Northwood strolls out of the back, a small, confused smile on his face. Right. He and the suits were still back there, waiting for me to get Jude’s coffee fix under control so that we could continue our important, life-altering meeting. For me, anyway.
This is the most important moment in my entire life, and now I don’t even care. I want to crawl upstairs to my bed and shut down for a while. But I can’t do that. I’ve got Northwood to deal with.
It takes all my effort to inject enthusiasm back into my tone. “Your eyes aren’t lying, sir. This is my twin, Noah. Noah, this is Charles Northwood.”
“The beverage guy. Pleasure,” Noah says, getting off the stool to shake Northwood’s hand. My eyes narrow. Noah’s a grumpy sod, but that greeting was cold, even for him. Even for the news he just told me. How the hell does he know Northwood, anyway? I haven’t spoken a word about this meeting to Noah. Not once.
“The pleasure is mutual.” Northwood turns back to me, perhaps unwisely dismissing Noah entirely, who continues to study him mercilessly. “Now, Nathan. Do we have an agreement? Jude will shadow your business for a month and report back?”
I sigh. “Sir, I think—”
“Yes. I’ll be sure to keep you informed,” Jude says. When I gape at her, she studiously avoids my gaze.
Why the hell did she cave? Is it because she just learned someone I clearly care about died? That would be almost … kind. Another hint of the warm person she was over email. Maybe she’s not as uptight as I thought.
I’m not sure how I feel about that. It’s only going to make it harder to resist her. My teasing aside, I’m not dumb enough to think getting involved with her while she’s here would be a good idea. It’s just fun to trade barbs.
This will be easier if she remains cool to me. Her sudden decision to stay doesn’t help with that.
Northwood nods and actually snaps his fingers at the suits like they’re naughty dogs that need to be brought to heel. I keep waiting for them to, I don’t know, act like individual human beings or something, but instead, they just file out the door.
“We’ll circle back with a conference call in about a week or so, yes?” Northwood says, extending his hand toward me.
“Sure. Looking forward to it.”
With one last nod to Jude, Northwood strolls out the door. It swings shut behind him.
Noah watches Northwood leave, a curious expression on his face. After a long moment, he says, “Careful with that one.”
My head whips toward him. Noah loves making cryptic statements. It’s annoying as fuck. I know it gets him more than enough pussy, but at times like these, when he knows intriguing details about my life even I’m unaware of, all I want to do is shake him until he spills everything.
But he never will. The man’s a steel trap. I’ve spent my whole life trying to get shit out of him, and I’ve never once succeeded. The only words that ever come out of his mouth are precisely those he’s already carefully considered. He says nothing without a reason.
“What do you know?” I nevertheless ask, folding my arms across my chest and glaring at him. Maybe pigs will fly, and my super-intense, terribly scary glare will make him tell me everything.
Noah throws a significant glance toward Jude, who’s staring him down with her own special scary face. “Just look out for yourself. That’s all.”
And then he, too, slips out the door, leaving me finally alone with Jude.
Chapter Eleven
Jude
Once everyone is gone, Nathan practically wilts before my eyes. He looks so exhausted. So defeated. Unexpected sympathy hits me. The old pain returns, a horrible echo of the agony I see in his eyes.
I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
“Why did you change your mind?” he finally says, raising his face to look at me.
Because I was where you are, once.
“How about we go somewhere and get some lunch? I think both of us have a few questions we’d like to ask the other.”
“Oh, yeah? Are you saying you’re … hungry? You go right ahead and taste me if you need to do so.”
I just shake my head. His outrageous innuendo doesn’t have any heat behind it. He’s going through the motions, on auto pilot, blindly reaching for any coping mechanism he can find. Instead of being irritated, I just feel terribly sad. So I don’t make a comment about the inappropriateness of his remark.
When he notices me studying him, he sighs, his shoulders slumping farther, and says, “I know a place where we can go. It’s a little early still for lunch, but I think we can rustle up some food.”
