by Aubrey Dark
After an hour of fitful tossing and turning, it was obvious I couldn’t sleep. I yanked the covers away from me and stood up. There were a million things that needed to get done this month, but I could only think of one. I looked through my phone contacts until I had found Sanders’ friend.
“Hello? Hello?”
“Jake?” There was a cacophony of background noise on the phone. “Hello?”
“One sec.”
I waited for only a few seconds before the noise faded away.
“Hello? Who’s this?”
“William,” I said. “You gave me your contact information at Sanders’ party.”
“Oh, right!” The voice on the other end chuckled. “I have you down as Lonely Recluse in my phone.”
“Great.”
“I think that’s what Sanders called you. Are you still looking for a girl? Because I’m at this party right now—”
“No, no,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “Actually, I was more interested in that jeweler you were talking about. Do you remember? The one who did up the diamond earrings on short notice?”
“Right. You called me at two in the morning because you wanted earrings?”
“Something like that.”
“Your brother was right about you,” Jake said, snorting into the phone. “Hold on one sec.”
I bit my tongue and waited while he got the number for me.
“Thanks,” I said, jotting down the number. “Do you think he’ll be awake at this time of night?”
“If you’re buying, he’s awake,” Jake said. I could hear the amusement in his voice. “Let him know you’re a friend of mine, and he probably won’t tack on a rush fee for you. But you have to tell me what you did that was so terrible.”
“Excuse me?”
I frowned, not sure what he meant.
“Did you forget your mom’s birthday? Is this a girl you just knocked up? You don’t call for emergency jewelry for no reason.”
“Oh. No, actually,” I said. “It’s something of a surprise. I can’t say.”
“Uh huh.”
“I’m sure Sanders will be happy to fill you in on the gossip later,” I said. “Until then—”
“Sure, sure. Congratulations or condolences, whatever the situation is,” Jake said hurriedly. I got the feeling he was distracted by something.
“Thanks,” I said, and before I could say goodbye, he’d hung up. Sanders’ friends were so damn annoying, even when they were helpful. I sighed, looking at the phone. It had to get done sometime, didn’t it? And the longer I put it off, the more likely it would be that I would screw everything up irrevocably. Sierra had signed the contract, but there was still the risk of my family—or the board—finding out the truth. I would need to move fast to make things seem less suspicious.
By the next morning, I was down a few hours of sleep and a few more dollars out of my wallet. But I was anxious to get things moving, and quickly. I’d set up the outside patio with vases of white calla lilies I’d picked from the garden. I tried to put candles on the patio table, but the morning wind was not cooperating, and I thought it was better to have unlit candles than to burn down the tablecloth with an ill-fated gust. In the kitchen, I put together the breakfast I’d been planning, baked the pastries the cook had left for me in the fridge, and left the bacon warming in the pan.
I’d set everything up by seven o’clock, when I slumped into the easy chair in the corner of the kitchen. Now I only had to wait for Sierra to wake up. I would just rest here for a moment…
“Ahh! What the hell? William, wake up!”
My eyes snapped open. Sierra was standing over the stove, fanning smoke away from the pan. I coughed at the smell of burning.
“What—what time is it?”
“What the hell do you mean, what time is it? There’s something burning on your stove! Get up!”
I stood sluggishly. I thought I’d just closed my eyes for a second. After all, I’d been almost done—
I blinked, remembering why I’d been up.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “I—sorry. Wait. It’s alright.”
“How is this alright? The pan is burnt!” Sierra was wearing a tank top and loose drawstring pajamas that showed just a sliver of her back. At the sight of her skin, my cock throbbed, remembering the night before.
No. Not the time. Definitely not the time. I thought I’d worked out those feelings last night. I bit my lip hard enough to wake me up and drive the lustful thoughts away from my brain.
“Forget the pan,” I said. “It was only bacon.”
“You wasted an entire pan full of bacon?” Sierra’s face fell, as though I’d told her that her dog had run away. “That’s even worse than wasting the pan.”
“I’ll do up another one. Wait. Here,” I said, pushing her away from the mess. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“I woke up to the smell of burning, and I was so scared, I didn’t even know where Kit was. I didn’t remember where I was—”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, gritting my teeth and throwing the whole mess under the faucet. A cloud of steam erupted, hissing, from the sink. “Obviously I didn’t mean to fall asleep. That wasn’t part of the plan.”
“What plan? What are you talking about?”
“Look, don’t—can you help me out here?”
“Sure. Let me get another slab of bacon and a pan that isn’t fried to a crisp, and—”
“Go out to the patio there,” I said, motioning her outside. “I’ll be there in a second once I get things ready.”
This could still work. I had the fruit salad anyway, and oranges. Shit. I hadn’t squeezed the orange juice.
“Kit’s going to be up soon,” Sierra said. “She’ll be hungry. Not for bacon, but still—”
The smoke detector went off. From the other side of the room, I heard a scream.
“MAMA!”
“There you go.”
“Wait!” I cried, as Sierra turned to go back to her daughter. The loud beeps of the smoke alarm filled the air. “It’s almost ready.”
