by Haley Travis
The strange new heat inside me made me cry out again, and my back arched as my legs dropped to thrash against the bed.
My ears were ringing from my pulse hammering too hard, as I realized Taylor was saying something I couldn’t make out. “What?”
“I know it’s too soon. I don’t care. I love you, Alice. We were meant to be.”
Reaching up to run my fingertips along the side of his face, I could see the purity of his gaze as he stared down at me.
“I love you too, Taylor.”
10
_____
Taylor
Spending the entire morning just lounging with Alice was absolute heaven. We were so comfortable with each other that it genuinely felt like we’d been together for months.
I don’t know what it said about me that in my close to forty years on the planet I’d never had sex that felt so emotional. It wasn’t just physical, we were becoming part of each other on a much deeper level. I hadn’t even known that I was able to experience that.
There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that we were going to win the stupid show. Although I didn’t care personally, I could see that Alice had a bit of a competitive streak, which amused me. Anything that made her happy was worth a bit of awkwardness on my behalf.
We had a huge brunch, with Alice being surprised that her favorite oolong tea was already stocked in my kitchen. When I asked her about food preferences on the way to the car dealership, I took a note, and sent a text to Mrs. Henderson.
It still broke my heart to some degree that Alice seemed so surprised that I could want to care for her. She hadn’t revealed a lot of her past, but it didn’t sound like she’d ever had anyone to depend on before.
I needed to be that man for her. A pedestal who would lift her up, and let her shine.
We spent a little while discussing an array of “problems” to go over with the therapist, and made note of several options, so we could see which they ran with.
Alice went to shower and get ready. We’d been constantly together all night and morning, so I gave her some space instead of ogling her while she bathed, which would have been my preference.
Taking my coffee to the living room, I did some work on my laptop, checking the security scheduling with my guys, and tweaking one of my investments that was suddenly doing well.
When my phone rang, I knew without even looking it was Gary. “Hey, what’s up?”
“You two are killing it!” he exclaimed. “Seriously, we can’t believe the numbers.”
“What do you mean?” I called up the website on the big screen, but there were no results, just the buttons on how to vote. Gary told me a secure code to add to the URL to get the numbers. “Damn,” I muttered.
“Right?” Gary laughed. “You two are winning by a mile.”
“Yeah, but how did you even get viewer numbers like that? What sort of crazy publicity did Darlene do?”
“She asked for help from the local university,” he chuckled. “They have a ton of media students who are desperate for real world projects. We took on a few interns, and they’ve been working their butts off to make the show go viral.”
“Apparently it’s working,” I said, scrolling through some of the comments. “So I guess the three of us inheriting the TV station is practically a done deal.”
“Pretty much,” Gary agreed. “There’s a bit of a gray area as to what will be good enough to fulfill the terms of the Will, but I’m sure I can make them see our side.”
“Don’t even tell me if you’re going to bribe the lawyers. I don’t want to know.”
“Don’t worry about it. The show is doing great, and we’re nearly there.”
Releasing a loud sigh, I shook my head. “After all this time, I can’t believe that you and Darlene and I are going to own the station. It’s crazy.”
“Hey, wait – I thought you didn’t want anything to do with it?”
“Not really, but if I’m a part owner, I’ll want to at least keep an eye on things. Add my two cents now and then, you know.” Laughing more to myself, I added, “We’ll have to make sure that Darlene doesn’t hand the reins to her husband. Can you imagine what lunacy Darrell would come up with?”
Gary chuckled. “Yeah, I thought of that. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll be great at the therapist this afternoon. At this point, as long as you show up and are polite, you’ll win.”
“Thanks,” I said, ending the call.
Leaning back to sip my coffee, a tiny movement out of the corner of my eye made me jump, almost spilling down my shirt. “Jesus,” I muttered, setting the mug down before I scalded myself. “You scared me. Come over and sit with me.”
“No.”
I turned to see that Alice’s bottom lip was trembling, and her pale hands were in fists by her sides. She looked absolutely beautiful in a dark silver gray dress that was quietly elegant. A bit dressy to be going to a therapist, but it would make her cinnamon hair stand out on camera.
I quickly realized that the furious look in her eyes was probably due to my phone conversation, but I wasn’t sure how much she overheard from my side.
“How could you tell me that you love me while you’re lying to me?” she whispered, backing slowly away.
“I never lied,” I said, standing up and taking a step toward her. To my horror, she took another step away.
“Alice, I was going to tell you everything as soon as the show was over. I just didn’t want to put extra stress on you while we’re muddling through this thing.”
