This won’t go away.”
Mr. Pembrook obviously didn’t have the same dead sick weight in the pit of his stomach that Brandon did. The man destroyed his plate of crapes in a just a few bites. “You think the media can’t be bought? If we bring home daughter dearest, the Newowskis’ will take care of the press.”
“Those people are spotlight hogs. They will use this to spin off more tell-all books or publicity for their parties. I don’t think Felicity will want that.”
“You think you know about what this woman wants?”
“I know a
lot about her.” Brandon had to say it. He had to believe it at least on some level.
“Then how come you didn’t know this?”
And that was all he could think about heading back to the tiny house in a cab. It was two hours later. Brandon had let himself be distracted at the restaurant with sales figures and spreadsheets, and planning projects for when he returned to work.
He realized he was fooling himself thinking he could get away from reality for a whole month. He would just be running away from who he was. Because as much fun as he’d had working on the building projects with Tom, and as much as he loved the smell of a woodwick candle, and knowing where everything he used on a day to day basis came from, it wasn’t his reality. Hell, it wasn’t even Felicity’s.
Brandon had a big apartment that was perfect for entertaining clients. Before he’d lived with Felicity, he would have called those same people friends, but in reality, he was more connected to this woman who he didn’t know a damn thing about. He shouldn’t be angry. She hadn’t promised him anything. He’d known she was hiding something. But he hadn’t expected this.
After putting cash in the hands of the cab driver, who conveniently didn’t have change for a fifty, Brandon stood outside the tiny house, staring at it. The building was simple in shape and design from the outside, but inside it was exactly what Felicity needed it to be. Inside was something just perfect for her. For a few days, it had felt like Brandon could fit too.
He squared his shoulders, turned off the phone Pembrook had forced him to take until his own recharged, and stepped inside.
Chapter Thirty-One
It was a mistake to let someone get this close. It was a mistake to want to help people. Her mother had always told Felicity that charity work had to be looked at as an investment. Her mother told her that it was important to know what press would be in attendance, and how many people were already interested in the cause before taking it up.
Felicity didn’t want to think about the payoff for giving people homes. She just wanted to make people happy.
Turned out the road to hell was paved with good intentions.
Brandon didn’t even knock as he stepped inside her home. He didn’t say anything as he pulled a chair from the wall and sat down.
His boss had uncovered who she used to be. It was the only thing that made sense. Felicity hadn’t even called home in…it had to be at least a year. She was sick of her parents’ demands and even more tired of them putting her down. She’d had to walk away. She couldn’t be happy with them, and they couldn’t be happy for her. So she’d done what was best for her heart, and stopped trying to reason with a brick wall of money.
There was a part of her that had held out just a smidge of hope she was wrong. Brandon crushed it.
“I have to say…” he started and looked up at her, and the disappointment was crushing. “This is the first time I’ve ever slept with someone and didn’t know their real last name.”
He crossed his legs and his arms, and she watched as his face washed clean of the emotion she’d shared with him the last few days.
He finally just asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I changed my name. Who I was in the past wasn’t relevant to who I am now, or what I’m trying to do.”
“If you needed money, why didn’t you use your trust fund?”
“I don’t want their money.” Felicity wrapped her arms around her stomach. “And I would have to change my name back if I wanted to access it. My parents refused to recognize my name change.”
“They do all kinds of charity work. I’m sure they’d write a check for this whole thing and you could go off and do whatever you wanted. Like…go back home.”
Felicity felt the bile rise in her throat at the suggestion of returning to her parents’ house. They weren’t abusive, and they weren’t violent, but they were apathetic. They came from money, and their only skills seemed to revolve around making more of it. Any difference they made in the lives of other people was dwarfed by the amount of work they put into maintaining their status. She was sick of it all.
“I don’t belong there. And they might not even want me back at this point.” Which she wasn’t all too upset about.
“They want you back, trust me.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“My boss spoke with them.”
Felicity didn’t want to hear this. She was free. She’d finally gotten free of it all, and because of a name, she couldn’t run far enough away to escape her family’s money. Then she realized exactly what was going on here.
Felicity grabbed the other chair off the wall and sat just millimeters from Brandon. “What did they offer you?”
“They didn’t offer me anything. I didn’t speak with them.”
