David opened the glass door to the shop, and stepped inside, only it wasn’t a store, more of a workspace. There were a few long tables piled high with fabric, and a maze of clothes racks on wheels were parked with absolutely no respect for traffic flow. As he stepped around one, a man appeared. A Pillsbury Doughboy type, mid-thirties, with a tape measure in his teeth.
“Horatio Moore?” David asked. Then he pulled out his business card, trying for European fashion flair. Ha. Whatever. Today he’d be lucky to pass for Yankee asshole.
The man pulled the tape measure from his mouth. “Who are you?”
Oh, yes, who was he? International man of fashion. Right. “We represent Ashley Larsen, she had discussed the…fashion event for her stores? Chicago’s Next Big Look. She had selected you to showcase your designs in her boutique. It’s a great honor.”
Horatio squinted in confusion. “You’re from New York?”
“We manage a variety of interests.”
“I didn’t realize this show was this big.”
Using two fingers, David pinched his forehead in what he hoped was egotistical ennui. “Big is not what we want. We want exclusive.”
“And you want me?”
“Ashley wants you. We’re merely the bank.”
“Sure, I’ll do it,” Horatio said with a nod. Apparently being an overbearing ass was the key to success within this world. There were certain parallels with Wall Street. “What’s the plan?”
“In September, over the Labor Day weekend, she’ll have a set of two challenges. Cocktails and the everyday sort of clothes.”
Horatio laughed. “Cocktails? You mean cocktail wear.”
“That’s it.” Jeez, this was clothing, not the GDP. “You make the designs for the show, and the audience will decide which designer represents the Next Big Look for Chicago.”
“Who am I up against? Probably Lorenzo. I hate that prick. You know how many times he’s stolen designs from me? More than I can count.” He pointed to the striped dress in the window. “See that? Admire the slim cut. Look at the way it moves. Sometimes, I swear, I can only stand in awe.”
David looked at the dress, frowned. “I can see that.”
“The dress is my masterpiece, my signature. Lorenzo ripped it off, and—oh, God, strike me dead now—he added a belt! It’s like putting a moustache on the Mona Lisa. Bastard.”
“There’s no Lorenzo. There’s a lady from Miami, Mariah…” He struggled for the name, and gave up, settling on the singular alone. It made her sound more important. Whatever. “And then there’s a guy from New York.”
“Out-of-towners? Whoa, that’ll be awesome. Hey, you want to look around? I’ve got a great brown cashmere that would go so well with those shoulders of yours,” he said, sweeping his glance over David in a purely professional manner that still made him nervous. This was so not his world.
David took two steps back. Two steps closer to freedom. “No. I have a call with Milan in five minutes. Another time.”
“You’re sure? I can do some great things for you.”
David waved, fleeing the place. Fashion. Captain Kirk would have never been caught dead in a boutique, not even if the entire universe was at stake.
Ashley was going to owe him for this one. Big-time.
IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when Ashley got to the hotel. She thought about calling first, telling him the crisis was over, but sometimes it was easier to duck the bullet, rather than take it straight to the heart. When she slid the key card in the locket, she peeked in, found the lights on and David at work at his computer.
“Hello,” she said cautiously, trying to gauge the mood. He was shirtless, in blue jeans, quite casual except for the tense line at his shoulders. And of course, no look of impending emotional eruption would be complete without the severe cut of the jawline. Ashley forced a smile.
“Welcome back.”
“I’m sorry,” she offered, getting the apology right out there in the open, before the real accusations started to fly.
“Is everything okay?” he asked, his voice concerned, but his eyes bothered her, like Miami before the afternoon storm. Miami was so much easier than Chicago.
She wanted to go to him, touch him, wanted to soothe the rigid shoulders, but that was more ducking. Needing to get this over, she cleared the tension from her throat. “Yes. It was a mess. We had a fight with the bank, had to trudge to ten stores. And you know, they really rip you off on checks. The first one actually would have cleared, but no…they had to put the biggest check through first. Sneaky jerks.” Her smile wobbled a bit, but she was steady. She walked over to the desk and leaned against the corner, trying for casual, too.
