by Lexy Timms
“Sounds like you’ve already had coffee,” I said.
“And there’s plenty more for you. I made sure of it.”
I smiled as my eyes finally peeled open.
“Such a handsome sight,” I said.
“Maybe when I get back you can enjoy it a little more,” he said with a wink.
“Honestly? I don’t think I can move.”
“Then I’ll do all the moving for you.”
His lips reached down for mine and my fingers threaded through his hair. I watched him turn and walk away, admiring the swagger he held in his step. That man walked with a confidence I’d never understand. A confidence I’d never felt in my life.
Well, unless I was wrapped around him.
I pulled myself from bed and decided to tidy up the house a bit. I didn’t start my job at the diner until tomorrow evening, and it sounded like Grayson would be gone for a few hours. I made up the beds and cleaned the dishes, putting them away so I could fill the dishwasher again. The broken glass on the porch had been cleaned up, but I hosed it down just to make sure there were no shards left. I pulled some weeds in the backyard like I used to do and tended to the flowers out front, and once I’d worked up a decent sweat I went inside to get a drink.
One glass of water led to two, and soon it was almost lunch time and I hadn’t eaten. It was twelve thirty and my stomach growled ferociously before I felt dizzy. I needed something quick. Something easily ingested so I could stand and make myself a decent meal. I opened the pantry and scanned the shelves, eyeing a package of chips on the floor.
Leaning against a box full of wine.
I bent over and picked it up, hoisting the heavy thing onto the kitchen counter. I bent over for the bag of chips and opened them, then popped a few into my mouth. The saltiness helped with the dizzy spell I was experiencing, but my eyes were studying the wine box in front of me.
It was from a place called Still Valley Vineyard.
Huh.
Sounded a lot likes ‘Stillsville’.
I reached in to pull out a bottle to see what it looked like. Was this the wine from our date night? My lips slid into a grin as I thought back to the night before. I guess he expected us to do a lot of drinking if he ordered six bottles of wine to be shipped in.
But instead of my fingers hitting a bottle, they grazed against a piece of paper.
Furrowing my brow, I pulled it out of the box. It was a handwritten letter addressed to someone named ‘Boss-man’. My eyes scanned the letter as my hand grew weak around the bag of chips. I looked at the logo on the wine box and read out the name again, then re-read the letter quickly.
Still Valley Vineyard.
Stillsville.
“Boss-man,” I said with a whisper.
He was the owner of the vineyard?
That couldn’t be right, and I knew a quick internet search would clear that up. I set the letter back into the box and went in search of my phone, my hunger falling to the wayside. I dug through my things and found it, cursing that the battery was almost dead. I sat by the charger and plugged it in, then typed in the name of the vineyard.
And fuck if Grayson’s face didn’t pop up along with it.
But it wasn’t just the vineyard. Things about the NFL popped up as well. Games. Tackles. Wins and losses. Pictures of him with insanely-huge men. Pictures of him on a practice field. Interview after interview with him talking into a microphone with sweat pouring off his brow.
Grayson MacDonald!?
I wasn’t a sports fan. Not by a long shot. But everyone knew who Grayson MacDonald was. One of the best in his position to ever grace the field—that was who he was. I read through the articles on the injury that took him off the field and out of the sports arena. I flipped through pictures and combed through headlines as blood drained from my face.
I flipped back to the vineyard and began looking at pictures of it. Taking in its sheer size, its beauty, and the sprawling mansion that sat on the hillside.
My heart fluttered so fast in my chest I thought I was going to pass out.
Why in the world had he not told me any of this? Why hadn’t he told me the delectable wine we had over dinner was his? Did he think I was going to try and attach myself to him because of his money or something? Steal his fortune and run off with it? What kind of woman did he think I was? I searched for his net worth. The internet had every piece of information I could’ve ever wanted to find on a man like him. Maybe it wasn’t what I was thinking. I couldn’t be. There was no way Grayson could be—.
My eyes bulged at the number.
Four billion dollars?
Grayson’s net worth was four billion dollars!?
My phone slipped from my hands and my dizziness came back. I stalked back out to the kitchen and picked up the chips I had spilled all over the floor. I pulled the letter back out and looked at the bottom, trying to discern who it was from.
Maria Lopez? Who was that?
And why did she call herself ‘his savior’?
The wisdom strewn throughout the letter told me the two of them were close. No one gave anyone like Grayson MacDonald that kind of guidance without having some sort of special, intricate relationship. But finding all of this and coming to grips with what he had hid from me reinforced the idea of him leaving. If he’d planned on staying, why wouldn’t he have told me all these things about himself? Why wouldn’t he have opened up more so we could get to know each other? I placed the letter back in the box as tears lined my eyes.
He really was going to leave me in his dust.
I liked Grayson. A lot. And not just after what I had discovered. Even before that, when I was screaming in his bed and he had me pinned beneath him, there was a comfort in his eyes I couldn’t ignore. An allure to him that drew me to his person. But this only confirmed his plan to leave. No man would attach himself to a woman if he didn’t want to tell her about this side of his life. A man only opened up to a woman he wanted to keep around.
