The Meant to Be Collection

by Claire Highton-Stevenson

  “Seriously, Amber!”

  “What? It is true, I see the way you look at her,” she said, leaning forward and sucking on her straw.

  “And just how do I look at her?”

  “Like you want to fuck her!” As Amber said the words, an image flashed into Brooke’s mind of Catherine at her desk, her blouse unbuttoned two buttons more than they needed to be.

  “I will admit she is very attractive,” Brooke agreed, taking another sip of her beer.

  “Attractive? She is downright hot. She could have been on the cover of a magazine and not look out of place,” Amber continued. “I mean I get it, jeez, even I would.” She laughed.

  “Well, feel free to take a shot,” Brooke threw back as she picked up the menu and perused it, hoping that Amber would change the subject. She couldn’t fathom why she was so uncomfortable talking about Catherine like that. Amber was right; she did want to go to bed with Catherine. Maybe that was the problem: Brooke didn’t view Catherine as just a fuck. Catherine was classy. She deserved wooing properly and being taken to nice restaurants.

  “And step on your toes? No chance! Anyway, she likes you too.”

  “What? Since when have you become the lesbian love guru of England?” Brooke laughed once more. “I am having the chicken.”

  “Well of course you are, what else is there to have?” Amber agreed as she too checked out the menu for the third time. “I have watched the two of you all week. She thinks we are shagging, and she hates me for it.”

  “No, I told her we’re just have fun hanging out.”

  “I’m telling you, she thinks we are sleeping together.” She watched as Brooke frowned. “I tell ya what? On Monday I will come to the office and flirt with you. Flirt back, watch her reaction.” She sipped her drink. “She. Likes. You!”

  ~FI~

  The weekend for Catherine was a last-minute attempt to find some form of relaxation. She even had her hair cut.

  Everything at work was up in the air because of the urgent audit she faced and yet, she still couldn’t get Brooke out of her mind. The idea that she was spending the weekend with Amber again just filled her with sadness.

  She kept herself busy and tried desperately to keep her thoughts away from what she thought Brooke and Amber must surely be getting up to, but she failed and spent long moments envious of Amber. Amber was at least fifteen years her junior; eager, fun, and attractive. Amber was everything Catherine felt she wasn’t.

  Those few moments spent in the arms of Brooke Chambers had been the most exciting she had spent with another person while naked in a very long time.

  If she concentrated hard enough, she could still feel the heat from Brooke’s fingers as they torturously searched and mapped her skin, and the taste of her lips and tongue as she invaded her mouth and made her knees go weak.

  “Jesus,” she muttered to herself.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  On Monday morning, Catherine was at work early as usual. She had every file listed and organised in order for checking and rechecking – every training record, every uniform order form. If HR dealt with it, then she would have it covered, and with help from Brooke and her team, they would find any discrepancies and fix them before Mr. Foxworth arrived on Friday to go through them.

  And just as though by thinking about her she had conjured her up, there she stood in the doorway watching her. Once again, she carried coffee and a bag of pastries. She wore jeans today that hung low on her hips, the shallow dips there just visible when she lifted her hand to show Catherine the pastries and her button-down fitted plaid shirt rose up slightly. Catherine felt her mouth dry and she swallowed, unable to speak, so she just smiled.

  “I figured you would be here early, so…” Brooke gave a ‘here I am too’ shrug and stepped into the office. She set the coffee down next to the pastries before just ripping the bag open to reveal two pain au chocolat’. Catherine’s favourite.

  “I didn’t expect you to come in early too, Brooke,” she said, once she could finally find her voice.

  “More hands on deck, the quicker we get finished, and the quicker we can go for a drink!” Brooke said, watching Catherine’s reaction.

  “I am sure Amber will be only too pleased to have you finished early,” Catherine replied, and there it was, that undertone of something Brooke could never quite put her finger on until now. Was Amber correct? Was it really jealousy?

  “Oh, Amber won’t mind you and I going for a drink. In fact, she suggested it.”