“I’m glad you got it worked out.”
A long silence followed, and she didn’t like the silence, so she rambled on to fill it. “How was your day? I’m glad you didn’t fly back to New York.”
“I thought about it, but I’m booked on the first flight out in the morning.”
She knew he would have thought about flying back, was almost surprised that he was still in Chicago. Ashley would have sat in the hotel for days waiting for him. David wasn’t her. “I’m sorry I didn’t call.”
“I assumed you had a reason.”
“I couldn’t get away,” she offered, not a great reason, but partly the truth.
“Here,” he said, and handed her a card. Horatio Moore, Designs by Horatio. “He’s in for the show. You’ll have to call him, but he agreed.”
Oh. My. God. She stared at the card, stared at him. “You met with him?”
“Somebody had to. I tried to call and see what you wanted, but you weren’t answering your phone.”
Her smile started to wobble again, and she bit her lip, hard, preferring the pain to the guilt. In her life, her dreams had always been pushed aside to take care of other things. More important things. It wasn’t that she was walking away, no, but sometimes you had to do what you had to. While she had been busy cleaning up Val’s mess, she hadn’t expected him to clean up her own.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. Maybe if she kept saying it, he would believe her. He didn’t look as if he believed her. He’d barely lifted his eyes from the screen. “We were talking to the cops,” she babbled on. “I didn’t think talking on the cell would be smart.”
“No, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been smart. Polite, yes. Sensitive, yes, thoughtful, yes. Smart. Obviously not.”
“You’re mad,” she stated, then went to sit on the bed, then immediately stood, because she didn’t want to argue on this bed. There were too many good memories here. She didn’t want to spoil it with bad ones, and there would be bad ones now. She braced herself against the wall, hands behind her back and waited. She didn’t have to wait long.
“Hell, yes, I’m mad,” he blurted, but his voice was eerily calm. She liked it better when he yelled, but he didn’t yell, he only swiveled the chair around toward her. “When you left, I was furious at your sister. At the garbage she was dragging you into. But now, my anger has moved beyond that. You could have told me what to do, could have clued me in a bit. If I had known you wouldn’t show until midnight, I would have flown home. I like this hotel room, but not that much.”
Yup, the truth hurts, but the cold look in his eyes was worse. Ashley wanted to stay calm because now wasn’t the time to fall apart and prove everybody right. “All I needed to do was get Valerie in a better place, talk her down from the ledge and then get back here to you.”
Apparently that was the tipping point because finally he stood with his arms folded across his chest. Neatly hidden beneath his arms were twin angry fists.
“Do you hear how you talk about her? You sound like she’s a four-year-old, Ashley. She’s thirty years old. Let her grow up.”
In David’s mind everything was so easy. Damn the consequences, just do what you needed to do. Life wasn’t like that. Ashley took a lingering glance at those arms, wished he would tug her close, wished his hazel eyes weren’t so troubled. But no
, they were going to have this out. Damn.
“You don’t understand,” she started, but she’d never been good at educating herself nor anybody else, yet it was important for him to understand this: that there were no good choices here.
“Why don’t you explain it to me, Ashley. Explain why you have to play nursemaid. Explain why you put your shops on hold, why you put me on hold, why you put everything on hold when she calls.”
She shot away from the wall and started to pace. It was so easy for him to criticize, to point out how to do everything better. Yes, she was prepared to eat crow for screwing up the day, she should have called, but she wouldn’t let him do this to her. This, this, she didn’t deserve. “You don’t know.”
David cocked his head, a challenge in his eyes. “Tell me.”
