Had he wanted to protest her being absent from his bed?
It gave her morning mood a little happy jolt. “I do enjoy all the nuptial hoopla. Shay and Poppy are so excited about their upcoming weddings. London, too.”
“Mmm,” he said, bringing his mug to his mouth. Then he set it down on the counter and looked at her with narrowed eyes. “I thought you weren’t a bridal enthusiast. You said you didn’t believe in happy-ever-afters.”
She shrugged. “I said I didn’t believe my parents’ marriages would ever last. As for my attitude toward weddings themselves...it’s pretty hard to be scornful when your sisters are spinning with delight over the idea of getting hitched to their men.”
“Jace is the same,” Brett said. “Shay was thinking of a spring or summer wedding and he’s unwilling to wait that long.”
“Poppy said Ryan’s threatening to kidnap her for an elopement. He wants to be her husband now.”
Brett took a swallow of his coffee. “That’s kind of nauseating.”
“Oh, you!”
“Has anyone told you you’re a brilliant conversationalist in the morning?”
Well, he’d sure woken up. Angelica crossed her arms over her chest. “Admit this. You were thrilled to be asked to walk Poppy down the aisle.”
“I’m the oldest. Mom taught me I had to let the younger ones get their way once in a while.”
“You’re just being a curmudgeon to maintain your rep.”
“What rep is that?”
Angelica grabbed her purse from the counter and sorted through the items inside. Keys, wallet, phone. Glancing over at the clock, she realized she only had a few more spare minutes.
“Angelica? What rep is that?”
“Dyed-in-the-wool bachelor. Guy stubbornly clinging to the idea that a single life is best.”
“I am a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor—which by the way sounds like someone wearing a Mr. Rogers sweater. And while I wouldn’t say I’m stubbornly clinging, I do think the single life is best.”
“Knee-jerk,” she said with a dismissive wave.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said, now sounding not only awake, but grouchy.
“Blanket statements about how being single is best are ridiculous. They’re knee-jerk remarks from the bachelor sans a sweater.”
“Okay,” he said, eyes narrowed. “I’ll qualify it. The single life is best for me.”
He was looking increasingly peeved and she was feeling a bit irritated herself. “How can you say that? Maybe you just haven’t found the right woman yet.” Oops. That sounded a bit too plaintive. “What I mean is, there are your sisters, with two of the best men on the planet panting to be their partners. Don’t you think they’ll be happy together?”
“I hope they’ll be happy together.”
His unconvinced tone got on her last nerve. “Honestly, you’re taking this whole skeptical thing just too far.”
He shrugged. “So I’m not sentimental.”
Okay, she had yet another last nerve. Digging through her purse, she found her phone, held it out. “You should call Mason.”
He eyed her warily. “Why?”
“So you can tell him there’s no Santa. Blow up his fantasy about the Easter Bunny, too. While you’re at it, tell him there’s no Tooth Fairy either.”
“And I’d do that because...”
“No sense letting the boy believe in anything, I don’t know, sentimental.”
“Angelica—”
“I bet it was you who told your sisters that nobody really came down the chimney.”
A ruddy flush edged his cheekbones. “I’m not convinced Poppy knows there’s no Santa to this day,” he muttered. “I bet she still believes.”
“Even more reason for you to break the news to your nephew that his mommy and his Duke will never be in love. Oh, and maybe you can get London in on the call, as well, and tell her that her father and her stepmother-to-be don’t have anything real either—”
He shoved himself up. “Angelica—”
“—no matter how that might shake Mason’s belief that he is loved or undermine London’s confidence that she is cherished.”
“Angelica.”
Ignoring the dark note in his voice, she raised her arms, let them fall. “Seriously. What does it take for you to acknowledge love when it’s staring you in the face?”
He leaped to come toe-to-toe with her, his stool toppling to the floor in the process. “And you’re an expert?”
“I know what I know. I trust my eyes.”
“Trust.” He spit out the word. “What the hell do you know about trust? The very people who you should have been able to rely on—your parents—have only abandoned or betrayed you.”
There was a high whine in her ears as she stared into his eyes—so icy cold they burned as they ran over her from head to toe and back to her face.
“As for love...who has ever given that to you, princess? How do you know anything about it?”
“Brett—”
“Tell me. Tell me who the hell has ever loved you?”
Her mouth opened, but words couldn’t make it past the sudden constriction in her throat. Who the hell has ever loved you? The heat on her skin chilled and, snatching up her purse, she ran. Away.
“Fuck. Shit. Wait. I lost my temper. I didn’t mean it to come out like that. Angel face...”
She was too fast for him. Or he didn’t follow after all. Because nothing and nobody stopped her from jumping into her car and pointing it in the direction of the village. She was breathing hard, and her hands trembled as she gripped the steering wheel.
The person shaken was herself.
Still feeling unsteady as she approached the back entrance of the hardware store, Angelica fished for the employee keys from her purse. The scent of cigarette smoke alerted her first, then she jolted back as a woman stepped forward.
Lorraine Kushi. The woman wore a black wool coat loosely belted over a gray dress. Her knee-high boots were gleaming black leather in a severe style that matched the dark wedge of her hair.
