The car reached the hotel’s circle entrance, and Chelsea released Nick’s hand as he got out. A few minutes ago, she’d been willing to throw caution to the wind and dive into this thing with Nick without a second thought. But she didn’t have that luxury right now.
“Nick, I don’t think we should do this.” Her gaze reached past him, trained on the headlights disappearing into the darkness. “I think, by the time we figure this all out, it won’t work.”
“Chelsea,” he whispered.
“And the longer we try to figure things out, the more”—her voice caught in her throat—“the more it’ll hurt.”
An Escalade approached, and Nick led her away from the new commotion. “You can’t live like you’re on the second strike. You always convinced yourself you were going to strike out when you still had one pitch left to do anything with.”
“But this isn’t just a game, Nick. If I lose you—if I lose my business, I can’t just go home when it gets dark and come back swinging harder the next day. There are people counting on me. Missy’s going to have a baby.”
He turned around, squeezing the back of his neck. “I’m not asking you to choose between being with me and running your business. I want us to have both.”
“Nick.”
“I know there are a lot of things working against us.” He shook his head, as if arguing whether or not to finish his thought. “If you don’t think we can get through those things, then tell me now.”
That was the thing. She knew she could love him enough—that being with him was worth whatever cost or risk or sacrifice, but it wasn’t only her life she was responsible for.
If her team knew what was happening, they’d slap her in the face and probably shove her toward him for even thinking of them right now. But it wasn’t just that.
“Maybe it will be different in the future, when things with the company are more stable, but Nick, I sleep on the couch in my office most nights and live off of the bread and peanut butter in my office drawer.” Chelsea had watched a relationship crumble under those circumstances before, right in front of her eyes. “And I have no idea when that’s going to change, especially if we end up signing this contract.”
“I get what you’re saying, but—”
“I’m not certainly going to let you put your life on hold, Nick. Not when you have big things to do.”
A sad smile shadowed his chiseled features. “Okay, Chelsea. If that’s what you think you want, then that’s what we’ll do.”
“Nick.” She didn’t want him to go, but she couldn’t exactly ask him to stay when she was the one driving him away.
He planted a kiss on her cheek and backed away. “I’m going to take a walk, but you go on up. Really, it’s okay. Get out of those shoes before you hurt yourself.”
She sighed, reaching—aching—for the words that would make things okay.
“But Chelsea…”
“Yeah?”
“Just promise me you won’t forget.” He dug his toe into a loose bit of concrete before those blue eyes pierced right through her. “I’ve seen you hit balls out of the park on the third strike, too.”
That night, Nick wandered through busy downtown Chicago with a lone plastic shopping bag scrunched in his hand. He passed deep-dish pizza places and nightclubs and law offices and several hours. Was it really the same day as that dinner with Chelsea?
No, the clock on his phone told him. It was 12:32 the next morning. And the sore knuckles on his right hand confirmed that it was definitely not the same day.
A voicemail bubble appeared on his screen from an unknown Oklahoma City number. Those were usually business-related, but who would be calling him this late?
He felt something bump his bag and tightened his grip.
“Oh, sorry, man,” a guy around his age said as he passed Nick on the sidewalk, walking closely to a woman with an ice cream cone. She turned and grinned at him before they walked away.
His chest constricted as a different face returned to his mind. The woman’s eyes had a similar shape to Chelsea’s.
“God,” Nick whispered under his breath. He had nothing coherent to say still, yet he knew his Father understood the mess of confusion, the tangle between bittersweet acceptance and wishing that things had turned out much differently, and the question Nick didn’t want to know the answer to. Was that it between him and Chelsea?
Nick should have known the moment they saw Paul, when the panic written all over her face told him the man hadn’t just conned her out of her hard-earned dollars. The scumbag had done so by way of her heart. It was only by the good Lord’s kindness that Nick hadn’t crushed the smirk off the guy’s face permanently. Yet his little love tap had done enough, thanks to modern technology.
