by Maria Luis
“Kissing you.” His voice sounded cut from knives, gutted and raw. Her eyes went wide at his words, but she didn’t throw herself out of the room and into the sea below, so he figured—hoped—that he wasn’t so out of line with the confession. “I’ve spent three years missing out on kissing you, Mae.”
Her hand went to her throat, and he watched as she visibly swallowed. “I-I don’t understand.” Almost impulsively, she twisted around to scan the room behind her. But it remained blessedly empty, and when her dark eyes met his again, he couldn’t read her worth a damn. “Is this a prank?”
Reese’s stomach bottomed out. “What? Hell no, Mae. Why would you even say that?”
“I work for you,” she pushed back, as though he didn’t know that he signed her paychecks, that he paid her healthcare, that he saw her every single day.
Heart pounding erratically, Reese wrangled the words in his head—the words he’d thought of nonstop for years . . . where to tell her, what to say, how best to express that he wanted her with every fiber of his being. That he loved her.
And then he blew it all to crap.
“You’re right,” he said, voice stone-cold with embarrassment, “I don’t know why . . .” He drew in a breath to stabilize the red clouding in on his vision. Red, he thought, almost snorting. So appropriate. Sort of like the heart in his chest that felt like it’d been torn asunder. “I don’t know why I even said that. Maybe it’s from inhaling dust all day. It’s gone to my head.”
She blinked, but instead of reopening her eyes right away, her delicate lashes fluttered closed . . . and stayed that way. Like she couldn’t bear to look at him. “I like you, Reese. Actually, I think that might be an understatement. You can be moody and quiet, and God knows you can be insanely antisocial at times, but you’re . . . you’re my boss. And, if I want to be completely honest, I’m pretty sure you’re also my best friend.” Now, she looked at him, and the torment he saw in those coffee depths nearly dragged him to his knees. “Kissing wouldn’t be a good idea, for either of us.”
He stayed silent, lips pressed together like a finely sewn seam because he was confident that if he opened them, if he said anything at all, he’d beg.
And begging wasn’t Reese’s thing. Not now, not ever.
“I-I’ve been down that path before and I lost everything. If I knew then what I know now”—at her sides, her hands balled into tight, little fists—“I wouldn’t have kissed Steve. But because of all that, I can’t kiss you now. There’s too much at risk, and I’m not willing to lose what I have with you to—”
The sky exploded, and Reese whipped around, shoving his body in front of Daisy’s. Her hands latched onto the back of his T-shirt.
Jagged lightning streaks sparked to life across the horizon, illuminating the entire bay as though it was just after noon and not early evening. Moments later, the pitter-patter of rain joined in, slashing across their view with torrential force.
Oh, crap.
Their view.
Reese turned away from the sea, his feet already eating up the space to the foyer. “We need to find material to protect the wall.”
Over the thunder, he heard Daisy’s shoes scurry after him. “There is no wall!” she shouted at his back. “Or did you forget that you had it demolished when there were no materials to protect the interior of this house?”
“I didn’t forget.”
“Rain was predicted for today,” she added, right on his heels, and the more she talked, the more Reese felt like his head might explode, just like the sky. “You don’t make mistakes, Reese. You always think things through. Why in the world would you ever—”
“Because!” he shouted, whirling around to face the woman who had just dumped his heart into a blender and flicked the switch to ON. His voice charged through the room like the thunder erupting over the once-tranquil waters of Fortune’s Bay. Shadows danced across her shocked expression, thanks to the lack of light in this corner of the dining room. “Because,” he ground out again, “you wanted this house to be something special, Mae. And I wanted to be the one to give it to you. Me.” He balled his hand and jabbed his thumb into his chest, dead-center. “Me, Reese Harvey. Your boss.” He stepped in close. “Your friend.” Another step, and she didn’t even have the chance to back away because he was right there, pressing her slim frame against the wall, his hands coming to rest on the frayed wallpaper on either side of her head. “Me,” he reiterated, this time even lower, “the man who has wanted you, who has loved you, for years.”