Pretend you don’t know her, Angelica admonished herself. She tried donning a polite expression. But Brett’s attack had made her numb on the outside even though she was still a mass of raw emotion on the inside. For all she knew, she was wearing a scary, serial-killer grin.
Looking at it, the reporter took a quick, nervous drag from her cigarette.
Be cool, Angelica thought. “Can I help you?”
“Are you Angelica Rodriguez?”
“This is Hallett Hardware,” she said, then immediately thought, fail. “I’ve got to get to my job.”
“I thought we could talk.”
“No time, sorry.”
“It’s a shame how the internet makes anyone recognizable.”
Angelica swallowed. The jig was up. “What is it you want?”
“We have a lot in common, you know.”
She tilted her head. “How’s that?”
“Brett Walker.”
“I don’t have anything to say about him.”
“Your father, then. Your circumstances. I can help you get your side of the story out into the world.”
Angelica’s fingers tightened on the ring of keys. “Why would the world care about my ‘side’?” Though of course her attorney had warned her of this very circumstance from the first.
Lorraine dropped her cigarette to the asphalt and ground it out with the toe of her dominatrix boot. “Don’t be naive. It’s human nature to be interested in the only offspring of a now-infamous fraudster. People want to know if you’re innocent or complicit.”
Innocent or complicit. Angelica felt her face flame. “I have nothing to do with my father’s business.” Or his Ponzi scheme. “That’s already been reported.”
“I’m aware of that. And he siphoned off cash from your own accounts, hoping, it seems clear, to make it to another day when he could recoup his losses. It was way too far gone for that, though.”
Angelica shrugged.
“But you acted as his hostess on occasion. Many times that was how he met new investors.”
In the first year after college she had arranged several parties at the Beverly Hills house. But he’d stopped socializing at home after that, preferring to take friends and clients to dinners at LA restaurants or the country club. She’d really noticed the change when he’d decided against his annual Christmas party. He’d given her no reason, and still hoping she could please him, she hadn’t pressed.
“It was those new investors that propped up the operation,” Lorraine continued. “As long as new money poured in, he could make payments to those who wanted their money out. When an imbalance occurred, more money being demanded than was coming in, the whole scam collapsed.”
“I have a degree in finance. I understand the fundamentals.”
“Which is yet another reason why the public wonders if you actually didn’t know...or if you should have figured it out.”
Tension wrapped Angelica’s neck like a strangling hand. Should she have known? Her father had been so secretive the past couple of years. Then, at the very end of spring, he’d insisted she take up residence at the lake house. There’d been renovations he’d ordered her to oversee during the summer months.
And she, still trying to win his approval—who the hell has ever loved you?—had driven up the hill.
“I won’t be the last journalist to find you,” Lorraine said. “For now, the press has been easy on you because you look blameless. But to keep smelling sweet and clean, you should get ahead of this.”
Angelica hesitated. The lawyer had mentioned that idea, too.
Lorraine stepped closer, as if sensing her waffling. “I’m your best bet. I asked around town and heard you’re buddies with the Walkers—working for one of the sisters, I believe? Brett and I are good friends, you know, and the two of us...we could be good friends, too, Angelica. I won’t lie to you, getting you in front of my camera would be a coup. But I’ll treat you right.”
Like she’d treated Brett right? Angelica’s roiling thoughts calmed. Lorraine Kushi, as Brett had remarked, was a snake, and Angelica certainly wasn’t going to reward her reptilian ethics. There was no way she’d believe the other woman would go out of her way to treat her fairly. Her priority would be gaining viewers, not reporting the truth.
“So...” She pretended to be mulling over the reporter’s proposal. “We should do this soon?”
“Today,” the other woman snapped out. “Word is there’s going to be a presser regarding your father’s case this afternoon... He’ll be all over the news tonight.”
While she’d be watching a wedding-gown marathon, please God.
“You think...you think you’d be the best to interview me?”
“If not...well, this is an interesting town. Without you, I might end up reporting on that string of burglaries I’ve been hearing about.” She hesitated. “And the rumors that the Walkers might be responsible.”
Angelica went cold to her bones. This was how the woman was Brett’s “friend”? But she kept her expression free of the disdain she felt for Lorraine. “I see. But there’re other stations—”
“Channel Six barely beats us in ratings. Their financial reporter, Sean Marks—he’s an asshole.”
Sean Marks. Channel Six. Angelica made mental note, then met Lorraine’s eyes. “Let me think about it, talk to my attorney.”
“An interview is the way to go. You need to start thinking about yourself.”
“Yes.” Angelica nodded. She did need to start thinking about herself. And for herself. With a new certainty of purpose, she headed for the hardware store’s back door. No longer was she going to let circumstances bat her about.
It was time to take real charge of her life.
* * *
KEEP CALM, GLORY admonished herself, even as she did a little jig while pulling food from the refrigerator. You’re only having a man over for dinner. No reason to feel so...uncontained, even though she’d had wild sex the night before in the cab of a truck.
Even though the man coming to dinner was the man she’d had wild sex with. Even though he was the man she’d fallen in love with.