“Great, then it’ll be ready—whatever the hell it is—once I’ve given Kit something to eat.”
I sighed. This couldn’t go any worse than it had. I leapt onto the counter and unhooked the smoke detector until it finally stopped its horrific beeping. I pulled out a fresh package of bacon from the fridge and dumped it into another pan before starting to slice up the oranges. But Sierra came back earlier than I’d expected. She looked exhausted, with a sleepy girl in her arms.
“Is there any oatmeal around here?”
“Oatmeal?” I’d made a fruit salad, and pastries, and she wanted oatmeal?
“For Kit. That’s pretty much all she’ll eat in the morning.”
“Oh. Sure.” I frowned, opening the pantry. “There should be some in here somewhere.”
“You don’t know where your oatmeal is?”
“I’m not the one who does the shopping,” I snapped, fumbling through boxes of flour and bread crumbs. “I’m not the one who cooks.”
“Obviously.” Sierra raised one eyebrow at the burnt pan in the sink.
My heart fell. I’d tried so hard to get everything perfect. And she didn’t even care.
“Oh, here it is!” She leaned over me, her breast brushing my shoulder as she pulled out the box of instant oats. With one arm still holding Kit, she poured a cup of the oats into a bowl, added milk, and stuck the whole thing in the microwave. Even with a kid in her arms, she was utterly graceful, her movements all clear efficiency.
“Can I help with anything?” I offered.
“I don’t think Kit likes her oatmeal blackened,” Sierra quipped. “But I’ll be sure to let you know if we change our mind about that.”
I opened my mouth and couldn’t find the words for a retort. It wasn’t fair. I’d messed up one thing. One. And she was acting like I was an idiot for making a mistake.
Blowing her bangs out of the way, she pushe
d open the patio door.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“You said to go out to the patio. What’s this plan you said—oh, boy.”
From the sound of her voice, something was wrong. I followed her closely out to the patio. Two squirrels looked up from the beautifully set table, half-gnawed remnants of the pastries I’d baked for Sierra in their claws. The wind had blown over two of the vases I’d set up, and flowers were strewn everywhere amid broken glass.
“Dammit!” I ran over to the table. “Shoo! Get out!”
The squirrels jumped down, scattering angrily away from the food.
“What the heck is all this out here? What are all these flowers?”
“Mama, ‘quirrel!” Kit reached out as though to hug the squirrels.
“Could you put her down for a second?” I asked. “I only need a second.”
Sierra hitched Kit up on her hip.
“William, you’re acting weird. What do you want?”
I sighed. It was impossible. This was a disaster, but I had the ring in my pocket, and I wasn’t going to be put off any longer. I took the box out of my pocket and knelt down, careful to avoid the broken glass.
“Sierra, will you marry me?”
From her baffled expression, I knew I had messed up. Kit reached down towards me and screamed “QUIRREL!”
Sierra tilted her head, her small pink tongue darting out in confusion to wet her lips.
“William, I already signed the contract.”
“I know, I just—I wanted to have this as a story to tell people. In case they asked how it happened.” I was still kneeling, the patio tile growing hard and cold under my knee.
“Oh. Then, in that case, yes.”
“Sorry. I messed everything up.” I shook my head, standing up. “This was a bad idea. I should have known it was a bad idea.”
“If you were actually marrying me for real, I might care. But this is fake. Right?”
She was looking up into my eyes, and there was a hint of curiosity in her expression. As though I might say that it was real. But this wasn’t real. I was getting things out of the way, and that included the proposal.
“Right. Yes. Of course.”
“Then yes, William, of course I will marry you.” She shifted Kit to her other side and held out her hand. I stared down at it balefully.
“The ring?” she prompted.
“We should do this over,” I said. “What are you going to say if someone asks about the proposal?”
She laughed, and the peals of her laughter twirled up into the cool morning air.
“I’ll tell them exactly what happened,” she said. “This is a funny story.”
“We can’t have a funny story for our proposal!” I was aghast.
“Why not?”
“My family—nobody would believe it. I’m not that kind of person. I would get everything right. I wouldn’t make these mistakes.”
“Except you kind of already did. The—ah—the squirrels were a nice touch, I’ll admit.”
“QUIRREL!” Kit cried happily.
“It’s because I was tired!” I cried out in protest. “It would have been perfect.”
“Then you can tell everybody that your new bride is curing you of your anal retentive perfectionist tendencies,” Sierra said. “Now put the ring on my damn finger before you burn a second pan of bacon.”
The bacon! I darted a glance back to the house.
“Ahem. The ring first.”
I pulled the ring from the box and took her hand. Her palm was warm and soft as I slid the ring onto her finger, and I lingered for a moment more than I should have. Then she looked down at it and her eyes went wide as pancakes.
“William, this is huge. This isn’t real, is it?”
“Of course it is.”
“Oh, geez. I can’t—okay, Kit, yes, let’s get you something to eat.”