Her shoulders jerked, a thin vein near her hairline throbbing relentlessly. With each hard intake of breath, her breasts skimmed his hard chest. “You don’t love me,” she said, voice quivering with emotion. “You don’t, Reese. Maybe you think you do but I can promise you . . . I can promise you that it’s just a phase.”
“Is that what it is?” He gave her his weight—all of him—and her cheeks turned a rosy hue of pink. “So, what, you’re just going to tell me exactly how I feel?” Thunder punctured the sky, and Reese swore he felt the very foundation of the house shudder with fear. “Maybe I should take a spin at guessing where your head is at, too.” Don’t, man. Don’t go there. He shoved away his conscience, burying it deep. “You say that I’m your best friend.” When she didn’t dispute him, he pressed her to give him a solid answer. “Say it, Daisy.”
Her dark eyes swept over his face at the use of her first name. “You’re my best friend.”
And yet he wanted to be so, so much more. The irony wasn’t lost on him. “Then why,” he drawled, already hating himself for what he was about to do, “would you write that letter to me.” His laugh sounded as broken as his heart. “A letter written to Insufferable You. You hate me, and for the life of me, I can’t understand why you wouldn’t just tell me the truth. All these years, have I really been that awful to you?”
She blinked.
Then, “That letter was never about you.”
Chapter Nine
Reese blinked down at her, and Daisy didn’t know whether to slug him in the chest or stomp on his foot and storm away, she was that angry.
And she didn’t do angry.
She was the happy girl. The go-lucky person who everyone turned to for a good time.
Not anymore.
With her back to the torn wallpaper, she craned her neck so she could glare at the mountain of a man before her. “That letter wasn’t about you, Reese.” She shoved an open palm at his chest, which was as hard and as immovable as the bluff the house rested on. “But maybe it should have been.”
His nostrils flared, his dark eyes burning with so much emotion she was half-surprised she didn’t spontaneously combust into flames. “Wanna elaborate on that?”
Thunder boomed overhead, and it wasn’t lost on Daisy that the wind had changed direction, sending rain into the perimeter of the dining room, off to her left, straight through the “wall.” Honestly, there might as well have been an OPEN VACANCY sign posted just outside. Even the storm itself seemed metaphorical—here they were, and nothing was going as planned.
It’s like the universe is sending me its very own pity party, complete with a sob-fest.
“Everything you’re saying right now,” Daisy said loud enough to be heard over the rain, “I’ve heard it all before.”
Dark brows furrowed. “You’re going to have to give me more than that. And what do you mean, the letter wasn’t about me?”
“It wasn’t.” Daisy fisted her hands and set them against his chest, pushing him back, taking in a lungful of air that didn’t have Reese Harvey stamped all over it. It was so hard to think straight when he stood so close. “It was about my former boss, Steve. And I’d only written it because my readers wanted it—they’d asked me to write a letter to an ex and that was the result.”
There was a brief pause, and then Reese pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes shut. “You need to back up. Why did your readers want a letter about an ex? And I don’t even know what you’re talkin
g about . . . you have readers?”
Uh-oh.
Love Letters Unrestricted had been her baby for the last three years. A place where she could be funny . . . anonymously. And, yeah, it was the anonymous bit that she loved most. Her confidence stayed with her, then, unlike the times she’d stood on a stage, her knees quivering and her brain jerking from one element of her sketch to another, never settling on one long enough for her to get through the whole thing.
If she told Reese the truth, that safety net she’d grown would be null and void.
He’d be able to go on her website. He’d be able to read her words. He’d be able to judge her.
The latter terrified her most of all. It was one thing to know that random people on the internet thought she was a dud. Another thing entirely to know that a man you admired, liked, and yes, were attracted to, thought you should never make another joke again.
There was a reason why Daisy hadn’t done well on stage.
And this was it.