At the sudden thought, Glory nearly dropped the head of lettuce in her hands, and she had to juggle it along with the tomato and the cucumber. When she managed to control them, she shut the fridge with her hip while trying to calm her skipping heartbeat.
She was in love?
She couldn’t be in love.
Her acquaintance with Kyle Scott only went back a few weeks, and during one of those he’d been gone. A person didn’t fall in such a short time—didn’t that go against the laws of nature or something?
But then she had a mental picture of the two of them on that table the day before. Herself telling Kyle that the lake had been expected to take three years to fill and instead had taken three days.
The world could work that way.
Dropping the produce on the countertop, she placed her hand over her stomach, which was doing flips and turns like a kid hopped-up on sugar. All of her felt that way, revved and just a little bit nauseous.
“Get a grip, Glory,” she said out loud.
But still, she nearly jumped out of her shoes when she heard the knock on her front door. She had only a few steps to gain some kind of composure—her bungalow was just that small—and she supposed she might still look a little bit green because he gave her a quizzical glance when she opened the door.
“Okay?”
“Mmm. Yeah,” she said, bright as a button. “Come in.”
And he did, walking right to her and yanking her close for a kiss, bending her over his arm and laying it on, hot and intense. She stumbled back, blinking, when he let her go.
“Is that a smirk?” she demanded, straightening her shirt and trying to look annoyed, even though she was considering dragging him straight to the bedroom.
“I think it’s my smug look,” he said. “I can’t help it. God, you’re beautiful.”
Swoon!
Then he glanced around, taking in the living room and kitchen and tiny dining area that were really all one space. “Nice.”
She waved a hand. “Some people call it open concept. I, on the other hand, realize it’s merely small. There’s a bathroom and one bedroom down the hall.”
He glanced that way, then gave her a little smile. Smug smile. “Maybe you’ll give me a tour later.”
“Maybe,” she countered, trying to sound airy and unconcerned and not at all like a woman who was in love!
“You live here long?” he asked, following her the short distance to the kitchen area.
“About a year. The people who had it before me used it as a weekend and vacation place. They lived—”
“Down the hill,” he finished for her.
She nodded. “Then they got too busy with work to come up very often and I got the chance to have it. I love how it’s nestled in the big pines and that there’s a creek out front.” You had to cross a footbridge to reach the front door, which gave it a fairy-tale quality to Glory.
With her very own lover within its walls, it seemed even more fantastical. She pulled a beer from the refrigerator for him and sipped at her glass of wine as she began chopping vegetables. “What about you? I just realized I don’t know where you’ve been living.”
So cautious, she’d avoided most things personal, worrying she’d become too invested in him. But now she wanted to know everything.
“The house I’m working on...the owner’s letting me stay there.”
“Oh. That’s great.” It made her worry a little, though. Money must be tight. “You shouldn’t have been paying for those dinners out we’ve had.”
“Glory—”
“I know I said we’d trade picking up the restaurant tabs.” She punished the cucumber because she couldn’t stab herself for her inconsideration.
“You’re making dinner for me tonight,” he pointed out.
She glanced up. Smiled. Because making dinner for him meant now she felt safe having him in her home. Her heart was no longer at risk. It was already lost.
She allowed herself a moment to study him, her gaze tracing him with a lover’s intensity. His hair was longer than it had been when they’d first met and wavy at the ends. His lean features were handsome and masculine, and his dark eyes were more black than brown.
If they had children, would there be blue-eyed brunettes and dark-eyed blonds? She thought the combination of their DNA would create strong and smart mountain kids...who would ultimately be roped to the hardware store like she was.
Roped...?
“Glory? What is it?”
She shook herself, refusing to let her mind delve into that random, uncomfortable thought. “I’m okay,” she said, throwing the vegetables into the salad bowl on top of the torn lettuce. “So...which do you like? Cats or dogs?”
“I’m an equal opportunity pet person. Except for tarantulas. And iguanas.” He cast his eyes to the ceiling. “Fish are okay, but watching them as a screensaver is simpler than aquarium care.”
“You spend a lot of time on a computer?” she asked, trying to see him bellied up to a keyboard. It was easier to imagine him with a hammer or a paintbrush. “Do you actually type or do you do the two-fingered hunt-and-peck?”
“Uh...” He looked away. “I like to watch those videos of kittens scared by paper coming out of printers just like everyone else.”
The oven dinged and Glory pulled out the chicken casserole she’d made from her mom’s “company” recipe—one that harked back to her childhood. It was really nothing special, Glory realized as she’d grown older. Cans of soup and stuffing mix. Her mother was into more complicated dishes now that she’d taken those cooking classes at the gourmet chef’s shop in the village.
“Do you have family?” she asked, as she dished out plates.
He carried them both to the table she’d set for two. “Oh, yeah. Parents. And I have a brother and a sister. You’re a lonely only, though.”
That’s right. She’d told him that once. “I envy you siblings.”
“Because you weren’t tortured enough as a child? My sister let her friends put makeup on me when I was four and then they took pictures. They blackmailed me with those for the next ten years.”
Can't Fight This Feeling (Cabin Fever) Page 25