That Weekend...

by Jennifer Mckenzie

But he needed her. Didn’t she know that?

  Sriously. Have to see you tonight.

  4 real? Do I have a say in this?

  But he had already tucked his phone into his pocket and was busy putting on his shoes. If he ran, he might make it there by eight-twelve.

  Jake? Hello?

  Hello? Anyone?

  Anyone? Bueller?

  He stepped out into the cool night and locked his door behind him, ignoring the rest of Ava’s texts. She would only try to talk him out of coming over or want to know what was so urgent and this was too big to talk about over the phone. His town house was in a mixed complex with apartments and there was a large underground lot the residents shared. Jake continued down the street, bypassing the short path that led to the lobby and the elevator for the lot. The tequila had hit him harder than expected and he thought a walk in the fresh air would do him good.

  By the time he got to Ava’s building—a blurry fifteen minutes later—it had started to rain. He shook off the droplets in the elevator and closed one eye to focus on the floor numbers as they climbed. Ava was waiting at her door and Jake couldn’t help the stupid grin that appeared on his face when he saw her. He practically fell on top of her in his haste to give her a proper greeting.

  “Whoa. Easy there, tiger.” She sniffed. “Why do you smell like lime juice?”

  “Tequila.” He saw her rear back when he breathed liquor fumes. “Sorry.” And dug in his pocket for some gum. But he only found his wallet, which promptly slipped out of his grip. “Whoops.”

  “Oh, God. You are loaded.” But she didn’t sound mad. He was pretty sure she even smiled when he looked up from trying to get his wallet, but by the time he tried his one-eye trick, the expression was gone, so he couldn’t be sure.

  He managed to stuff his wallet back in his pants and hugged her again. She was so soft. Her shirt felt sort of velvety. He liked running his hands over it. “I’m a diddle drunk. I mean, little.”

  “Diddle?” She was definitely grinning now. And laughing. He smiled, too. “Is that why you came over here?”

  “I could be convinced.” He wrapped his arms around her, hugged her to his chest and rested his chin on her head.

  “Hey.” She was wriggling. “I can’t breathe here and do not use me as a resting post.”

  He shifted, moving his face to the side of her neck, and inhaled. She smelled like the outside, the rain and clean air. A hint of the perfume she’d sprayed on this morning clung there, too. He inhaled again. “You smell so good. I could eat you up.”

  “None of that, either,” she said, but he noticed she’d stopped wriggling.

  She pulled back to look at him and he gave her a sloppy smile. “Hi.”

  “Hi.” She took a half step back. Jake took one with her. “Exactly how much have you had to drink?” she asked.

  “’Bout half a bottle.” He’d left the empty container on the table along with the glass and a bunch of drained lime wedges. He pulled Ava close again. She fit right into the curve of his body, just nestled right in there. Or would have if she’d quit trying to push him away.

  “Half a bottle of tequila? You are going to be hurting tomorrow.”

  He shrugged. It was probably true, but he wasn’t hurting right now, so his mission was a success. “Come over here.”

  “No.” She danced away. “Why were you drinking half a bottle of tequila on your own at eight o’clock?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” He danced toward her.

  “Really?” She sidestepped him when he tried to twirl her back into his arms. “So you got drunk, called me and invited yourself over not to talk about it?”

  “Yep.” He tried to catch her again, but she was slippery, like an eel. He closed one eye again.

  “You need coffee.”

  “Nope.” He snagged her arm this time and yanked her into his chest. “I need this.”

  She snaked out of his hold. Jake looked down at his arms now holding air and then back at her.

  “How did you do that?”

  “Coffee. I’ll make you some.”

  He managed to hop up on one of the stools in front of her large breakfast bar. The kitchen was all stainless steel and white, but she’d added splashes of red. A picture of an apple, a dish towel, a vase that she’d filled with cheerful daisies. The room looked bright and clean.

  Jake watched as she started opening and closing cupboard doors. “I’d rather have another drink,” he told her. His buzz was finally beginning to wind down, but Jake didn’t like the misery that was attempting to take its spot.

  “Do you really need one?” She paused in her search to glance back. Lust washed over him. The way her blond hair curled over her shoulder, the creamy look of her skin and the light in her eyes.

  “Well, I can think of something else I’d rather have, but you told me not tonight.”

  “I think you’d be better off with coffee.”

  “I think you should have a drink with me.”

  “I think you should tell me why you’re here.”

  “I ran out of tequila?” He drummed his fingers on the countertop.

  Ava quit searching, leaving one of the doors half-open, and crossed the room. The counter was still between them, but Jake figured he was strong enough to haul her over top of it and into his lap. He might have done it, too, if she hadn’t stopped short. “Seriously.” He could read the concern in her blue eyes. He didn’t like it. “What happened?”

