by Jenn Hughes
Don’t look up. Don’t look up . . . God, why do his pecs have to be so perfect?
“No. I have plans. Dinner with Richard.”
“Oh. Okay. The night after then?”
“I don’t know. We’ll see.”
She wanted to say yes so badly. Throw caution to the wind for once and enjoy herself . . . but she couldn’t. When she finally did look up, Sam’s blue eyes burned into her like blasts from a laser. He knew what she wanted. As usual. Her flushed face probably told him as much. But he didn’t push.
“Have fun then. With Rik.”
“We will. We always did.”
Lillian left the auditorium, hurried through the theater, and then headed out into the cold night. It was exactly what she needed—bitter ice and wind to chill her to the bone. Guys took cold showers. She took cold walks home. And home meant warmth and safety and enough distance between her and Sam to help drive him out of her mind.
Just don’t turn around. Ignore those incoming big feet stomping behind you . . .
“Lillian?”
The way he said her name, that smooth, deep voice giving it the cadence of a song, almost buckled her knees. She would not admit to quivering then. Buckling, maybe.
“Yes?” she asked, turning to face him.
“Show up late.”
“What?”
“Show up a few minutes late for your dinner with Rik. The show doesn’t begin until the star arrives. Remind him he’s the lucky one.”
And then Sam walked away, snow flurries swirling around him as he headed down the lamplit sidewalk. Lillian waited there. Alone. In the dark at nearly midnight. She waited and watched Sam Owens disappear down a side street.
Only an acquaintance.
Definitely nothing more.
Chapter 9
Ul-tomato-ums
Sam scrutinized his opponent across the table in Rōru, Port Bristol’s answer to the fusion sushi craze. Business lunches rarely had anything to do with business, and that afternoon’s didn’t break the mold. He’d invited Rik Bryant to afford himself an opportunity to gather intelligence on Lillian. But then Rik had ordered a salad.
A salad. In a sushi restaurant. Sam’s upper lip curled a little.
What kind of a person orders a garden salad in a Japanese restaurant?
With his chopsticks, Sam tepidly poked the pink, fleshy mountain of ginger on the side of his plate. His attempts at subterfuge usually went off without a hitch. A figurative piece of cake, or California roll in the case of Rōru. But the salad threw Sam off his game. It had to be some sort of grab for supremacy—
“So, all things considered, that last filing with the ITC over Preston’s patent infringement was a waste of time,” Rik said, gently piercing a slice of cucumber with his fork. “Best to drop it.”
“Yeah, sure, if you think it’s a lost cause . . . Are you meeting Lillian tonight?”
Smooth transition. God, I suck.
Rik slowly scooped up another bite of salad. Piled high with lettuce and a grape tomato rolling precariously on the top, he only made it a few inches before the tomato rolled off.
Second try. Kamikaze tomatoes again. Sweat beaded up on Sam’s forehead as he watched Rik start the infuriating process again.
“Yes. Why?” Rik replied, cool like one of his cucumbers.
“I wondered if maybe plans had changed or something.”
Not wondering—hoping. The idea of Lillian spending time with Rik gnawed at Sam. Even though their shenanigans were none of his business, Sam couldn’t stop worrying about Lillian getting burned by an old flame. Rik had a nasty habit of ignoring innocent bystanders on his path to victory. Off-season or not, Preston Lavery or not, Sam did not want Rik getting his claws back into her.
The tomato rolled off Rik’s fork five times in a row. He didn’t even sigh. Nerves of steel.
Rik finally stopped herding his tomato and looked at Sam over his glasses. “I thought this was a business lunch. What’s with the sudden interest in how I’m spending my evening?”
“It’s called small talk,” Sam mumbled, averting his eyes and focusing on a particular fallen sesame seed on his plate. “Not everything has to be about business.”
Silence made Sam look up. The sneer on Rik’s face pretty much spelled out the truth. Caught. His attempt at outmaneuvering a slippery eel of an attorney like Rik Bryant had been a stupid idea. But desperate times called for stupid measures.