Which meant they offered something to his company. Because it always was a bargaining tool. This was something they could give him without even speaking with him, so it had to be through his business. And business was the most important thing, after all.
“How much money are they giving the bank?”
His silence told her it was a whole hell of a lot.
“What do you have to do to get this money?”
His self-righteous posture deflated a bit as he said, “I have to convince you to go back home to your family.”
Felicity laughed. She laughed as she pulled out his suitcase she’d packed for him. She laughed as she put it outside. She laughed as she got in her truck and backed it up to the trailer. She was still laughing when Brandon finally came out to see what she was doing. But when she went to hook up the hitch, the laughter turned to tears. She couldn’t do it.
She stood at the bed of the truck and stared at the hitch. She could crank down the jack just six inches, pull her house away and be gone in minutes. She touched the black metal and realized she couldn’t pull away from all the people who wanted to support this community as much as she did.
Wiping her eyes she went back around to the front of the house and expected to see Brandon standing there. She expected to hop up on her hay bale and yell at him for planning her future like everyone else in her life wanted to do, but the hay bale had been kicked aside, and Tom was putting the completed steps he and Brandon had been working on in its place.
“You look like shit when you cry. You should do that less.” Tom pulled down some metal flaps he’d installed on her siding and slid the steps into a track to keep them stable. They matched her style perfectly.
“I thought we agreed you’d use these for one of the new houses we’d planned.” Felicity was a little miffed at not having the hay bale to poke her feet anymore.
“You’re the one who needs the stability most, right now.” Tom stretched and hitched a thumb toward his own F-250. “I’ve got Bob the Builder in my truck there. Said you kicked him out.”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now, Tom.”
He stared her down. She didn’t have the energy to tell him he was being rude.
“You’ll be here when I get back?”
“When are you coming back?” she asked.
“I start construction on the first house tomorrow. I was going to move the trailer I bought tonight.”
“But…where’d you get the money?” Felicity had to wrack her brain. The GoFundMe account was still being processed. There was a significant amount of cash from donations sent into the station, but it was all in the business account.
“Brandon put me on the bank account. We were going to surprise you. Something tells me you surprised him first. But I still want to do this. I still think this is a great idea.”
Felicity did too. “What if you find out something about me that might change your mind about who I am?”
“I know you.” Tom pointed to the truck. “That guy…he cares about you, but sometimes that romantic crap gets in the way of knowing a person. Have you killed anyone?”
“No!”
“Do you have a stash of fetish porn?”
“No!”
“Damn. I was kind of hoping that one would be a yes.” Tom smiled and trotted off toward the truck. When he opened the door to hop inside, he looked back. “You are the same person who hired me because I wanted to help people just as much as you did. We’re going to do something great. That trumps a past in my book.”
Felicity smiled. She’d spent the whole last year telling herself she didn’t care about who she used to be, but in reality, she’d cared so much she’d gone into hiding.
After driving her truck back where it belonged—far away from the trailer hitch—she went inside and evaluated the contents of her closet.
Then she pulled her hanging clothes aside, and light from the window glistened off the blue sequins at the back of the bar. Grabbing the top of the wooden hanger, she listened to the beads and sequins clink together. The dress was heavy. It wasn’t as light and airy as the cotton she wore most of the time. Taking off every piece of clothing left her cold in more ways than one, but she didn’t stop. She slid the Versace dress back over her head for the first time since she’d left.
When she’d run from her old life, this dress had felt like a weight on her shoulders that she’d never be able to get rid of.
Now that she stood in her tiny house, very over dressed for the life she had now, it didn’t feel as oppressive. The dress felt like it could block off all the emotional turmoil she’d gone through tonight. Her old life had been all about appearances, and she could glimpse her old self when she touched the fabric. She went to the pocket door by her bathroom and looked in the mirror.
Before, her shoulders had slumped under the weight of the dress. It was a symbol of what she was supposed to do. Now when she wore it, she could see the countertops she’d picked out on her own behind her. She could see the dishrack she’d broken in a moment of passion and had no desire to fix. The slight glint from her Nan’s thimble on top reminded her it was still home, no matter what she was wearing.
Felicity pulled her mass of curly hair up and held it off her neck. It had taken over two hours to straighten her hair for the awards show where she’d last worn this dress. Felicity had sat in a chair for so long her ass had fallen asleep, only to be woken up after walking in high heels she didn’t even like.