by Amelia LeFay
“Tell me now, are you a prince? Is your real name Prince Wesley Fitz-Lloyd Uhler Dickens or something like that?”
“Jane.” He was laughing, but I was serious. “First of all, that name is quite good. Secondly, no I’m not a prince, and no, it’s not a castle. It’s probably the same size as Max’s penthouse.”
Opening the door and stepping on the gravel as he got out as well, I exhaled while quickly giving my hair one more brush. After we had gone through customs, I’d made him stop so I could brush my teeth, fix my hair, and do my makeup in the bathroom.
“Relax, my mothers are harmless. A little crazy so you will fit right in—ouch.” I cut him off by punching his arm.
“Don’t freak me out. I’m already nervous.”
Shaking his head, he walked up to the green door and knocked once, then twice, then paused before knocking up and down the door.
He took a step back, and a second later a woman around my height with short dirty blonde hair and an ear full of piercings on one side but only a stud in the other opened the door. Her glasses rested on her nose. She stared at us for a moment before slamming the door in our faces.
“I told you,” Wes said, not even surprised. “They are crazy.”
A second later, the same woman came out, this time with a fly swatter and started to smack him. “You little twat!” she screamed as she hit him.
“Ouch, Mum! Mum!” he yelled, dodging her swings.
“How can you let me answer the door looking like a loon?” She hit him again. “And when you bring a guest too!”
“Mum! Okay all right! I’m sorry, but now you’ve embarrassed me enough.”
“Don’t mind them.”
I turned to the other woman. She had shoulder length brown-gray hair and green eyes, and she smiled at me kindly.
“You must be Jane.”
“Yes, it’s a pleasure to me you, ma’am.” I stretched out my hand but she linked arms with me to bring me inside.
“My name is Pippa, not ‘ma’am’. Do I look old to you?” She eyed me carefully and I shook my head.
“Not at all; we could be twins in fact.”
“You’re sucking up to me?”
“Is it working?”
She grinned and then turned back to Wes and his other mother. He was now chasing her and tickling her sides while both of them laughed like mad.
“You two will freeze, and I’m not cutting off your toes no matter how much you beg, Wes,” Pippa yelled at them.
“What?” I huffed, trying not to laugh.
“When he was a kid, he was always the drama queen. He got a paper cut and he thought he needed stitches. He got the flu, he was writing a will. One day he jumped into a frozen lake and came home crying and begging us to cut off his toes so he could save his leg.”
What? That didn’t sound like him at all. “How old was he?”
“Six.” She shrugged and we both laughed.
“Whatever she is saying, there is a perfectly good explanation,” Wes said the moment he came back inside with his mother beside him. She was breathing a lot heavier than he was, and she didn’t look happy about it.
“Is there an explanation for sniffing Mr. Edwards’ dog’s ass—”
“I was four! I don’t even remember!” he gasped out, exasperated, which made both of his mums laugh. Walking over to Pippa, he gave her a short hug and kissed the side of her face before adding, “She just got through the door, so please keep the embarrassing stories to a minimum.”
“No, please. I love this. Back home he’s the cool one. Wesley, the handsome and godly chef. I’m glad I get to see you as more human.”
“I prefer handsome and godly.” He pouted, putting his hand on my back.
Rolling my eyes, I bowed. “Yes, Chef.”
“Better—ouch—Mum, this is abuse.” He frowned when she pinched him.
“Hello darling, I’m Brenda.” She put her hands on my face. “It is such a pleasure to meet you. Had my wanker son told us you were coming, we would have cooked something.”
“You’re welcome,” Wes stage-whispered to me to me as he walked farther into the house. Brenda glared at him. He whistled and I was expecting some kind of dog, but instead a gray bird came out of nowhere and flew onto his hand.
“Wesley’s home,” the bird said and I laughed. He came over to me and I took a step back. Again the bird said, “Wesley’s home.”
“What do we tell Wesley?” Pippa asked the bird.
“Get in the kitchen. Make a sandwich.”
Wesley turned to face them both. “How long have you been training him to say that?”
“A while.” Brenda shrugged, taking my arm. “Now go while we get to know more about Jane here.”
“Mum, we’ve just arrived. We’re tired and—”
“Jane, are you tired?” Pippa asked me.
“No ma—no Pippa, I’m fine,” I corrected myself quickly.
“See. Now go.” Brenda nodded.
“I’m going. I’m going,” he replied before giving me a quick look.
“She’ll be fine. Now go.” Pippa pushed him. “Mozart, what should Wesley do?”
“Get in the kitchen. Make a sandwich.”
“I’m going.” He moved over to me and kissed the side of my head, and I tried to angle myself away from Mozart. I wasn’t really a bird person.
“Get in the kitchen. Make a sandwich.”
“One more time and I’m feeding you to Mr. Edwards’ cat,” Wes muttered as he walked around the corner.
“I’ll get some tea,” Pippa said, following him.
I was going to tell her not to worry about it, but I didn’t really want to turn down tea from a British woman in her own home.
“So…Jane.” Brenda led me into their living room, which had a beautiful view of the ocean. “Tell me, when did you fall in love with my son?”