  “I felt like seeing you.” Maybe it would be better not to talk about any of this tonight. Tomorrow would be soon enough. Actually, tomorrow would probably still be too soon, although if he were honest, it was always going to be too soon to talk about it.

  “Jake.” She reached out and laid a small hand over his. He threaded their fingers together. “Tell me.”

  It was suddenly hard to breathe. “Coffee, and then I’ll tell you.”

  She made the coffee, not asking him anything even once the cups were poured. She simply placed his in front of him and waited.

  Jake inhaled the fragrant brew and then told her everything. “The investors called. We didn’t get the money and I don’t have anyone else lined up.” His free hand curled into a fist. “It’s done. I’m done.”

  He’d failed. Again. And eventually, he was going to have to tell his family about it. He closed his eyes. More proof that, unlike his father, he couldn’t hack it in the real world.

  He opened his eyes and looked at her, expecting to see a horrified expression. The kind that said she wanted him and his stink of disappointment out of her apartment now. Claudia would have already had him off the stool and halfway to the door while making an excuse that she had a lot of things to do before bed tonight so it was best that he left. But Ava hadn’t moved and her expression hadn’t changed. Probably just too polite to tell him to get lost.

  He let go of her hand and pushed himself off the stool. “I should go.” He needed to figure out how he was going to tell everyone the news, what he was going to do now.

  She swept around the side of the counter and blocked his path. “No.”

  Her good hand was on his chest. Heat seeped through the thin material of his T-shirt and into his bloodstream. His heart jolted.

  “No,” she said again, softly this time. “I don’t want you to go.”

  They stood like that for a minute. Her hand over his heart. Jake felt it thump harder. “I don’t know why I came over. This isn’t
your problem.”

  He didn’t know why he expected her to get involved. She wasn’t even getting a permanent job out of this.

  “Jake.” She curled her fingers into his shirt when he made a move to head for the door again. “I want to help.”

  He didn’t feel drunk anymore. Wasn’t sure if it was the coffee or staring into the face of his failure. “There’s nothing to help. It’s over.” He looked at her. “Guess this means you have your weekend free now.” There was no point in going through the filming without even the chance of obtaining financial backing.

  “You’re just giving up?”

  He searched her face for the distaste she must be feeling. He couldn’t blame her. He felt it for himself. “It’s called cutting your losses,” he said, still surprised that she hadn’t kicked him out. Claudia, she was not. “I’m not throwing good money after bad.”

  “No, you’re just throwing away everything that you’ve worked for.” Her hand fisted in his tee when he tried to move around her. “Didn’t you tell me that you moved here to pursue this? And that it was your dream?” There was a bite of anger to her voice now.

  “Yes.” But that was back when he’d thought generating interest in the show would be a snap.

  “Then you can’t just give up on it. Fight. They aren’t the only investors in the world. They’re not even the only investors in this city. And you’ve already set everything up for this weekend. You’d be crazy not to go ahead with the filming.”

  He placed his hand over hers intending to peel it off, but instead pressed it more tightly to him. “It isn’t that easy.”

  “Actually, it is.” She leaned into him. “You’ve set everything up—it would be a waste not to continue.”

  She had a point. “Maybe.”

  “Definitely. Having a show you can actually screen for potential investors will make it easier to shop around. Maybe you could even go directly to the airlines. You don’t need an investor for that.”

  “No.” But he couldn’t move forward very far without one, either. He had no way to film a second episode or pitch to multiple buyers. This would be a one-shot deal and if the first pitch didn’t sell, he’d be broke. He told her so.

  “Then we better make the show so great that it sells right away. In the meantime, you can start looking for another investor.”

  She made a move to untangle herself, but Jake held her tighter, not willing to let go of her or the little beacon of hope she was shining on him. “And what if I can’t find another investor and the show doesn’t sell?”

  She looked up at him. She was so close that he didn’t need to close one eye to see her clearly. She smiled. “Then we come up with another plan.”

  They took their coffee into the living room where Ava proceeded to bombard him with questions. “What about looking for an investor back in Toronto? You must have a lot of connections there.”

  “No.” He bit the word out. She blinked at him from behind the rim of her bright red coffee cup. “Sorry, that was a bit harsh, but I don’t want to use any of those connections.”

  “Why not?”

  “This is something I have to prove that I can do on my own.” He stopped there, not wanting to delve deeper.

  Ava had other ideas. “Why does it matter where the money comes from?”

  “Because.” He sipped his coffee and then told her the story. “My dad is kind of a big shot in Toronto. Self-made man, all that. He started his company with nothing but a dollar and hard work.”

  Instead of looking impressed, Ava laughed. “A dollar? I highly doubt that.”