Her skin broke out with perspiration at even the thought of unveiling the truth to Reese. From the flinty look in his dark eyes, however, she knew he wasn’t budging.
Either she fessed up or she came across looking flighty. With anyone else, the latter wouldn’t bother her. With Reese, it was just unacceptable.
With the rain and thunder as her chorus, she forced the words out into the open. “I run an online blog, Love Letters Unrestricted.”
Reese’s gaze was unwavering in its directness. Almost comically, a single brow arched high on his forehead, a silent beckoning for her to dole out more information. He expected nothing less.
“It’s like . . . like—”
“A place you like to go to tear people apart?”
The bitterness in his voice was like a knife to the gut. “No, definitely not.” Daisy threw a wild glance around the darkened dining room. “No,” she repeated, trying to find the right words to express what she wanted to say, “of course not. You know me, Reese. I’m not . . . I’m not the sort of person who goes around bashing my acquaintances, let alone people I know and love.” Swallowing past a lump in her throat, she kept going. “It’s just that . . . wow, this is hard to say.”
That’d been her problem, too, way back when. She’d never been particularly good with voicing her thoughts on the fly. Scripting her sketches, on the other hand, had left her sounding so stilted and so unfunny she’d actually been laughed off the stage more than once.
Good times.
“I don’t even know where to start.” Reese opened his mouth, and Daisy jumped in with raised hands. “Don’t say it.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You absolutely were going to suggest that I start at the beginning.”
To her surprise, the corner of his mouth hitched. “It’s where stories begin, Mae. At the start.”
“Some don’t.”
“What?”
“Some don’t start at the beginning. Some start in the middle of a scene—it’s called media res.”
“You’re getting fancy on me,” he muttered, a hand diving through his hair, “and I have no idea where you’re going with this.”
She knew he didn’t. But it made sense. Her entire life, she’d always seemed to get halfway before being cut off or having her trajectory abruptly cut short. “I don’t know what it’s like to finish anything,” she finally said. “My whole life, it’s been one thing after another. Generally speaking, I wasn’t good enough to continue.”
“Jeez, Mae.” Reese scrubbed his hands over his face. “You’re going to have to walk me through this one. You’re sprinting in circles and I’m just . . .” His hands lifted at his sides in a helpless gesture. Behind him, the sky had turned as dark as night. “I’m confused, all right? You’re not making a lick of sense.”
She was so much better writing out her thoughts, her emotions.
It was one of the reasons Love Letters Unrestricted was so successful. Through words, Daisy could be witty or laugh-out-loud hilarious or just a notch above sly. It was all there in the punctuation, in the rise and fall of each sentence, in the turn of each phrase. Her fingers itched for a pen, for her computer keyboard, and she felt them twitch at her sides, that need manifesting physically.
“I wanted to be a comedian growing up,” she muttered, her eyes glued to his chest. “I wanted to stand on a stage and make the crowd roar with laughter. I wanted to do it for me, but I also wanted to do it for my mom. You know . . . you remember what I told you about her death. Anyway, my dad, he always said that I was the one to make my mother laugh, and it became so important to me to keep doing it for other people who might want to smile when they didn’t feel like it.” She met his gaze, held it, even though she wanted nothing more to do than twist away in embarrassment. Maybe rush into the rain and let the wind suck her into the storm itself. “Unfortunately, I blew it. Every time I stood on that stage, I might as well have had verbal constipation.”
At the admission, Reese’s face softened. “Mae—”
“No, Reese.” She shook her head, resolute in telling him the full truth. “I did. It was horrible, actually, the way I bombed so hard. Fortune’s Bay is small, so I’d actually gone to Victoria Falls for the shows. Silver lining, I guess.” Her shoulders rose with an indrawn breath. “I was dating this guy, Steve, who owned the comedy club. What I didn’t realize then was that he didn’t think I was any good either. He hired me on as a manager, and even though it killed me to watch the stage full and the crowd laughing, I figured that it was for the best. I had a knack for administrative work.”
