I can’t control my laughter. She’s lost her mind. Perhaps I can have her committed. I just handled John, but damn it—is it now time to deal with Kelsey? I see Abby’s beautiful face falling away from me. I want to be with her so badly tomorrow night. Kelsey doesn’t bluff, and she can be highly devious when she wants something. Unfortunately, I’m that something she wants.
I take a few more sips of my lobster bisque, wipe my mouth, and stand up. “Have a good night.”
Her eyes widen, and she looks so innocent. “I’m doing this for your own good. Bill would’ve loved to see us back together. It’s what he wanted—that’s why he even included me at all.”
I shake my head. She’s like a dog with a bloody bone. There’s no talking her out of her crazy desire to be with me. I walk out of the restaurant. My feet are heavy. My heart hurts. Am I willing to lose everything I’ve built with my father and North Star Holdings to be with a woman I’ve only known for five weeks? The decision seems obvious, but I’m just not ready to make it yet.
20
Abby
I step off the plane at MSP Airport, Minneapolis. In the Jetway, I can feel how cold it is outside. I get my luggage at the baggage claim, and even forty feet from the door, I can feel the airport’s heat tempered by blasts of cold every time the sliding doors open. Before long, I’m in my car, waiting for the engine to warm. I stare at the parked car facing mine. I’m taking solace in the fact that Nolan Patrick and I are finally in the same city.
Soon, my engine is purring smoothly, and I hit the road. More thoughts of Nolan and my job come to mind. I think about what it is going to be like now that we’ve christened our boss/employee relationship with the best sex ever. I think about the dull-gray and pale-white uninspiring colors of the office. I recall standing at the top of that volcano, looking over the island and deep-blue waters. I imagine what it is going to look like sitting at my desk, staring at bobbing heads protruding above the cubicle walls with everyone working away at maintaining Bill’s empire. I’m just not sure it’s enough for me anymore.
I pull into my driveway, and I’m happy to see that snow hasn’t piled up. Ethan Crawly, the neighborhood sweeper, has been on his p’s and q’s. I open the garage door and close it behind me. Suddenly, my cell phone chimes and buzzes in my purse. For some reason, my garage has a cell-signal hot spot. I retrieve my phone out of my bag and flip it open. I have eleven messages and listen to them one by one.
The first nine are Nolan hoping I had a good Christmas, saying that he’s thinking of me, and asking me to call him when I get a chance. The last two messages are interesting. First, he asks if I would be okay with him flying to St. Kitts so that we can spend New Year’s Eve together. In the last message, he said that was going to fly out “tomorrow,” regardless of my response. Nolan never showed up, or if he did, then he didn’t find me. The island is so small. There aren’t very many places for tourists to congregate. I’m sure we would’ve run into each other at the New Year’s Eve celebration on Frigate Bay if he had come. However, I spent most of my time that night trying to avoid Daniel and anyone who may have been on that yacht the day after Christmas. Regardless, I’m happy he tried to call. My stupid phone… I took a late flight in, so it’s almost midnight, probably too late call Nolan.
I get into my house, and its familiar scent brings me fully back to my life before I flew to St. Kitts. I set my bags down and turn on the light. I look around my living room. All of my grandparents’ stuff is still there, still the same. For the first time ever, I’m uncomfortable with seeing more of my grandparents in my living space than I see of myself. I continue staring, looking to locate the pieces of me: the plant on the table next to the couch, which always looks either half-dead, dead, or thriving; the end tables that I picked up from IKEA along with the lamps; and a couple of pictures that I’ve taken and framed on the wall. I see my art books on the bookshelf. I walk to them and smile. I brush the dust off the cover of one and open it to a random page.
“The impressionists,” I say.
