For My Own: A Contemporary Christmas Anthology

by Alison Packard, Shari Mikels, Kinley Baker

  What he didn’t understand was why the repeated phone calls with Paige hadn’t been enough for the woman. She’d flown in, even after he’d expressly told her not to, and had shown up about an hour before his meeting. It wasn’t as if she had anything new to tell him beyond what they’d already discussed. He finally gave up trying to figure out what was going on with her, and let her handle some of the final details of what would be covered during the press conference scheduled for the next day.

  After she left to take a phone call, he shook hands with the others around the table, trying to wrap things up, but they continued talking and he didn’t want to be rude. Get a drink or two in some of these guys and they were ready to talk for hours. It threw him for a loop that he was actually ready to be done with pro baseball. It didn’t make him sad that he wouldn’t be seeing these people again. He wanted to get this over with, didn’t want to spend any more time with them, because they weren’t his future.

  Okay, time to get these niceties over and done with. He was ready to spend the rest of the evening with Rachel and do whatever she wanted. The most important thing was being with her. Holy crap, it was like he was back in high school, only wanting to spend time with the girl he liked. Except now, he wanted to spend every waking—and sleeping—moment with the woman he loved.

  God, did he love her. He’d stopped by the jewelry store late that afternoon on the way to the restaurant for the meeting and had looked at the different pieces of jewelry.

  He still had a ways to go in trying to prove to Rachel she could trust him completely, but he’d get there. Not wanting her to feel pressure of any kind, he’d selected a pair of dark aquamarine earrings that reminded him of her eyes and yet would still be safe for her to wear around her students.

  When it looked like he’d finally be able to make his escape, he opened the folding door and peeked out. Immediately, he saw Paige and Rachel talking with each other. Rachel’s friends were behind her, closer to the door.

  Why would Paige be over there talking to Rachel? Had he ever told her about Rachel? He didn’t think so. He hadn’t mentioned Rachel by name the night he got drunk and—

  Were they arguing? What could they possibly be arguing about?

  He watched as Rachel threw him a look and left, her friend, Karen, pulling her through the door. What the hell?

  Needing to follow Rachel warred with needing to find out what Paige had said. He pushed through the crowd around the bar and through the closely packed tables in the restaurant area to get to Paige.

  “What was that about?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual. A woman claims she’s an old friend of yours, thinks she might have a chance with you, and I get rid of her for you.”

  “What exactly did you say to her?” He didn’t try to keep the rising anger from his voice.

  “What are you getting so upset about?” She reached out and laid her hand on his arm. The exact same gesture she’d done many times in the past, but this time it made his skin crawl. Things were starting to fall into place and he didn’t like where they were falling.

  He gritted his teeth. “What did you say?”

  “I said what I always do. I told her you were busy and you wouldn’t have time for old friends from now on.”

  That wasn’t everything. The look on Rachel’s face had been...betrayal.

  His hands fisted on his thighs, the skin pulling tight across his knuckles.

  “I want to know everything you said to her.” He also wanted to get to her, but he needed to know what kind of damage control he was facing.

  “I don’t see what the big deal is. I told her I was in town to make things official. She might have gotten the idea that we’re an item, and then I told her you’ll be holding a press conference tomorrow and she can find out more then.”

  What. The. Hell.

  You don’t even know you’re doing it.

  He hadn’t understood at the time what Rachel had meant, but she’d been right, and he understood now. It obviously took a two-by-four to knock reality into him.

  Kevin didn’t know where to begin with Paige. He couldn’t fathom where she got the ideas she had floating around in her head.

  “I’m not interested in you.”

  “Well, after we slept together that night, you wanted me to start keeping everyone away from you.” She paused, looked down and looked back up. “I thought that meant once I was no longer working for you, we’d see where what we’d started in New York took us.”

  He never should’ve slept with Paige that night. Never. It’d been during a moment of weakness, when he’d figured out he was jealous over what he thought David and Rachel had together, and he’d gone on a drinking binge. Paige had come over to discuss the next something or another he was supposed to do, and one thing had led to another, with Paige in his bed and Kevin filled with regrets.

  He took a deep breath and let it out. “I was drunk that night because I thought the woman I finally realized I wanted would never be available to me. I’d been drinking because of her.” He pointed toward the door. “Turns out, she is available now and she’s the one I want. I don’t know why you’d think we’d be getting together when I haven’t seen you much since that night.”

  “I thought that was because of your schedule and then because of your injury.” Her face flushed red. “I didn’t understand why you didn’t want me flying in. I get it now.”

  “I didn’t and don’t want to be with anyone else but her.”

  He needed to find Rachel.

  “I’m going to have to let you go. I don’t really need a PR rep anymore, so this is as good a time as any to part ways.”

  “I was just doing my job.”

  “I understand that. My advice—don’t get involved with your clients.”

  He turned away from her to leave.

  “Kevin, I’m sorry.”

  He nodded in acknowledgement and raced out the door.

  Now he just had to hope Rachel would listen to him and forgive him for everything.

