Always & Forever: A Sweet Romantic Comedy (ABCs of Love Collection, Books 1 - 4)

by Brenna Jacobs

  Moving from one resident to another, Ivy kept glancing around for Lucille. She didn’t seem to be here. Not that she’d be hard to miss, but occasionally Lucille wore a bright wig or a turban and Ivy didn’t know it was her until she saw her face. After making her way around the group, Ivy headed for Lucille’s room. Deirdre sat at the computer at the nurse’s station, typing into the keyboard. The crease between her eyebrows looked particularly deep today.

  “Hi, Deirdre,” Ivy said. No answer. She was so focused that she hadn’t heard her. “Deirdre?”

  She looked up from the monitor. When she saw Ivy, her shoulders slumped.

  “Happy to see me?” Ivy joked.

  “Sorry. This is looking bad.” Deirdre swiveled the monitor so Ivy could see. It looked like a document full of words. Ivy shook her head to indicate that it didn’t look so bad to her.

  “Looks like the city council and the building commission gave first round approval for that new project on our property. I had to go digging around a little, because they’re working some privacy clauses into their arrangements, but the name on the project is Titus Cameron.” She looked over the top of the glasses she was wearing. “Isn’t that the…”

  Ivy interrupted. “The coffee shop wonder-boy?” She could feel her face getting hot. No way. It wasn’t fair. Couldn’t some other company be the one to ruin her life? Why did it have to be the shop she loved? Stupid Titus Cameron and his stupid brilliant business plans.

  As if Ivy needed another instance of rich men behaving badly to add to her growing pile of evidence.

  Deirdre was reading the document to Ivy. It was a letter detailing how the residents of Centennial Glen would be affected by the proposed construction and something about due process and frankly, Ivy didn’t understand much of it.

  “So, you’re asking them to…” Ivy prompted.

  “Reconsider.” Deirdre rubbed a spot near her temple with her knuckle. “Hold a public meeting. Unzip the privacy arrangements so we can see what’s going on. I’m sure they have lawyers ready to fight us on this, but how much can it hurt to ask?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it? And at what point would Deirdre decide to ask Ivy to try talking to someone higher up in the company? That could only end badly. She could see it—Ivy, petitioning for a meeting with Titus Cameron, which obviously would end in her getting fired from Velvet Undergrounds, followed by the demolition of the Glen. Ivy would sit, unemployed and un-caffeinated, atop the rubble of her former life.

  Deirdre put her face back up to the monitor and began another round of aggressive typing. Ivy backed away and headed to Lucille’s room.

  Knocking on the door was more habit and formality than protocol. The nurses and CNAs had open access to all the resident rooms, but Ivy still always felt a little intrusive simply walking in. When she rapped on Lucille’s door, she heard a muffled, “Come in. I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Lucille always knew it was her. She could tell from the knock, she said, and from the feeling of giddiness she got anticipating Ivy’s visits. Ivy believed that was about ten percent true. Mostly she figured that Lucille knew her work schedule and didn’t get many visitors.

  “Hi, Lucille,” she said.

  “Business or pleasure?” Lucille asked, giving her the most unsubtle wink.

  “Both, of course. Numbers first. How are you feeling?”

  Lucille answered dutifully about her bum elbow and the itchy skin behind her knees while Ivy took her blood pressure.

  “All right. Now it’s time for you to tell me more about the new young man at the shop.” Lucille put her hands on her thighs and leaned forward as though this story was going to be the best entertainment of her week. Well, Ivy thought, that was possible.

  “Turns out he’s actually rich, not just rich-looking,” Ivy said without preamble.

  “Which, in addition to being handsome, a young man ought to be if at all possible.” Lucille used her fake British accent, which Ivy had learned meant that she’d stolen that line from some famous book. She used to ask where the lines came from, but Lucille got mixed up and frustrated when she couldn’t remember an origin. Ivy had figured it was better to just smile and nod. And laugh a little, because Lucille was delighted when she could make Ivy laugh.

  “And he is also handsome, as I recall?” Lucille prompted.