Funny that I landed on the impressionists—Impressionism is my favorite art movement. I grin at my luck, yawn, close the book, and put it back on the shelf. A chill of loneliness washes over me unexpectedly. After spending the week with my family, I feel uncomfortable in the solitude. I’m too exhausted to let being alone make me anxious. Plus, I’m eager for the night to turn into morning so that I can go to work and see Nolan. I go to my room, peel off my clothes, and go straight to bed.
My alarm jolts me awake. Thank God I set the delayed timer. One thought prevails—Nolan will be gracing my presence much sooner than later. My eyes are wide open, and pep energizes my steps. I take a shower and wash my hair, visualizing Nolan’s hands all over me. Will we kiss when we first see each other? I wear my pink shimmering lip gloss just in case.
It looks as if fresh snow hasn’t fallen all week, so the drive to work is smooth. I pull into the parking lot assigned to our building and look for any sign of Nolan. I don’t see his SUV, which means he hasn’t made it yet. I’m twenty minutes early.
I think about all the e-mails I have to shuffle through as soon as I make it in the building.
“You’re back!” Kristin says, sitting behind the receptionist desk, looking extra chipper.
I smile. “Yep!”
“So…”
I stop even though I know what comes next is unconfirmed gossip.
“Do you know why Nolan wants to meet with Misty?”
I shake my head. “Nope. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that she’s worried.”
Taken aback, I work very hard not to flinch, but I keep my composure. “Worried about what?”
Kristin shrugs nonchalantly. I guess since I can’t provide any insight that she can take back to Misty, she has nothing else to lend to this little conversation of ours.
“Okay… well… nice to see you again,” I say and go directly to my desk.
I spark up my computer. I wonder—did Nolan learn more about Misty’s motive in allowing John to take those files out of the basement?
Speaking of the sexy angel, Nolan sweeps past my desk. I shoot excitedly to my feet. He stops at the door to his office and looks at me. He’s not smiling, so I wipe the smile off my face.
“Hi, Abby,” he says. His tone is too formal, and he hasn’t looked this dreary since the day we met.
“Hi.”
Nolan turns his back on me and enters his office. “Can you please come in?”
I take a forceful breath, wondering if I had been right about him all along. I grab my pad and pen off the corner of my desk then hightail it into his office. I’m so unsure what that blank look on his face means. He left eleven messages on my phone—a guy who calls that many times has to be interested, and yet he can barely look me in the eyes.
He walks behind me and carefully closes the door.
“Oh, I could’ve gotten that,” I say.
Finally, he cracks a smile, albeit a small one. “How was your Christmas?”
“Very good.” I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Nice… nice.”
“Is there something specifically that you want to say to me?”
“Um, yeah.” He points to the seat at his desk that’s across from his. “Please, sit.”
Part of me feels like being defiant. This reunion is not even close to how I envisioned it. “I got your messages.” I say and watch his reaction.
His eyebrows furrow.
“Did you end up flying to St. Kitts?” I say.
Nolan stares at me like a lost puppy. Something is definitely bothering him. “Um, no.”
“Oh…”
“Please have a seat, Abby.”
There’s no way I’m going to sit down now. My intuition has kicked in, and I know for sure that he’s about to put some emotional distance between us. “What do you want to say to me, Nolan? Spit it out.”
He blows a hard breath out of his nose. “I just�
� about the time we spent together.” Nolan closes his eyes to gather his bearings. “Abby, we can’t see each other now.”
I feel as if I were smacked in the face by a big fat book titled I Told You So. “What do you mean by ‘now’?”
Nolan just stares at me as if he’s tongue-tied. The way he’s making me feel is so bad on so many levels.
“You’ll continue being my assistant, of course.”
I frown so hard that my head hurts. I mean, how far is he willing to fall into the depths of jerkdom? “I don’t think so,” I finally say.
That lost puppy dog look returns to his face. “Huh? What?”
“What happened between the time you left me the message about joining me in St. Kitts for New Year’s Eve and now?”
Nolan studies my expression. It’s strange. I can see how conflicted he is.
“What happened?” I urge him.