  * * *

  “Do you want to go back to your house, or do you want to stay with me tonight?”

  Karen had dropped Toni off first and now they were sitting in Sara’s driveway, waiting for Rachel to make a decision. Where could she go tonight? She didn’t want to be by herself at home. Gah, no.

  She crossed her arms over her stomach and curled forward slightly.

  “Come here, sweetie.” Karen wrapped her arms around Rachel and Rachel let the feel of her best friend’s love hold her up for now.

  “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.” Karen rubbed her hand up and down Rachel’s back.

  “I believed him. I—” A sob escaped before she could stop it.

  Karen squeezed her harder. “He made you believe him because he said all the right things. He has a lot of experience with women, and you said yourself you flat-out told him he doesn’t even realize he’s a flirt.”

  Rachel tried wiping her tears before they hit Karen’s shirt, but it didn’t work.

  “This is all part of his persona. He’s been acting one way for so long, he can’t change. You know what they say. A tiger can’t change his stripes. That man obviously can’t change his most basic sexual behavior.”

  Rachel didn’t want to believe any of this. “He said he didn’t know how David and I had broken up. What if he didn’t know and so what he did with that woman was in the past? What if she was mixing truth and lies? God, I wish I knew what to believe.”

  “That...might be possible. But it didn’t sound that way to me. It sounded like she was still intimately involved with him.”

  “How could that be? He’s been with me almost the entire time the past few days.”

  Karen handed her a tissue. “So what are you thinking? She made up stuff to say to you? Why would she?”

  “I honestly don’t know. But what hurts the most is that even if he did sleep with her in the past, he had a chance to tell me this, to get it out in the open, and he didn’t.
As soon as I told him why David and I divorced, Kevin had the chance to tell me exactly what had happened between him and Paige, and he chose not to.”

  That was the part that hurt the most.

  Could she really have fallen for yet another guy who slept with someone who was still working for him?

  Karen squeezed her one more time before straightening in the seat. “So...where do you want to go to share another pint or two of ice cream?”

  “Your house. Let’s go back to your house.”

  “You got it. I’m going to stop by the store to pick up a couple more pints. I want to make sure we’ve got plenty of ice cream for the rest of the night.”

  During the drive to the store, Karen tried to keep up a running commentary of all the sweet dessert-type foods she loved. Rachel knew Karen was giving her brain something else to focus on. Unfortunately, she found her brain still had plenty of cells left over to think about Kevin and how much her heart hurt because of him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kevin drove to Rachel’s house, pressing speed dial during the entire drive and getting nothing but her voicemail. He left a few messages, even explaining as quickly as he could what had happened, but there’d been no call back yet. There were no lights on at her house, and when he knocked on the door, there was no answer.

  He couldn’t figure out whether that was because she was sitting in there in the dark and just didn’t want to open the door to him, or if she wasn’t home. He waited a little bit longer but heard nothing, not a sound from inside.

  Since he didn’t want to look like a stalker, he figured he’d try to find her elsewhere. Walking by her car, he reached out his hand to the hood to see if it was warm.

  It wasn’t.

  She’d been with Karen and she’d told him Karen had just recently moved. He had no idea where to, though.

  Her parents didn’t live too far away, so he’d go there.

  During his drive, he tried to piece together everything Paige had said and everything Rachel had warned him about. He thought through many different conversations and came to the conclusion that he’d just totally missed the signs that Paige had become obsessed with him. He’d been clueless because he’d never thought of her that way. While she was working for him, he hadn’t wanted to hurt her feelings by telling her he regretted sleeping with her. Especially since, hello, she was in charge of what the public thought of him.

  Those decisions had been a mistake on so many levels, and he was now paying for all of them.

  He didn’t want to lose Rachel, but she was right—he needed to change his behavior. Respecting her and thinking about more than just himself needed to be his top priority.

  He wasn’t sure about all the different ways he needed to change, but he could figure it out. With Rachel’s help, he could figure out how to be the man she deserved.

  Pulling up in front of her parents’ house, he saw one of their cars was missing from the driveway, the outside lights were on and no inside lights except for the one living room light they always left on each night were on.

  Unless Rachel was hiding out in the dark, waiting for one or both her parents to come home, she wasn’t here either.

  His next prospect gave him pause. He didn’t want to go to Tim’s, but he wanted to see Rachel and get things worked out more than he didn’t want to tell Tim what had happened.

  He let out a groan and hit the steering wheel before making the three-point turn in the middle of the street to drive to Tim’s house.

  Ugh. Maybe he could somehow talk to him without letting on what had happened. Yeah, right. No words came to him except “Where’s Rachel?” and that wasn’t exactly going the subtle route.

  The drive to Tim’s house was way too short, and Kevin still hadn’t come up with what to say except the truth. Of course, that was assuming Tim would even give Kevin the chance to tell him the whole story of what had happened.

  He walked up the front walk as if he were going before a firing squad, but he couldn’t make himself walk any faster. As much as he wanted to find Rachel, he really didn’t want to have this conversation with her brother.

