by JA Huss
“That’s a quite a windfall.”
“Right?” I ask. “But it wasn’t right. Because my dad wanted me to have enough, but not too much. And sixteen billion is way too much. So I did what he asked and I parceled it out the way he intended. I kept the part I got as the executor. And I kept the hotel, obviously, since it was mine anyway. I decided I’ve been scared of taking chances for far too long. I was going to make a decision and stick with it. See it through to the end. See what I’m made of. And no, running a resort in Lake Tahoe was never how I saw my life when I was younger. I pictured a capable man taking care of me for the rest of my days, to be honest. So I adjusted my dream. Thought about what I wanted. And what I wanted was to be… capable of something. Anything, really. So I’m still here. And I’m staying.”
“I get it.” Fletcher looks down at the sand and starts running it through his fingers alongside of me. “I was out here last week. Just moping on the beach. And Shelly came out and sat next to me. She put her arm around me and looked up at my face with those wise eight-year-old eyes and said, ‘It doesn’t matter if you sell it, Uncle Fletch. We can always think about the beach in our heads and it will still be there.’”
“Very wise kid,” I say.
“She’s amazing. And she was right. So I put the house up for sale the next day, and one week later we had an offer on the table.” He stops playing with the sand and stares out across the lake. “I feel so much relief, Tiffy. It scares me. I should feel like a failure. I should feel like I let my granddad down by putting this house up for sale. But I don’t. I just feel relief. Like I’ve finally admitted I was on the wrong path and just accepting that fact is enough to make it right.”
“I’m glad.” I have so much more to say, but I’m just not sure how to start. So we sit there in silence for a few minutes, listening to the waves and watching jet skis off in the distance.
“I’m going to LA tonight.”
My heart wrenches in my chest. But what did I expect?
“How much do you really know about me?” He fills in the silence left hanging.
“Enough to know you weren’t who I thought you were.”
“Hmmm,” he grunts. “I was so pissed about that, you have no idea.”
I have nothing to say. So I say nothing.
“You never tried to know me, Tiffy. You never once tried to know me. You didn’t make any effort.”
“That’s not true,” I say, feeling a little defensive. “I looked you up on Wikipedia.”
It was a joke, but he doesn’t laugh. “You saw Fletcher the stripper. Fletcher the player. Fletcher the fuckup.”
“To be fair, Fletcher”—my anger gets the best of me—“those were the only parts you showed me.”
“Really? You sure about that?”
“You were a man-whore.”
“I told you you were special the first night we met.”
“That was after you propositioned me at the show.”
“You came there to fire me based on rumors.”
“Rumors that were partially true! And you outed yourself as the matchmaker, remember? I didn’t come up with that idea myself.”
He shrugs. “I was trying to help you. And I did help you.” He looks over at me, the anger in his heated stare apparent now. “You just never saw it.”
“You hurt me too, Fletcher. You set Cole up with Katie and never told me why. You let me find out on my own. You took me to a restaurant to practice—”
“You wanted all that, Tiffy. And I didn’t tell you about Cole because I didn’t have the evidence until after you broke into my hotel room and went through my private papers.”
I don’t reply. I’m angry again and I don’t want things to end like this.
“I saw you, ya know.”
“Saw me where?”
He shakes his head. “Not where, Tiffy. You’re so preoccupied with where and when. The only thing that matters is the how and the why.”
I sigh. We’re going in circles. “You lied to me, Fletcher. And sure, I was no one to you, so I guess you had that right. But you don’t get to judge me. Not when our whole relationship was based on the idea that you could change me.”
“Is that what you think?” he asks, laughing. “Well, try on this perspective for a minute, Miss Preston. I fell for you the minute I saw you out in the audience. I never wanted to change you, you wanted me to change you. I liked the clothes you wore. I liked the sexy you had back then. I liked everything about you, which is why I went out of my way to help you. It was Cole who needed the new and improved version, not me.”
I huff out a breath of air though my nose, the anger building inside me. “You don’t even know me, Fletcher.”
“Ditto, babe,” he snarls. “Ditto.”
I stand up and wipe the sand off my ass. “Well, I’m glad you’re good, Fletcher. And maybe one day we’ll be friends again. But I’m not going to sit here and let you tell me who I am. Not when you haven’t even asked one goddamned question about me. Not one, Fletcher. You were never interested.”
He stands too, grabbing me by the wrist. “So tell me, then. What makes you tick, Tiffy Preston? You figured me out. I had a debt I needed to pay, a family I dropped everything to take care of, a woman and a child who weren’t even my responsibility. I left college for them, you know. I put my whole life on hold to take care of my brother’s mistake. Scraping by doing this and that. Trying to pay the taxes on this monstrous house and put food on the table. Pay the babysitter while Samantha went to nursing school. And I did my best. Any way I could. I came up with dozens of ideas to get something rolling and that matchmaking business was all I had for years. And I was good at it. I helped those girls, Tiffy, Every single one of them. I changed the way they saw themselves.”
