I didn't get rejected often, was this what it felt like? It sucked. I hated it. When I got it during work, it didn’t matter to me because I could always make a better product. In my personal life, what was I supposed to fix when someone didn’t want me? It wasn’t clear or easy, something I could logically talk through then put together an action plan for.
I looked over at her. She was shivering. She had a coat on, but she wasn't dressed for this type of weather. Honestly, neither was I. Neither of us expected it. It seemed like we were stuck though so we were going to have to at the very least cooperate if nothing else.
“Come on, we should go back.” We gathered the bags and hustled back to the cabin. The short walk from the car to the cabin left both of us pretty wet and frozen. Once inside, I helped Maggie out of her coat.
“How about you do the fireplace and I look for supplies,” I said. It wasn't a suggestion. We were sharing the same space and even though the cabin was large, the more room we got to keep between us the better. With our wet shoes and coats hanging in the entryway, I went to the kitchen.
Whoever came here ahead of us knew that there were going to be people in the cabin and thankfully there were supplies. There was a good amount of dry food, and other more perishable stuff like bread, deli meat, milk, and cheese. Fresh fruit and vegetables were limited but there was a good selection of canned produce too. Water wouldn’t be an issue either. If we were careful, the food could last us about a week, but I wasn't sure we would need it to last that long. I was hoping we wouldn’t. I boiled some water and started making a couple of cups of coffee to warm us both up. Maggie walked into the kitchen as I was rifling through the cabinets.
“What are you doing?”
“I'm trying to see what we have in here.”
“There's food. I checked earlier. Water shouldn't be a problem either.”
“I know. I'm looking for flashlights, batteries, candles, things like that.”
“What for?”
“Just in case the power goes out, we're going to need them.”
“That isn't going to happen, is it?” she asked. I sighed and got up to my feet.
“It's better to have and not need them than to need and not have them.” She stood there watching me and I watched her. Neither of us spoke for a few moments and nothing significant seem to pass in the air between us. I felt the need to fill it though. I felt this weird urge to confess to her how much she had been on my mind for the last several weeks.
And what would she even do if she knew that information?
She had been clear when she told me that she wasn't interested in me in that way. This was so strange. I was never speechless in front of women. I always knew what to do. It sounded bad but I always had the upper hand. After my encounters, it was the women who were left wanting more and not me.
I cleared my throat and looked down.
“I'll go check the garage.”
I had to walk past her to get to the door that led to the garage. I pretended not to notice her following me there too.
I wasn't sure what I was expecting when I finally located the light switch, but the garage was just as clean and well-maintained as the rest of the cabin. There was a shelf along one wall with boxes and other paraphernalia. I started searching.
In one of them was a couple of lanterns and lined up along the wall were some propane tanks. A little more searching unearthed a box of candles, a little more and I found some flashlights.
Underneath some boxes was a slightly dusty small generator. It didn't look like it would last very long if we ever needed it, but at least it was there. There seemed to be extra gas, so maybe we'd be able to get a few hours of use out of it.
I studiously ignored Maggie's gaze on me.
“So?” she asked.
I rose slowly. “We’re hoping for the best, but just in case of emergency, we have some stuff here that we'd be able to use. We’re probably not going to need it but whoever decked this place out knew there was this kind of risk involved.”
She was rubbing her arms like she was cold. I could help her with that. I could think of a lot of good ways that I could warm her up and that would warm me up too. It almost felt like we had to do it, you know? Like, what did two people who were attracted to each other do when they had unlimited time together in a private area? If she was scared about other people finding out, I wouldn't tell.
If she simply was not interested in me, well forget I ever suggested it.
“Well, I'm going back to sleep.” I walked past her out of the garage. I wanted to add that she could look for me if she wanted anything, but I stopped myself. I wanted to put as much distance between us as possible because I needed the space.
I didn't want to do anything that I regretted. I didn't want to step over the line and make this experience even more awkward for us than it had to be. She said nothing as I made my way back upstairs. I closed the door behind me, sighing as I looked around the room.
If that fucking snow wasn’t gone by the morning, I was going to jump off a bridge.
6
Maggie
Okay then, don't let me stop you.
I watched Toby walk out of the kitchen like he really had somewhere to go. Granted, I didn't particularly want to be close to him right now, but he could at least pretend like this wasn't the worst thing that had ever happened to him. He was acting like I was the last person he would want to be trapped with and I was taking it personally a little bit.
The feeling was mutual, but he didn't have to be so obvious about it. Without even saying anything to each other, we had made an unspoken agreement that we weren't going to be hanging out much for the time that we were here.
Fine by me. Whenever I started to make judgments about the man, I remembered that I didn't know him very well. All I truly knew about him was that he was Easton's business partner and what he sounded like when he climaxed, which, to be fair, wasn't enough to base a judgment on a person.