I follow Nathan in my rental car. The drive is short—there aren’t many places to eat in town—and when I pull in behind him, I realize this is the place I ate at last week. I stare at the entrance in trepidation. Hopefully no one will recognize me.
Nathan comes over and opens my door for me. “Wait until you try one of their burgers. Life-changing.”
“I’m a vegetarian.”
He stares at me in horror. “You’re kidding.”
“Okay, no, I’m not a vegetarian.”
“Thank Christ. I thought we were going to have a problem.”
“I’m a vegan.”
“Oh, God, that’s even worse.”
“Hey, what’s wrong with vegans?” I say.
“Nothing. I just have absolutely nothing in common with them.”
“Well, I suppose it’s a good thing we don’t need to have anything in common with each other, then, isn’t it?”
Nathan leads me inside and scans the list of specials. “You’re the one who just agreed to stay here for a month. Something tells me we’re bound to find something in common during that time. Oh, hey, an avocado and sriracha burger.”
“We’ll get to that later,” I say. “Anyway, I lied. I do like … meat.”
His head whips toward me. “Jude Shaw, did you just flirt with me?”
Aw, that was dumb. The words just slipped out. But when I notice Nathan’s expression and the light that’s entered his eyes for the first time since he found out about Alice, I can’t bring myself to feel bad about it.
“Whoops,” I say. “Slipped out.”
He grins. “Did you just do something naughty?”
I roll my eyes. “Like you can talk.”
He leans in closer. “Jude, you know all I do is behave badly.”
“Huh,” I say, tapping my chin in thought as I study him. “That might just be the truest thing I’ve ever gotten out of you.”
“You feel free to get anything out of me you need, sweetheart.”
“Aaaand we’re right back to the drivel. For a minute there, I thought I needed to be concerned.”
Nathan snickers. A waitress greets us and leads us over to a booth. Nathan greets her by name and tells her he wants the burger special. I order a bacon burger, because this day has been stressful already and I deserve the calories.
I let Nathan chat with some of the other people in the cafe while we wait for our food. Various people keep coming up to him to give him their condolences. He takes it well, but the sympathy clearly weighs on him. And yet, despite his discomfort and the stress in his eyes, he nevertheless uses what I’m coming to understand as his customary humor to deflect attention from his true feelings.
Hmm. Maybe he isn’t as carefree as I originally thought. Maybe his constant flirting and clowning around is how he deals with pain and uncertainty. And judging by how everyone comes up to him and jokes with him, maybe this role has been more cast upon him than undertaken by himself.
“So who was Alice?” I ask when we’re finally given our food and everyone leaves us to our meal.
Nathan drops his burger he’s just picked up, then tears his fingers through his hair, smearing grease into it.
“Fuck,” he mutters, uselessly trying to scrub it out before giving up. His hair stands up in all directions. With a shrug, he tosses his napkin on the table, still avoiding my gaze.
“Nathan?” I ask softl
y.
He glances up. The pain has returned to his eyes. He sighs. “Alice raised me and my brothers after our mom died. Our own grandparents had already passed and our father became emotionally unavailable, so Alice took it upon herself to make sure we didn’t turn into absolute bastards.”
“That was kind of her.”
“Yeah, well, she wasn’t entirely successful,” he mutters, but doesn’t explain further.
I wait for him to continue.
“Anyway,” he says, “our dad died ten years ago, so Alice and her husband, Larry, were essentially our only family members left alive. I guess it’s just Larry now. Well, and our brood of cousins, of course.”
“And who’s Griffin?”
Nathan stares at me blankly. “How do you know about him?”
“Noah mentioned he wasn’t doing well,” I say quietly.
“Christ.” Nathan runs his hand through his hair again. “Griffin’s one of my older brothers. Third oldest, after Jackson. Axel’s the oldest—actually, you’ve seen him, too.”
“I have?” I say, confused. When did I meet anyone besides Noah?
“Yeah,” says Nathan. “He was there, too. That night we bumped uglies, as you like to call it.”