  He knocked on the door instead of ringing the doorbell, hoping to buy himself a few more seconds of time, but he knew his luck had run out when the door swung open quickly.

  “Hey, sorry to bother—”

  “What the hell did you do to my sister and why am I getting texts from people who saw Rachel have words with some blonde at Pawlie’s followed by you making the same blonde upset?”

  “Can we not have this conversation on your front porch?”

  Tim stepped back away from the door and stood off to the side.

  “Come on in, asshole.”

  Kevin stepped far enough into the foyer area, he was able to shut the door. “Are you going to let me explain—”

  Tim came at him like a bull charging, grabbing Kevin around the midsection and sending them both over the back of the couch onto the floor. They separated briefly while getting up.

  Kevin really didn’t want to hurt his best friend, but he also didn’t want a black eye for the press conference tomorrow. He kicked Tim away, putting his foot in Tim’s stomach, as he made another run at Kevin.

  “Stop. Just listen to me.”

  Tim dived at Kevin again, pulling up at the last moment, sweeping Kevin’s leg out from under him. Kevin went down hard, wincing as his tailbone took the brunt of the fall.

  “You promised. You promised you had nothing but good intentions with Rachel.”

  Tim began rushing Kevin again, but Kevin jumped to his feet and put as much distance between the two of them as he could.

  “I know, and that’s the truth. That hasn’t changed. I love Rachel.”

  “Then what was this mess I got a bunch of texts about?”

  Damn small towns. Everyone knew everyone and knew how to get in everyone else’s business.

  “My PR rep, Paige, remember her?”

  “Yeah?” Wariness took up residence on Tim’s face.

  “Well, it turns out she’s been under some kind of delusion that she and I are an item. She’s been telling everyone this for a while.”

  “And?”

  “She pulled the same stunt on Rachel tonight. I had no idea what Paige was thinking or what she’d been doing. I fired her as soon as I found out.”

  “Was that the argument?”

  “Yeah. I love Rachel. I really do want to spend the rest of my life with her. I just have to prove to her that I’m worth her taking the risk on loving me back.”

  “That’s gonna be hard to do now, isn’t it?”

  “Just when I’d been making headway on gaining her trust.” Kevin shook his head, tried to wipe out the scene he’d witnessed, but couldn’t.

  “I told you to stay away from her.”

  “I can’t, man. And at this point, I don’t wish I could. I’m glad I can’t stay away from her any longer.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “First, I need to find her. She’s not at her house, or at least she’s not answering the door, and it doesn’t look like anybody’s home at your parents’ house.”

  “They went out. It’s their usual game night with their group of friends.”

  “Ah. Sooooo...where is she?”

  “Probably staying with one of her friends.”

  “And? Are you going to help me find her?”

  “Nope.”

  “What the hell, man?”

  “This is on you. I’m not helping.”

  “No, you’re just hurting your sister by not helping me get to her tonight. She doesn’t deserve going the whole night thinking I’m with someone else when I’m not. Asshole.”

  Tim looked at him. Kevin didn’t dare turn away from the eyes that glared at him.

  “Good point. I guess I can try to help you out. Have you tried calling her?”

  “Yeah, but it went straight to voicemail—”

  “Which means it’ll go straight to voicemail for m
e too, and she’s not even taking texts.”

  “Nope.” Kevin paused, trying to think. “I know Karen recently moved. Do you happen to know where she moved to?”

  “I never got around to asking Rachel about that.”

  “Do you know where her other friends live?”

  “I think Toni lives in the Greendown neighborhood. Or maybe that’s the other one.”

  “Sara?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re a ton of help here, man.”

  “Have you tried doing a property search for Karen?”

  “Hadn’t thought about it. But that’s why I came here. You’re the computer expert and I guess stalking runs in your family.” Tim let a grin through the perpetual scowl he wore.

  Tim brought up the local GIS property info for the county while Kevin looked on over his shoulder.

  “They’ve only got her previous address. Sorry. Now I’m wishing I could help you.”

  “It was the her-hurting-all-night part, wasn’t it?”

  “That did it. Here, unless you come up with something else we can try, why don’t you join me for a beer and we’ll find some sporting event on TV we can argue about.”

  Kevin didn’t have a better idea, but he didn’t want to give up so easily. “There’s gotta be something else we can do.”

  Tim got a couple of beers from the fridge. “What do think we can do? This is a small town, and it’s late. You’re going to have to wait till morning and hope you can work things out then. Now sit down and watch some TV and take your mind off things.”

  “I can’t. You’re not getting it. I can’t let her go.”

  “Okay, man. I get it. But it’s pretty late, and unless you’re going to risk having the cops called on you because you’re knocking on Rachel’s friends’ front doors, then you’re going to have to stop pacing and take it down maybe a notch.”

  Kevin shook his head. No, Tim didn’t get it, but there was no way he was going to be able to explain to him the helpless feeling that had him in its grips. The same helpless feeling when he originally saw his career go down the toilet.