“Nothing, Abby.”
He’s lying to me. I sigh gravely. “Okay, well, you’re not obligated to tell me anything, but I have to say, Nolan, that at the moment, I feel like your doormat.”
He gestures as if he’s reaching out for me but can’t quite reach me. “Don’t feel that way, Abby, because it’s not the truth.”
“Then what is the truth?”
“I’m just not ready for a full-time relationship right now.”
I close my eyes to restrain my tears. “I wish you had told me that before we made love.”
I open my eyes, and he still looks as if he’s lost for words. There’s a knock on the door.
“Who is it?” Nolan says.
“Misty. You wanted to see me?”
“Later,” he says.
She opens the door anyway and looks from me to Nolan then back to me.
Nolan glares at her. If looks could kill, Misty would fall dead where she stands. “Did you hear ‘come in’?” he asks.
“No, but you wanted to talk to me.”
“Go to your desk, and I will call you when I’m ready to talk.”
She looks at me with a frown then backs out of the office. Whatever Misty has done, Nolan’s steamed about it. I didn’t think he had the capacity to look at someone with such abhorrence. However, a memory pervades my thoughts. I see the view from the top of the volcano, and in the scale of things, what’s happening now seems so insignificant. I want more. I need more.
“Nolan,” I say calmly. “I quit. Right now. I quit.”
“But, Abby, I…”
I wait for him to plead his case, but instead, he clams up.
“Bye, Nolan.” I turn my back on him and walk out with way more confidence than I walked in with.
I’m disappointed that Nolan didn’t grab me from behind and apologize profusely for being a jerk. I can feel his eyes on me as I put on my coat and take my purse out of my desk drawer. I was never the sort of assistant who tacked personal pictures on my cubicle walls or brought in personal items to decorate with. I have nothing to pack but myself. Nolan and I lock eyes one more time before I stroll down the hallway, past Kristin’s curious expression, and out into the bitter cold.
I feel as if I’m still in a daze as I drive home. My heart has never hurt so much, like it’s physically pained. How can a man I’ve only known for five weeks cause me so much agony? And now I’m without a job. When I make it back home, I sit on the sofa, staring at the picture of my grandparents above the mantel. My mom always said that I’m a collector of relics. She used to tell me that the habit could be like a boulder tied to my ankle if I didn’t learn how to look back on the things of the past for a brief time then let them fly into eternity like a dove. How many times has she repeated that notion to me and in so many ways? I can’t count. But now, finally, her words of wisdom make all the sense in the world.
I pick up my cell phone to make a call. My eyes gravitate toward the lack of bars in the corner. I have no signal.
“Dang it!” I smash the phone on the floor. It’s time to get a new one. It’s because of that dang phone I missed all of Nolan’s dang calls anyway. Maybe if I had gotten closer to him last week, then he wouldn’t have decided to abandon the relationship we were beginning to build. Or maybe there was nothing I could do. Something tells me he’s back with his ex-wife. I could tell she wanted him from the moment we ran into her at the restaurant. And now he’s hers. Congratulations, Kelsey, and good riddance, Nolan.
I get up off the couch, grab my keys off the table near the door, and head out. The first thing I do is replace the relic of my cell phone with a super-duper, totally top-of-the-line one that will probably never drop a call or miss a call unless I’m lost somewhere in the Amazon forest.
I’m soon sitting in my car with my new cell phone. For some reason, the wheels of my car come to mind. What if I started the engine, put my wheels on the road, and let them roll, and roll, and roll until I end up at the starting line of my real life? Maybe Nolan Patrick wasn’t my end-all, be-all. He could’ve been put in my life to wake me up.