Dodging a crowd of loud, possibly intoxicated women approaching from behind, Nick huddled in a lit entryway to drown out the noise of the busy city street and tapped the voicemail on his phone.
“Hi, this message is for Nick Pearson. My name is Vivian Kleinworth, and I’m a friend of Chelsea Scott’s.” Nick’s heart pounded at Chelsea’s name. “She asked me to reach out to you to set up a meeting regarding your moving company. I’m a business strategist and have a lot of experience in transportation, so Chelsea thought I could give you some ideas to move forward with expanding your fleet.”
Possibilities raced through his mind. More trucks. More employees. Increased service radius. Ideas he’d been formulating for months that he’d had trouble actualizing in practical, realistic terms.
“Sorry for the late notice,” the message continued, “but I’m in Oklahoma City until Thursday morning, so please let me know if you have any questions.”
Questions? Where should he begin? Maybe with how Chelsea expected him to meet with this woman in Oklahoma City when they were in Chicago, for starters.
He opened his messaging app and tapped on Chelsea’s name, but there was a new one from her already waiting, sent shortly before the timestamp on Vivian’s voicemail two hours ago. It was a long one.
Hey, you’ll be getting a call soon from Vivian Kleinworth, my college roommate and Rhonda’s daughter. How I found Rhonda, actually. She’s the smartest person I know and travels all over to help companies. You need her in your life. Trust me. Flight details are in your work email. You leave tomorrow at 11am, and it’s already paid for with reward points I need to use and have more than I know what to do with. So don’t even try to say no, Pearson.
Nick leaned against the glass door next to him and chewed on his thumbnail. He knew exactly what Chelsea was doing. Easing her guilt and sending him away in one fell swoop since she couldn’t leave this time. Giving him something that was important to him as a diversion. She was treating what had happened between them like she had with that Paul character—as if it was all on her.
It’s not my fault you let your emotions get in the way of business. How could Chelsea believe a whiff of that?
A dancing icon appeared under her words—Chelsea was typing something. Then the icon disappeared.
What was she thinking? Trying to make sure he actually went to Oklahoma City? He’d be an idiot not to take advantage of that opportunity—an action step, he’d heard Chelsea call it in her keynote—even if was served to him on a platter of guilt. Or was she attempting to apologize now, to find words that would clear the air between them?
Buried underneath the possibilities was a hope he brushed away like the crumb that it was. Logically, he couldn’t go there. He knew what it was like for summer to be over with Chelsea Scott, and it was easier this way.
Nick held his breath, watching his phone. The typing icon came back for a few seconds before the screen was blank again for good.
He would just have to be okay with not knowing.
Chapter 9
Eight hours on her feet showing planners. Almost two at a bar table during a cocktail mixer. When Chelsea returned to the hotel that night, she was practically crawling. Yes, the heels combined with her skinny slac
ks made for a fierce professional look even Rhonda had complimented, but standing on them for almost ten hours straight plus the night before had worn the skin raw on the arches of her feet and formed bruises in the soft tissue around every bone.
The elevator reached their floor. Almost ten hours of showing her planners and talking to people who’d seen Nick’s punch, of pretending his absence didn’t feel like missing a vital organ from her middle, and her spirit was about the same as her feet.
Ahhhh. Nearly to the room now. Which was more necessary, plunging her toes into the room’s ice container or putting on pajama pants and burrowing under her covers for the rest of the convention? The bed was winning by a thread.
For the third time, Missy winced as she looked down at Chelsea’s feet. “Maybe we should get you some different footwear.”
Chelsea nodded. “Tomorrow I’m finding the fuzziest slippers. Rhonda can just—” Her breath zapped, she stopped as they turned the corner to their hallway, where an older woman with bleached hair and leathery skin was fumbling with the lock on the door next to theirs. Letting herself into Nick’s room.
“What’s the matter?”
“He ended up going.” She swallowed past the dryness in her throat. “Good. That’s good.”