She made a disgusted snort and rolled her eyes. “That’s always the case. Men keeping information away from women so that they can control them. Like how my boss at the coffee shop won’t tell us the schedule until the last minute, so he can pretend he’s important. Or how my first year professor would email assignments to the guys, but make each woman come into his office and beg for it.”
“Baby, it’s not like that at all.”
“So you and Gary and Darlene are going to take over the TV station? Why?”
“It seems like it,” I said gently. Sitting back down on the couch, I tried to appear relaxed, to put her at ease. “Gary and Darlene are my cousins. I’m an only child, so those two are vaguely like my younger siblings. When my grandfather passed away a few years ago, his lawyers laid out the weirdly intricate terms of our inheritance.”
She stopped backing away, leaning against the door frame as she scowled.
“We hadn’t even known that he’d owned that derelict station. We all had different ideas of what to do with it. Darlene wanted to do entertainment programming with her husband, Darrell. I didn’t care one way or the other. Gary wanted to find a way to flatten it and sell the land to a strip mall corporation.”
Alice’s mouth fell open. “That’s horrible.”
“Yes, well, that’s why I came on board. To help the two of them work it out. We figured that if the TV station was functional, even just as a studio producing online content, we could see how much land was actually needed. Technology has come a long way since Grandpa’s time. We figured maybe sometime down the road, we could sell off the extra parking lots, while keeping most of the production facilities.”
“And you had to make a show to fulfill the terms of his Will?” she asked. “It’s not an experimental show, it’s a greedy cash grab.”
“A popular educational show,” I clarified. “It’s to prove that we’re actually interested in the station itself, and creating content. The terms were both precise and vague in different ways. We had our lawyers and Grandpa’s lawyers settle on some reasonable numbers. Gary got some students to do a bunch of media planning, and the numbers are incredible.” I waved to the big screen TV while Alice stared in disbelief.
“That can’t be right,” she muttered.
“It is,” I sighed heavily. “There goes my big dream of being completely anonymous online. We’ve practically gone viral.”
Her pretty eyes looked glassy while she blinked quickly, as if she w
as trying not to cry. “Dammit. If my roommates think that I’m making much money from this, they’re going to jack my rent again.”
“Alice, you can stay here as–”
She held up her hand. “I cannot believe you didn’t tell me you’re related to them. That you have such a huge personal stake in this.” It killed me that tears were filling her eyes. “You can’t tell me you love me while you’ve been lying to me,” she said again. “It doesn’t work. I don’t know if…” She shook her head. “I need some space.”
Grabbing her coat and shoes, she was out the door in a flash.
Sitting there completely dumbfounded, I didn’t know what to do. I needed to chase after her and explain, but once a woman says she needs some space, that’s that. That much I do know.
I could only sit still for ten more seconds, then threw on my shoes and raced out the door.
Running down the driveway to the street, I looked in both directions, but Alice was completely gone. Even after calling her name a few times, she had simply vanished.
The worst thing of all was that the wind had picked up, and she didn’t have a warm coat with her. I could handle her being furious with me, and even wanting to be away from me for a while.
But the thought of Alice and her freezing little fingers out there all alone made me completely nauseated with panic.
11
_____
Alice
I knew that Taylor would chase after me, so I ran down the street and darted into his neighbor’s yard. Hiding in some shrubs, I waited until he stopped calling for me, then hurried away.
I didn’t know the area, but found a coffee shop where I could have a cup of tea and a muffin. My head was spinning, and I needed to sit still. Thank goodness there was a power outlet beside the table to charge my phone.
There was no way to know how much of Taylor’s performance over the past few days was real, and how much was an act to get a rather large chunk of property. The station’s neighborhood was run down, but those large lots would still be worth a ton of cash. Rich people didn’t stay rich by passing up business opportunities.
I knew that our physical connection was unbelievably real, but how could we have an emotional bond if he didn’t trust me enough to tell me the entire story about how he was connected to this show? This was a project where I was revealing myself to camera, to the public.
And there was the age difference. It was hard not to think that he was treating me like a stupid little girl. I didn’t want to be the silent, docile young woman.
Plus, the more I thought about it, the more the idea of him paying my tuition after only knowing me for a few days made me uncomfortable. There was no chance that money like that didn’t come with strings.
Maybe we really were too fundamentally different to make this work. He seemed so casual about money, when it had always been a symbol of raw survival to me.
The stress weighed down on me, and my shoulders tightened.
