Just at that moment, the door from the hall opens, and the man himself walks in, then stops, staring at the empty room. He frowns.
“Where did everybody go?”
Then his eyes meet mine, narrowing on the suit jacket I’m still wearing. His jaw works, but he has no right to be angry. I just walked downstairs in my own house to find a group of complete strangers discussing my mom’s pie.
My rage is a living thing, howling inside me, rising up until it spills from my mouth. “It’s a pie contest, Gibson, not a fucking Superbowl ad!”
Chapter 12
Gibson, who doesn’t quite understand what’s gone so wrong…
Ten minutes ago, I was on top of the world. I was totally relaxed from the best sex of my life. McKenna’s trust, the way she opened up to me last night, let me take care of her, was the best feeling in the world. I came downstairs feeling like a million dollars, to find my top marketing people on the doorstep, as I requested last night. We’ve been going over pie crust market analysis and reports on customer eating habits ever since.
Then I went to the bathroom and now my entire Marketing department has vanished. How long was I in there? Clearly I’ve missed something, but I don’t know what. I check my watch and sure enough, I was only in the bathroom for three minutes, five tops. “Where did everybody go?”
From the way McKenna’s wild hair looks like it’s about to burst into flames, this is entirely the wrong thing to say. And why the fuck is she wearing someone else’s jacket?
However, as the fire of rage fills her eyes, I realize I may be about to die, and I still don’t know why.
“It’s a pie contest, Gibson, not a fucking Superbowl ad!”
I stare at her. Even almost naked, an angry McKenna is quite the sight, especially with her ‘just had awesome sex’ bedhead making her about three inches taller. Her eyes are glowing, her skin is flushed, her lips parted. The temptation to push her up against the nearest wall is almost overwhelming, but I’m mature enough to know that’s a bad idea right now.
At least, it is if I want to keep my testicles.
“I know it’s pie,” I tell her, holding out my hands in the time-honored ‘good doggy’ pose. “The best pie. That’s why I called everyone in. Research shows that contest winners depend as much on previous perceptions and unconscious bias as the actual product itself. Even in a blind tasting, things like the pattern of the crust can really make a difference.”
Her face twists. “I’m not pissed about the pie, Gibson. Okay, actually, I am pissed about the pie. But I’m even more pissed with you flying thirty people into my goddamn kitchen without even telling me. This is my business! My life! I don’t need you or anyone else just coming in and taking over!”
My first thought is that it was really only fifteen people, at most, but I have a feeling saying that will lead straight to my funeral.
That said, I’m more than a little confused, and starting to get pissed myself. This isn’t the reaction I usually get when I help someone out. “This isn’t me taking over, McKenna. This is me helping. Me taking over would have been buying the Grey Goose, and every other place that’s considering not renewing your contract. I didn’t do that because I knew you wouldn’t like it.”
“Damn fucking right I wouldn’t!” Her yell is almost a scream, and now I’m mad too. What the hell is going on here? I’m helping. I’m now allowed to help? She thinks I’m just going to stand by and watch her struggle when I could do something about it?
“This isn’t about what you like or don’t like. In business, perception matters, McKenna. You are running a business, aren’t you?”
Instead of firing up even more, she simmers down, and I’m relieved. I don’t want to fight with her. I love her. That’s right. I’m in love with McKenna Brooks. Even if she drives me nuts sometimes. Then I refocus on her eyes, and realize something’s gone wrong. Even more wrong, that is. She’s not mad anymore. Or maybe she is, but I can’t tell. She’s gone cold, and I can’t read her.
Shit. I said the wrong thing. What the hell is happening here? “McKenna—”
“Get out of my house. I was wrong to think there was any way this could work between us.”
“McKen—”
“That’s Miss Brooks to you, Mr. Hall,” she tells me, quietly but firmly. “Now leave. And take your company’s property with you.” She pulls off the coat and throws it at me.