Lillian Walker played on repeat in Sam’s brain. A circular subroutine of the pillow-perfect lips he’d tasted at The Electric. Sam needed to know if Lillian had said anything to Rik about what happened. Or better yet, maybe she’d canceled on Rik and intended to come to The Electric that night after all.
“Small talk involves the weather or mutual acquaintances or bullshit like that—this is not small talk. You’ve managed to bring up Lillian twelve times since we sat down.”
No, I haven’t . . . Shit. Yes, I have.
Rik’s sneer stretched into a creepy grin. “I get it now. You wanna nail her. And you think movie nights at The Electric get you in like Flynn.”
“She told you we’d met there?”
“No, but you just did. You mentioned The Electric at Old Henry’s and, I have to give it to you, Sam. When it comes to movies, you and Lillian are a match made in heaven. I put two and two together.”
Sam bit his tongue through a piece of Bristol roll. “Right. But good taste doesn’t equate to sex. How do you get that I’d like to get her into bed from my asking if the two of you are meeting up tonight?”
“Because, Sam, the only time you show any interest in a woman is when you want her for yourself.”
“Maybe I’d like to know if I need to buy a regular-size bucket of popcorn or the Kong-size one at The Electric tonight. It doesn’t hurt to plan ahead. You know, in case Lillian decides to skip dinner . . . ”
Suddenly, Rik slammed his hand down on the table. The glasses shook. The silverware jingled. Half the eyebrows in the restaurant raised.
“No! Bad Sam. No. Baaaad.”
“Are you correcting me like I’m a dog?”
“As your friend, yes. You are a dog. A hound. So stop it right now. Lillian is off-limits”
“That’s funny coming from you.”
Rik glared back at him. “I made the right decision in the wrong way. I know I hurt her. And that’s a good reminder to never let it happen again.”
“Someone’s grown a conscience,” Sam muttered.
“It happens. I’m sure it has something to do with the fact that I know Lillian will lose more than her job if she spends any more time with you.”
Sam had never been on the visiting team in one of Rik Bryant’s legal battles, but he suddenly stood on the opposite side of the field. The ruthless attorney came out to play—and Sam wasn’t about to lose. The gloves flew off. Helmets and shoulder pads and whatever else sports dudes used for armor did, too. Sam cracked his knuckles, and then tossed his napkin onto his half-eaten sushi. Big smile for effect.
“Sure. Like I’m going to believe a guy who faked colitis to get a continuance in court.”
Rik carefully set down that damn fork, and then folded his arms across his chest. “Preston made Lillian, and pretty much everyone else at Mythos, sign a nonfraternization policy.”
“So what?”
“So what? Oh, nothing much. Only it’s aimed specifically at you.”
Sam’s jaw dropped. “That’s insane.”
“Of course it’s insane. That’s the level this war of yours has reached. Sure, it would be difficult to enforce and wouldn’t stand up in court for more than a minute, but 99 percent of Mythos employees never have to worry about you having the hots for them so they all sign. Lillian included. But now she’s th
e 1 percent, and Preston will make her life a living hell if she breaks her contract.”
Shit. All Sam’s ingrained neuroses had been wrong. Lillian hadn’t slammed the brakes on their kiss because she wasn’t into him. And it probably didn’t mean his ability to read women had started to go as he approached his late thirties. Next could have been his abs and then, God forbid, his hair . . .
Back on point. Lillian’s line about her job and Sam being mutually exclusive, about how she wouldn’t risk her career for him—it wasn’t some kind of loyalty to Mythos holding her back. And it definitely wasn’t a lack of heat. It was literally the potential lack of a job.
Rage burned up Sam’s self-control. His chopsticks cracked under pressure against his plate. Preston was deliberately fucking things up for him again. It hadn’t been enough to steal his and Ravi’s hard work—Preston wanted to make Sam miserable forever. And all because Sam had said to his face what everyone else only whispered behind his back.