I closed the door to the garage and walked back to the kitchen. On the island were two empty cups. I hadn't put them there, maybe it was Toby. I decided to make some coffee and filled one up. Instead of heading to the living room, I stood in front of the window watching the snow come down. It hadn't slowed down at all in the time that we had been back in the cabin. I felt a little uneasy thinking about it. Toby was talking about some of it melting so that we could finally get out of here, but in order for it to start melting, it had to stop coming down.
My phone started ringing suddenly. I pulled it out of my waistband.
“Hello?” I said. It was Missy.
“Hey, are you two okay?”
“Yeah. Mostly. I mean the snow is coming down pretty hard. We thought a little while ago that maybe we could make it down off the mountain, but the snow is coming down too heavy and visibility is basically zero. We decided not to risk it.”
“Oh my God, I'm so sorry,” she said.
“Don’t be. There was no way of knowing that this would happen.”
“Honestly, I feel like this is partly my fault. I screwed everything up when I announced that I had to go to the doctor.”
“Don’t be silly, your health comes first of course. How are you by the way?”
“We’re in Denver but the weather won't let us get up to Vail. According to the forecast, the snow is likely to last for the next couple of days.”
Days? As in more than one? That thought made my stomach hurt. Even though I had been mentally preparing myself for it, and he had made some comments about being here for longer than intended, reality was just setting in. Needless to say, of course, I did not want to be up here with him. Even though that was the case, would it have been better to be up here alone?
“I... I’m glad you guys had a safe flight.”
“Thanks.”
“What is all of this going to do with the timeline for the photoshoot?”
“Photoshoot? Maggie, you cannot be worried about work right now when you and Toby ar
e stuck on a mountain in a blizzard.”
She was right, but I was just trying to change the subject.
“We've been making calls. We're going to get up there and get you guys out. Easton told me that the place had been stocked in preparation for the photo shoot, is that true?”
“Yeah. Toby and I looked; he says that we have enough food for about a week as long as we are frugal about it.”
“Oh my God, Maggie I'm so sorry this is how it turned out. I know you were looking forward to going to Vail.”
I swallowed and nodded slowly. It was kind of funny how one action had spurred the chain of events that had gotten me snowed-in with Toby. Was there a good reason why I couldn't have waited a little bit and just gone at the same time as Maggie and Easton? It was useless to contemplate that now. I was stuck with the last person on Earth that I wanted to be stuck with.
“Don’t worry about it, there's no way you could have known or even prevented it. I asked already but how are you doing by the way? Did the check-up go okay? I hope everything's good?”
“It did actually, it seems like such a bad time to announce this but, I'm pregnant.”
Oh my God, she was pregnant!
Oh my God, she was pregnant.
I was happy for her. Obviously, I was thrilled for her. She was my friend and she was excited. She was having a child with the man that she loved, and then that she was going to marry. Of course, I was thrilled for her.
I wished that that was the only thing that I felt. Besides being friends, Missy and I were also colleagues. More accurately, she was my boss. What would having a baby mean for her business? What would it mean for my job?
The thing about Missy was that she didn't need the money she was making from her business. She mostly just did it because she liked it and she was good at it. She had grown up wealthy and had always had money at her disposal. Easton, the man she was marrying was the founder of a business that was valued in the billions.
Taking time off when she gave birth wouldn't hurt her financially so why wouldn't she do it? What if she wanted to put her business on hold and take time off? Even better, what if she decided to shutter her business completely? She could do it if she wanted to and not feel a thing. I would though.
I left my old accounting job to work for Missy. Even though it was an assistant position and by all measures, her business was a small one, she paid me very very well and the job was fun and a lot more flexible than anything I had had in the past. If she decided that she didn't want to work anymore, which she very well could, I was out on the street. Well, not literally, but I would have to find something else and I would have hated giving up this job that I liked so much, and that paid me so well.
There was the other little bit of me that wasn't quite thrilled about her announcement, the part that was a little bit jealous. Out of my new friend group of Missy, Eddy, and Brenna, not only was I still the only single one, but I was now the only one that didn't have a baby. I tried my best not to fixate on timelines and having abstract things achieved by certain age milestones. It wasn't useful and all it did was make you feel bad about yourself, but from time to time, like now, it was hard to get away from those feelings.
“Congratulations, I know you guys are going to have a beautiful, healthy baby. I'm happy for you.”
“Thank you. I don't know what to feel right now, I'm nervous and kind of clueless, but I'm excited.”
“How is Easton?”
“He's excited too. We thought we would at least be married before this happened, it wasn’t planned at all, but we were going to get around to it anyway so why not.”
I congratulated her again. That creeping feeling of not having done enough came up and wrapped itself around my neck.
When was it going to be my turn? I was twenty-seven. I had never had any hang-ups about turning thirty, but being surrounded by my new friends and their successful husbands had planted and then exacerbated my feelings of unworthiness. I saw how happy they were and how well their lives were going. What did I have to do to get that? It hurt, even more, to think that I could have had it at one point, but it didn't work out.
