Reluctantly in Love

by Niecey Roy

  “I know he’s a good man. He’s the best.” My lips pressed into a frown and Chase’s blue eyes rocked through my mind. “That’s why I’m walking away now. Before either of us get hurt.”

  She looked like she might argue, and I was glad when she didn’t. She kissed my cheek and told me to call her later.

  While I showered and dressed, I shoved Chase from my mind.

  Missing him now was bearable. It hurt, a lot. So it was easy to imagine how bad it would have been after, say, thirteen years of marriage and then—bam—it was over, like my parents’ marriage. Yes, I missed Chase. But he was just a man, and I was just a woman, and we were just two people who didn’t make it to the next stage in our relationship. I wasn’t okay with it now, but I would be someday.

  For now, I needed to work on forgiving my parents, forgiving myself for pushing my dad away all these years, and forgiving my mom for letting me do it. And because I wasn’t about to be dragged through their rollercoaster ride of a relationship again, I needed to find out if this reunion of theirs was serious or if it was just a fling brought on by too much wine and nostalgia from being in the love nest they’d built, once upon a time.

  I stood at my front door, hesitant. Go in fearlessly, or be a coward on the front step. Decisions, decisions.

  I put my hand out to grab the door handle, but it was yanked open from the inside and both my parents stared back at me. My mother had that irritated look on her face that I’d familiarized myself with early on in my life. She was hurt and when her feelings were hurt, her accent was thicker and her emotions a lot more volatile.

  “Do you want to give me a heart attack?!” She was breathing so hard, it was easy to imagine smoke rolling out of her ears. “I am so disappointed in you, anak. How could you do this to your mother? I gave you life. I born you.”

  I stepped inside and toed off my slippers. “I smell coffee.”

  Her eyes bulged and she spun around and stomped off.

  “You should have called. We were worried.” My dad looked like he wanted to lecture me.

  I supposed he’d decided to let it go for now because of the way I stormed out. My theatrics and inability to keep a lid on my temper might have been inherited from my mother.

  We stared at each other in awkward silence. I had no clue what was going on in his head, but in mine, I was busy debating on how to get this party started. My lips quivered, while every horrible thing I’d ever thought about him crashed through my head. I took a deep breath and closed the distance—and hugged my dad.

  Forgiving him was the best feeling I’d ever felt in my life. Better than nailing that rat bastard Matthew Garrett, better than all the money shots I’d ever taken, better than writing The End on every single one of my novels. Forgiving my dad lifted a weight off my heart that I hadn’t realized was there.

  He patted the back of my head. “Glad you’re home, Pumpkin. Should we go make something to eat? How about a fettuccini?”

  “Let’s make carbonara.”

  He gazed down at me. “Carbonara? That’s not your favorite.”

  “It’s a new favorite. I made it for a friend once. Added mushrooms. It was really good, actually.” It was Chase’s favorite. I’d made it for him once a week.

  “Carbonara with mushrooms it is.” He draped his arm over my shoulder. “Why don’t you tell me about the book you’re writing? Your mother tells me it’s about a woman who sees ghosts.”

  I leaned my head against his shoulder. “Something like that. She even tases people.”

  His brows screwed up with alarm. “Do you have a Taser gun?”

  Changing the subject was probably the best plan. “Let’s make garlic bread, too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Time without Chase dragged by so slowly, it was unbearable. A week felt like a month. Two weeks felt more like a year. I missed him. I wasn’t supposed to miss him. Letting him go was supposed to be easy. It was the right thing to do. It was the fair thing to do, for Chase.

  And for me. In our time together, I’d fallen farther than I expected—farther than I was supposed to. Yes, it was better to let him go now. I already felt in too deep.

  He hadn’t called since walking out my hotel room door. It was what I’d wanted, and still my chest ached. Call it what it is—heartache.

  I threw myself into work, pretending to be too busy to hang out with my friends, too busy to have any kind of personal life. Busy kept me from missing Chase as much. Busy kept me from running into him while out with our friends. This is why you shouldn’t have gotten involved with him in the first place.