  Ivy reached her left hand back and rubbed her right shoulder. Knots. The kind rich people got massages for. The only massage Ivy had ever gotten was when she went to the furniture store and sat in one of those electric massage chairs for a fifteen-minute demo. Those fifteen-minute demos had occasionally lasted for an hour.

  “Not really my type,” Ivy said, but she didn’t do a very good job of hiding her grin from Lucille. Stop it, Ivy tried to command her mouth. But she couldn’t help the intruding thoughts of Bentley’s gaze, his charm, and his sweetness. The only thing she could actually dislike about him was his money.

  “Of course not your type. Because your type has more of a rumple to it. Your type is somewhat disheveled. I preferred my young men to look like Cary Grant, and you like them a bit more like James Dean.”

  The first time Lucille had made this distinction, Ivy had to look up pictures. As it happened, Lucille was exactly right. Furthermore, their tastes intersected precisely at the face of Paul Newman. And they both agreed they’d marry Gregory Peck’s eyebrows.

  Ivy picked at the dark blue nail polish on her index finger. “He’s the kind of guy who wears an ironed shirt every day. By choice.”

  “You see him every day?” Lucille sounded like she was trying hard to sound casual.

  Ivy shook her head. “You know what I mean. Like, he chooses buttons instead of T-shirts.”

  Lucille smiled. “I love that in a man.”

  “Exactly. It’s like he’s an eighty-year-old man inside a twenty-five-year-old body.”

  Lucille ignored the ageist commentary. “And so now we’re going to talk about his body?” she asked, rubbing her hands together.

  Ivy laughed. “Stop it. People can’t talk like that these days. No way. He’s not an object, you know.” She tried her best to make her face serious.

  Lucille nodded as if to agree that Ivy’s argument was reasonable. “He’s not even an object. He’s only an idea until you bring him around to meet me.”

  Ivy looked up from her nails. “Why would I do that?”

  Lucille shook her head. “I didn’t mean you should bring him around to meet me right now. Later. When things get more serious.”

  Standing up from the chair, Ivy started picking up potted plants and putting them back down. She rearranged a few magazines on the tiny table. “You’re being silly.” She didn’t look at Lucille, because she didn’t need to. Ivy was positive that Lucille was grinning in the way that meant she knew better. Today was not the day she could stand up to that.

  How was it possible that thirty minutes ago, Bentley Hollis had ceased to be attractive to her, but now, with Lucille’s interest, everything Ivy liked about Bentley seemed to weigh more heavily than the one thing she didn’t like? How was it possible that Lucille’s grin made all the negativity of Ivy’s experiences melt away? What had prompted this shift in Ivy’s mind?

  Ivy kept talking.

  “Things won’t get serious. There are no things. Nothing is serious or even on its way to being serious. He’s not interested in girls like me.” She let out a very small sigh that she hoped Lucille wouldn’t misinterpret as regret. Because it absolutely wasn’t regret.

  Lucille made a noise that sounded like “pshaw.” Ivy knew that meant Lucille disagreed.

  “It’s true,” Ivy said, wishing the words hadn’t come out so whiny.

  “How on earth could you know something like that?” Lucille asked. Ivy could feel Lucille’s gaze on her, even though she did her best to avoid meeting her eye in the tiny, cramped room.

  “There’s this girl that hangs out in the shop and she talks to him when she thinks nobody’s looking.
She’s like some kind of a model. She just looks like money, you know?” This was a safe place to venture some eye contact with Lucille, who nodded, because Lucille was no dummy. Of course she knew what a woman who looks like money is like. Ivy explained anyway. “Perfect hair, and these totally subtle clothes that would make a girl like me disappear.”

  Lucille’s eyebrows asked a question that her voice was keeping silent about. “Like, she wears a lot of white. And tan. The color tan. And she’s…”

  Ivy realized that she was gripping her hands together. She unclenched her fingers and rubbed her hands down the thighs of her scrubs.

  “Anyway. He likes girls like that. Not like this,” she said, gesturing to herself. She knew that Lucille understood her, that she wasn’t looking for a contradictory compliment.