“So? What’s that got to do with me?” I regret those words and quickly amend them. “Us, I mean. Because even though what you’re doing to me right now isn’t fair, I’m still here. I’m still trying. But all you seem to want to do is blame me for this fucked-up position you’re in. Do you want the money to keep your house, Fletcher? I can give it to you if that’s what you need in order to understand I like you.”
“Fuck you,” he growls. “I was never interested in your money, Tiffy. You’re mixing me up with your dream man, Cole.”
I look away and shake my head. We are both silent again, perhaps choosing our next words carefully as we try to navigate a minefield of hurt and disappointment.
“Back when I first started the matchmaking thing it was sort of a joke. I had just quit school in my senior year to help Samantha with Shelly after she gave birth. She had some depression and I was a psych major. So I figured if I couldn’t finish my degree, I could at least help her out. And it became so clear that Samantha’s self-worth was tied up in Walker’s opinion of her that I started coaching her on how to feel sexy. Not how to be sexy, Tiffy. How to feel sexy. There’s a very big difference.”
I look him in the eye now, seeing a way forward, even if it is by way of a very crooked path.
“And after she started getting better, I began to notice more and more how people perceived me, and how that perception wove its way into my own opinion of myself. Sexy, to ninety-nine percent of the population, is only on the outside. So why not take advantage of that? Why not sell my brand of sexy and buy myself some time?”
“So you became a stripper. Don’t you think that’s a little self-defeating, Fletcher? On the one hand you’re lecturing Samantha and these other girls about valuing themselves for who they are on the inside, but at the same time you’re using your looks to make money.”
“It was an experiment, that’s it.”
I can tell he’s pissed off about my accusation, but screw it. He brought it all up. “So you wrote a screenplay about what it feels like to be an objectified man taking his clothes off to survive and you sold your story to a network. I’m happy for you, Fletcher. And I think you’re going places. Selling this house is probably going to set you on a path
to success. And I wish you all the best. But I was raised by a prostitute, Fletcher. So excuse me if I didn’t have the highest regard for your path to redemption.”
His mouth gapes open for a second.
“Yeah, my mother sold herself to save me. And she got what she thought she wanted too. But she never loved my father. And once I came to terms with that, I started to doubt her love for me as well. It’s a shitty thing to be lied to under the pretense that it’s for your own good. And you did that to me too. Did you even like me? Or was I just another project? Was I just another girl you needed to fix to make yourself feel important and in control of your own destiny?”
“That’s not what it was,” he sneers.
“That’s because you and I see it from opposite sides, Fletcher. And you’re so goddamned sure that you walk on water, you can’t even be bothered to wonder if my point of view is even worthy of your consideration.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
I don’t stop her when she walks out.
I don’t stop her because everything she just said hits me in the chest like a brick. It stops me dead.
Instead I sit back down and stare out at the water, wondering if Samantha feels the same way about me as Tiffy does. Wondering if, in the process of trying to fix things, all I did was fuck them up more.
I pull out my phone and tab Sam’s contact. She picks up on the third ring, kids laughing in the background. “Hey,” she says, a little out of breath. “How’d it go?”
Samantha moved out of the mansion last September. She graduated from nursing school and sat me down that night, thanking me for all my help, but anxious to take control of her life and make it on her own. “Got an offer,” I say without much enthusiasm.
“Great!” But my silence betrays my thoughts. She knows me too well. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fletcher,” she says in that stern voice she uses with me often these days. “We’ve been over this. I don’t need that house. And you’re selling for all the right reasons. I don’t want you to keep it because you think you owe us. Or,” she adds quickly, “because you think your granddad would be disappointed. He had no way of knowing how it would all turn out. He doesn’t want you to struggle. He wants you to live a good life and put the past to rest. And even with the Hollywood money, it’s a big commitment to keep that property.”
“I know,” I say. But my fight with Tiffy is weighing on my mind right now.
“You don’t need to take care of us anymore, Fletch. We’re good. And I’m so thankful. But I can’t steal your life away just because you feel obligated.”
Her words are just another brick hitting my chest. “I’m gonna take the offer,” I say.
“Good.” She laughs. “Good. I’m so happy for you, Fletcher. Really.” There’s some squealing of girls in the background and I know she and Shells are at a friend’s house for a pool party.
“Well, I’ll let you guys get back to the fun.” I force the cheerfulness into my voice so she won’t ask any more questions. “I just wanted to let you know.”
“Congrats, Fletcher. Talk to you soon.”
I end the call and lie back on the sand, letting the wind whip around my body. It’s hard to let Samantha go. And I bet it was even harder for her to take her life into her own hands and trust that she had what it took to make it on her own. Walker is still hanging around and part of me suspects that Sam wanted some distance from me so she could sort out her feelings for him.
That hurts too, since I was the one who was there for her and Shelly. He walked out, just like his name implies. Too many big dreams to be saddled with a high school girlfriend and a new baby. Walker and I had this competitive gene that hooked us when we were kids and never let go. So I wonder… did I step in for Samantha and Shelly? Or did I just want to prove to my brother that I was a better man than him?