My mouth dropped open. “It’s not like that. We’re…we’re close, but we’re hardly in love or anything.”
“My son wouldn’t have brought you here if he didn’t care about you. Relax, I’m not one of those menacing mothers who get overprotective of their sons. Well, I am, but I doubt I have anything to worry about with you.”
My palms didn’t usually sweat, but I had a feeling there was a first time for everything.
“It’s really complicated.”
“I’m an author dear,” she said, making herself comfortable on the couch. “Complicated love stories are the best kind.”
God help me.
“Are you going to keep staring?” my mom, Pippa, asked me as she put the teakettle on the stove.
“What?”
“You keep looking toward the living room as if she’s going to disappear…and you’re letting the cold air out.” She nodded to the door of the refrigerator I still had open.
“Shit—”
“Language.”
Rolling my eyes, I closed the door and moved to lean against the sink. Mozart was now standing on his post, pecking at his own wings.
“Did you break it off with Max?” she asked as if it were that simple.
“No.”
“Does she know?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“Mum…” I’d never needed to come out to my mums before. They’d never cared and I knew it was not a big deal, but this was.
“Yes?” She turned to face me.
“All…all three of us are together. Max. Me. Her, all of us.”
“Wesley!” She stared on in shock.
“I know.” I cut her off before she could speak. “I know what you’re thinking. It’s not right. This is complicated. You can’t love two people at the same time. One or all of us will get hurt. I know, Mum. I know. But…”
“But!”
Sighing, I went back to how I’d felt the day before when Jane had told me about Elspeth’s plan. “I had an interview with a chef yesterday morning. I admire him more than anyone in the industry, and he told me to go out ther
e. To learn more and not get locked into one city, or not yet, at least. The moment he said it, I wanted to go anywhere…everywhere. I was excited at the thought of learning something new to cook.”
“I’m not sure I understand the connection here,” she replied, taking the kettle off the stove.
“I thought about this all day.” I went on. “Where I would go? How they would feel if I did go. I felt so torn and then she texted me. She said ‘I love you’. I couldn’t help but smile. I was so choked up that I walked into a damn wall. Immediately, every thought that had been running through my head since I the interview disappeared. I didn’t want to go anywhere she wasn’t…where they both weren’t. I’m in love with her and I’m in love with Maxwell. I don’t know if it’s equal. How do you measure how much you love someone? If they were both hanging off a cliff and I could only choose one, I’d join them on the cliff and hope we could go together. I can’t divide myself from them.”
She sighed deeply. “If this is the case and all of this just happened, then why are you here?”
“Because I don’t want to be pushed to the side by Max. That’s why I left and that’s one of the reasons I brought her. I want him to know what it would be like for me to sit on the sidelines and watch them together in public. I want him to be the odd man out for a little bit.”
“Wes, I don’t know what to say.”
I stared into her green eyes. “Don’t say anything. Just support me. Support us. Support my choice to love two people at once. Please, Mum, we have enough people against us as it is.”
She put her hand on my cheek. “Okay.”
“Your moms are hilarious.” I sighed, falling on top of his bed before staring at the night blue sky painted on his ceiling. His whole room was covered in books; not just comics, but the complete works of authors like Plato and Aristotle and also Edgar Allen Poe and Shakespeare.
“That’s one word for it.” He lay down beside me. “I knew they’d like you, though.”
Really? I smiled. “I like them, too, though Brenda really dug deep. I swear, one second longer and she’d know my social security number and blood type.”
“Don’t be surprised if she makes you into a character in her next crime novel.”
“It’s so cool that she writes crime.”
“That’s one word for it,” he repeated.
I stood up and dropped some of the pillows onto the floor beside me.
“What are you doing?” he frowned, shifting onto his side.
“Sleeping on the floor.”
“Why?”
I had a lot of reasons…well, really just one. “Max. He’s not here.”
“So you want to sleep on the floor?”
“No…I…” Urgh. Running my hands through my hair, I thought about how to say it.
“Jane?”
“You whisked me away to England in less than twelve hours.” He didn’t understand what that was like for me; even I hadn’t really thought about it. “Three months ago, I never thought I’d even leave Boston. I went to Mexico with Allen once, yeah, but that was just right over the border. We saved for months and rented this beat-up old Chevy. It was this once in a lifetime thing for me. And in less than twelve hours, you’ve brought me to England, in first class, and I’m in a castle by the sea, even though you won’t admit it’s a damn castle. But this is amazing, Wes! I’m so excited and happy. I want to kiss you. Kissing you right now will lead to other things, and then I’d feel bad going back knowing we just cut out Max as if he was nothing.”
There, I said it.
He stared at me for a long time. His face was emotionless.
“Wes?”
“I’ll sleep on the floor.” He got up and walked to his closet to pull out a knitted blanket. He dropped it on the pillows I had put on the floor. Before lying down, he kissed the side of my head.
“Wes?”
“Jane don’t say more, please. You’ll make it even harder for me.” I thought I’d screwed up by bringing up Max. However, I saw the raging erection he had in his jeans.