“He was the man sitting at the bar when I first came in!” I say.
Nathan makes a gun with his fingers and pantomimes firing. “Bingo.”
“That guy’s your brother? But he’s …”
“He’s what?” Nathan says, eyes narrowing.
I flush. “He was so, um, large. And didn’t he have red hair? You and Noah don’t have red hair. And he was clearly very, very drunk.”
Nathan snickers. “Oh, yeah. He was. For a minute there, I thought you were going to say he was attractive. I was worried I’d have to beat up my own brother just to soothe my jealous pride.”
“Um, yeah, no.”
“Anyway, so that’s Axel. Only he has red hair, by the way. Noah and I have been plotting to set him up with his accountant, Andrea. She’s worked for him for years and he can’t see what’s right under his nose.”
“That was the woman who was with Noah,” I say, remembering the trio that first night. “I thought they were going to fight each other. I had no idea they were brothers.”
“Axel was probably stupid drunk enough to try, but Noah would have creamed him. Axel’s large, but it takes him a while to wind up, even when he’s not completely shitfaced. Noah’s much more limber. I, of course, am the most limber. If you want, I could provide you with a demonstration—”
“That will not be necessary,” I say. “So Axel’s the oldest, and then Jackson?”
Nathan’s shoulders slump. “And then Griffin. They’re all a year apart. Noah and I are two years younger than Griffin. We’ll be twenty-nine soon.”
“And why is Griffin so upset?”
Nathan’s jaw tightens and his hands clench into fists. “He’s our town’s doctor. It’s so small that he’s the only one.”
Understanding dawns. “He was Alice’s doctor, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah. Fuck. Yeah. He was.”
I reach across the table and place my hand over his fist. He inhales sharply, staring at our hands. His fist relaxes and then flips palm-up, squeezing tightly then letting go. I pull my arm back across the table.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Nathan.”
He smiles without humor. “Feel free to kiss my boo-boo and make it feel better.”
I just stare at him sadly.
“So why are you here?” he says suddenly.
“What?”
He points at my food, then picks up his burger again and finally takes a bite. He grunts in approval, taking another bite before looking at me. “Why are you sitting here, and not taxiing down a runway? Weren’t you all hot to escape this place?”
Stalling, I take a bite of my own food. My nose wrinkles in distaste. Not too great, unfortunately. Just like last time I was here. I chew quickly, trying to get it down faster.
“Well?” he asks again after I swallow.
“I felt bad,” I finally admit.
He blinks. “What?”
I glare at my burger. “Okay, so there were two reasons.”
Three, really. But I’m not going to tell Nathan that I want to stick around to figure out what exactly Northwood has planned. It’ll be easier to do that if I can first figure out what it is about Old Abe’s that has him so curious.
When I don’t immediately answer, Nathan looks up from his food, brows raised.
I sigh. “It’ll help my career. Northwood’s been making me jump through hoops for years, and this is hopefully the last one. I don’t want to hang out here for a month, but it would be stupid to throw away everything else I’ve done just because I don’t feel like doing this last thing. So he wants me here for a month. I’ll grin and bear it.”
“It won’t be that bad. I’m here, after all,” says Nathan playfully, but the humor doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
We eat in silence for a few moments.
“So why do you feel bad, exactly?” he says then.
And here’s what I don’t want to admit even to myself.
“You looked so sad,” I finally say, deciding he deserves an honest answer. “Both of you, when Noah told you about Alice. I just … I don’t know. I could relate. I couldn’t bring myself to say no.”
His eyes widen. “What’s this? Does Stone Cold Barbie have a beating heart after all?”
“That’s the thanks I—wait, what did you just call me?”
He freezes. “Um …”
I roll my eyes. “I’m going to let that slide this one time out of respect for Alice. And besides, I’ve been referring to you as Bartender Boy in my head for a week, so I guess I can’t talk.”