  Ivy sat in the chair opposite Lucille, leaned in, and lowered her voice. “But I am not afraid to admit to you that his buttoned-down cuteness is kind of appealing.” Ivy sneaked another glance at Lucille, who continued to say nothing. “He has made this very adorable effort to relax.”

  Ivy could tell that Lucille was trying not to say something. Or not to laugh. Or basically trying hard to filter in some way. Ivy continued. “I know. You need more details, and here you go. I will give them to you. His hair. It’s become kind of rumpled. And his clothes, well, a little less starchy. He comes to work now with his shirt untucked.”

  She let out a little laugh, and Lucille smiled. “The first time, it was buttoned up all the way to the top of his collar, but it was untucked. I’m waiting for him to wear a shirt without a collar before I make any big decisions about liking him.” Ivy could feel the grin all over her face. That was just about enough of that. She tried to think of something not awesome about Bentley. Like his propensity to hide his family’s fortune. Yes. Exactly like that. Much less awesome. “Anyway, I think it’s cute, his effort to untuck. It’s easy to find it cute right now, especially since I know nothing’s ever going to happen between us.” Ivy sat back against the chair, nodding at her own closing argument. But even as she nodded, she remembered the feeling of electricity that passed through her hands as she touched his hair.

  Lucille nodded back. “Now they train you to see the future over there in the coffee shop?” Lucille asked, her eyes doing that sassy old-lady twinkle. “That’s how you know nothing will ever happen?”

  Ivy couldn’t help it. She laughed. “Yes. In fact, they do.” She put her fingertips to her temples and closed her eyes, making a quiet humming sound. “Right now, I predict that there will be meatball stroganoff for dinner tonight.”

  “Oh, you’re very good. Staying to eat?” Lucille got up from her chair, a process that seemed to take a little longer now than it used to.

  Ivy occasionally bought a plate of whatever was on the menu at the Glen, lingering with Lucille. It was an indulgence she’d started when Grammy was still alive, and, after all, a girl had to eat.

  But today there was something important, even critical, that she needed to do. “Lucille, wait a minute. I have to talk to you.”

  “We can talk at dinner,” she said, nodding toward the door. “Best seats will be gone if we wait too long.”

  “Please?” Ivy said. “Just for a minute?” The older woman held the back of the chair. She took an audible breath and stood up straight, like she knew something bad was coming.

  Ivy could see the tension in her arms and face. Best to just get it out. Rip off the metaphorical Band-Aid. “They’re tearing down Centennial Glen and turning this property into something that will make money.”

  Lucille made a face like she was tasting something bitter. “When?”

  Shrugging, Ivy told her she didn’t know. “There’s a process, apparently, and they’re in it. But I figured if I’d heard about it, you deserved to hear about it, too.”

  Lucille nodded her head as though that had solved something. “Right. So you need a new place to work and I need a new place to live. No problem.” It was so like Lucille both to put Ivy first and to treat this like it wasn’t a tragedy that Ivy almost laughed.

  “Exactly. No problem at all.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Bentley watched the door for Ivy. No, for customers. He was watching to see what kind of customers came in on a Tuesday afternoon. Not obsessively staring at the door until Ivy came in for her shift.

  The Tuesday afternoon customer, as it happened, was a varied blend. Like always. The numbers showed that Velvet Undergrounds was popular with every coffee-drinking demographic, as well as a small but consistent non-coffee-drinking crowd who came for table space and pastry. And as far as Bentley had witnessed, there was not a dangerously slow time. Mornings before nine were crowded, both with people staying and those who carried their cups out. After nine, there was a comfortable stream of customers, and Bentley was surprised to see how many people had a coffee and a pastry for lunch every day. He had already learned to recognize a few daily visitors and prided himself on knowing what they wanted before they made their orders.

  Afternoons saw a lot of students, both high school and college kids, gathering around circular tables or on squashy leather couches. Early evening was usually the quietest time, but business picked up again when people came in for after-dinner treats.

  Bentley looked around and felt justifiably proud of what he’d created. He had built a place people loved to be, a place that fulfilled something—if not a need, at least a common and consistent desire.