“Night,” I whispered.
“Night.”
She had no clue the effect she had on me.
How I wanted her more because she also cared for Max.
Adjusting on the ground, I looked at my bed.
“You knew I was going to offer to take the floor, didn’t you?”
She pretended to snore loudly. Smiling to myself, I closed my eyes.
Chapter Eighteen
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Reaching to the nightstand, I grabbed my phone. “What?”
“Where are you?” Scarlet hollered in my ear so loudly I had to pull the phone from my ear. “You’re late.”
“For…?”
“Maxwell! The meeting!”
“The meeting is at 9—”
“Which is why I’m calling you at 8:57 a.m. wondering where the hell you are!”
8:57a.m.? I pulled my phone away and stared in shock as the time went from 8:57 a.m. to 8:58 a.m. I had never overslept, not in the last four years at least. Wes always got up early, which in turn got me up, too. Rolling over, I sat up, looking around me room…my very empty room.
“Max?”
“I’m on my way.” Hanging up on her, I got up.
I’m not sure why I walked out of my room, as if I really needed to check that they both weren’t there. I stood at the door for a while until I felt my phone vibrate again. Lifting it up, I saw I had a few missed messages from Jane.
‘Max we just got here. Just thought you’d want to know.’
‘I know you’re upset…both of you are upset but…just…I don’t know.’
‘I hope you’re all right. We both miss you, goodnight. -Jane.’
Her most recent message read, ‘I know you’re already up, so good morning. Sorry I didn’t text earlier. Pippa and Brenda took me into town today. I got a wool sweater from a real life sheep! I met her. Her name is Tabitha. She has her coat back and I think we look like twins.’
Attached to her message was a picture of her and Tabitha. Smiling, I shook my head. Only she could grin like that because of a sheep.
‘Which one is Tabitha?’ I asked, texting back as I headed into the bathroom.
‘Ass. Glad you finally texted back. Are you all right?’
‘I’m perfectly fine. Working is keeping me busy so you don’t have to keep texting me. Enjoy your trip.’
‘...Okay. :( But I’m going to keep texting. After all, I’m not the one paying this phone bill.’
‘Do what you want. How is Wes—’ Erasing the second sentence, I put the phone down and rubbed the back of my neck.
Ring.
Looking at the phone, her next texted pissed me off more than I could even imagine: ‘Wes says he’s glad you didn’t oversleep without him.’
‘His ego may have made him think I’m unable to live without him…he’s completely and utterly wrong. I didn’t even notice.’ I sent it before I even realized what I was saying.
Why couldn’t I ever say the things that were really going through my mind?
“We’ve got nothing and 48% of our viewers believe that you are personally attacking Governor MacDowell with no real facts,” Scarlet said as she walked around the table. “Maybe we should drop the story.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No one else is talking about this. The moment we stop applying pressure is the moment he gets off.”
“Max, we aren’t prosecutors.” She groaned, rubbing the side of her head. “The story has started to cool down. We have no cards left to play, and our only trump card to date, the interview with any of the supposed girls, vanished weeks ago. I have no idea where she is, or if she was even serious about being forced to sleep with him.”
“She could be—”
“There are no dead prostitutes or missing persons in the city either. We need to move on.” She had cut me off, and when I looked around the table, I could tell they all thought
the same.
“Fine,” I muttered, rising from the desk. “We pushed it too close. That’s all.”
“Max—”
Ignoring her, I got up with my phones and walked out. I made it halfway to my desk when Dwayne Adams—who I decided must have a fetish for plaid shirts—approached me.
“Sir, we aren’t just going to drop this, are we? I really think we have something here.”
“Didn’t you hear them? We have nothing.”
“I’ll find something,” he said quickly.
“Why?” I turned to him.
“Why?”
“Why are you so committed to this story?” I asked him. I knew my personal feelings were clouding me in this, but what was in it for him?
“He’s guilty—”
“Bullshit. What’s the real reason?”
He didn’t speak, so I just left him to follow me into my office. Once inside, he closed the door.
“I want to nail this asshole to the wall,” he stated.
“I see that, but you’re still not saying why—”
“Have you heard about the BWA the Governor passed four years ago?” he asked.
“The Balanced Wellness Act.” I nodded. “What about it?”
“Since it’s been put in place, welfare for men and women has been cut by more than half. Because the governor struck down the new income increase, working people are really struggling. Some are even going to soup kitchens now. It is so bad that people want to protest, but they can’t afford to take the time off from their low-paid work. In the past, any that tried were sent to jail on trumped up charges. Governor MacDowell called them ‘throwaways’. On top of that, he slashed over a billion in spending while cutting taxes for millionaires. He claimed minorities were the reason for rising crime rates, but most of the arrests were for petty crimes like stealing food. Now that we know he’s also a fraud and a predator, we’re going to just let this man walk? I can’t! I won’t.”
For a split second, I remembered Jane’s lecture on what ten dollars meant to her. “Have you ever been starving, Mr. Emerson? No? Have you been so hungry you feel sick and in pain? Or so poor you eat other people’s leftovers in bars?” Her words played over in my head.