I gently tug my arm out of his grasp and sit back down, watching him. “Okay.”
“I didn’t want to come home,” he says as he pets the cat, currently purring happily as if he lives here. “I guess things are just weird right now. But that doesn’t mean I can snap at you. You’re the sweetest person I know.”
“You don’t know me anymore,” I murmur, remembering what I thought about in the car. Landon’s brows furrow, but then he nods.
“Maybe not. But I do know that you’re sweet, and I care about you, and I just wanted to say I’m sorry for being an ass.”
“Thank you.”
He looks over at me now and really looks at me, his eyes tracking me from head to toe, then finding mine again. “You look great.”
“Thank you,” I repeat, not knowing what else to say. I can see that he’s hurting, and maybe confused, and everything in me wants to scoop him up and pet him, like he is the cat, to soothe him and comfort him.
But I can’t. It’s not my place. So I sit where I am, waiting for him to make the next move.
After a long minute, he stands, sets the cat on the floor, and walks to the door. “Thanks for stopping by, Cami,” he says, nods, and walks out.
I sigh and stare at the cat. “You’re not going to leave, are you?”
He simply jumps back up on the couch where Landon was just sitting, curls into a ball, and immediately goes to sleep.
“YOU’RE LATE.” I INFORM RILEY, who just walked through my door with a bottle of wine and a grocery store sack full of ice cream.
“Sorry,” she says as she hurries into the kitchen to stow away the ice cream and pop open the wine. “I got held up on a call with the web designer. But I brought sugar and wine, so I should be forgiven. Besides, the show hasn’t started yet.”
I slap slices of pizza on plates for both of us, and we each take a plate and a glass to the living room, and settle in for our date night.
Every week, Riley, another best friend of mine, and business partner, comes over and we watch our favorite shows back to back while eating bad food and drinking too much wine.
It’s tradition.
“Meow,” the cat says as he slinks into the room, his nose sniffing out the food.
“What the hell!” Riley says in surprise. “When did you get a cat?”
“I didn’t,” I reply as the opening credits for The Vampire Diaries begins. “He got me.”
“Huh?”
I explain how he ran in the house and refused to leave. “So, I bought him some food and a bed and some toys.”
“You got a cat,” Riley says, grinning.
“He got me,” I say again.
“What’s his name?”
“Scoot. Because he won’t scoot.”
“I think it’s awesome,” Riley says with a smile and scratches Scoot’s ears, making him purr. “He’s so pretty.”
“And stubborn. He doesn’t listen. I tell him he can’t sleep on my bed, and he does it anyway. The only thing he does right is use the litter box.”
“He’s a cat,” she says with a shrug. “That’s what cats do.”
We settle in to eat and watch TV as Scoot jumps up on the back of the couch and curls in a ball to sleep and watch over us.
“I’m telling you,” Riley says as she sips her wine. “That Ian Somerhalder is going to eventually be my husband.”
“He’s already married,” I remind her and watch as young vampires feed on innocent bystanders while also saving the town from evil.
It’s an amazing sort of irony.
“For him I could be a homewrecker,” she says thoughtfully. “I mean, look at him.”
“Sexy for sure,” I reply with a nod. “Except when he has blood dripping down his chin.”
“I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for having blood dripping down his chin,” she says with a smirk. “Unless he wanted to do me in the bathroom.”
“Ew,” I reply.
“You don’t like to do it in the bathroom?”
“No, the blood part. Ew.”
We giggle, then settle in to enjoy the rest of the show. When it’s over, I pause the DVR so we can clean up the pizza, refill our wine and scoop ice cream. Because right after The Vampire Diaries is The Originals, an off-shoot of the Vampire Diaries.
Just as I’m about to resume the TV, Riley says, “So, have you seen Landon?”
She’s not looking directly at me, and she says it as if she’s asking me if I’ve checked the weather forecast for tomorrow.
“I saw him the other day,” I reply. “Just for a minute.”
I really don’t want to get into it. The girls all know that I’ve crushed on Landon for years.
“Kat said he came into the restaurant the other day,” Riley says. Kat is the fifth friend of our group. The five of us co-own Seduction, a trendy restaurant in Portland. We’ve been open for almost a year, and business couldn’t be better.