  Catherine didn’t reply right away. Instead she stood and went to a file drawer. Opening it, she said, “I think we will start here. If we take half the files each, then we can quickly get through each drawer and mark off the areas that we have finished.”

  “Alright, and then we can go for a drink?” Brooke said. She was smiling and not prepared to back down.

  “Why?” Catherine asked, looking at her seriously. Brooke was just relentless about it. If it was one thing Catherine couldn’t take, it was being the butt of somebody else’s joke, and that’s what this was starting to feel like.

  “What do you mean, why? Isn’t it customary for friends to hang out?” Brooke said, picking up a pastry and pulling a piece off.

  Catherine’s gaze followed the morsel as it was placed between open lips. She remembered those lips encased around her own nipple, warm and wet as they tugged…she shook herself back into reality. “I guess so, however I don’t understand why Amber suggested it?”

  “Um, because she thinks we would have fun?” Brooke said honestly, although she left the part out where Amber suggested how they would have fun.

  “Well, let’s just get on and see how we do before we get ahead of ourselves and think about fun,” Catherine said abruptly, handing the files to Brooke. Before seating herself at her own side of the desk with her half of the remaining files, she cast a glance out of the window. The sky a shadowy grey between white clouds that drifted with the wind. Sometimes she felt as though she were just a cloud, being blown through life. Maybe she did need some fun.

  “By the way, I like your new hairstyle,” Brooke said, gaining her attention. She grinned across the desk as she stuffed the last piece of pain au Chocolat into her mouth.

  Catherine turned away again, smiling that Brooke had noticed.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The café was quite busy by the time Brooke’s lunch break came around, filling up with customers taking a break from Christmas shopping. She lined up in the queue and pushed her tray along with them.

  Amber was going to meet her as soon as she was done with her paperwork. So, for now she could just sit back and people watch for a minute or two.

  Grabbing a pre-made sandwich and a bottle of water, she paid and then found some seats that overlooked the shop floor. It all felt somewhat familiar to her; of course, she had used Pollards to shop long before hitting her head. Her parents had always lived in the area, and Pollards was the biggest store in town, so everyone knew it. The store looked very Christmassy with all the lights flashing and the decorations sparking. She hummed along to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as it played out of the store sound system. Adverts popped up every now and then, informing customers of great deals they just had to buy. Someone had left a copy of today’s newspaper, and she scanned the front page: another celebrity caught with their pants down.

  “Yo, Chambers. You’re back!” exclaimed a loud voice from behind her. She turned to find a tall man in uniform grinning at her.

  “Uh, yeah…sorry.” She glanced down at his name badge. S Potter…she had no clue who he was or what the S stood for. “Lost some memory from the bang on the head.”

  Without invitation, he sat down on the seat opposite. “That’s what I heard. Almighty thump then. Good job I was there to help.”

  “Well, thanks.” She grinned.

  “So, when are you back out there with me?” he asked, his chin jutting towards the store.

  “I’m not sure. I have to redo all o
f my training and get a doctor’s approval. Till then I am stuck in the HR office.”

  He sucked in a breath. “With the ice queen? As if getting your head caved in wasn’t enough.” He chuckled.

  “Catherine? She’s okay.”

  “Don’t let her catch you calling her Catherine. It’s Ms Blake,” he said, imitating her. “Anyway, I thought you and her had issues?”

  “What kind of issues?” She was genuinely confused about the question. Catherine was a friend; why would they have issues?

  He shrugged and stood. “Dunno, I just got the impression she didn’t like you, and you weren’t that enamoured with her either. Anyway, best get back to it. Good to see you back.”

  He walked off, leaving Brooke with more questions than she started with. By the time Amber appeared, she was bouncing her knee with apprehension.

  “What’s up with you?” Amber asked, flopping down into the seat Potter had vacated. “You’re like a coiled spring waiting to ping.”