But this time he wouldn’t win.
“Screw Preston. Make room for Lillian in the legal department. I’ll pay her double what she makes at Mythos and then—”
“And then what, Sam? What’s your plan? Get her fired from Mythos by flirting your way into bed with her, hire her to work at Origin, and next year when you’ve moved on to your latest flavor of the month, then what?
“It’s not like that.”
“Let’s forget about what you think for a minute. Your plan of essentially buying Lillian will not go over well with her. Besides, I’m sure she has noncompete and nondisclosure clauses up the wazoo in her contract, so hiring her would be a real shitstorm. Listen to reason. This is me, the head of legal and the guardian of Origin’s gates, telling you absolutely not.”
Suddenly, Rik and Preston seemed one and the same. A mutated mess of asshole. “Since when are you a knight in shining armor to Lillian Walker?” Sam asked, pointing hard at Rik’s annoyingly calm face.
“Since I treated her like shit all those years ago. She deserves better. Better than you or me. Lillian wants a serious relationship. Long-term commitment, trust, stability. You know, those little homing beacons that send you running like the starting beep in the hundred-meter dash. You won’t give her what she needs and you know it, so don’t jerk her around.”
The guy was so blind he’d need a guide dog to get out of the restaurant. Sam wasn’t the one who’d left Lillian high and dry when Emily crooked her finger at him, then turned around fifteen years later and asked for her help. Sam had done nothing to Lillian, so for Rik to tell him not to jerk her around seemed comical . . . for about two seconds.
“Everyone and their stupid assumptions. You don’t know me or what I want.”
Rik laughed. One more time and he’d need facial reconstruction surgery. “I don’t need to know you. Your record speaks for itself. Type your name into any search engine, and all that pops up are photos of you with different women. Blondes, brunettes, redheads. Your only requirement is they be young and drop-dead gorgeous. Do you honestly think Lillian doesn’t know that?”
It felt right to call Rik a dick, but Sam knew it made him sound like a teenager so—
“Dick,” Sam said smugly. It slipped out.
“Oh, very mature.”
Rik had a point, and Sam sighed. “So what am I supposed to do? Pretend like I don’t know her? Stop going to The Electric?”
Pretend like I don’t think about her nonstop every second of every day?
“That’s exactly what you do. December will fly by, your off-season will end, and you’ll forget all about Lillian. Focus on your company and your video games and the line of women waiting to keep your bed warm. You’ll be happy with that.”
Those words hit Sam harder than any thrown punch. Rik saw him like the rest of the world did, and no matter how much Sam wanted to argue, he couldn’t. Rik being right or wrong or a dick or all three put together made no difference.
Sam had deluded himself. Maybe he and Lillian could have skirted the whole rival-companies issue, but at some point, they’d take a turn. A serious turn.
Sam sacrificed nothing by getting close to Lillian, but she had everything to lose. And every movie at The Electric, every time he would ask for one more night, meant he would force her to take a risk. Put what he wanted ahead of what she needed. It all sounded a lot more like college-Rik than Sam previously thought.
He stood up, glaring down at Rik. “I’ll back off. But if Lillian decides work isn’t quite so important and she’s willing to take a risk on me, let me make something clear—I won’t say no. You don’t really know me. No one does. I might surprise you and turn out to be exactly what she wants.”
He jerked out his wallet. After dropping a hundred onto the table, he slapped Rik on the back. The force sent a cherry tomato flying from Rik’s fork onto a nearby table. Everyone gasped and stared. Sam jerked his coat off his chair and then walked out of Rōru in a fit of . . . polite, orderly exiting. He was irritated, but not enough to make a huge scene.
Once outside, Sam took a deep breath of frigid, soy sauce-tinged air. It burned his lungs. He needed that. He needed a clear head. Voluntarily letting go of his chance with Lillian required reason, logic . . .