“Did he?” I ask.
“She said he looks pretty good.”
No he doesn’t. He’s sad and maybe scared, and it’s not my job to help him.
“Good for him.”
I press play and pretend to be engrossed in the show. When I’m finished with my ice cream, Scoot jumps down into my lap and curls up, but when I pet him, he hisses, so I leave him be.
“I know that Mia is glad that Landon’s home.” Riley says, and now I want to hiss at her.
“Why are we still talking about this?”
“Because you’re not saying anything,” she says.
“There’s nothing to say. He’s home.”
“And you love him,” she reminds me.
I shake my head. “I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t know him, Ri. I’ve carried a torch for a boy I used to know. A lot has happened.”
She’s frowning. “But it’s Landon.”
“I’m fine,” I say, exasperated. “It’ll be nice to see him once in a while, but I’m not a teenager, Riley.”
“Is it weird because of Brian?” she asks, making me frown.
“Why would it be weird because of Brian?” I’m deliberately being a pain in the ass. I don’t like to talk about this. It just makes me feel guilty and bad.
“Look, people get divorced all the time,” Riley’s voice is calm and matter-of-fact. “I’ll admit that being friends with your ex is odd, but people do it. I’ve heard.”
“Brian doesn’t have anything to do with Landon.”
“Well, given that they didn’t know each other before, and Brian’s not even from here, you wouldn’t think so. But I know differently.” Riley’s eyes are soft as she watches me. She’s the only one who knows all of the reasons that my marriage to Brian didn’t work.
And one of the reasons is Landon.
“I was young, and when I met Brian—”
“You were still hung up on Landon. I know.”
“But I didn’t marry Brian to spite Landon, Riley. That’s dumb. I did fall in love with Brian, and our relationship evolved naturally to marriage. It was the logical next step.”
“Logical,” she says with a nod.
I blow out a gusty breath. I don’t have to tell Riley that my marriage with Brian didn’t work because I’d never allowed myself to fall in love with him the way he deserved. That I’d been holding a piece of my heart aside for Landon.
Even though I knew that Landon wasn’t going to ever come back.
Except now he’s back, and I’m no kid, and I’m still so attracted to him that it’s silly.
“Can we not talk about this anymore and watch our show now?”
“Okay.” She doesn’t sound convinced, but I really don’t want to talk about Landon. When the show is over, we clean up and Riley leaves, and I climb the stairs to my bedroom. I don’t argue with Scoot when he jumps onto the bed and curls up behind my knees.
I’m not a teenager anymore. I failed in a marriage with a good man because I was hung up on Landon. It’s childish. It’s ridiculous.
; It needs to stop now. It’s past time to move on with my life.
I LOVE OUR RESTAURANT. WE’VE worked our asses off for it. I walk through the dining room and stop to fuss over a centerpiece, enjoying the cozy color scheme and richness of the fabrics. It’s inviting. Sexy.
Everything about our place is sexy. We made sure of it. From the warm atmosphere to the aphrodisiacs on the menu, Seduction screams classy sex.
And I like to think that it mirrors the five women who own and run it.
I walk through to the wine bar that Kat runs and grin when I see her and Mia, our master chef, with their heads bent over wine goblets, sniffing deeply.
“It smells like wine,” Mia says.
“It smells like cherries and oak. It’s full-bodied.”
“Like me.” Mia smirks and pats her round hip. Mia may carry a few extra pounds, but she’s sexy as can be with it. Her long dark hair, usually worn up and under a hat, hangs in loose curls to her waist.
“I wish I had your curves,” I say as I join them. “What are you doing?”
“Kat’s trying to teach me how to smell wine.”
“How’s that going?”
“It smells like wine,” Mia says with a shrug.
“I give up,” Kat says with a frown, her red lips twisting in disgust.
“Kat, you’re the one that needs to know this stuff,” I remind her. “And you’re excellent at it.”
“Exactly,” Mia agrees, nodding. “You’re the wine expert. I’ll keep doing what I do in the kitchen.”
“Good plan,” Addie says, her heels clicking on the hardwood as she and Riley join us. Addie’s tall and rocks curves of her own. She’s the most fashionable person I know, and as she’s a former model, I’d expect nothing less.