I didn’t want to go to this therapist. Sitting in a room and talking with Taylor right now would be awkward and upsetting enough, but with a stranger judging us? I didn’t think I could go through with it.
But I had never backed down from a challenge. Being dirt poor and working like hell to make it through was just my way of living. I knew so many people who gave up at the slightest inconvenience, yet I slept in a closet to make ends meet.
I had to be strong enough to win this contest, and get my paycheck, and the prize.
Rolling my shoulders back, I finished my muffin. I would have to go. Somehow. Then my phone beeped.
Taylor: Are you OK? I’m so worried about you.
Taylor: I’ll come and get you wherever you are if you want a ride. Or if you just want to meet me at 2 o’clock at the therapist, I’ll see you there.
He sent the address, as I stared into the screen for a few moments. Finally I responded.
Me: I’ll meet you there 5 minutes early so we can get the microphones on.
Taylor responded in a blink.
Taylor: We don’t need them this time. The entire office is wired up. Her only patients today are the three couples from the show, and we’re last.
Taylor: See you soon. Call me if you need anything at all.
Flipping to my maps app, I found the nearest library. I was more than accustomed to finding places to hide out that were free, and somewhat quiet.
I wasn’t sure how much of that part of my life I was ready to share with Taylor. His caring touched my heart, but if that crossed into pity...no. The thought made my shoulders tighten and my fingers clench.
I just couldn’t stand letting him think that I couldn’t take care of myself. That I was some sort of fixer upper opportunity.
More than anything else, I didn’t like feeling that I owed anything to anyone. Because they would inevitably call in those debts someday, leaving me with nothing.
12
_____
Taylor
Once I realized I wouldn’t find Alice by screaming and running around the neighborhood, I went back into my house to pace the living room.
At least she answered my texts and agreed to finish the show, although I would have understood if she hadn’t wanted to. This stupid family inheritance was supposed to have been a gift, not something that turned everything sideways.
Grandpa’s abandoned TV station had long been forgotten, not only by our family, but by the entire world. Apparently there was a caretaking company who went by once every few months to look in on it, but that was all. I’d only met my grandfather a handful of times as he was always traveling, and he’d never mentioned his station once.
The sprawling land consisted of ample parking lots, two massive storage and set building structures, and the studio building. It had been set up in the sixties and seventies for everything from children’s shows to game shows to local news. It was a relic from a previous era.
But the neighborhood had taken some downturns over the years, and the once promising area was now nothing but warehouses, some mechanic shops, and a low income apartment complex near the highway.
When Grandpa passed away three years ago, Gary, Darlene and I had quickly toured the outside of the property and decided to leave it alone until the neighborhood perked up again.
Then last year a flower nursery and a couple of artist cafés brought a bit of new life to the area. Gary started looking into the mechanics of selling it at the same time Darlene began looking into the details of what it would take to fulfill the terms of the Will. Those were a little tricky.
I had attempted to stay out of it, but their plans went sideways on me the second I saw Alice.
I couldn’t even put a finger on what it was about her. She was so delicate, and clearly stronger than she looked.
She was soft-spoken, but wouldn’t take crap from me. She teased me. I’d always been such a big guy that nobody would dare do that. But she did. I loved that.
Alice was just wonderful in every way. Her energy made me feel lighter. Hopeful. Like I hadn’t wrecked my life by being a shady bodyguard back in the day. Like it was safe to lower my defences.
I loved Alice so much already and I knew I was going to smother her, spoil her, give her too much attention. Hopefully we could work out a way to make her be all right with that.
Pacing around the house like a caged animal, I need to burn a bit more time before leaving. It was impossible not to picture Alice in my home.
I’d never really thought of sharing my space before, but now it filled me with curiosity and excitement. Would she want to redecorate? Would she want to move things around? Where would she want to study?
Walking through the house again, I went through it with a more critical eye, trying to find spaces that Alice could make her own. There was plenty of room in the walk-in closet to set up one of those makeup tables with lights. There was a whole shelf in the bathroom that she could take over.
And I knew the perfect place where she could keep her books and
whatever she needed to study for school.
Now all I had to do was talk her into moving in and spending her life with me. Given that she’d just walked out and was furious with me, that might be tough.
13
_____
Alice
After an hour and a half spent calming myself among the stacks of books at the library, I took the bus to the therapist’s office. As I got off, I looked up to see Taylor’s car in the parking lot right in front of me.
He instantly ran over and draped a coat around my shoulders, taking my hands in his to rub them briskly. “Be angry with me. Yell at me. But please let me take care of you instead of wandering around out in the cold.”