  Home was where I missed Chase the most. It was too quiet. Too empty. My bed was too big, and no amount of blankets made me forget how cold I was. How ironic was that? I’d spent the last ten years of my life alone for the most part, but now the loneliness was like a heavy blanket weighing me down.

  I went on with my life, hoping I’d forget how much I missed him. Every day I still felt the sting, though. Maybe I always would. Deep down I knew why, but I couldn’t—wouldn’t—admit it out loud. I couldn’t say the words, because they’d make moving on impossible. And every night, I heard Chase’s voice: I love you, Roxanna. I would curl up into a ball and miss his arms around me, and I’d fall asleep with my chest feeling hollow.

  I sat in my home office at my desk, typing up a final report for a runaway I’d been tasked to find and return home. The case had been simple to solve. After speaking with all of her friends, all of her boyfriend’s friends, it’d been easy to surmise what’d happened. I’d found her hiding out with her boyfriend at his uncle’s home. They’d been too afraid to tell their parents she’d gotten pregnant.

  I met her parents. They were beside themselves with worry. I didn’t feel it my place to explain why she’d run, that was a conversation for them to have as a family. I merely took them to her and gave them the privacy they needed.

  As I typed up the report I thought of my own relationship with my parents. Since my birthday, things were different with my dad. We spoke more and the tension was gone. We were planning to write a new cookbook together—baby steps. We would start in his test kitchen in the spring. I was looking forward to it; maybe by then I wouldn’t have a hollow ache in my chest left behind in Chase’s absence.

  My stomach grumbled. I’d forgotten to grab something to eat before coming back to the office. There was only popcorn and bananas in the kitchen. Because you live alone.

  Talk about depressing.

  No wonder all I did was work. There was no warm body to come home to and snuggle with. No one to tweak my nose, or kiss my neck.

  No Chase.

  Shit. I was lonely. Officially sappy-sad, and pathetic in my loneliness.

  So, this is new . . .

  And irritating. Since when was Roxanna Moss lonely? Since never, that’s when. My irritation got the better of me and I let out an expletive.

  I wasn’t supposed to miss Chase. My writing wasn’t supposed to suffer because he and I weren’t together anymore. All of my scenes were glum and full of heartbreak. The story had started out as a ghost story and had morphed into a love story of two people torn apart by death. My agent thought the pages were great; she raved about the emotion, the angst. But they just reminded me of what—who—I’d given up.

  I miss him.

  I was supposed to be the tough one, and yet there I was, moping over a sexy doctor I’d chosen to walk away from. A sexy, loving, amazing man who made me feel emotions I hadn’t thought myself capable of.

  My cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number. “Hello?” I asked.

  “Roxanna? Hello?” a woman whispered into the phone. “Roxanna, are you there?”

  “Yes, this is Roxanna. Is this . . . Linda, is that you?” I hadn’t spoken to Beverly’s friend since before the Pretzels case was shut.

  “Yes, it’s me. Can you talk?” Linda asked, still whispering.

  I straightened in the chair and turned on the speaker function. Sett
ing the phone down on the desk, I said, “Yes, of course. Is everything okay?”

  “No. The alien is back. We need your help.”

  “You’re serious? Beverly saw it again?” Two months had passed since I saw Beverly after Pretzels was returned. Now, suddenly, the thong-wearing alien was back. Why?

  “Two nights ago,” Linda said.

  “Why didn’t Beverly call me herself?” I swiped my finger across the laptop screen then tapped on Beverly’s file to open it. I clicked on the timeline document and it opened on the screen. “Is she okay?”

  “She didn’t want to tell anyone. She says she thinks she’s losing her mind. It’s that step-ass of hers.”

  “Matthew,” I said.

  “He’s convinced her that the prowler was all a figment of her exhausted imagination. Now she thinks she’s just seeing things.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I can’t stand that guy.”