And then she leaves, striding across the living room and up the stairs. Normally nothing would give me the greatest pleasure than to watch her go, in all her naked glory, but all I’m aware of is the cold, hard rock forming in my chest as she walks away from me for the second time.
“Sir?” A quiet voice comes from behind me, and I turn to see Evan, my VP of Marketing, standing in the doorway, looking poised to run.
“Clear this out. And get the jet ready. We’re going back to the city.”
“Yes, sir.” He eyes the jacket in my hand. “Um, may I have my coat back?”
I squint at him. “This is yours?”
He nods, the quick nervous motion of someone well aware their job is on the line. “Yes, sir. I thought, well, she was standing there, and I thought maybe she should, uh, put something on?”
As much as I want to be furious with him, I can’t get mad at him for doing the right thing. I throw him the jacket, and he catches it and pulls it on in a hurry.
Through the window, I see my people milling around in the yard, and I can’t face them. I just can’t. I flew them all out here at a moment’s notice and for what? I don’t even really understand what I’ve done wrong, but whatever it was, clearly it’s a deal-breaker in McKenna’s eyes.
I stalk through the house and go out the front door. I don’t know where to go from here, so I just sit down on the top step of the porch and look at the cherry blossom blowing on the breeze. At that moment, my phone rings. It’s Declan.
“Your car’s fixed. You wanna drive to the airport?” I’m guessing one of my marketers has called him, probably Evan.
Originally, the plan was for me to drive myself around while I was here. I was on vacation, after all. If I was driving, I was less likely to spend the time working, which was exactly what would happen if I had a driver. But things have changed. Everything’s different now.
“No. Send an extra car. I’ll get some work done on the trip.”
“Okay.”
I’m about to hang up, but something about the quality of the silence has me frowning. “Is there anything else?”
There’s just enough of a pause for me to think he’s hesitant. Declan is never hesitant. “Just wondering how the property acquisition went.”
Fuck. I’d forgotten about the ranch. I shake my head. My first instinct is to cancel the purchase. If McKenna doesn’t want me, I don’t want to be anywhere near her. Then I realize that’s ridiculous. I run nineteen clubs around the country and most of them I don’t see from one year to the next. It doesn’t make sense to abandon a perfectly viable business venture just because I—
What? Got rejected? Had my heart broken?
I scoff. I don’t have a heart. Just a cold, hard, lump of steel in my chest, and it’s getting colder by the minute.
“It’s fine. Perfect, in fact.”
“Excellent. See you later.”
I stare at the cherry blossom on the driveway, the cars, the steps leading up to the porch. I should get the landscaper to put in cherry blossom trees at the ranch. Or not. Every time I see a single petal I’ll think of her, and it’ll hurt like hell.
Good thing I don’t plan on spending much time there after this.
God knows I don’t need more pain from the women in my life leaving me.
Chapter 13
McKenna, working hard to maintain her righteous fury…
The cars left about half an hour ago, five of them, all in a convoy. It looked like a Presidential cavalcade, except for a billionaire instead of the President. A very sexy, demanding, funny, dictatorial, s
mart, control freak billionaire.
Nope, not thinking about him. Not even going to think his name. He’s just an irritating know-it-all man who stayed here for a few days.
No, I am not going to think about the orgasms.
I stomp downstairs. The crowd of random strangers he let into my house probably left a hell of a mess. Clearing it up will give me a good way to burn off my anger. And then I need to get outside and catch up on my chores. Gi— that asshole has put me way behind on the day’s work.
I look at the clock, and I’m shocked to see it’s not quite nine o’clock, but that’s still pretty damn late for a farmer. I have things to do, starting with clearing up the kitchen.
Unfortunately, the kitchen doesn’t need clearing up. It’s spotless. I stand there, trying to find some evidence that I didn’t just hallucinate the whole thing, but there isn’t a mark anywhere. Not a crumb, not a sticky note, not even a goddamn paperclip.
Great. Just great. Now I have to work off my mad some other way. Why did he have to leave everything clean? Now I feel like I’m angry at the inside of my own head, and that’s just ridiculous. He made me do this, made me push him away because he couldn’t respect my boundaries.
