by Inara Scott
“Thinking about me?” He pulled her tightly against him. Her back nestled against his chest and his chin dropped on top of her head. “Why would you do a thing like that?”
“Because you keep sending me e-mails,” she managed to retort. “How am I supposed to get any work done? It’s very distracting, you know.”
“You are a piece of work, sweetheart,” Brit said admiringly. “You keep fighting until the bitter end.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “You should stay at a hotel tonight. That way I won’t wake you up in the morning.”
“At some point I’m going to start taking this personally.”
“Well, you should,” Tori pushed back into a sitting position, and then heaved herself out the bed.
“Come with me,” he said suddenly, the words falling, unbidden, from his lips.
“Where? To a hotel? Haven’t you heard a word I said? I need to work tomorrow.” She punctuated each word slowly and distinctly. “If I don’t work, Karl leaves the firm. I lose my most important client, and probably kill any hope of partnership in the process.”
“No. Not to a hotel. To Scotland.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Scotland?” Tori’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t believe what he’d said. “Brit, I can’t even take off the weekend. How am I going to go to Scotland?”
“You’re a fourth-year associate at a law firm, Tori, not the president of the United States. Take the week to wrap things up. Or if you’re really concerned about it, take two weeks and meet me there.”
Tori’s entire body twitched with a combination of shock and anger. “Good to know you think I’m completely expendable.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Brit said. “Of course you’d be missed. They’d have to hire three associates to replace you.”
She knew he was trying to defuse her temper with humor, but she had no interest in being mollified. The very idea of her going to Scotland was ridiculous, and Brit knew it.
She spun around on her heel and started down the stairs. “I’m getting myself a cup of tea, and then I’m going to bed. By myself.”
She padded down the stairs. Brit followed a few paces behind.
When they reached the kitchen, he leaned against a counter, watching as she strode across the room to grab the old metal teakettle. His deep voice echoed in the empty room. “You won’t even consider it?”
Tori paused, her fingers tightening around the handle of the kettle. “I can’t. I told you what Karl said tonight. I slack off, he leaves the firm. I can’t risk that.”
The amusement left Brit’s voice. “Yes, you can. In fact, if you don’t start risking it, I’m afraid you’re going to lose something far more important than your job.”
Tori’s heart fluttered. She filled the kettle and set it on the stove, then grabbed a cup and a tea bag from the cupboard by the sink. Her cell phone rang from the living room but she ignored it. Probably Karl, making sure she was still working. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“Look around you, Tori. Think about it. You’re living in an empty house, spending every minute you aren’t sleeping at work. How do you expect to have any friends? How are you ever going to have any relationships?”
She stared at him, her mouth dropping open in astonishment. “You just figured this out about me? Brit, I do what I have to do to make partner. That’s all. That’s what I’m living for.”
“But that makes no sense!” He pushed off the counter and stalked toward her. “You are a beautiful, intelligent, vibrant woman. Why do you punish yourself this way?”
“You may not know this,” Tori retorted, “but some of us need our jobs. Some of us need to know that when the bill comes from the nursing home, they’ll have the money to pay it.”
“I get that, I do.” Brit ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “I don’t get the way you do it. You treat everything that’s not work like it’s an annoyance. A distraction from what really matters.”
The emotions were coming too quickly for Tori to catalog. She reacted without thinking, the words spilling out in an unplanned, uncontrollable rush. “We had nothing, Brit. Absolutely nothing. My father left my mother with an overdrawn checking account, a high school diploma, and an eight-year-old kid. She worked harder than any person you’ve ever met, and now she’s in a nursing home, and she doesn’t remember her own name. I won’t risk her life. I won’t.”
“Tori…” Brit reached out to touch her shoulder but she jerked away. He ignored her and reached out again, this time turning her to face him. “Tori, you can’t go back and fix things for your mother. I don’t care how successful you are. It won’t change what she went through.”
“No. It won’t. But I sure as hell can make sure I don’t repeat her mistakes.”
“Ah. I see.” Brit dropped his hand. “You’re determined to cast yourself as your mother, and me as your father. You refuse to accept the possibility that maybe there’s a man out there who’s worth taking a chance on. And yes, I know I didn’t exactly start out the right way, but things have changed. At least, they have for me.”
Tori’s throat caught. “What changed?”
“I don’t want you for a month, Tori. I thought that would be enough but it isn’t. I want more. I want to rub your shoulders as you fall asleep. I want to cook you breakfast in the morning. I want you to come away with me because you can see that work isn’t the most important thing in the world.”
Her mother’s voice echoed in Tori’s head. Before you trust a man, Tori, ask yourself, Where will you be if he leaves you? How will you keep going after he’s gone?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Work is the most important thing to me. I can’t afford to take this weekend off. Not for anyone.”
He threw up his hands in frustration. “So that’s it? You’re ready to give it all up for a weekend in the office?”