  “Will you help?”

  “Of course I will. I saw the shoe prints outside her house. Someone was out there, and the sick bastard is wearing an alien costume so she thinks she’s going crazy.” I scrolled to the bottom of the timeline and typed in the new sighting. “’lf she doesn’t want me to know about this, we can keep it between us.”

  “I knew you would help. I’ll pay you for your time.”

  I smiled. She was a good friend. “We’ll worry about that later.”

  I hung up and lifted my legs, propping them up on the edge of the desk. There was only one suspect this time, and I wasn’t going to let him win. Game on, Garrett.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  In the time since Pretzels’ miraculous return, Matthew Garrett had found another girlfriend. He wasn’t only seeing the barely legal blonde; there was also a pretty redhead in her early thirties who spent a lot of time at the gym when she wasn’t at work. She was an investment banker, and I didn’t think she had a clue he was married.

  “What a slime ball,” I mumbled from the driver’s seat of an LM Security van parked in the alley across from Garrett Properties office suite in downtown Lincoln.

  Matthew sidled around his second floor office. He was dressed in a black suit with a silver and black tie. He was handsome with his grey peppered hair slicked back, and appearance-wise I could see why women found him attractive. But why did they stick around? From everything I’d heard about him so far, seen of him, his character was flawed and his smile was more on the greasy side.

  I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.

  “You sure Leo’s okay with me running this stuff?” Richard asked, and I lowered the binoculars to glance back between the seats. Richard sat at the van’s surveillance console, fiddling with buttons.

  Our tech specialist was out on a job with Leo today, and their case trumped this case that I wasn’t getting paid for. At least Leo was a great boss, who also shared my inability to let unsolved cases go. He’d given me the green light to follow up and nail the bastard driving Beverly crazy. Richard was here as a paid contractor. The guy knew his stuff. The only thing I understood about the massive console that took up one side of the van were the switches that said on/off.

  He flipped a switch. “He banned me for life, remember?”

  “Richard, this is an authorized use of LM Security property.” I turned and lifted the binoculars to my eyes again. “He said we can contract you whenever our other guy is busy with another case.”

  “You think it’s him?”

  “I’m telling you, something is off with this guy.”

  “Like, his pants.” Richard laughed, a-hu-a-hu-a-hu. I’d gotten used to the way he laughed. “Get it?”

  I grinned. “Yeah, I get it.”

  We’d been out here for the last hour, waiting for Matthew to leave his office for lunch. I didn’t know which girlfriend he’d be meeting, but he’d be gone a good hour. That would give me enough time to get up to his office and plant a bug. The excitement made sitting still almost impossible.

  “Oh!” I dropped the binoculars into my bag between the driver’s and passenger seats. “He’s on the move.” I glanced back at Richard. “Are we ready?”

  “Yup, green light.” He saluted me.

  “Wish me luck,” I huffed, pulling the bag up off the floor. I hopped out of the van. “I shouldn’t be long.”

  “You don’t really look like a fire department inspector, but okay.”

  I hitched my bag over my shoulder. “Richard, I paid a lot of money for this uniform. It’s authentic.”

  I’d gotten it from a uniform store. One of Leo’s security guys hooked me up; he had an in with a clerk who thought he had dreamy eyes. In exchange for a Benjamin, she gave me the white collared button up, a tie, and the unflattering black pants. I had to order the patches for the sleeves and above the breast pocket, but anything can be found online these days. I hadn’t been able to get my hands on one of those black hats, but was assured that a baseball cap with Fire Department embroidered on the front was suitable. My hair was tied up in a ponytail and pulled through the back of the cap.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have put on any makeup,” Richard said.

  “Richard, I’m not sure what you’re getting at, so I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you.” I shut the door.

  Matthew exited the front of the building and slid behind the wheel of his sports car. I waited until he was at the intersection before I crossed the street. The black boots I wore were clunky and heavy. They weren’t from my shoe collection; I’d purchased them this morning. I could feel the beginnings of blisters rubbing raw against my socks and I winced with every step.