Entitled, self-obsessed, ‘you are in business, aren’t you?’ asshole.
I storm through to the front of the house, and see a piece of paper left on the hall counter. Ha! So he did leave behind something for me to clear up after all. Total, fucking—
I pick it up. It’s not a stray piece of paper. It’s an envelope. And it’s thick. I frown and open it up.
Inside is a wad of bills, far more than it would have cost for a month’s stay here, let alone a few days. There’s also a note, wrapped around the bills.
My apologies for the inconvenience. JD
All of a sudden, my rage evaporates and I sit down hard on the chair behind the counter.
Who am I kidding? I’m just as mad at myself as I am at him. And the pain and sorrow that it didn’t work out is a hole straight through my gut, burning like acid. I thought I’d found someone, maybe The One, but it turns out I was just…what?
This money seems to suggest I was a charity project, but I don’t think that’s entirely true. At least, I don’t want to think it is, but what do I know? A few days is hardly long enough to truly know someone. Maybe I was someone to take over and mold into what he thought I should be. That doesn’t feel quite right either, but again, how would I know either way? Maybe he was just humoring me all along, with all that ostensibly supportive talk about my business and the loan and my plans…
I shake my head. Whatever his motivations, he clearly likes to be in control, and he doesn’t even live here. Would he expect me to obey his every command from wherever he lives full time? As far as I’ve been able to tell from the internet, he moves around a lot, depending on which of his clubs needs his attention at the time. The nearest Black Cherry is over four hundred and fifty miles away. Like it or not, he was never going to commute from Valentine Lake, but that didn’t stop him from trying to take over anyway.
You liked it, though, whispers that horrible little voice in the back of my head that tells me things I do not want to hear. In fact, you loved it.
I loved it in the bedroom, and clearly that’s just wrong. Well, okay, not wrong, per se, but he couldn’t keep those tendencies to the bedroom and I can’t let a guy control me in my everyday life. I just can’t. Shades of my mother float through my mind, her face at Dad’s funeral, the way her life was torn apart when he died…I can’t do that to myself. I just can’t allow it. Who’d look after Mom? Who’d look after the farm? I can’t let someone else make me weak for love. I’d have nothing and no one to lean on when they left.
Too late for that, isn’t it?
No. No, it isn’t, because I’m not in love with him. I can’t be. I can’t love someone who tries to take over one of the most important things in my life right now and turn it into a...a...a circus.
I don’t love him. I don’t.
“Honey! I’m home!”
I look up to see Mom coming through the front door, but for some reason, she’s all blurry. I blink to clear my vision but that doesn’t help, and suddenly I realize I’m crying, and that’s why my eyes are all hot and my skin feels cold.
“He’s gone,” I whisper.
Mom’s arms wrap around me, and she whispers comforting nonsense in my ear. All I can think is that I can’t love him. Not if I’m going to survive him walking away. Not if I’m going to survive the fact that I made him leave.
We’re in the kitchen, and Mom’s pulling ingredients out of the cupboards. It’s how she deals with every bad thing that’s ever happened in our family. When I got a bad test result, she baked cherry turnovers. When the cherries ripened too fast one year and just cracked and cracked and cracked, she made jam.
So. Much. Jam.
When I got stood up for Prom, she baked cherry tarts. Yes, those cherry tarts. And then Dad took me to the Prom. Danced with me and everything, and when stupid Jerry Pavelis, who was supposed to be my date, came over to try and apologize, Dad got all up in his face and told him he shouldn’t come near me ever again because if he couldn’t even bother to show up at my house on Prom night, he wasn’t worth anything else.
I could have solved it myself, of course, but Dad was pissed that someone upset his little girl, even though I was seventeen by then, and no one upset either of the two women in his life without feeling the consequences.
Jerry damn near pissed himself. It turns out I’d been his backup plan, but when Alicia Devlin, aka Plan A, found out about it, she dropped his ass like a sack of horse manure.
