Be What Love Is
Page 19
“Think about it and let me know.”
I leave him in the kitchen. He doesn’t chase after me, nor does he come knocking. Somehow, someway, I don’t spend the entire night staring at the shared wall between us. And somehow I don’t fixate on Gavin or my mom for that matter. When I do fall asleep, I dream about bicycles with giant lemons for wheels.
Reid
The chill that ripples through my body is almost painful. This behemoth of a house has always been drafty, but I don’t remember ever being this cold. I’m having a terribly hard time focusing on the work right in front of me, and there’s a lot to catch up on since we spent the day daddy hunting in Bath.
God, it’s miserable to even think about what a failure that was for Cara. That’s why it is inconceivable to me that she would even entertain the idea of going through something like that again. I hate seeing her hurt. And to complicate matters, I really hate that seeing her get hurt, hurt me too. I need less hurt in my life. Much, much less.
I’ve learned to cope with the hollowness over the years. In fact, I’m quite good at suppressing it. Rule number one has always been to keep my associations limited and straightforward. Do not let too many people in. This worked for several years, allowing only Trevor and Anna to get close because they were family. Losing them has been…
Christ, I don’t want to think about it.
Well, I’ve broken rule number one in such a colossal manner. I let Cara in, deep, almost like I didn’t have a choice about it. She’s not playing fair by being so unbelievably pretty, and clever, and having the ability to make every part of me come alive. But I’m a strong-willed man, so that’s no excuse for letting my guard down.
She’s right to ask about what we’re doing here. What am I doing? If this were only about the sex, this would be easy. I wouldn’t feel like I’ve been body slammed against the floor. Maybe I wouldn’t be so cold.
But if it’s more than sex, what is it? I never wanted to settle down with someone. I never wanted kids. I’m satisfied with my life and my choices up to this point, so why on earth would I want to change?
I don’t. So, bloody focus you fool.
Victoria’s email stares back at me. She’s been crunching the numbers. The expansion is now at risk if we don’t close the Collins Group deal. It all hinges on them, and I’m about to blow it because I can’t keep my dick in my pants. Hopefully, there’s something valuable in this house that we can fall back on if it doesn’t go through.
I push away from Trevor’s desk and pace around his office.
Cara is messing with all my plans. If I could stop playing house in sodding Somerset, I might be able to seal the deal with the Collins Group once and for all.
There’s got to be something I can do to expedite this process. There’s got to be a way to have Cara see things my way. I have to convince her that we need to be quick and that we need to keep things between us…what exactly?
Professional?
Friendly?
More than friendly?
Being more than friendly got me into this mess in the first place. And now that I’m even considering it, my mind sinks into the memory of being with her. I squeeze my lips together as I remember her taste on my tongue and the smell of her arousal. Her heat, her passion, and my eagerness to pleasure her completely consumes my memory. I remember how it felt to be inside her, how she squeezed me and moved with me and came right apart beneath me. The memory of my own release as vivid as if it happened a moment ago. And all of this has caused a craving for her that overwhelms me. Maybe if I go to her now—
“Stop,” I say aloud, nearly at the door.
That tempting Siren has wrecked me good. She must be magic because this is not Reid Lewis. This is not how he operates.
“The Collins Group,” I remind myself.
I grab the laptop and swing it around my way. While standing, bent down to the desk, I roughly push Cara out of my brain for as long as it takes to write an email that outlines a proposed strategy to win them over. In it, I promise Victoria that I will be done here soon and that I’m entirely on board to make the deal happen.
What I don’t tell her is that to get fully on board, I have to let Cara go. I have to forgo all my desires and make it so we’re only friends. That’s the safest thing for the business and for my heart.
I press send and take off to roam through the house and figure out how in the hell we’re going to finish this task quickly. While I do, I’m struck by other memories, ones with Trevor and Anna and the life that I got to live with them here. Cara’s right about one thing, I don’t regret letting them in, even though the pain is unbearable. But that doesn’t mean I have to do it again. Plus, when they took me in, they saved me from a rudderless existence. Trevor gave me purpose. I can’t waste that purpose now.
When I get to the attic, my mouth drops. I’ve just been saved. I’ve found my quick way out.
Chapter Sixteen
Breaking Dishes
Cara
“Cara.”
I crack an eye open and find Reid standing above me. He’s dressed for the day, smells wonderful, and looks flawless, as usual. Me, on the other hand? I’m in rough shape. I’ve got horrid bedhead, my make-up is most likely smudged since I didn’t bother washing my face last night, and I’m sporting some pretty wicked morning breath.
“What?” I grunt.
“Are you getting up this morning? It’s half ten.” He’s not smiling, not frowning either, but firm, expectant, impatient.
“Oh.” I’m groggy and confused about why I didn’t wake up earlier.
“I can let you sleep,” he offers, and I shake my head. We haven’t gone through the house since the morning of the gala, and that was barely a productive try.
“What do you want to tackle today?” I ask.