  “Maximum Destruction, do you copy? This is Man Candy. Over and out,” Richard said in my ear.

  I paused in step. “Maximum Destruction?”

  A woman passing on the sidewalk slowed to shoot me a curious stare.

  “You know, because you hurt people.”

  “Do we have to keep rehashing the past?” I grumbled.

  “Remember, you maced me.”

  “This is no time for memory lane.”

  “Can I be Man Candy, or what?”

  “Fine, but I’ll have you know, I’m not fond of my undercover name.” I stood in the recessed alcove off the sidewalk. “I’m going in now,” I whispered.

  “Shh,” Richard hissed in my ear. “They might be recording you.”

  I searched the corners above the door, but there was no video camera. “He’s not in the mafia; I don’t think a property manager needs to record his clients.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  I considered it. “You’re right. I don’t know that.”

  Of course, my imagination took over. Maybe he’d gambled on credit at the mafia’s poker table, and they wanted their money. So, he stole Pretzels, pretended to pay cash to the person who returned her, and Beverly reimbursed him. Bam. Except Matthew wasn’t hurting for money, and I doubted he’d needed to orchestrate Pretzels’ disappearance for a measly fifteen thousand dollars. He was a millionaire. Or, the estate he’d be inheriting was worth millions.

  The lobby was decorated in modern contemporary with bright cream walls, black square leather chairs, and nickel plated lamps.

  “Are you inside yet?” Richard asked in my ear. I ignored him.

  A perky brunette with a high topknot and red lipstick smiled from behind a massive black-stained desk. She recognized the shirt. “Oh, back so soon?”

  I raised the clipboard and the photocopied print out of a safety inspection report. “Yes, we just wanted to follow-up. There were a couple notes here about the possibility of needing the elevator serviced, and I need to check the alarms on the second floor.”

  “Maximum Destruction, can you hear me?”

  I ignored him. “Shouldn’t take too long. Maybe a half hour, forty-five minutes. You won’t even notice I’m here.”

  “Perfect timing. I’m stepping out to grab some lunch, but will be back in about forty minutes.”

  “I don’t think this
is working . . . Shit, she’s going to strangle me,” Richard mumbled, and then he blew into the microphone.

  My head jerked and I almost yanked the earpiece out. I pressed my eyelids together and clenched my jaw. Ouch.

  “Are you okay?” the woman asked.

  “Testing, testing. Maximum Destruction, can you hear me?” Richard asked, a note of desperation in his voice.

  “Yes!” I said, louder than I’d meant to. The receptionist’s eyes widened, so I gave her a toothy smile. Hoping Richard would know my words were for him, I enunciated, “Yes. I hear you.” And then for the receptionist, I said, “I am fine.” I tapped my forehead. “Headache, that’s all.”

  “Oh good. So what’s going on?”

  The receptionist hesitated for a moment, but must have decided I was harmless because she gestured to the elevator. “Okay, then.”

  “I’ll get started upstairs,” I told her with a pat to the clipboard.

  When the aluminum doors to the elevator shut to carry me upstairs, I whispered, “Richard, you almost blew my ear out.”

  “Sorry. I thought maybe it quit working.”

  “It didn’t. Don’t blow into the microphone like that. The receptionist thinks I have a twitchy neck. She probably thinks I’m on drugs.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Sucks we’re not hunting aliens. That’s a bummer.”

  Gen had been bummed too. She hadn’t taken it as hard as Linda, though.

  “Well, I think it’s a good thing,” I said.

  “I’ve been doing some research on alien abductions.”

  I shuddered. “Unless Gen is forcing you to, why?”

  “Because we need to know, that’s why.”

  “Maybe some things are better left alone.” The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. “And we’re not equipped to fight aliens. I’m not sure a Taser gun and pepper spray would work on them.”

  “I read online that if you have a big, luscious booty you’re more likely to be abducted by aliens.”