Even Andy opened up to me before he asked me to move with him. It didn’t do us much good, but it was the act of opening up that mattered.
And Grayson wasn’t opening up.
I couldn’t get the tone of the letter out of my head. As I sat at the kitchen table and munched on the few chips that hadn’t fallen onto the floor, I wondered who Maria was. What was Grayson’s relationship to her? She obviously knew where he was. She was probably the one who shipped him the wines. But did she know about me? Was Grayson talking to her about me? Or was it something else?
Just another thing he was hiding so he could have some fling with a small-town girl?
The idea made me sick to my stomach. One specific line kept rolling through my mind from the note. Her comment on making more meaningful connections with people around him. Did Maria want that with him? Maybe she was a woman back wherever home was for him. Maybe she was back there trying to find ways to reach out to him in Illinois and remind him of herself. Like a long-lost lover not quite wanting to let go of something she still loved. I imagined an exotic woman, with black hair and hazel eyes and tan skin, standing on a balcony overlooking the vineyard and waiting for him to get home.
Long lines. Thin features. Curves where it all counted.
If he had something like that waiting for him at home, no wonder Grayson wouldn’t stay with me.
I finished off the chips before tossing the bag into the trash can. There was really only one way to settle the questions running through my mind, and that was confronting him with them. I wanted to know why he’d been so secretive about that wine. I wanted to know who Maria was. I wanted to know who I was to him and what his plan was once the week was finished. I needed to know. I deserved to know, given all that we had been through. I wiped at the few tears that threatened to spill over, chastising myself for not being stronger.
What did I expect anyway? For him to take me with him?
A lot of good that did me the first fucking time.
I walked back into my
room and began putting all of my things into my bag. I didn’t know why, but I felt compelled to do it. My stuff was strewn all over the room I had chosen for myself, and it looked like a damn pig sty. But it didn’t feel right to put it in the empty dresser drawers Anton had in the room. This wasn’t my home. As much as I wanted it to be, it wasn’t. As much as I felt comfortable in it, it wasn’t. I shoved my things into my bag until all that was left was a pair of yoga pants, a shirt, and my phone connected to its charger.
I needed another shower. For some reason, I felt gross all over again.
My speech ran through my head as I washed down my body. I wrapped a towel around me and stared into the mirror, rehearsing it even more. I didn’t want to anger Grayson. That wasn’t the point of all this. But I did want the truth. I did want answers as to what the plan was when the week came to a close. Was he leaving? Staying longer? What was I to him? Did I mean anything to him like he did to me?
I dried myself off and tossed the towel into a hamper before I pulled on my fresh clothes.
I looked over at the clock and saw it was almost three in the afternoon. The house was cleaned. The truths had been uncovered. My things were packed and my room didn’t look like a damn mess. All there was to do was sit and wait for him to get back. I didn’t like that. I enjoyed sitting and waiting for him the night he went out drinking, but I didn’t like it now. It felt tainted somehow. Tainted with an anxiousness I couldn’t shake.
I went and made myself a mug of hot cocoa, trying my best to execute it the way Anton used to do.
The way Grayson did.
It didn’t come out quite right, but it was good enough. I plucked the letter from the box and sat down at the kitchen table, my eyes watching the microwave as the minutes ticked by. I wasn’t focused enough to read a book, but I didn’t have the energy to bide my time until he got back.
So I sat, sipped my subpar cocoa, and waited.
Chapter 27
Grayson
I walked out of the accountant’s office after having a very long talk with him. I finally felt like I had Anton’s estate settled, but not without some long conversations. Apparently, the accountant had felt he could take it upon himself to divvy up the funds to charities how he saw fit with his own personal guidelines and ethics. So I got my personal lawyer on the phone to let him know exactly what would happen to him and what I would drain him of if he didn’t follow Anton’s wishes to the letter.
It shut his ass up quickly, and I sat there while he processed the donations as they were laid out in Anton’s will.
I came out of the accountant’s office with my head held high and a settled soul. It still hurt that he was gone, but knowing his estate had been settled with relatively no hiccups made me feel better. I couldn’t wait to get home and talk with Michelle about it. I couldn’t wait to get home and spend my evening basking in her presence.
Unlocking my rental car, I looked up across the street and saw a familiar face walking out of the bar. It shouldn’t have shocked me that Andy was coming out of a damn bar at four in the afternoon, but I didn’t want him to see me. I didn’t want him to get the notion that I wanted to stand around and talk to his sorry ass.
“Grayson!”
Shit.
“Buddy!”
Nope.
“Hang on a second. I need to talk to you,” he said.
“Hey there, Andy. What’s up?”
But the second he approached me, he shoved me against my car.
I furrowed my brow as the door was slammed shut with my back. Andy had a scowl on his face and I braced myself for a fight. He held his fist back in the air as our eyes connected, and I balled mine up as people began to stare.
Funny, I didn’t even smell too much alcohol on his breath.
What the fuck was he doing?
“What do you want?” I asked.
“You know what I want,” Andy said.
Then a smile crossed his face and he patted me on the chest.