  “Maybe not a dollar,” Jake conceded, “but he didn’t have family money to fall back on. He had to make it on merit.”

  She frowned. “So, you think you have to do the same or you’re some epic failure?”

  “No, but I want to prove that I can.” Had to prove it to rid himself of this heavy load that had followed him to Vancouver.

  “You think your dad didn’t use his connections to get money for his company when he was starting out?”

  “But they were his connections.”

  “And these would be your connections.”

  “That’s the problem.” Jake exhaled loudly and put his half-finished coffee on the end table. “They wouldn’t be my connections. They’d be his. I have no way to separate the two unless I get investors who are virtual strangers to him.” Which had turned out to be much more difficult that he’d ever anticipated. “I need to know that the money is coming in because they believe in the project.”

  She titled her head. “Surely they’d believe in it. Do you run with a crowd that has so much money they can throw it away on a vanity project?”

  Jake shot her a look.

  “Must be nice.”

  “Actually, it sucks. You never know what people’s motivations are.” He thought he’d gotten pretty good at recognizing them over the years, but Claudia’s betrayal had proven him wrong. “Look, I don’t expect you to understand. But I moved here because I needed a fresh start. That meant leaving behind everything I had there, including those connections. So I need to find another way.”

  “All right.” She nodded slowly and sipped her coffee. But he could tell she still had something to say. It was evident by the lift of her eyebrow and the twist of her mouth, though she was trying to play innocent.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” She raised her eyebrow even farther in feigned surprise, but he wasn’t buying what she was selling.

  “You clearly have an opinion on this. Spit it out.”

  She shrugged. “It’s not really my business.”

  “So make it your business.” He trusted her opinion. She was smart, and it would be good to get a different opinion on this. He reached out and put a hand on her knee. “Talk to me, Ava.”

  Her whole body softened, turning toward him. “I understand parental issues.” She laughed softly to herself. “Believe me, I understand. But I don’t want to see you throw this opportunity away over some misguided sense of pride.”

  “I wouldn’t say it’s pride. You’d feel the same way in my situation.”

  “I don’t think I would.” She shook her head. When she looked at him, her eyes were clear. “If my mom owned the television station and wanted to make me the host of our show? I wouldn’t think twice before saying yes and celebrating.”

  “It’s not quite the same.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, my situation is more like your mother owning a TV station, but refusing to hire you because she doesn’t think you’re good enough. Instead, she pays off an old friend to let you work at his station. You think you do a pretty good job, but you make one small error in judgment—” though the mess with Claudia had felt anything but small at the time “—and suddenly all anyone can talk about is that you only have the job because your mom is friends with the boss.”

  She put her hand over his. “Is that what happened?”

  “Close enough.” He didn’t share the part about overhearing his father tell his mother that he wasn’t surprised Jake’s situation hadn’t worked out. It made Jake feel like a failure as a businessman and a son, and still hurt too much to say out loud. “Wouldn’t you then want to prove that you could succeed on your own?”

  She placed her cup on the coffee table and scooted across the couch so their thighs were touching. “I still don’t think you should cut off all those possible sources of funding.” She put her hand on his arm. “
Who cares why they give you the money? That’s not important. What’s important is what you do with it. You believe in the show, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Despite the fact that nothing had fallen into place as planned, Jake still thought the show had potential.

  “Then take the money. However you can get it. Make the show into a huge success and sit back and be proud of what you’ve accomplished. Trust me, no one will care how you got the money once the show takes off.”

  It was tempting, so tempting. “But I’ll care,” Jake said. It wasn’t just the thought of taking pity money, though that was something Jake wanted no part of. But if he did, he could never say that he had managed this on his own. There would always be the question about his father’s influence. “I want to do this on my own.”

  “Jake.” She leaned closer. “You’d still be doing it on your own. Everyone needs financial support when they’re starting a company. Everyone. What makes you think you’re different?”

  He shrugged and leaned back, hauling her with him. “I just need to do this on my own terms.”

  Their lips were practically touching. When she spoke, Jake could feel the whisper of her breath buffeting against his mouth. “Is that more important than making the show happen?”

  He studied her. There were little flecks of gold in her eyes, just a few shades darker than her hair. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  She leaned back. “Really?”

  He tightened his hold on her. This wasn’t supposed to be the point when she pulled away—this was where she should have been curved into him and they stopped talking completely. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

  “To try to knock some sense into you.”

  “No.” He clasped her to him so she couldn’t move. “I think you should stay right here.”

  It had started to rain about an hour ago, and had gradually increased in intensity from a delicate drizzle to a loud downpour. It slapped against the window in an unending rhythm. But they were tucked inside where it was nice and dry.