  It felt great to know that he’d done this; he’d made this happen. There had been plenty of battles with his father and with the board along the way. They were laser-focused on ways he was spending more money than they thought he should.

  He fought hard against the corporation’s ideology of “The Most Money is the Best Money” when he demanded that all the Velvet Undergrounds’ coffees were sustainably sourced and the disposable cups compostable. His father joked that he’d raised a hippie, but Bentley never doubted that Walter Hollis was proud of him.

  Bentley had put up a fight to get board approval for a local furniture manufacturer to make all the shops’ couches. Yes, they cost significantly more than mass-produced stuff from overseas, but with every new order, his cost margin went down.

  Basic economics. You had to spend money to make money. And Bentley was spending significant money. And even though he wouldn’t say it out loud inside the shop, he was making significant money, too. It was all working out.

  The business part was definitely a success. A few more weeks and he’d have fulfilled his dad’s requirements for gaining full control of the company from the board. Cameron Enterprises would no longer be a Hollis Holdings project; it would be his.

  His and Titus Cameron’s. That was the only glitch in this whole operation. Lex had been so certain that creating a mysterious and fascinating persona as the face of the Velvet Undergrounds would lead to the pinnacle of PR magic. She’d been right. Titus’s name was on everyone’s lips, both in the business community and in Lex and Mercedes’s social circles. There was a buzz around Titus Cameron that went well beyond his financial success. He’d become some kind of mythical billionaire playboy character, and some days that amused Bentley. Other days it perplexed, worried, and frustrated him.

  His mind fought with itself. Half the time, he wanted to shout out, “I’m him. I’m Titus Cameron,” while the other half, he wanted to yell, “News Flash: Titus Cameron doesn’t exist.” And both were true.

  A therapist would have a field day with that one.

  He glanced at the door again, and then the clock. She wasn’t late, he reminded himself. But apparently she didn’t subscribe to the Hollis Family Timeline: if you’re not five minutes early, you’re not on time. Elizabeth Grant might have agreed with him. She kept looking at her watch and sighing, making under-her-breath comments about what time her kids finished school.

  After a few more minutes of that, Bentley was getting uncomfortable. And he didn’t want Ivy to get in trouble. “I can h
andle things here,” he told Elizabeth. “Go ahead. It’s fine.”

  Elizabeth thanked him but refused, and he wondered if she wanted to stay so Ivy could feel her disapproval. She and Ivy had a weird friction, a vibe that seemed to say there was always conflict. Like putting a tropical bird in a cage with a honey badger. Just not a good idea. No wonder they were so rarely scheduled to work the same shifts.

  He took orders from the next two customers before he had time to realize that Ivy was officially late. But the next time the bell jingled, there she was, stomping into the shop looking beautiful and a bit scary. Her eyebrows crashed down over her eyes, daring anyone—particularly Bentley, it seemed—to look at her the wrong way.

  Too bad he was no good at small talk. “Hi, Ivy.” He tried not to look at the clock. He failed.

  “Don’t start with me about being late. Take it up with Titus Cameron.” She slammed a drawer shut and tied on her apron.

  Elizabeth made a dismissive noise as she tossed her apron into the “used” bin. “Right. Because we’re supposed to believe that you were with Titus Cameron.”

  He didn’t think it was possible for Ivy to look more annoyed, but there it was—an increase in her ire. The pink in her cheeks set off her purple-black hair. Aside from the fact that she looked ready to punch someone, she’d never been more attractive.

  Bentley looked away.

  Ivy chose not to answer Elizabeth, but a minute later, after Elizabeth’s unsubtle exit, when he and Ivy were alone, Bentley had to ask. “What did Titus Cameron do this time?” he said, over his shoulder as he washed a mug.

  Ivy dropped a box of lids and swore. She picked the box up and swore again. When a flap opened and lids went streaming out, she kicked them across the floor.

  So maybe this wasn’t an ideal time to chat about Titus.

  Bentley slid the lids that had stayed in the box into their holder on the counter, and then took orders, made the drinks, and served the next three people in line. By that time, Ivy had regained control and cleaned up her mess.