“I’m just messin’ with ya,” he said, as he lowered his fist.
He started laughing, like he’d made some sort of funny joke. I smoothed my hands over my shirt and began looking around at the people staring at us. I needed to get away from this man. This shell of a boy I used to know. He stopped laughing and leaned his elbow against my car, like he was about to chat up an old friend.
“What the hell was that for?” I asked.
“Oh, come on. Don’t act like you don’t know you’re dabbling in my sloppy seconds.”
“What?” I asked.
“Michy? My ex? Rumor has it the two of you have been snuggling up in town lately.”
Wait. ‘Michy’ was Michelle?”
“It don’t bother me a bit,” he said. “I know you’re probably banging her. It’s hard not to, with those sweet thighs of hers. And those eyes? Man, they can really take someone to their knees. But she’s sweeter on hers, if you want a few tips.”
I raked my eyes up and down his shirtless body as my mind began to drop things into place.
“And if you’re wondering, I don’t give a shit about her any longer. There’s a reason why I kicked her out. She’s a minx in the sack, but she’s crazy as fuck. And she’ll withhold sex in a heartbeat if you screw up, so have a little on the side to call up when she’s in one of her moods.”
Red dripped over my vision as he pushed off my car. Andy was her ex?
He slid his arm around my neck and brought his face close to mine. I wanted to shove his nose up into his brain. He had kicked Michelle out? That was why she stumbled into Anton’s house at two in the fucking morning?
Why the hell had she not told me any of this?
“Anyway, we got better things to do,” Andy said. “You settled Anton’s estate yet?”
“Just got finished with it,” I said.
“Good. I’ve already got myself locked and loaded,” he said, as he patted my chest. “Where we headed to first?”
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“I was thinking of maybe heading west to get a new start. I went north for the oil, came back here to right my head a bit. I’ve been thinking about it since I saw you in the bar. You know, when we talked about you settling Anton’s estate.”
“Uh huh,” I said.
“Yeah. I figured after dabbling in the northern girls and dipping into the slices of pie around here that a bleach blonde bunny might suit me a bit. Maybe one in one of those small bikinis that lay out on the beach specifically to attract men? I’m sure you know the type.”
“No. I don’t,” I said flatly.
This asshole was wrapping around me and talking about leaving town on Anton’s dime. But he had a rude fucking awakening coming to him. My brain finally processed everything he had thrown at me and I pushed him off my body.
“The fuck, man?”
“I settled Anton’s estate, but I didn’t sell anything off,” I said.
“What? That’s what you said you were doing.”
“No. That’s what you inferred I was doing. Anton gave his properties away. He gave his things away to the people of this town because he was a decent human being. Unlike yourself.”
“Say what now?” he asked.
“We aren’t going anywhere. I’m not taking you anywhere with me. I’m wrapping up shop here, then I’m going the fuck back home.”
“You better watch your mouth,” he said. “This place is your home.”
“This place stopped being home the second my mother shat on my life and my father decided I looked damn nice as a punching bag, Andy.”
His eyes widened as I took a step towards him.
“And you? You’re nothing but a piece of shit headed down the same damn path my father walked.”
“I’m a lot of things, MacDonald. But I don’t beat up kids.”
“No. You just toss women out of your life at two in the morning with nowhere to go and no money to her name. Sounds about like what my father did to my mother on several occasions,” I
said.
I watched him raise his fist back to actually hit me, but I was quicker than him. I couldn’t take another neck injury or another blow to my head, but that didn’t mean my speed had dwindled one bit. I clocked my fist against his jaw and heard it crunch as he fell to the ground, writhing in pain and kicking up dust. I stepped over him and opened my car door, making sure to nail him in the back of the head before I jammed my keys into the ignition.
Then I pulled away from the accountant’s office and began speeding back to Anton’s.
My mind swirled with a thousand different things. Why the hell had Michelle not said something about being with Andy? And how the hell could she have ended up with an asshole like that in the first place? Did the woman have no standards whatsoever in her world? It was insane to me. The idea of a trash can like him putting his hands on Michelle before I did sizzled my vision. My hands gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles were white and my fingers went numb.
She seemed so sweet and innocent.
But I knew Andy well enough to know he never attached himself to anyone sweet and innocent.
Had it been a ruse the entire time? Fuck, I should’ve known it was. Women in my life did that. Portrayed themselves to be anything I wanted them to be so they could get closer to me. Closer to my vineyard. Closer to my wallet. Closer to my body. Andy enjoyed women who were fast and loose. He always had.
Michelle sure as hell knew how to pick them.
If Michelle had a type, did that mean she felt like I was akin to Andy? It wouldn’t shock me if she did. Apparently, I wasn’t welcome in this town unless I was being slapped across the face or used for Anton’s fucking estate money. If I was nothing but an overgrown bully like Andy, then it shouldn’t have surprised me that a woman like Michelle latched onto me.
Fuck!
I beat my hands against the steering wheel at the stoplight in front of me. The one damn light in all of Whitefish. I roared at the top of my lungs while people in other cars looked at me like I’d lost my damn mind.