  Brooke rubbed her face, her hand reaching around to touch the small covering over her stitches. “Nothing,” she said too quickly.

  Amber cocked a brow and pursed her lips. “Right, and I’m the queen. Spill it,” she demanded, picking up the uneaten half of Brooke’s sandwich and taking a bite.

  “Do I…did I, I mean before I hit my head and forgot everything…did I like Catherine?”

  Amber sat back in her chair, one side of her mouth twitched upwards. “Well, honestly I don’t know.” Brooke frowned. That wasn’t the helpful answer she wanted. “Ms Blake isn’t…until now, she hasn’t been the easiest person to get along with. She’s polite and very good at her job, but she’s not very…sociable. All I can tell you is that you started working here and she was her usual forthright self. But even when Kim and I explained what she was like, you seemed intent on trying to be nice to her.”

  “In what way?”

  Amber took another bite of the sandwich. When she finished chewing, she explained, “Well for instance, you would come into the office with coffee and tea for us all, including Catherine.”

  “Right, well that’s just...I did that this morning and she…”

  Amber cut her off. “I know, but back then she didn’t like it. Something is different with her lately though, and I think that stems from you.”

  “I just don’t get it. Why would she be mad at me for bringing her a hot drink?” That just sounded preposterous.

  “Well, all I can tell you is that one morning she stormed into the office and demanded to see you. I’ve never seen her that angry,” she added, “When you arrived, she made me and Kim leave the office. It’s not hard to hear a raised voice in this place, even from the hallway. It was muffled, but she was definitely ripping you a new one.”

  Brooke screwed up her face. “This is so frustrating!” She stood up abruptly.

  “Brooke? Wait...”

  “I’ll be fine, I just…I need some space,” she called over her shoulder as she all but ran from the restaurant.

  Chapter Forty

  Brooke was frozen. The quick walk around the block, though, had helped. Every step had loosened something else at the back of her consciousness. Amber and Potter’s words mixed her up and tossed her thoughts around, but in the end, they seemed to settle and make sense. Something clicked, and images began to pop in and out of her mind’s eye so fast that she could barely keep up, but now as she stood outside of Catherine’s office, rapidly running her palms up and down her arms in an effort to warm up, she knew what she had forgotten: Catherine.

  There were a lot more questions than answers, and she had a lot of things to discuss with Robin too, but right now there was only one thing she wanted to find out.

  Taking the bull by the horns, she grasped the handle to Catherine’s door and pushed it open without knocking.

  The object of all her attention was on the phone. She looked up, frowning, and for a moment Brooke considered backing out, but she had come this far and right now, some things were more important than Catherine having a bee in her bonnet about work. She ignored the glare, closed the door behind her, sat down in the chair opposite Catherine, and waited.

  “Roger, I am going to have to call you back, something…important has come up,” she said into the handset. “Yes, yes, okay, that will be fine. Thank you.” Slowly she brought the handset from her ear and placed it back in its cradle, her eyes set on Brooke the entire time. She felt a little unnerved as the security guard seemed to have zoned out as she continued to just stare at her. “You do realise that its polite to knock on a closed door before you barge in?” Catherine said when nothing was forthcoming from Brooke.

  Brooke nodded. “I do, yes.”

  “Right, well in future, please…”

  Brooke interrupted her, grinning. “I’m not sleeping with Amber.”

  “I really don’t need a rundown of your love life, Brooke,” Catherine said. She looked away at her computer just to avoid that penetrating stare. When Brooke laughed, her attention was brought back to the brunette. “Brooke, are you okay? Is it your head?” She grew concerned now at the strange behaviour.

  “Yes, it’s my head,” Brooke confirmed, nodding now along with the grinning. “Do you want to go for a drink?”

  “As I have said before…”

  “I was thinking Art, or maybe we could head down to Brighton and I could win you a matching Penguin? I’m really good at those shoot ‘em up games.”

  Catherine felt the air leave her lungs. “What?”

  Brooke leant across the desk and lowered her voice. “Or…we could just spend the weekend in bed again.”