“I can attest to that.”
Her heart warmed at the soft, quiet way he said it. So humble. So genuine.
There weren’t a lot of guys like Reese out there, which is why it killed her to turn him down. But she just couldn’t give this gig up, and she refused to fail at yet another thing in her life. At this point, her pride just wouldn’t allow it.
After a small pause, she went on. “Unfortunately, Steve didn’t think I was right for either the job of manager or girlfriend. He fired me from both positions on the same day.” She grinned weakly. “Lucky me, right?”
“Steve is a prick.”
“I’ve called him much worse.”
“Yeah, but calling him a ducking kiwi just doesn’t have the same ring to it.” Reese lifted a hand, and it neared her face, as though he was desperate to cup her cheek. A sigh rattled across his full lips and his hand dropped back to his side.
It took everything in her not to toss caution to the wind and let herself be carried away by the storm. To leap into his arms and hope that, for once, everything worked out for the best. These last three years, working for Harvey Construction had been amazing, and it worried her more than anything that if she took the next step with Reese, she’d find herself on the outs.
All over again.
In a low voice, she said, “Love Letters Unrestricted was my out from the depression I was feeling. It’s honestly the most ridiculous site, which is why I adore it so much. Readers vote for what they want me to dedicate a whole letter to—sometimes it’s French fries, sometimes it’s Netflix, sometimes it’s a celebrity that the whole world is crushing on. It’s harmless fun but it gives me a sense of accomplishment.” The only other place where she felt confident in her work was Harvey Construction, at Reese’s side as his right-hand woman.
“And the letter to Steve?” Reese asked roughly.
Daisy licked her lips. “Cathartic. I bleed my soul into words, no matter who it’s for.”
He nodded, and then he was stepping back, adding more space between them that made Daisy instantly aware of the loss of him, his heat, the way she felt more alive with him standing near than she ever had before.
“Building is the same way for me,” he said, giving the dining room a quick, impersonal glance. She knew him well, though, and so it was so very obvious to her when the cool mask slipped over his face, his expression banking. “We’re not going to mak
e it back to the mainland, and this room is just—”
“Ducked.”
A rueful smile tilted his lips. “If we’re basing this room on a scale of water fowl, I’d have to say we’re currently goosed.”
Daisy couldn’t stifle her laughter. He did that to her—made her laugh, made her smile. Especially in these last few days. I wish . . . She pushed those wistful thoughts aside. She couldn’t have both, both her job and something more with Reese. Ultimately, he’d decide she wasn’t worth it, just like Steve.
Having him as a friend, even if he was still her boss, was better than not having him at all.
“Wouldn’t you think swanned is more appropriate?” With a single finger, she pointed to the horrid weather just outside the room. “Beautiful as they are, they’ve got an evil bent. Just look at Swan Lake.”
“I’ve never seen Swan Lake.”
Her eyes went wide. “Are you even human?”
“Debatable,” he said with a wink, and she knew, she knew he wasn’t okay with her decision, but he was putting it all behind them for her. Because it was what she wanted. Because that was the sort of guy Reese was.
Don’t be so insecure. Have some faith. Just GO FOR IT.
Daisy stepped forward, heart going into triple-time in her chest. “Reese, I—”
But Reese was already stalking over to the now-exposed part of the room to inspect the damage. “Me and the guys are going to have our work cut out for us here. Good thing I own the place.” He muttered something beneath his breath that Daisy didn’t quite catch. “Like I was saying before, we can’t go back to Fortune’s Bay tonight. With this weather, I bet the water taxi is already closed for the night. There’s not a shot in hell that Gage is going to be back before morning with the tarp.”
“I took an Uber from the docks,” Daisy said. “I don’t know if they’ll be running still, but I guess they could be, right?” God, this was awkward. They clearly couldn’t stay in the Victorian for the night—there wasn’t even running water and give it another thirty minutes and they’d be using the flashlights on their phones as twenty-first century candles. “I’ll give them a call.”