“Awww. Chelsea.” Missy scanned her key card, and the lock clicked. “I’m so sorry.”
“I knew it was the only way I could get him to leave.” She kicked off her heels the second she was inside the door and peeled off her skinny slacks.
Missy threw her bag on the bed and unclasped her earrings. “That man would have done anything you asked him to.”
Chelsea pulled on soft, fleecy pajama pants and let herself fall on the bed, only answering with a sigh wrung from her lungs.
“Why didn’t you want him to stay again?”
Missy’s yawn caught Chelsea in one, too. “Because, Miss.” She winced as her toes seemed to constrict. “I can’t give a relationship what it needs right now. Especially not with him. There is no slow motion of dipping toes in the water with Nick, you know? Being with him is running from the dock and diving headfirst without stopping to check the water. It’s not fair to him.”
Her sister-in-law nodded with a tight smile. Avoiding Chelsea’s eyes. It was nice of Missy to hold back what she was thinking, but her expression as she disappeared into the bathroom said it all.
Chelsea turned her phone on, checking her social media apps. The first notification knifed through her middle: Nick Pearson and Vivi Kleinworth are now friends. The sight of their profile pictures next to each other twisted the blade, the candid shot of her roommate dancing at a wedding with a full, blush-colored skirt twirling around her and soft lighting accentuating her feminine features. Next to Nick—Chelsea’s Nick.
No emotional decisions. He wasn’t her Nick. A few days and a string of summers didn’t make him hers. Still, an itching curiosity moved her fingers to Vivi’s profile. Her college roommate’s faithful documentation might tell her how the meeting went. Chelsea clicked on the first picture, posted two minutes ago. It was a dimly lit frame of an ornate chocolate dessert. You know a meeting’s going well when it requires a second venue, the caption read. Wink face.
Low lighting. White tablecloth. Two spoons. Wink face.
Was it a business consultation or a date? Knowing how beautiful her roommate was, it had started out as one and morphed into something else.
Chelsea zoomed in on the edge of the picture. Those were Nick’s knuckles resting on the clean, white tablecloth. No. She shut off her phone and let it clatter on the bedside table next to her. Zooming in on a photo was where she had to draw the line. Sleuthing and speculation wouldn’t help anything. Worst-case scenario, Nick and Vivian fell for each other. He deserved a woman like her, wonderful and brilliant and gorgeous. Someone who could walk in heels without resembling Bambi on ice and help him run his business, to boot.
Lord, what did I do?
The ring of the hotel phone chainsawed through her thoughts, and she reached to answer it. “Hello?”
“Is this Miss Scott?”
Chelsea fiddled with the cord. “Yes, it is.”
“There’s an urgent message for you downstairs at the concierge desk. Please come down at your earliest convenience.”
Her earliest convenience was next week, because that’s how long it would take her cement-block feet to get downstairs. There was no way she could force them into shoes right now, and that was okay. She could run down, grab a piece of paper, and return to her room unseen. Not even at the same hotel as Emmerlyn and her video blogger friends.
“Missy, I’ll be back in a second,” she called to her sister-in-law.
Was this real life? Because the person waiting for Chelsea at the concierge desk surely stole a few years of it. As if this week could get any weirder.
Jack Myers. Myers Distribution.
And the bottom half of her looked like she was going to a slumber party.
“Do you remember me?” He gave a little laugh as his gaze trailed to her floral pajamas.
How could she forget? “Of course. They just said I had a message, I didn’t know—my feet hurt—oh my word.” Chelsea palmed her forehead.
“It’s okay. I just wanted to see if I could have a few moments of your time.”
“I’m all yours, sir.” She shrugged and let her arms fall to her side. He’d have to take her as she was.
Mr. Myers shifted on his feet. “Well, Miss Scott, I would like to put your planners in three thousand college bookstores and office supply chains across the nation with the potential for more after we test those markets.”
