by Ranae Rose
She knelt to pick up the fallen bouquet, finding a note tucked among the blossoms on a little plastic prong. I’m sorry, it read, but I know this setback won’t keep you from fulfilling your dream. You’ll make it happen. Love, Derek
She clutched the bouquet to her chest, blinking back tears.
“Who’s the musclehead?” Peter asked, appearing suddenly at her shoulder.
She pulled the door softly shut, unable to bring herself to respond. All she could think about was the hurt she’d seen in Derek’s eyes.
“A boyfriend?” Peter asked, his tone edged with obvious jealousy.
She shook her head, afraid her voice would give away her misery if she spoke.
Peter’s face lightened considerably. “Good.” He placed a hand on her waist, turning her to face him. “What do you say about getting back together then?”
She shook her head and mustered all the firmness she could. It wasn’t very difficult to do when she thought of what an ass he’d been while they were dating. “No, Peter.”
“Come on, baby. I’ll be back in town for good within the month. We’ve already got the building. It’s right in town on the corner of West and Spiller, not far from here at all. I could move back in. Or, better yet, we could move some place better together. I’ll be making plenty of money.”
“Wait,” she said, her heart suddenly in her throat, “the corner of West and Spiller?”
He nodded. “It’s right in town, near Grey Street.”
“I know where it is,” she said, her head whirling more than ever, and not just from the wine.
“Then you see how perfect the situation is.” He leaned in, breathing wine-fumes against her face as his lips brushed her cheek. “Say ‘yes’.”
“No.” She pushed him away, ducking beneath his arm.
“Don’t be like that, baby.”
“Don’t call me baby! I want you to leave.” She was choking back tears now, her mind whirling with thoughts of Derek and the revelation that her perfect café premise would soon be Peter’s new office.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. Get out of here, Peter.”
He glowered at her. “What about my shirts?”
“Go get them out of the washer. They should be done by now.”
“They’ll be soaking wet!”
“I don’t care. You have to leave.”
He stomped out the door moments later, still bare from the waist up, soggy shirts in hand. When he was gone Kelly locked the door and leaned against it, sliding down to the floor. What had she just let happen?
****
Derek tended shop automatically, largely indifferent to the fact that they’d run out of raspberry jelly and that protesters had queued up on the sidewalk again. He’d put Jason in charge of the frying, not trusting himself to make the donuts with his usual care. All he could think about was Kelly, and he found himself gripping the counter so hard it hurt as the scene from the evening before played out in his head for what seemed the thousandth time. An undressed man had been the last thing he’d expected to find when he’d ventured to her apartment. He’d been worried that going to see her after she’d broken up with him was too forward, that she’d needed space. What a load of shit that’d been!
He raked a hand through his hair, but it was too short to have much of an effect. Maybe it was just like she’d said - maybe she really didn’t want a relationship. Maybe she just wanted somebody to fuck. The thought set his teeth on edge. She wasn’t like that, or at least he hadn’t thought so. But he couldn’t come up with anything else to explain what he’d seen last night – her and some strange guy sousing themselves in wine, he already naked, or at least shirtless.
God, had they made love? He’d asked himself that a hundred times already, but the agony the question incited had yet to lessen. His memories of sex with her were so vivid – it was all too easy to imagine the shirtless stranger in his place. Had she breathed the same way against his neck, gasped the same way beneath him? Had he felt the ecstasy of her hips bearing down on his, begging for more? He couldn’t stop himself from wondering, or his gut from clenching and twisting as he imagined the answers. Just thinking of her with another man made him want to snap something in half – preferably the guy he’d seen her with. At the same time, he longed to race to her apartment, charge in, wrap her in his arms and take her to bed, claiming her as his own and reminding her of how incredible they’d been together.
But he couldn’t do that. She’d broken up with him. That about summed up how he felt – broken. He’d only known her for a few weeks, and after she’d hung up the phone, crying, he’d realized just how attached he’d gotten. There wasn’t another woman like her in Blue Mills. She’d seemed too good to be true – until he’d found her with that guy last night. He clenched his hands into tight fists. How could she fuck someone else when she’d been in tears while breaking up with him just a few hours before? When he’d been dying to make love to her all day? Even now, his balls ached. No amount of anger could chase away the feeling or make him stop wanting her.
“Derek?”
He turned toward the sound of a timid voice and saw Cassandra, one of his two part-time employees, peering out from the kitchen. She’d scurried back there a couple hours ago to help Jason. Derek suspected his bad mood had scared her off. Well, he didn’t blame her – he wouldn’t have wanted to work beside his cranky, brooding self either, and it only took one person to run the cash register. “Yeah?” he asked, trying not to sound like the frustrated, furious, horny ass that he felt like.
“Somebody’s at the back door asking for you.”