  The palm of Catherine’s right hand flew to her chest. “You remember?”

  Brooke nodded. “Not everything, things are still dropping into place and I’m trying to make sense of a lot of stuff, but yes, Catherine…I remember you.”

  The air in the room stilled. Catherine’s skin flushed and heated as she tried to fathom what this all now meant.

  “I can explain,” she began. The phone on her desk began to ring, but she ignored it. “The thing is…”

  “You made a mistake?”

  Catherine nodded.

  “All I want to know is which part was the mistake? Ending things when you did and being mean in order to make me leave you alone, or coming to stay and look after me, letting me start to like you all over again?”

  “First bit,” Catherine said quickly, unsure where Brooke was taking this. “I shouldn’t have.” She swallowed and took a deep breath. “I wish I hadn’t done that.”

  Brooke nodded and let those words settle. “So, if we drew a line in the sand…” She was interrupted by the phone ringing again, and she followed Catherine’s gaze towards it. “Answer it.”

  Catherine shook her head. “No, I want…” She stood up and came around the desk, grabbing her coat from its hook on the wall. “Come on, we can’t talk here.”

  ~FI~

  The 20-minute drive had been relatively silent. Catherine had asked when her memory had returned, and Brooke had filled her in on the conversations she had had with Amber over the last few days and the brisk walk that had helped nudge things along.

  When she mentioned that Amber thought she was jealous and had assumed they were sleeping together, Catherine felt the heat rise in her cheeks. Amber was a smart girl.

  “Amber thinks that I…does she know? About us? Did you tell her?”

  “Of course not, she just said it was obvious just by looking at us that we both had the hots for each other.” Brooke glanced out of the window and didn’t recognise the street they were on. “Where are we going?”

  “My house. It’s quiet there, no interruptions. I want this sorted one way or the other,” Catherine stated as she pulled into the drive of a small two-storey detached house. Switching the engine off, she turned to face Brooke, and the younger woman was instantly reminded of the night they had last seen each other, when Catherine had been smiling at her and making a move. “
Are you coming in?” she asked, when Brooke made no move to release the seatbelt.

  “Yeah.”

  Catherine’s house was warm as they entered together. Not just physically, but aesthetically too. Warm browns and reds adorned the walls and furnishings. Soft lighting lit the walls and the artwork that adorned it. It was fresh and modern, but homely; a lot like Catherine.

  “Tea?” Catherine asked as she placed her bag on the floor by the door and hung up her coat. Brooke nodded and kicked off her shoes when Catherine did, following along behind her towards the kitchen.

  Fresh white walls and shiny cupboards glimmered in the late afternoon sunlight that filtered in through the large window. It looked out to the small but perfectly tidy garden, a small lawn with manicured beds of deadheaded flowers and bushes that were still holding their own despite the cold of winter seeping in to stifle them.

  A small breakfast bar with two stools separated the space, and Brooke pulled a stool out, sliding onto it easily as Catherine filled the kettle.

  “I need to know something, before we do this…” Catherine said. Her back still to Brooke, she stared out into the garden at a small chaffinch that had flown down and landed in the bare branches of the apple tree.

  “What’s that?”

  She turned to face Brooke, licking her bottom lip as she thought for the words. “I want so much to trust you…” She looked away again, fighting the urge to cry. “I just…”

  Brooke stood up and rounded the bar. Standing in front of Catherine, she reached out a shaky hand. Her fingertip gently connected to Catherine’s chin and lifted. “There is only one way to find out, and that’s to let me show you. But I can’t do that if you keep these walls up.”

  Catherine stared into those dark eyes and searched them for any ounce of insincerity and found none. Brooke’s palm cupped her cheek and she fell into its warmth, wanting so badly to feel her touch. She closed her eyes, and when Brooke’s lips touched her own, she succumbed easily to the kiss. Falling into it, her lips yielded to Brooke’s gentle assault on her mouth.