She glared, opened her mouth to yell, but then she began to speak, carefully, absolutely, so he could follow her. “As bad as you think this is—with the bounced checks, the needing to find lost permission slips for Brianna, the stupid arguments—it’s a cakewalk now. I go to bed at night, and I don’t have to take a pill to sleep. I don’t have to ask the bail bondsman how his kids are doing. I don’t have to check my purse in the morning to make sure all the money is there. I don’t have a pit in my stomach when the weekend rolls around and I’m not sure if Brianna’s going to see her mother or if Aunt Ash and Grandma are sitting primary. This is easy, David. This is good. I’ve been to hell. I don’t want to go back. If babysitting and holding her hand keeps me out of hell, I’m all for it. You don’t know. People that don’t go through it—they don’t know. You’re all Mr. Tough Love, throw your brother out, throw your ex out, throw Val out. I’m not you. I can’t be you. Sometimes I wish I could be like that, but I can’t. I’m sorry if that disappoints you and I’m sorry I didn’t call today, and I’m sorry that you don’t approve of the way I treat Val, but it’s what I’m going to do because it works. You think I’m stupid for putting up with this, but it works, and nobody, nobody, can argue with that.”
He stood there, impassive, a hard wall of stubborn. “You have a right to be happy.”
Oh, that was underhanded. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking of her. He was supposed to be all mad, and selfish, the manly man who knew it all. That, she could stand up to. This, she wasn’t sure. “I am happy,” she said, and she wished her voice sounded more certain.
“I want to kill her, Ashley, and I’m not a cop, or a soldier, or somebody that deals with violence on a daily basis. I’m an ordinary guy. I work with spreadsheets. Financial models, return on investment, and I want to kill her. I want the problems gone. I want your shops to run in the black, but I can’t fix it if you don’t want me to. I want you to be happy, and she makes you unhappy. I don’t like to see you unhappy. I hate it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, apologizing again. She was sorry she hadn’t called, she was sorry her sister was a walking reality show, she was sorry that she hadn’t been there to meet with Horatio, and most of all, she was sorry because he was flying out early in the morning, and she had wasted a good fourteen hours. Ashley didn’t want to waste any more time.
“Are we okay?” she asked him. David looked so frustrated, and she understood, but anger and frustration, those emotions didn’t solve anything. She’d gone through that when Val had turned up both drunk and pregnant, an especially awkward situation. From then on, Ashley’s decision-making changed forever. It wasn’t so easy to be all tough and hard like he wanted her to be. Still, she wished it were easier on him. He was getting a painfully quick lesson on the realities of living with a recovering alcoholic. Yeah, welcome to the club.
His arms dropped to his sides. Helpless. Yes, she knew that look, too. “I want us to be okay,” he told her, his voice low. “I want everything fixed, but I don’t think everything is fixed.”
Of course it wasn’t fixed, but Ashley took happy when she got the chance. “Could we pretend? Just until you get on the plane?”
“Until the next crisis?”
“Yeah, until then.”
“I’m not very good at pretending, Ashley.” She already knew that. She loved that he saw the world so simply, could look at the bad and label it for what it was. When it came to her business, she needed that simplicity, that honesty. She’d learned from it, and was stronger for it.
But the other thing that David had done for her—her aspirations were getting bigger, and they almost seemed obtainable. At one time, she had been ambivalent about doing much more than keeping Val sober. Now, her wish list was longer. She still wanted to keep Val sober, but she also wanted to do right by Ashley’s Closet, and most of all she wanted to keep David in her life. It shouldn’t be impossible, and if it was, she didn’t want anyone to tell her so. Not even him. “Please try. You want me to be happy. Make me happy. We don’t have a lot of time, David. I don’t want to spend it like this.”
David gave her a smile, and she wished it were more certain. Then he came to her, and pulled her close, and for a few moments, his cheek rested on her head and in his arms, she found the very happiness he said she deserved. “I’m very happy now,” she whispered. “You make me happy.” Surrounded by everything she said she wanted, Ashley smiled to herself, and she wished it were more certain, too.
THE BEDSIDE CLOCK said five-thirty, and outside the sky was turning the first shades of gold. Halfway between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m., David had closed his eyes, but sleep remained out of reach. Theoretically, lying here with Ashley, his fingers skimming through the soft waves of her hair, he should have been one happy man, but something was off. Probably the way she was frowning in her sleep.