“Kat, I just got off the phone with Leah, your new bartender. She’ll be here by three to start training.”
“Cool,” Kat says with a nod. “Not sure why she called the front of the house and not my cell.”
“She said she lost your number. She sounds a little— ” Addie struggles to find the word.
“Not the brightest bulb in the shed?” Kat asks. “She’s a little dense, but she’s an excellent bartender, she’s adorable, and she doesn’t take shit from the customers who have had too much to drink. She comes highly recommended.”
“I totally trust your judgment,” Addie replies with a smile. “I’m just passing along the message.”
“Do not try to set her up with Brian,” Kat says, pointing her finger at me. “I mean it.”
“I would not do that,” I reply, as innocently as possible. “Like I would set people up with my ex-husband.” I can’t stop my lips from twitching.
“Right. Because you haven’t tried to set him up with every single woman you know, including us,” Mia replies and rolls her eyes. “Finding dates for your ex is just weird.”
“For your information, he’s been finding his own dates lately,” I reply and sniff haughtily. My ex-husband, Brian, is a good man, and I want him to find an awesome girl. He deserves that. I just wasn’t the girl for him, but we’re still good friends.
“Now that we’re all here,” I begin, changing the subject, and open the folder I brought in with me, “lets talk about the expansion.”
“I can’t believe that we’re expanding already,” Riley says, eyeing Mia’s wine. “We’ve been open less than a year.”
“And we’re bursting at the seams,” I reply. “With Jake packing in crowds every weekend, and word spreading of what a fun, sexy place this is, our wait times are too long. I’ve made graphs and spreadsheets. Needing to expand isn’t a bad thing.”
“I agree,” Addie says with a nod. “And I think we’d be packing in people with or without Jake. Just don’t tell him I said that.”
Jake Knox is Addie’s husband, and a former rock star who’s been playing at Seduction on the weekends. His voice is pure sex, and is perfect for the atmosphere of our place.
“Oh God, she brought graphs,” Mia says, hanging her head in her hand. “This is all a foreign language to me.”
“I was able to talk the former owners next door down far enough that we can pay cash for the space.” I say, ignoring Mia, and pass around the report I typed up last night after Riley left and I couldn’t sleep. I’ve attached the graphs and spreadsheets to the back.
“We don’t have to take out a loan?” Kat asks, surprised. “That’s awesome.”
“You are such a great financial officer, Cami,” Mia says with a smile. “I used to hate your budgets, but it’s exactly what we needed.”
I grin. Mia’s disgust over my budgets was never a secret. The passionate chef has thrown many a spatula at my head when I told her she couldn’t have more money for extra truffles.
“Honestly, my only concern is time,” Addie says. “I don’t have time to oversee construction. I know that Mia practically lives in the kitchen, and with Kat running the bar, and Riley dealing with marketing, who is going to take the lead on this?”
“I agree, and honestly, now that Seduction is my only client, I have the time to take on the project.” I fold my hands over the folder and take a deep breath. As of two months ago, I closed my other CPA business, and am now exclusively devoted to Seduction. Not that I wasn’t before, but a girl can handle working sixteen hour days for only so long before she starts to go a little nutty.
“Are you sure?” Riley asks. “It’s going to be a busy few months.”
“I’m sure.”
“Awesome,” Mia says. “You and Landon will do a great job.”
“Excuse me?”
“Landon.” Mia grins and nods toward the entrance, where Landon is walking our way. “He’s taking the lead on the construction side.”
“Hi ladies,” Landon says as he joins us. “I hear you have a project for me.”
“We have a construction crew we work with,” I sputter, but Mia just grins knowingly.
“Dad’s thinking of retiring, and Landon’s taking up some of the slack,” she says. “We’ll have the same crew, but Landon will be in charge of it.”
“Cami’s going to be in charge,” Addie informs him. “So anything you need, you just call her.”
“Great,” he replies, and I finally glance up at him only to find him watching me with those shining blue eyes. “I promise to go easy on you.”
I swallow and can’t help but laugh at the irony. Just when I’ve decided to keep my distance from Landon, he takes on the job that I’ll be working intimately on.
Murphy’s Law.
Fucking Murphy.
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Listen To Me (Fusion #1) Page 25