He grins. “Bartender Boy? I like it. Sounds like the name for a superhero. Makes me feel all warm and cuddly. A couple more remarks like that and I might have to switch your nickname to Red Hot Barbie.”
“Oh, please shut up.”
“Hmm, yes. Or perhaps Warm Gooey Barbie might do.”
“I hate you.”
“No, you don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t have made such a terrible sacrifice and agreed to spend all of your waking hours with me for an entire month.”
I stab a finger at him. “Um, no. I will not be spending all of my time with you. Regular business hours will do.”
He grins wickedly. “You’ll be in my bed by Friday. No, Thursday. Maybe even tonight, if you can’t find a place to stay. Spoiler alert: there are no hotels for fifty miles.”
“I’m well-aware of that,” I say dryly. “And I will sleep in my rental car before I ever sleep in your bed, King. You better remember that.”
“Sure, sure. Let’s see how many nights spent cramped in your rented Camry it takes before you start singing a different tune.”
“There will be no singing.”
“Of course, of course. I totally believe you, sweetheart.”
What a goon. I take another bite. Blech. “By the way. If I were you, I’d remember what your brother told you about Northwood.”
His eyes narrow. “Are you telling me I have something to worry about when it comes to him?”
I shrug, staring at my plate. How much should I tell him? I don’t want him to think there’s something wrong, because I’m not sure myself, but …
“All I’m saying is that Northwood always gets what he wants.”
“Well, that’s good, because he and I want the same thing.”
“So it would appear.”
He shoves the last of his burger in his mouth, chews thoughtfully, then says around his food, “Is there something specific you’d like to share or is this just some tactic to get me on my heels for the negotiation?”
“I prefer to deal with people honestly. I might be a stone cold bitch, but I still like to be straight with people.”
He absorbs this. “And you’re implying that Northwood doesn’t?”
I fiddle with my
fork. “He’s been known to cut a few corners when the occasion presents itself.”
Nathan frowns. He stares at me consideringly, wiping his fingers on his napkin. “Do you think this is going to be one of those times?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “But he’s never had me stay with a potential client for a month before. Not even close. Frankly, it seems a little unnecessary, but maybe he really wants to babysit this deal. In either case, something’s up. Normally, I wouldn’t mention it to a potential partner unless I thought there was actual merit to my suspicion, because even though I work for the man, I’m not going to be involved in anything shady. But you? Well. Nothing about this deal has been normal from the beginning. So like I said, proceed with caution.”
“If he’s such a bad guy, why do you continue to work for him?”
“I have my reasons,” I say evasively. “Besides, he’d never let me leave even if I wanted to, anyway.”
“And why the hell is that?”
“I’m too valuable. And like I said, Northwood always gets what he wants.”
“Does he have something on you, or what?”
“No. But he does have the ability to blacklist me in the industry if I piss him off. Which leaving NBI would definitely do. I have no desire to invite that kind of wrath down upon me.”
“Hmm.”
I try to take another bite. Gross. It’s going to be hard to finish this.
“Okay, what’s up with your food? Should we get you something else?”
“I doubt that would help,” I sigh. It really wouldn’t make a difference.
“You sure? Because what I just ate tasted stellar.”
Nathan doesn’t know there’s no point in getting another meal. It’s not the cafe’s fault. It happens more often than not when I eat out. But I don’t want to offend him since he’s obviously proud of his town.
“What gives? Are you a picky eater or something? We can go somewhere else if you want, but just to forewarn you, pickings are slim.”
I groan. “It’s not that. It’s just … I have perfect taste.”
“Come again?”
“Perfect taste. I’m one of those supertasters. I experience taste with far more intensity than normal people. Everything about food, from its flavor, to the aroma, to the temperature, it all rattles around in my brain like a symphony. If it tastes good, it’s like Beethoven’s Fifth. Or Bach’s cello suite. If it’s bad? Nails on a chalkboard. Over and over and over. I can’t help it.”
Lush (The King Cousins Book 1) (The King Brothers 4) Page 8