“Who?” he demanded, suddenly suspicious. Hopefully it wasn’t Amy Richardson again – in his current state, he was likely to tell her to take a free éclair and shove it up her ass. It could keep the stick she kept up there company.
Cassandra shrugged, her dark eyes widening in apparent bewilderment.
“And why can’t this person come through the front door like everyone else?”
She shrugged again.
“Take the register, will you?” He stormed back into the kitchen, ready to tell Amy or one of her holier-than-thou cohorts exactly what he thought of them and the asinine protests they’d been staging.
The visitor was no longer at the backdoor, but standing beside the remaining functional fryer. Jason was nearby, looking guilty as he lowered a batch of donuts in. “He shoved his way inside,” he explained as the oil bubbled, welcoming the latest round of doughy rings.
Derek turned a wary eye on the stranger; an average-looking man who appeared to be somewhere around middle-aged and was wearing an oversized tan trench coat. He looked like Dick Tracy. Or some kind of terrorist. “You’re not here to blow the place up in the name of preventing public nudity, are you?” Derek thought aloud.
The man seemed taken aback at that, but wasted little time in beginning an introduction. “No. I’m Steven Walters.” He stared at Derek as if he expected him to recognize the name.
“Who?” Derek asked brusquely.
“Columnist for the Blue Mills Times,” Walters added, cocking an eyebrow in apparent exasperation.
“Somebody from the paper. Great.”
Walters charged ahead, apparently undeterred by Derek’s lack of enthusiasm. “The Times is covering this whole scandal” – he waved a hand around the kitchen, as if to indicate Derek as well as anyone and anything associated with him – “and I’m here to interview you.”
“Not interested.”
Walters whipped a notepad out from under his trench coat, as if he hadn’t heard Derek’s reply. “The religious protesters have already been interviewed, and they made their opinions quite clear. Surely you want your side of the story to be heard?” His dark eyes gleamed with a small-town journalist’s story-lust. A man caught on camera running practically naked through the streets? That constituted a scandal all right, at least in Blue Mills. The fact that he was a local business owner only made it juicier
.
“There is no story,” Derek snapped. “There’s only a bunch of rabble-rousers blocking the sidewalk in front of my store.”
Walters scribbled furiously in his notebook, apparently taking that as a quote.
“Leave,” Derek said, resisting the urge to snatch the notepad and throw it into the fryer. The only thing that stopped him was the fact that he was behind on production. The protesters’ efforts still seemed to be increasing traffic – wonder of wonders – and he couldn’t afford for his one working fryer to go on the fritz like the other one had.
After several protests and a promise from Derek to see him bodily out of the store, Steven Walters finally scurried through the back door.
Derek glowered after him before turning to Jason. “Don’t answer if anyone else knocks, OK?”
****
As she neared the Blue Mills Donut House in her car, Kelly finally understood the definition of the term ‘nervous wreck’. Her stomach was tied in knots, and she was gripping the steering wheel so hard her fingers hurt. It was just past eight o’clock, and she’d spent the entire day thinking about Derek. She knew how it must have looked to him when he’d shown up at her apartment the night before and found her with shirtless – damn him for spilling the wine – Peter. She’d seen the hurt and the shock in his eyes. What had he been thinking since then? She was desperate to tell him the truth, to let him know that the only man she could even think about making love to was him.
And she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that, either. She craved Derek – his touch, his smell, the sound of his voice – so badly that thoughts of him had kept her up all last night. She’d been so furious with herself over missing Joan’s call about the building that she’d broken up with him, determined to deprive herself of any distraction from her dream of opening her café. But now that she’d shoved him out of her life, her dream seemed suddenly hollow. He’d become an important part of her dream, but it had happened so fast she hadn’t realized it until he was gone. She knew it now though. Maybe, if she explained and apologized, she’d be back in his arms tonight.
The Blue Mills Donut House was open until seven on most days, and it took about an hour of clean-up and closing chores before the building was officially vacated and locked up for the night. Derek opened shop himself almost every morning, which made staying until such a late closing time very tiring. Still, she was sure he’d stayed tonight, because his truck was parked behind the building near the back door. He was there too, engaged in conversation with someone else.
Kelly’s chest tightened, launching her heart into her throat when she got a clear view of the other person. She was a woman, maybe around twenty and cute, her golden hair tied with a ribbon into a high ponytail. Was she one of the girls who’d been hanging out in the donut shop, asking for Derek’s autograph? She was laughing at something he’d said, and he beamed back at her. A moment later he opened the passenger-side door to his truck and offered her a hand as she climbed in.
Kelly gripped the steering wheel hard, swallowing in a fruitless attempt to clear her throat. She shifted back into drive as quickly as she could, desperate to escape the parking lot before Derek saw her.