Inside, she set Kit down on the floor with a bowl of oatmeal and raisins. Leaning against the kitchen counter, she looked again at the ring as I poured her a cup of tea.
“This is insane, William.”
“You should call me Will. Most of my friends do.”
“I’m not your friend, though. I’m your future wife.” She held up her hand. The diamond sparkled in the light. Jake’s jeweler friend had promised me that any woman would drop dead at the sight of the ring. At least I’d gotten that right. “Do you hate the name William?”
“No,” I said. In fact, coming from her, it sounded much less formal. Much more…romantic. Not wanting to give away my emotion, I turned and stirred the bacon in the pan. The smell was delicious, now that all of the smoke was gone. I pulled a few strips of bacon from the pan that were already done. Sierra blotted them with a paper towel and bit off half of one.
“How is it?” I asked.
“Well, I like my bacon a little more well done, but…”
I laughed at the joke, and she nudged me with her hip. Holding out the other half of the strip, she offered it to me. I took the bacon from her fingers directly into my mouth. She smiled at me, a warm smile that reached her tired eyes and made her look completely beautiful in the morning light. I wanted to kiss her.
Breakfast hadn’t gone the way I had planned—at all, but here we were, standing around in the kitchen with Kit at our feet happily putting oatmeal all over her face. I couldn’t have imagined such a scene a month ago, but now it felt right. It was as though before I had been living in my house, but with her it was a home. Was this what married life was like? This sort of quiet contentment?
As though reading my mind, Sierra turned to me.
“I wanted to say thank you.”
“Thank you?”
“For everything you’re doing. For Kit.”
My heart stopped as a sudden suspicion struck me. Last night, she had been so forward—
“Is that why—Sierra, tell me it isn’t.”
“Hmm?” She crunched another piece of bacon, oblivious to my anxiety.
“Is that why you acted the way you did last night? Is that why you slept with me? Because if you think you need to repay me, I assure you—”
Her face registered shock.
“No! No, of course not!”
I waited, still uncertain. Why else would she have thrown herself at me.
“Last night was—look, I don’t know what last night was.” She held up a strip of bacon, gesturing in the air with it. “Maybe we both just needed the release. No big deal, okay?”
She looked at me, her eyes almost pleading. I could have sighed with relief. Except for that last part, I agreed. But I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it right now.
“No big deal,” I agreed. “And anyway…”
“Anyway what?”
“Anyway, now we can say we consummated the marriage.”
“Before the wedding?” She smiled again, that smile that begged for a kiss. I promised myself that if she ever tried to seduce me again, I would spend more time kissing those incredible lips. Last night had been rushed, furious. But of course there wouldn’t be a next time.
“I don’t think anyone will press us on a timeline,” I said, turning my thoughts away.
“In case anyone asks, I’ll say you ravage me every night.”
She leaned forward, her breasts perking braless through her tank top and forcing naughty images back into my mind. That and the idea of ravaging her every night had me getting more excited than I needed to be today.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, not meeting her eyes.
“Great. Well, I have to get some things done.”
“You have a couple of hours,” I said, eyeing the clock.
“What?”
“We have the luncheon today. Remember?”
But from the horrified look on her face, she didn’t remember at all.
Chapter 16
Luncheon? I thought that I was going to be able to go find a divorce lawyer today. Not to mention picking up birth control. I swallo
wed my surprise.
“Um, what luncheon?”
“The memorial luncheon for my father.”
Right. Shit. I’d completely forgotten that he’d told me about that. I scrambled for an excuse and came up with nothing.
“Can’t you skip it?” I asked lamely.
“Why would I do that?”
“You know. Because your father did—what he did to you.” I twisted awkwardly with the words.
“Sierra, my father was not a perfect man. But this is a company event as much as a family one. And I want to tell the family that we’re engaged.”
I nearly spit out my tea. “Already?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Great. I’ll—okay. I’ll need to find a sitter.”
He snapped his fingers, as though he had just remembered Kit. It irritated me that she was an afterthought to him. I know that she wasn’t his kid, but still.
“About that. Do you have someone in mind you’d prefer to watch Kit? I’ve asked Shawna to interview for a live-in nanny.”
“A what?” My second sip of tea went right to the back of my throat. “A nanny? Like, full-time?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want someone else taking care of Kit. I can manage her for the most part. I’ve only ever needed a sitter—”
He waved aside my protests as though they meant nothing. “I want someone available full-time. So that you have support whenever you need it.”
“But—”
“I know you can do it, Sierra, but you don’t have to do everything anymore. Even if it’s someone who does all of the laundry and cleaning up after her messes. I don’t want you to have to worry if you want to leave the house for five minutes. So, do you have someone in mind?”
Teresa’s face popped into my head immediately.
“Well, I do have a sitter—”
“Perfect. See what she’ll want for a live-in position. Room and board included, of course, and she’d be accompanying us on all the vacations we take. Except, perhaps, the honeymoon.”
I flushed hard at the mention of a honeymoon, my eyes finding a corner of kitchen tile to fixate on.
“I’ll see if she’s interested.”
“Do that.”