“Well, I wanted to talk to you about that. I discovered something, and I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
“Another possible dad that won’t turn out to be anything?” I laugh at my own joke, but he doesn’t find it funny in the least bit.
“No, the attic.”
“Trevor mentioned it in the letter you found in his office,” I remind him.
“Yes, but have you ever been up there?”
“No, my grandmother wouldn’t let me.”
“Get dressed,” he orders. “You’ve got to see this.”
He leaves me to it. After a quick shower, I climb the stairs up to the attic and my mouth drops. It isn’t an attic at all. It’s an entire third level of the house with lots and lots of doors. I groan. Reid comes out from one of those doors and mirrors my despair.
“I thought we were making such good progress,” I say.
“Wait until you see this.”
I follow him back to the room he’s just been in. The doors are deceiving, at least on this side of the hall. Instead of many little rooms, it turns out to be one giant room filled with boxes and junk and old furniture.
“Shit,” I whisper. “How on earth are we going to go through all of this stuff?”
“I’m not sure we can. I think we were too ambitious about that. We’ve got to get help.”
Why am I not surprised he wants to stop our process? I could read into it several ways, but I can’t deny he has a point. We do need help. “I agree.”
“I’ll set something up today and try to get someone in here tomorrow. Until then, I have business to attend to.”
“Maybe I’ll go back to bed.”
“I wish I could,” he says. “I didn’t sleep well.”
Didn’t sleep well, eh? Was it our fight that kept him up?
He gazes down at me, and our eyes lock. Very slowly, as if asking for my permission, he bends down and kisses me on the cheek. I freeze in place as he rests his temple against mine for a moment before standing back up.
“What was that for?” I ask.
“An apology.”
“Are you referring to our conversation last night?”
“Ye
s,” he answers. “Late last night I wandered around this monstrosity and thought about the memories I made here. I had good times with Trevor and Anna.”
I smile. “I can imagine.”
“I wouldn’t give those up to avoid all this.”
“So your outlook has changed?”
He rubs his chin. “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean?”
He stares at me and doesn’t say anything.
“What do you want, Reid?” I squeak out.
“I want to be friends. Only friends.”
His words knock the wind out of me. I don’t have breath. I can’t respond.
“Please,” he pleads.
I nod quickly in an attempt to appear all right even though he’s stomped on my heart. He nods too and sticks his hands into his pockets. I clear my throat and know I have to say something, anything, to move this along. There will be time for me to belly flop into those words later. “Okay. Friends.”
“Well, I’ll be around,” he says and leaves the attic.
It doesn’t feel right to follow him, so I stay put amongst the many boxes. I shake my head and think about his words, I want to be friends. Perhaps he asked for it because he doesn’t think he can handle anything more.
Reid is broken, and I don’t know if I should try to fix him.
There’s a red velvet upholstered chair nearby. I take a seat, and as if second nature, I twist in the chair and flop my legs over the armrest. Something about my body positioning is so familiar. The red fabric of the chair beneath my legs is familiar too. I jump up and stare at the chair.
“Whoa. No way!”
It’s the red monster. The chair that used to be in my bedroom when I was a girl. I loved it more than most of my toys. I used to read books in it and build forts off it. It was my go-to spot in my room.
If this is up here, what else is? I look closer at the nearby boxes, and my curiosity overcomes me. I know that Reid doesn’t want anything to do with this today, but I really want to check it out more.
I give myself five minutes to find something meaningful. It takes less than ten seconds.
The first box I open by the red monster is full of old toys. There’s another box of my old books that my grandfather used to read to me.
“Hello old friends,” I whisper to them.
I wipe a few tears away with my sweater and put the books aside. I’m tired of crying all the time.
The next box has some costume jewelry, ribbons, plastic bits and bobs, but there’s also a stack of letters tied together with some green yarn. Holy crap. It’s the letters my grandfather tried to send me.
I take a seat and pull the top letter out from the bunch and open it with twitchy fingers. The date reads a month after we moved away.
It’s a sweet letter that mostly talks about how he missed me and wondered how I was doing. I shake my head as I fold it up and stuff it back in the envelope. It’s going to be awfully hard to forgive my mom for this. To keep us apart because of her grudge was selfish and wrong.
The next few letters are more of the same. There are occasional updates about some of my old friends. All the letters end with the same sentiment. Tell your mother I love her.
A letter that’s near the middle of the bunch has a different tone. It’s angrier, desperate even. From what I surmise he traveled to California in hopes to see us and make up with her. She wouldn’t have it and took us north to L.A. and waited for him to leave.
I remember that well. It’s the first and only time I went to Disneyland. I thought she had done that for me, but it turned out it was to avoid him. The letters after that one are different. He apparently realized how useless it was to send them since they were all returned. While the salutation always read My Dear Cara, the letters were aimed at my mom. Maybe he hoped she’d give in and read one.
Towards the bottom of the stack, the letters are more like apologies for something I don’t understand.
Please tell your mother that it was only a business association and that I didn’t know it was him. She’ll understand what that means and most likely she won’t believe me, because she can’t see straight when it comes to this subject.