Karma’s a bitch, and my dad was scary when he was mad.
It occurs to me that Gibson is much the same, wanting to step in and solve my problems. I shake my head, determined to push him out of my mind. I’m not thinking about him. I focus on Mom instead.
By the look of things, she’s setting up for Poor Me Pie. Usually the name makes me laugh, but today I’m not so appreciative of the baked goods commentary.
“You trying to tell me something, Mom?”
“Nope,” she says. “Just figured you needed pie today.”
I narrow my eyes at her, but she’s not wrong. “I definitely need pie.”
You might wonder how Poor Me Pie differs from your standard cherry pie. Well, I’m glad you asked. First of all, my mom makes it, which automatically makes it better than every other pie you’ve ever tasted. Seriously, she’s a straight up wizard when it comes to baking. Secondly, Poor Me Pie includes a generous shot of alcohol in there. And by ‘shot’ I mean a cup. Not even half a cup. A whole cup of cherry liqueur.
It tastes AMAZING.
You have to hydrate, though, otherwise six hours later you don’t feel nearly so amazing. Yes, my mom is the only person I know capable of baking a hangover into a pie.
“Just tell me what happened, honey. You two seemed to be getting along so well.”
So I tell her everything while she rolls out pastry, then lines it with foil, fills it with baking beads, and slides it into the oven to bake. I get worked up all over again so that by the time I get to the part where he brought strangers into our house to improve on her already perfect pie I’m almost yelling.
Okay, fine. I’m really yelling. But then I stop and take a sip of my coffee, which is now cold.
Talk about adding insult to injury.
I cross over to the coffee pot and pour myself another cup. “You want one?”
“No, thank you, honey,” she tells me as she slides a perfectly baked pie crust out of the oven and sets it on the side. “I’m still hopped up on Alma’s coffee bean tea.”
I blink at her. “Isn’t that just…coffee?”
“Oh no, dear. Believe me. You’ll have to try it some time, but not if you plan on sleeping any time in the following two days. Alma outdid herself this time.” She opens a canning jar of homemade cherry pie filling and empties it into the dish, then s
tarts rolling out more pastry for the pie lid.
I shake my head, unable to completely hide a grin. Alma is...a special case. She has a wide ranging garden and some of her herbal experiments are astonishingly successful. Most of the rest are best not talked about.
A small number are straight-up illegal, but we don’t talk about those either.
“So, it sounds like Gibson got further than most.”
My coffee cup freezes halfway to my mouth. “I’m sorry?”
“He may have got a little carried away, but there’s no shame in letting a man take some of the load, you know.”
I snort with disbelief. “He didn’t try to take some of the load. He flew a couple dozen people down here to take the whole load and break it down into pie charts.”
I’m still sore about the pie charts. Somehow it feels like a snide remark that no one actually said.
“And what’s wrong with that?”
I stare at her. “He didn’t even ask! He just did it! He just...took over.”
“What would you have said if he’d asked? After all, it’s not like he tried to take over the entire farm,” she points out, far too reasonably for my liking, as she arranges the pastry lid over the pie. “He just tried to help with the pie contest.”
“I don’t care if he just wanted to suggest which dish to bake it in. I’d still have said no, of course. It’s none of his business.”
She makes a non-committal face as she pricks the pastry with a fork. “Maybe he wanted it to be his business.”
“Well, it’s not,” I snap, gulping at my coffee, an action I immediately regret as it’s hot enough to cauterize my mouth and throat. I really need to stop doing that. I think I just incinerated my esophagus.
Mom finishes crimping the pie crust and slides the pie into the oven, then turns to me, wiping her hands on a tea towel. “You always were an independent little thing, even as a child. You remember that time I said we needed more apricots? You disappeared for hours. We couldn’t find you anywhere. Your dad was about ready to tear the sheriff’s head off unless he called out the National Guard, and then Missy Jenkins called from town to say you’d come into the general store for apricots.”
Eat Your Heart Out: A Romance Charity Anthology Page 36