“Give what up? Give up a short-term affair with a man who is running away from his own life and trying to reclaim his lost youth? Sorry if that doesn’t sound more promising than a lifelong career.” Tori knew she was lashing out at him, perhaps unfairly, but it seemed vitally important that he stop looking at her with those solemn, sad eyes. He needed to feel a little of the heartbreak that was enveloping her.
“I screwed up a lot of things in my life, Tori. I worked too hard for too long. I tried to order around my family like they were a bunch of unruly kids. I’m lucky they didn’t disown me. But I’m ready to start over. You’re determined to stay here in this empty, hollow house, running in your hamster wheel, terrified to let anyone into your life. Who’s running away? Me, or you?”
“You knew what I had to offer,” Tori said, closing her mind to any further attacks. “We said one month, no commitments. I kept my end of the bargain.”
“Well, I didn’t.” Brit looked around the room, and Tori could feel him cataloging the dust on the appliances, and the stack of dishes in the sink. “I wasn’t ready to walk away from you. That’s why I asked you to come to Scotland. But now I wonder if maybe I was wrong. Maybe you don’t want to start over. Maybe I should walk away.”
“Please, go right ahead,” Tori said, her heart breaking in tiny, tingling pieces. “It isn’t as though I wasn’t expecting it.”
“If I leave, I’m not coming back,” Brit warned, his dark brows pulled together, his eyes boring into her as if they could see into her very soul. “You say I’m trying to reclaim my lost youth, and maybe that’s true. I wasn’t happy with the life I was living, and I’m starting something new. I want you to come with me, but I understand if that’s not possible.”
Tori’s entire body felt as if it had become a single, open wound. She stifled a cry of pain. “You’re not playing fair. You’ve got a perfect family, and a job, and money, and it’s all waiting for you when you come back.” She slammed down her cup on the counter, her entire body trembling with restrained emotion. “You’ve got everything to come back to and I’ve got nothing, Brit. N
othing but Goddamn Karl Bulcher!”
Brit paused. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right.”
Tori blinked. “What? You mean…”
“I mean, I can’t ask you to give that up.” He strode forward and pulled her into a quick embrace. “You need to get some sleep. I’ll stay at a hotel tonight. You won’t hear from me again. I hope things work out for you, Tori. I really do.”
Then, as quickly as he had come, Brit turned around and left.
…
So you gave her the ultimatum and she turned you down.
Brit drove away from Tori’s house feeling like he’d ripped out his own heart. When he’d walked into that house and seen how she’d been living, he should have known the answer to his question. Of course she wouldn’t come away with him.
Tori’s scars went far deeper than he’d imagined. It would take a bulldozer to get her away from her job.
He forced himself to keep driving, even though every muscle in his body screamed at him to turn around. He was done trying to fix people. He had reached out to her and she’d pushed him away. He had to move on. It wasn’t as if they were married. They weren’t even dating, according to Tori. He’d tried to change the boundaries of their relationship—if one could even call it that—and she’d said no.
End of story.
So why did he feel like walking out her door was the biggest mistake he’d ever made?
Chapter Twenty
Chest heaving, despair clawing at her throat, Tori watched Brit drive away. The phone began to ring even as the enormity of what had happened settled like a cold weight on her shoulders. The terrible, painful things he had said swirled in her mind. She walked back to the living room in a daze, barely registering the fact that the answering machine had picked up.
“Miss Anderson? This is Chad from Langston Estate. Can you please call me as soon as possible? Thanks.”
She froze. A horrible rush of terror left her momentarily dizzy. Struggling with a wave of nausea, she bolted to the phone and picked it up, but it was too late. With trembling fingers, she hit the speed dial and heard Chad’s voice on the other line.
“Chad? This is Tori.”
“Tori, I’m so sorry.” His voice was warm and soft, as if he meant to envelop her in a blanket. “So very sorry.”
She knew what he was going to say. Sinking down on the floor in the middle of the living room, she pressed a trembling hand to her forehead. “What happened?” she managed to say, the words coming from a great distance.
She recalled her cell phone ringing while she fought with Brit. Chad had never called her before, on either her cell or landline.
“We aren’t sure. They think perhaps a stroke. We found her in her bed this evening. You had a DNR, so they didn’t try to revive her.”
He kept talking then, about a death certificate and the funeral arrangements, how she should come down to say good-bye before they had to move the body. How they had paperwork on file that said she wanted to be cremated and was that still what Tori wanted. And all she could do was nod and breathe. Nod and breathe. Until the breathing became too difficult and she had to say a muffled good-bye and throw down the phone and suck in air like she was drowning.
Panic started next, panic in thick, heavy waves that curled her fingernails into her palm until the pain in her hand startled her into release. With an effort she stood up, grabbed her keys, and walked outside.
She needed to go to Langston. To say good-bye to the empty shell of the woman who had once been her mother. The only person who understood why she worked the way she did. The only person who would have appreciated the sacrifice she had just made.
The space in front of the house looked empty without Brit’s sleek black car. Her Mini sat at the end of the driveway, and she walked over to it, staring down at the pile of documents sitting on the passenger seat.