Gently he pushed at the twin lines above her eyes, but they wouldn’t disappear, no matter how much he willed it. Ashley’s frown remained, so David’s frown remained as well.
Twenty-four hours ago, he had everything in his life mapped out. He would move here, there would be no more planes, no more tiny hotel shampoo bottles, no more Do Not Disturb signs. Every night he would pull her close, and every morning, she would wake up against him. Like this.
It used to give him hives to think about living in the same city with Chris and Christine. Now, he could even stomach the idea of seeing them—occasionally, and Ashley would have to be with him. That anger he could put aside.
Val? No, that anger wasn’t going anywhere as long as she treated Ashley like her own private punching bag.
He shifted, uncomfortable in his skin.
Warily, his free hand fisted, and he increased the pressure until his skin paled white. David was an absolutist. He was paid a decent salary in order to be straight and upfront. He didn’t look the other way, he didn’t pull his punches—in his job, in the ring, in his life. He never had, and it was probably one of the reasons that Christine had left him.
What Ashley wanted was for him to look the other way. Now, truthfully, there were a lot of things that he would avoid doing to make her happy, but he couldn’t stand still and watch her hurt, or watch her frowning in her sleep and then cluelessly pretend that he was okay with this plan.
But that’s what she wanted. She put her needs second, her heart second, her life second to someone not nearly as worthy.
And while she was busy saving her sister, she didn’t want him to judge. But every day he went out and judged. It was who he was.
Ashley shifted, her warm skin brushed his, her breast pillowed against him. His cock rose, wanting to take her. His heart pumped, wanting to take her. But this time it was his obstinate mind that stood in the way.
He didn’t even know how to look the other way. Sure, he could try. David lifted his fists, twisted them in the air, studying the compressed power within. Slowly he released the pressure, wanting to ease the taut burn inside him, but it didn’t go away. No, pretending only made it worse.
David’s frown deepened, and finally, abandoning all pretense of sleep, he climbed out of bed. His plane took off for New York in a couple of hours. Home. Where was home anymore? He wasn’t sure.
Quietly he headed for the shower. After he was dressed, carry-on packed, he kissed her once on her sleepy, furrowed forehead, trying one last time to make her worries disappear.
“I love you, Ash.” His words were whispered and for his ears alone. Then he slipped out of the room before she woke.
14
FRIDAY PASSED and he didn’t call. Ashley kept herself busy making plans for the upcoming show, telling herself not to borrow trouble. A reporter from Chicago News Daily had promised coverage and the In Style columnist from the Tribune was intrigued. In the afternoon, she pulled off the PR hat, donned her manager hat, and smacked some sense into Evelyn, the manager of the Naperville store, who horrendously believed that a midnight blue blouse should be matched with a set of royal purple silk capris.
At first Evelyn was surprised because Ashley wasn’t usually such a bossy boss, but Ashley’s tolerance level was zero. Eventually Ashley whipped her into shape, giving her a lengthy diatribe on the subtleties of color, how a sophisticated scheme did not let the gradients run into each other like a smash-up on the Kennedy. No, they must flow, and wash together until they are as one. Evelyn was suitably humbled, the purple capris were back with the white blouse where they belonged. Fashion crisis averted.
By the time Ashley pulled into the driveway it was late, she was exhausted and David still hadn’t called. Not even an “I’m in New York” call, and she told herself it was not a sign of the end, or even worse, that he was trying to teach her a lesson on phone etiquette, which she didn’t mind so much, but David really wasn’t the “teach you a lesson” sort of man. So that left her back at “the end” conclusion. Sadly, she was starting to look at the world with harsher eyes which, in a time like this, really stank.
She opened the door to the smells of Val cooking supper, and Ashley smiled at the sign of normalcy. Day one after the great meltdown, and all is well. Yay. She hung her bag on the hall tree just as Brianna barreled forth from her room, and began insistently tugging at her hand.
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