Wonder how long it would take for a PI to get enough dirt to get Rik disbarred, and Preston sent to prison?
Chapter 10
Dinner in a Shovel
Faint clucks from the egg-laying hens separated from the restaurant’s diners by an enormous glass window distracted Lillian. The gentle rhythmic noise distracted her so much she didn’t even notice when the waiter carefully placed a shovel on the table in front of her.
The head of an actual shovel. The kind used to dig holes or remove snow. But this one held pasta primavera instead of dirt.
The irony of it struck her. Her body-shaping underwear dug into the soft flesh of her waist while her stomach growled for food. She hadn’t eaten anything since the cup of slightly expired yogurt she called a lunch, and so, there she sat. Across from Richard Bryant in a hip new farm-themed restaurant and fully capable of eating an actual shovel full of food. Too bad her shovel only held a cup’s worth of pasta.
Lillian looked up at Richard. He was enthralled by reconstructing his deconstructed fish and chips served on what appeared to be the oil pan from a car. Or maybe a tractor. She shook her head.
Last time I ever trust five-star reviews on a site called Yak.
From Farm had popped up as another pretentious restaurant at the forefront of the trend of serving food on inappropriate objects. Soup in stilettos. Steak and potatoes on mossy logs. Fascinating in theory and patronizing in practice. At least it didn’t totally smell like a farm. The air carried an aroma of wood shavings mixed with grilled meat and chicken shampoo.
Lillian took a sip of wine and nearly choked when she noticed a young woman at the next table trying to push kebabs off the tines of a pitchfork. At least Lillian’s garden shovel seemed a little less complicated. She shook her head and grabbed her fork, then dug into her angel hair pasta noodles. All four of them.
“I had an interesting lunch with Sam today,” Richard said quietly, gnawing on a carrot chip.
Lillian speared a piece of zucchini stuck in a crevice at the bottom of the shovel. Victory. “Oh, really?”
“Yes. He has the hots for you.”
Her fork rammed into the shovel, screeching horrifically like nails on a chalkboard. Lillian cringed. Everyone in the damn restaurant cringed.
She looked up at Richard, only to find a bizarre grin on his face. No way in hell was she about to let him enjoy teasing her about her Sam situation.
“Um, I think you’re mistaken, Richard.”
“Nope, I’m not. You’re not the only one who can read people.”
Richard continued eating, but had plainly conc
octed some sort of clever trap for his amusement. He wanted her to lie. Or deny it—denial was like blood in the water and attorneys loved it. He was playing another one of his fucking games.
“What difference does Sam Owens’s temperature make to you?” Lillian countered. “Let me answer that for you—none. Zip. Zero. I’m helping you win back your wife through this convoluted scheme of yours which, by the way, doesn’t even make sense. How is Emily supposed to know we’re out together tonight? She’s not even here.”
“Small town, Lillian. Word travels fast, and this is Emily’s favorite restaurant. The wait-staff know her, and she has reservations for tomorrow night. So then our waiter, whom I plan on tipping insanely well tonight, will casually mention he saw me here with a certain attractive attorney.” He smiled and tapped himself on the temple. “See. I’m three steps ahead. And it does make a difference to me if you’re getting involved with Sam. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“Do I really need to say it? Pot? Kettle? Black?”
“I’m trying to makes amends here.”
“No, you’re using me to get what you want, and now it feels like you’re trying to call dibs on me. You can’t covet me because you feel like it now. If I want to spend time with Sam Owens and then watch it all blow up like an overloaded phaser, it’s none of your or anyone else’s damn business.”
Oh, why did I say that?
Not only did the comment take the peace pipe in her hand and shove it directly up Richard’s ass, but it also exposed her in ways she hadn’t anticipated. She did want to spend time with Sam. And maybe she really didn’t care if it all went down the drain at some point. Job be damned. Richard be damned. Damn the torpedoes, too. Maybe rushing full steam ahead to Sam and away from Richard was precisely what she needed.