I read those sentences over and over again. What on earth was he talking about? Maybe it had to do with my dad. I set that one aside to look at later.
The very last letter is dated ten years after we moved away and it’s a confession about Anna.
You’re old enough to know about love now. Anna and I have known each other for many years. She was always off traveling the world and working through the charity. She was hard to pin down, and so I settled down with your grandmother because of some sense of duty to our families. Your grandmother would agree with me on this point. I wasn’t her first pick either. Anna was always in my heart, never far from it.
The timing was unfortunate, and I’ll always be sorry for that, but my relationship with your grandmother had been over for years. It didn’t feel wrong, and I know that it wasn’t wrong because Anna had always been and always will be the love of my life. I hope you find love like that one day. I hope your mother does too. As you may know by now, she loves fiercely, and while she may have been misled and hurt in a way that has caused irrevocable damage, I believe that hope is not lost and that she will find happiness in love. She will find a way to be what love is.
What the what? This is making my head hurt. The Anna part I get. I don’t need an explanation there. My time back in England has helped me see them more clearly. The part about my mom is mind-boggling. She may have been misled and hurt in a way that has caused irrevocable damage. What happened?
I have to talk to her.
There are secrets in this house, she said. The only question is, do I really want to uncover them?
Reid
The fridge is like a clothes hamper. Nothing looks good, and most of it smells bad. I grab a beer, close it back up, and wander back toward the sound of two men speaking very quietly about the condition of a golf green on the telly.
My laptop is still sitting open on the ottoman, all of my work emails are cleared for the moment, and all the market reports are analyzed. I’ve taken two conference calls, one of which was a team strategy session about the Collins Group.
Cara comes in and takes a seat at the opposite corner of the couch. She looks lovely. My first instinct is to open my arms for her to come and cuddle up against me, but I can’t do that. I have to protect myself and stick to my request that we remain just friends.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hi. Where have you been?”
“I was up in the attic.”
“This whole time?”
“Yep.”
I set my beer on the end table and shove my hand through my hair. “I thought we agreed that we wouldn’t do that today. Were you looking through boxes?”
I’m not sure why I’m so angry. Surely, I can’t be worried that she’d find something valuable and keep it at this point. We trust each other on that front. At least I think we do.
“It’s fine. I realized I was sitting on an old chair from my room. Sure enough, there were some boxes of my stuff, from my childhood.”
“Oh.” I soften up. “Did you find anything interesting?”
Cara pauses for a moment. “Not really. Just old toys and books mostly.”
“Come on, Cara.”
“What?” she asks defensively.
“I know you. Finding your childhood toys and books would mean a lot to you. Don’t act like it doesn’t.”
For whatever reason, she disagrees. “I’ve changed. I think I’m more like you now, a little desensitized. It’s too much to worry about. Plus, I can’t possibly take it all back with me. Hopefully, it will make some little girl happy.”
What on earth is she talking about? I stare at her for a moment before responding. “I’m not sure if I believe you.”
“You’ll have to take my word for it.” She pulls her legs up to her chest and tunes into the golf.
“Do you like golf?” I ask.
“It’s great for naps,” she says and that makes me laugh. “Do you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“That makes sense. It fits your image.”
“And what image is that?”
“You know, the stuffy rich boy who plays with money by day and goes to galas by night.”
“Is that how you see me?”
“Isn’t that how you want to be seen?” She stares at me, waiting for my reply.
There’s some truth in her words, of course, but she knows I’m more than that, and honestly, I’m a little hurt. I change the subject. “Did you eat lunch?”
She rolls her eyes. “No.”
“You should really eat,” I advise, but I’m caring less by the second.
“Thanks, friend.” She gets up to go to the kitchen, for what, I don’t know, but I’m guessing it’s not food.
I follow her in and watch as she scrambles to find a purpose. She opens the dishwasher and starts to unload it.
“Oi!” I bark, demanding her attention.
“What?”
“Are we really going to play it this way?”
She stops and turns toward me with a dish in her hand. I stand on guard because we’re just a few seconds away from her chucking it at my head. Her eyes are black. Her stance, rigid.
“Play it which way?”
I point at her with my beer. “You. Like this. Angry.”
“You haven’t seen angry,” she says and very carefully sets the dish on the counter.
“So you don’t want to be friends?”
“What’s the point, Reid? We’re just two people in a business arrangement. Soon, I’ll be headed back to California, and you’ll go back to London.”
“You’re hurt, I can see that.”
“I’ve been hurt since the moment I got here. None of this has been easy.”
“I know.”
“Honestly, I’m just done with the drama. It’s too much. Between my mom and my grandfather and you and this never-ending house, I’m at the point where I just want to light a match and walk away as it burns to the ground. You had the right idea when you sold everything and traveled.” She gives up on the dishwasher and grabs her own beer out of the fridge. “Maybe that’s what I’ll do. I’ll go to Australia and meet cute boys and spend my days on the beach. That sounds pretty perfect right about now.”