“Enough about me though. You guys hang in there. We're going to get you out as soon as possible.”
I got off the phone with Missy feeling worse than I had before. There was possibly a rescue team coming out to get us, great. Until then, she was expecting a baby with a man she loved, my job security was in danger, and by all accounts or at least in my friend group, I was a failure.
I looked around the kitchen for something to do to get my mind off those thoughts. Being all the way out here without the usual distractions, my mind could spiral undisturbed and leave me in the worst mood. I decided to make dinner. While I would have loved some fresh ingredients, the canned tomatoes and deli meat and cheese were going to have to work for the pasta dish I had in mind.
The guerilla meat sauce that I cobbled together looked awful but it tasted okay. I was pouring it over the pasta when I heard Toby walking into the room. I wanted a distraction, guess he worked.
“What’s that?” I heard him ask. I ignored his warm presence behind me.
“It’s dinner unless your standards are too high in which case, I can't help you.”
“It smells good. Thanks for preparing it. Anything I can do to help?”
He was being oddly kind and communicative considering he had stormed off before. Maybe he had rubbed one out while he was upstairs and was in a better mood. Whatever, it wasn't my problem. The person who was forced to be my roommate was actually being tolerable for the first time since we had gotten here.
“You can get the plates and the silverware out. I was going to eat right there on the island. You can join me if you want.”
“Thanks,” he said, sounding sincere instead of sarcastic. He got everything set up and I plated up the food. I took my time dawdling before I finally sat down next to him. For a few minutes, the only sounds were forks scraping on porcelain and our mouths chewing.
It was awkward. How many more days of this since we were officially trapped? Just because we were the only ones in here didn’t mean we had to eat meals as a family. Fuck that.
“It's good. You weren't working with much, but it’s certainly better than anything I could have come up with.”
“Thanks.” More scraping forks. More silence.
No, scratch that, it was painfully awkward.
I got up to get myself a glass of water and thought about asking him whether he wanted one too.
“Maggie.”
“Toby.”
We said each other's names in unison. A few loaded silent seconds passed and nobody said anything. I walked back slowly to my seat.
“You first,” he said.
“No, you.”
He cleared his throat. “We’re about to spend who knows how much time up here together. I think it's better if we put everything on the table now just to make this as comfortable an experience as possible.”
He sounded so businesslike and formal, I wanted to laugh. I knew the way that he conducted himself under other circumstances so it was funny.
“Well, I feel like we said everything that needed to be said on that night,” I said.
“You do?”
“As two consenting adults, we had a one-night stand where we stated the terms of our engagement. That's in the past now and I don't think there is any reason for us to behave awkwardly with each other now.”
He paused and seemed to contemplate that.
“Okay, sounds good. We're friends, right?”
“Slow down there, we just happen to know the same group of people,” I said. He laughed at that, even though I meant it to be a little bit sassy.
“All right, we are friends of friends. No reason why we shouldn't be able to hang out for the next couple of days and wait this whole thing out.”
I sounded a lot more confident than I actually felt. There was a lot of baggage from that night and we had just made a pact n
ot to talk about it. What would talking it out do besides make it awkward on top of revealing all my secrets?
Missy better hurry up with that rescue.
7
Toby
That ended up being a lot less painful than I thought it would be. Maybe I wasn't giving Maggie enough credit. I had slept with the woman, sure, but that didn't mean I knew her. She was straightforward and she said what she meant. She wasn't going to let what happened between us turn this into an awkward situation. I appreciated that. To be honest, though, I was more worried about my own actions than hers.
Dinner went by pretty smoothly after our talk. She told me that she had been on the phone with Missy and that she had told her that she and Easton were arranging for us to be rescued. Perfect. That meant this wasn't going to last very long. One night here, two at the most.
I was surprised at how slowly I was taking this. This was the kind of opportunity that people wished for. Being stuck somewhere with a person that they were wildly attracted to? That should have been my idea of heaven, but Maggie and I had just gotten on each other's good sides, no need to rush it. I was still very, very attracted to her, but I was more interested in whatever semblance of friendship that we had just agreed on having.
I helped her with the dishes and tidying up after we ate. I wasn't very hungry, but the meal was surprisingly good given the limited supplies we had to work with. I generally ate meals that other people prepared for me, but this was a little different. Usually, those people cooked for me because I was paying them. Life in New York seemed so far away from all of this. I wondered what it would be like adjusting.
“What are you doing now? Are you going back upstairs?” she asked me.
“What are you doing?”
“I don't know. I was thinking maybe I'd watch a little TV.”
“I'll join you.” She frowned slightly and raised her eyebrows. “What? Am I not invited? I thought we were friends.”
Her lips spread into a small smile. “We are not friends, but sure, you can join.”
Admit You Need Me: A Secret Pregnancy Romance (Irresistible Billionaires Book 4) Page 5