I worked as an intern at the Kennedy Art Museum my last two years of college. During my senior year, I was in charge of curating exhibits for local high schools and up-and-coming artists. I received accolades and praise for public response and the sheer depth and quality of my exhibits. After I graduated, I wanted to return home to Minneapolis. I sent my resume, applying for a position as a curator assistant, to just about every art museum in the city. Then I applied for the job at North Star Holdings, since a lot of the job duties complemented my skill set. I never thought North Star Holdings would take me seriously, but they did. Liza called me in for an interview. We clicked on a personal level. Plus the pay she offered was the kind of salary I thought I would have to work forever to obtain. So I started working for North Star Holdings, and when I started receiving interview requests from all the art museums, I declined their offers. That was two and a half years ago. Truth be told, I was still confused about how to answer the question “What next?” after graduating college. At this very moment, I feel as if I’m sitting in that space and time once again.
“What next?”
I know the answer lies in the contact list of my cell phone. I go down the list of names and stop on Kimmy.
“Abby, are you truly ready?” I whisper.
I take a long, calming sigh and press my finger on her name to call her.
I take more deep breaths as I wait for her to answer.
“Abby!” she says. I love how excited she always is to hear my voice.
“Hi, Kimmy. How are you?”
“Fantastic and in love.”
I picture her smiling so broadly that I can see just about all of her teeth. “That’s great!”
She laughs. “You’re so full of crap, Abby. I know you think I’m crazy.”
“No, I think you’re Kimmy, and I love you and respect you just the way you are.”
Kimmy falls silent.
“Hello?” I ask.
She clears her throat. “Um, just, what you said took me by surprise. I love you, too. Just the way that you are.”
I smile, and I’m sure she’s doing the same.
“Okay, so you didn’t call to tell me how you much you love me. What’s going on?” she asks.
“Oh, hey…” I’m hesitant to say what I want to ask. This one question, this one move, will change my entire future. Am I ready to give up on Nolan? Yes. I have no choice. “Greg, your cousin—he’s a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago, isn’t he?”
Kimmy screams as if she just won the lottery. “You want a job? You want to leave that humdrum job of yours to do what you were made to do, don’t you?”
“Well kind of, yeah.”
“I’m calling him right now! There’s no way in hell he’s not going to find a position for you! So get your bags packed. You’re moving to Chicago!”
21
How ironic—four months ago today, I packed my things and left Minneapolis for Chicago. I found a renter for my house in record time. My renters are a husband and wife
who have a newborn. So with the rent money that I receive each month, plus money I had saved up and the salary I make as a curator’s assistant, I was able to move downtown Chicago in a one-bedroom, one-bath high-rise apartment with spectacular views of the city and Navy Pier, and where I live is not too far away from the Art Institute where I work. Also, the job as a curator assistant required an MA in Art History. Greg only hired me after I agreed to apply for the graduate program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I applied, and now on top of my job duties, I’m a graduate student. I love both my job and my school. Brian has expressed how proud he is of me. And I thanked him profusely for giving me that ticket to climb that mountain.
“So, Abby, I can’t express how happy we are that you’re here with us,” Greg Dodson, Kimmy’s cousin, says.
Before I started working here, I met Greg once. I never understood why Kimmy thought he was obsessed with me. It’s been four months, and he hasn’t flirted with me once. He treats me with the same quality of respect that he does everyone else. I like him as a person.
“Thank you,” I say. “I’m happy you gave me a chance.”
“Your work on the Comparison and Contrast Contemporary and Master Impressionists Exhibit was above and beyond what was required.”
“Wow, thanks,” I say.
I wait for Greg to say something else, but he’s just staring at me with a giddy expression that I haven’t seen from him before.
“So is that it?” I ask, needing to speed this along.
Greg coughs to clear his throat. “Um, no.” He sounds out of breath. “Sorry, I’ve got a sinus thing.”
I lift a hand. “No problem.”
He smiles big. “I called you into my office because I want to offer you a raise and a one-year fellowship for contemporary impressionist art.”
I touch my chest. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Me? A fellowship?”
“Yes.”
Her Perfect Man- The Complete Series Box Set Page 14