****
By the time Kelly arrived home she was in tears, barely able to see through them to unlock the apartment door. When she finally succeeded she rushed inside, shaking. Now she knew just how Derek must’ve felt last night, when he’d found her with Peter. Had he felt this horrible, this broken? The idea made her want to find Derek and wrap her arms around him, but she was all too aware that the cute blond stranger she’d seen him with back in the parking lot was probably doing that now.
God, were they making love, even as she thought about it? The idea made her feel like she’d swallowed shattered glass, and the worst part was that she had no one to blame but herself. She’d pushed him away, cut him out of her life for something that wasn’t his fault. And now she’d lost him. She hadn’t thought of him as someone who’d move on so fast, but who was she kidding? He was gorgeous, the kind of guy who could pick up a girl by simply walking into a room. Why should she expect him to sit around in the same lonely misery she’d just sentenced herself to when there were so many women who’d be thrilled to have his attention?
If only she hadn’t taken that damn photo. Then there wouldn’t have been a queue of women stalking the donut shop, hoping to catch his eye. Maybe he’d have been alone tonight, and she would have gotten to talk to him. Maybe she’d be back at his condo with him right now, instead of that blond.
“Kelly.”
She whirled toward the sound of her own name, her heart hammering away as she thought half-hopeful thoughts of Derek.
It wasn’t he who stood behind her in the living room, but Peter.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “How’d you get in?”
His face broke into a lopsided grin. “You left the door unlocked. I came by to drop off the check I owe you for the couch. You chased me out of here so quickly yesterday that I forgot to give it to you.”
“Keep it.”
He crossed the space between them, and when he stood within two feet of Kelly, she could smell liquor on him. Well, that explained the grin. He was wearing another suit, though it was seriously wrinkled and several drops of amber liquid had stained the loosened tie. “You’ve been drinking,” she said accusingly. “I don’t want you here drunk.” She didn’t want him there at all, for that matter.
“Relax baby. I’ve been drinking, and you’ve been crying – we’ve both got our problems. Why don’t you tell me about yours?” He reached out, as if to take her in his arms.
Fat chance. She backed away, easily dodging his unsteady step. “I mean it Peter – leave.”
“Make me.” He lunged forward with surprising speed and pulled her against him while he buried a hand in her hair. She tried to squirm away, but he tightened his hold, pulling her hair so hard it tugged painfully at the corners of her eyes.
“Let me go!” she cried, stomping hard on his toes.
He didn’t even flinch, which she took as an indicator of just how drunk he really was. Her heart was racing, beating a butterfly rhythm against his chest, which he’d thrust against hers. He pressed his mouth against her face and breathed whisky fumes. “I know you still want me. Stop playing hard to get.”
Peter had clearly drunk his way past all reason. Realizing she was unlikely to escape his grasp on her own, she did the only thing she could think of – she screamed, hoping desperately that her neighbors were home and would hear.
He pressed his mouth against hers, muffling her cry and shoving his tongue past her lips. She struggled, but the only result was that the coppery tang of blood filled her mouth, mixing with the bitter taste of second-hand whisky. Her lip throbbed against his, bleeding freely where one of his teeth had caught it. He ground his hips against her as she fought, making her aware of the hardness that had sprung up between his. She squirmed and tripped.
He fell on top of her, which was very much to his advantage. Caught beneath his weight and left breathless by the fall, she could scarcely move. Instead of resisting when he shoved a hand beneath her shirt, she focused all her efforts instead on trying to draw precious air into her lungs. With him lying on top of her, shoving her legs apart rudely with a knee, it was nearly impossible. Just when she began to think she might suffocate beneath him, he flew off of her.
“What the hell?” he cried as he tumbled backward, a blur of rumpled suit and fair hair.
It took a moment for her to comprehend that someone had pulled him off of her, and even when she saw Derek towering above a sprawled-out Peter, she was still confused. “Derek?” she gasped with her first breath.
Derek had already torn his eyes away from her and was pulling Peter up from the floor by his collar. Peter’s nose was streaming blood down his face and chin, dripping it onto the front of his suit. Had Derek done that? Kelly rolled onto her side, struggling to rise as she gulped air. She he
ard the breath rushing from Peter’s lungs as Derek drove a fist into his belly, his dark eyes gleaming with fury.
Peter collapsed onto the floor again, his bloodied mouth moving silently. Derek reached for him, but he rolled aside just in time, only to bang his head off of a coffee table leg. Derek glowered at him as he curled into a ball, cursing and rubbing his head.
“You’ll kill him,” Kelly gasped when Derek reached down and pulled Peter to his feet again, a fist already cocked. Derek was twice Peter’s width and probably five times as strong, and Peter was in no condition to fight back. That didn’t stop him from throwing a punch at Derek’s face, though it was a weak, glancing blow.