She should read them tonight. Maybe she could bring them to Langston. She’d spent enough time around doctors to know that they always kept you waiting. Even to pronounce death, surely they would keep her waiting. No sense wasting time.
The thought brought a rush of bile to her throat. Was Brit right? Had she lost her soul completely? Her mother lay dead and all she could think of was work?
Where were the tears?
What had she become?
…
The moon had set and the night sky filled with stars when Tori stumbled back into the house, her head spinning, her breath coming in a thin whistle through clenched teeth. The nervous rhythm of her heart pounded through her sweatshirt, but still no tears clogged her throat.
She was a monster. She’d sat through hours of shoulder patting and sorrowful looks, said good-bye to her mother’s calm, peaceful face, and still her eyes remained dry. Perhaps that was because the frail, white-haired body did not look like it belonged to the woman who had raised her. Over the past year, she had gotten used to thinking Jeanne’s body housed a nervous stranger. It was hard to believe she was really saying good-bye.
In some ways, she had said good-bye a long time ago. In other ways, she wasn’t sure she ever could.
Tori retraced her steps up the porch and into the house, moving without thinking toward her mother’s bedroom. She threw open the closet doors and buried her face in her mother’s clothes, which still bore the faint smell of the heavy perfume she loved. From the floor of the closet Tori retrieved pairs of shoes, and tossed them in a pile in the middle of the room. For a moment, she held each one individually, imagined the shoe on her mother’s foot, and imagined her mother in the room, straightening her stockings as she got ready for work.
It was time to clean out the room. Her mother was never coming back.
A roaring sound in her ears made it difficult to concentrate, but the tears still would not come. She began to shiver, suddenly as cold as she had ever been before, her legs covered with goose bumps, her body frigid under her clothes.
Lurching to her feet, her body shaking, Tori yanked back the covers of the bed and huddled under a thin wedding ring quilt. Once, Tori had seen Jeanne crying into this quilt, great hulking sobs she could not hide from her young daughter. It was soon after her father had left them, when Jeanne was still trying to pretend she could keep it all together, and her heart hadn’t been ripped out and left for dead. Now, as Tori wrapped the quilt around her shaking body, she remembered that dark time, her fear that her mother would never regain her sanity and that she, Tori, would never be loved or safe, ever again.
Tonight, after she viewed the body, the counselors at Langston had sat down with Tori. They told her grief could take many forms. They said when an Alzheimer’s patient dies, the family may feel relief that the struggle is over, and then guilt for having such a feeling. Tori understood that, had even expected it.
But they hadn’t told her about the cold.
They hadn’t mentioned the feeling that her breath would be forever stolen from her chest, her lungs perpetually half-filled, her body wrapped in sheets of ice. When she exhaled into the quilt, her breath created a tiny pocket of warmth, and she pressed her cheek against it.
Her mother had always loved this room. She said this house made up for all those years when they’d lived in tiny apartments without any soul. She thought the flowered wallpaper, beautiful woodwork, and fifties linoleum had soul. Even if Tori always felt like a visitor here, her mother felt at home, and that’s what had mattered. All her life, the only thing that had really mattered was trying to make up for all the hurt her mother had suffered.
And now she was gone.
Her gaze fell on the nightstand, where a small leather-bound book sat by a lamp with a ceramic base decorated with soft blue forget-me-nots and tiny pink roses.
Pushing herself to sitting, Tori took the battered volume off the table. The smell of leather and musty pages emerged as pulled back the cover and flipped through the worn pages. The first page was dated eight years before, when Tori had first bought the house. It was a diary, in her mother�
��s unmistakable loopy handwriting.
Feeling like an interloper, but unable to put it down, Tori began to read. At first, she huddled under the blankets, struggling for breath and warmth, but something about the process of reading soothed her. The sound of her mother’s voice, echoing in her ear, eased the pressure on her chest.
Most of the early entries focused on Jeanne’s struggle to accept her diagnosis.
“I’m keeping this journal because they tell me it’s good to write, to keep your mind active. It terrifies me, the thought of what that means, so here I am, writing away…”
Many of the pieces were short accounts of daily life, of places she had been and worried she would forget. Others were complaints—about her nurse, her medications, and especially the restrictions Tori placed on her from cooking, from driving, and eventually from leaving the house by herself.
Tori skimmed most of it quickly, lingering only for a moment on the passages filled with good memories before moving on to what came next. There was a rhythm to the writing, good days mixed with bad, handwriting slowly losing its shape and the entries becoming shorter over the years. The dates were sporadic—for a few weeks she’d write every day, and then months would go by without an entry.
Toward the back of the book, an entry caught her eye. The pages were watermarked and the writing smeared. Tori sat up and spread the pages of the book as she read. It began,
Tori is working late again tonight, and the house seems dark and empty. I wish there was some way I could tell her how lonely I am. But I don’t want to burden her more than she already is…
Tori closed her eyes and took a shuddering breath. Steeling herself, she opened her eyes and stared back down at the painful words.