“Wow. I-I’m…”
“The model is shifting. Colleges are asking for a planner they can buy in bulk and provide for their incoming freshmen, and after talking to you the other day, I think what you have going on fits that bill.”
But she hadn’t given him any kind of formal presentation! What was even happening?
“Now, I emailed you the specifics, which I’m sure you haven’t had time to read.” Mr. Myers chuckled. “But here’s what we’re looking at.”
The numbers he proposed were good, a wholesale discount percentage that was way more generous than any of the retailers she’d dealt with so far.
“And you want them just as they are?” she asked. “No design changes?”
“Just as they are.” Mr. Myers rubbed his hands together. “You’re a talented woman, Miss Scott. I’ve been watching you, and I have a lot of respect for what you’re doing.”
His form swam in front of her misty eyes. Even in her pajamas?
“Now, I’ve heard your name floating around a lot this show—and not just because of your boyfriend’s right hook.”
Chelsea winced. Emmerlyn’s video was really making the rounds.
“So that’s why I called on you at eight o’clock in the evening. I’m a man who knows what he wants, and I want you to see how much I’d like to work with you, Chelsea Scott.”
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Myers.”
His eyebrows pinched together. “Please, call me Jack. Take some time to think about it before you sign any deals, talk to your people, and if it all sounds reasonable, we’ll fly you out to our offices in Southern California to get it done, or I can come out to wherever you are.”
Hmm… Southern California or small-town Oklahoma? That was easy.
Chelsea thanked him and said goodbye, boarding the elevator and walking to her room on autopilot. She checked her email and rapidly scribbled notes and some preliminary calculations on the first paper she could find, The Plan. She’d have to do a fuller projection, but so far, the numbers looked good. Maybe not Carter & Fritz good, but promising.
She glanced down at the page. It was kind of symbolic how her messy blue letters and numbers had taken over the clean black-and-white itinerary, snaking and looping around the typeface. Kind of how this whole trip had gone.
Three knocks sounded on the door to their room.
>
“I think that’s Rhonda,” Missy called over the noise of running water.
Chelsea jackknifed herself off the bed and opened the door for her sales director, who was holding a bag in her outstretched hand.
“This was waiting for you at the front desk—what are you wearing?”
She quirked an eyebrow at her business coach and reached for the bag. “Who’s it from?” Something from Mr. Myers?
Rhonda answered with a shrug before letting herself in and settling at the hotel room’s sleek black desk. Chelsea lowered to her bed and felt around inside the bag, her fingers closing around a folded piece of paper. She knew who it was from the minute she saw the hotel stationery.
Scotty, one side read. Bless him. The guy had the cramped script of a doctor but the heart of a saint. I’m on the 11:10 flight to Oklahoma City to meet with your friend. No matter what happens, I want you to kick butt at the rest of your convention and think these will help. Nick.
Her heart was going to beat straight out of her body. She pulled a black shoebox from the bag. A Converse shoebox. And then she knew what was inside. Teal Chuck Taylor All-Stars, just like the ones she’d worn as a kid until they turned brown.
“Did you have something to do with this?” Chelsea asked Missy, who emerged from the bathroom toweling off her clean face.
Her sister-in-law flashed a devilish smile. “I just told him your size, but the rest was all him.”
“What are those?” Rhonda peered around Missy, the corner of her lip pinched in distaste.
“Only the most magical shoes in the world.” Chelsea pulled one from the box, and another slip of creamy paper fluttered to the bed.
PS: Do it anyway. Rhonda is not the boss of you.
She laughed and stuffed the paper and the shoes back in the box.
“Okay, ladies, so I have some news.” Whatever it was must be good if Rhonda let her poor style choices off.
“Shoot.” Missy settled onto her own bed and drew her legs up beneath her.
“I caught up with William Giertz from Carter & Fritz, and he told me his boss was very impressed after her meeting with Chelsea.”
Love at First Laugh: Eight Romantic Novellas Filled with Love, Laughter, and Happily Ever After Page 66