Tiffy’s doubts about her mother’s love have shattered my preconceived notions about what I have been doing all these years. Will Shelly grow up thinking she was an obligation that needed to be dealt with? Handled like a problem? Will she accuse me of stealing her mother’s life? Will she accuse her mother of taking the easy way out? Will she doubt my love for her because I felt the need to provide? Step in and save them under the guise of doing the right thing?
I don’t want that.
And it’s not gonna happen. But none of these changes were because of me. It was Samantha who took things into her own hands and made the hard choices. It was Samantha who said no to our arrangement and decided there was more to life than… stability.
That word echoes in my mind and more of what makes Tiffy tick starts to make sense.
So I tab another contact and wait for my realtor to pick up. “Take the offer,” I say. “And keep me posted.”
I listen half-heartedly to his enthusiasm on the other end of the line for a few seconds, and then I end that call too.
I don’t go back inside the house. It’s just too much right now. They want to buy it furnished, which I can understand. It makes sense if you like the decor. Filling up all that space with new things is an expense that costs both time and money.
But it hurts. I took what I wanted before the first showing. All the things that tugged at my heart. But it still hurts.
So I weigh my next move in my head. Back to LA tonight? Or sort things out with Tiffy?
In the end that decision is made for me. Because when I finally make my way back to the driveway, on the windshield of my car, tucked under the wipers, is a ticket for the opening night of the new Mountain Men show at the Landslide Hotel.
If she’s still interested, then so am I.
I’m all in.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I stand backstage, peeking out through the curtain, staring at the auditorium doors while everyone else bustles around me getting ready for the show.
“Just go sit at your table,” Claudio tells me for the billionth time. “He’s coming, I know it.”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“Tiffy,” Claudio says, taking my face in his hands. “The man is in love with you. He hasn’t said it yet, but he is. He’s coming.”
“We had a fight, Claudio. And we didn’t part on good terms. And he said he was going back to LA—”
But my words catch because Fletcher Novak walks in.
He’s… stunning. Dark jeans that accentuate his legs and taper down just right. A white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up, casually, owning the look like no other man I’ve ever seen. And his blond hair is combed back, the unruly loose wave of curls trying to break free as they brush against his shoulders when he turns his head.
Is he searching for me?
I take a deep breath.
“Go. Sit with him.”
“God, I’m so nervous. What if we argue again? It will kill me.”
“He’s here, Tiffy. Don’t let him get away.” Claudio kisses me on the lips, and lets go of my face so he can get back to work. “I’ll handle everything, girlfriend,” he calls over his shoulder. “Go get your sexy on.”
I laugh, and then slip back behind the curtain and make my way out to the auditorium through the side door.
The event is sold out. People called the hotel for months complaining after the show was cancelled. It was the only thing they cared about. The magician is good, and it will be nice to have two shows, but I’m banking on the Mountain Men to make this hotel a success.
Fletcher spots me coming just as he finds the front-row center table I reserved. I had no idea he’d be in town, but I have a feeling Claudio had something to do with that. He was the one who insisted I keep the reserved VIP table for myself.
“Hey,” Fletcher says, reaching for me as I walk up. He takes my hand, pulls me close, and then leans in and kisses me on the cheek. “You look pretty.”
I blush. I’m wearing a flirty peach-colored sundress that hits me just above the knee and my favorite new four-inch heels. I dressed for him, so that’s a huge
relief. “Thank you. I’m sorry—”
“Don’t.” He places a fingertip over my lips. “You don’t need to be sorry for anything.”
“I know, but I just need you to know that it wasn’t fair for me to throw this show in your face. Not when I’m basically doing the same thing. I was wrong to judge you.”
He gives me a crooked smile that reaches all the way up to his eyes. “The apologies are over, and you were right about everything, Tiffy. I’m here because I want you. Not the new you, not the old you. Just you. Any way you want to be, I’m in, princess.”
I take a deep breath and look him in the eyes. “I’m in too, Fletch. I have never felt this way about anyone in my life. You are always there. Always on my mind. And even though I know I can do it without any help from anyone now, I don’t want to.” I swallow hard. “I really don’t. I want you there with me. Next to me, every night, for as long as you’ll stay.”
“I love ya, Tiff,” he says, pulling me to his chest and kissing my head. “I love ya. I want to be in your life and I’m not going anywhere unless you kick me out.”
I check my watch, and then have an idea. “We have twenty minutes before the show starts. Can I show you something?”
“Show away, princess. I’m your captive audience tonight.”
I pull him along by the hand, since he’s still holding mine, and go out the door into the lobby. “It’s upstairs.”
He waggles his eyebrows at me. “Sure it is.”
We get into the elevator and I lean back against the mirrored wall, fanning myself with my free hand. “I’m nervous.”
He just smiles. We get off on my old penthouse floor and he chuckles as I lead him down the hallway. “I like where this is going.” I bite my lip as I look over my shoulder at him. “Hey,” he says. “No using my tips and tricks against me tonight.”
But then he does that little tongue thing where he touches it to the tip of his front teeth, and I laugh. “I like your tips, so feel free to use them on me all you want.”