by Liz Crowe
“Fine.” She shouldered past him. Slamming the suitcases shut, she stayed dry-eyed to her amazement. Turning slowly, she crossed her arms over her chest. “But just so you know, the amount of money she was willing to pay me to get out of your life meant nothing. I walked out of her snotty country club lunchroom fully prepared to tell you about this. Until, of course, I called you.”
He shook his head, rubbed his eyes, as if not understanding what she meant. “Wait, what? When did you call me?”
“Why does it matter?” She tried to pick up both boxes, and grab one of the suitcases. And managed to simply dump the contents of both cardboard containers to the floor. That breached the dam of tears. She slumped to the floor, face in her hands. Dustin was at her side in a second, kissing her, holding her close. She let him, just for a minute.
“Shh, my Helena, please don’t cry.”
But no amount of his soft voice, coddling or comfort meant anything to her anymore. She had no business here, with him, in this life. It was over. Valerie’s chipper voice on the other end of the phone was simply one hint too many.
Don’t be stupid, Helena. You love him.
Yes, she assured herself. But I can’t do this anymore. Can’t pretend he won’t always be thinking about her. About the woman who for whatever reason had answered his damn phone today. After his mother had claimed her son and his old fiancée, she of the chipper “no, this is Valerie”, were “together”.
Dustin felt encased in cotton. Noises were muffled, his vision seemed fuzzy around the edges. He held her, let her cry it out, but he sensed the small bit of control he still had over his life slipping from him. “Shh,” he crooned once more. But wasn’t really shocked when Helena wrenched out of his arms.
She crawled to the boxes, started throwing all her shit back into them. He watched, his arm resting on a bent knee, as if observing someone else’s woman packing up to leave. He had no words. The weird, somewhat charged moment between him and Valerie earlier still rattled him. The extreme stress of the last weeks piled on, heaping more tension on top of the quivering ball of nerves that wore his suit. He didn’t even know himself anymore.
She stood. He stared at her, with what must be a dull look on his face. He didn’t have the energy to fight her anymore. Everything he had was wrong now. His brewery, his love life, all of it. All vanished in the blink of a single loose blood clot that felled his once powerful father. He shut his aching eyes, hoping he could wish it all back the way it was.
“I’ll be going to Planned Parenthood. Tomorrow,” she stated.
Pain shot through him. He clamored to his feet. “Stop. Stop it right now, dammit. This is ridiculous. Put this shit back. Let’s eat something and calm down.” His heart pounded.
“No, Dustin. It’s not ridiculous. It’s just reality. I’m glad I figured it all out now. Before I really got hurt.”
“Wait!” he yelled, but it only came out a whisper. “I love you,” he said to the closed door, then fell back on the bed, more exhausted than he’d ever been. Sleep. That was what he needed. A few hours, then he’d find her. Figure all this out. Make it right.
His dreams were a cacophony of emotion, swirling with faces of the people he loved. He woke with a start, thinking he heard a baby cry. He reached for his phone. He needed to call Erik. He would talk sense to her. But remembered his phone was lost, missing or… He flopped back on the pillow as a migraine gripped his temples. He’d sort this out. Tomorrow. He was certain of it.
Chapter Seventeen
Two Years Later
You again? She typed out an answer when Erik dinged her on Skype for the thousandth time. She had tried to will him out of her life. Tried to spare him the lame, useless way she had spiraled downward since losing Dustin. But he would not leave her in peace.
Who else?
What is it? She stretched her arms up and contemplated yet another day filled with work, home, sleep, lather, rinse, repeat.
Just wondering if you had heard the latest.
About what?
I’m the new brewmaster for Prufrock.
Great. Enjoy it.
And I’ve convinced Dustin to hire you back.
Her skin prickled. I have a job. I just got a promotion as a matter of fact.
It was a solid five minutes before he replied. Why won’t you talk to him, Helena? He is miserable.
He’s married, Erik, remember? So his misery is no longer my problem, it’s Valerie’s.
What the hell happened anyway?
She bit her lip and tried to come up with a reason to keep holding the whole thing back. And came up short. They were together just after his father died. His mother took me to a lovely lunch to tell me because he couldn’t do it.
How do you know that’s really what went down? You know how his mother is.
The blinding rage she’d felt that day, when Valerie’s smooth voice had answered Dustin’s phone, rushed back into her aching chest. She shut her eyes, tried to stay calm.
She’d driven away, not to the clinic but to her friend Julia’s house, and cried for two days straight. And her period had shown up finally, reminding her that the illusion of a potential reunion was just that. And she’d made him take his stupid, expensive car back too.
Erik, I didn’t marry him for a reason. And his mother gave me one. Let it go. He married someone else pretty quickly so I’m guessing he wasn’t exactly pining for me.
I don’t know why he did it either but I do know he needs you. I need you to help me get the brewery straightened out again.
Listen to me, Erik. I don’t care. I’m tired. I have a job. You have a life. Go live it and leave me alone.
She logged out before he could respond and sat, staring out the window of her office back at TriCity Distribution. She needed to get home and pack. It was beer fest week out in Denver and her role as sales manager for a growing distribution company meant a whole different set of tasks for that event. She’d tried to get out of it, knowing the memories would likely kill her. But Grant had insisted. He was getting a little insistent about other stuff too, and she shifted in chair, recalling the fairly forgettable kiss they’d shared late last night in his office. God, she did not want him. But the man she loved would never be hers. That much was crystal clear.
She sat up nearly all night after getting her stuff ready for the early flight, staring at nothing and wondering how she’d gone from loved and loving to alone and miserable. The fact that she knew she could shoulder a lot of the blame did not make her feel any better.
*
“Valerie!” Dustin yelled down the steps, dressed only in trousers and a tee shirt. “Where the fuck are my shirts?”
“Here.” His wife ran up to him, holding a bunch of plastic-swathed cotton. “Sorry.” She put an arm around him.
He tried not to visibly flinch and move away. “I’m, uh, sorry. You know. About last night.”
She blushed and nodded. “It’s fine.”
“No, it’s not. Stop being so goddamned accommodating. I was drunk, and rough, and I shouldn’t have…” He groaned at the memory. He’d gotten the food business back on an even, profit-making keel finally, had convinced Erik to come to Michigan and run production for the brewery, and had gotten shitfaced drunk last night, come home and rough-fucked his wife, pretended it was Helena, which pissed him off more, then pretended it was Erik, which made him come so hard he nearly passed out.
And now, he was going to put on a suit, and pretend to be in charge of a company he didn’t want, and repeat the whole cycle again. His life was a shithole, covered in a layer of puke. And he had no one to blame but himself. Well, himself, and Helena.
The day he’d gotten out of his car still wondering where his phone had disappeared to and had seen Helena furiously stuffing boxes into her car had been the start of the whole mess. He’d spoken with her exactly one time since, when she had resigned her job at the brewery and given him his car and condo keys back. After spending a solid three months begging
her to talk to him, sick with worry about her and frantic with the need to get some kind of explanation, he had woken, pulled on his stupid suit, gone to his stupid office and called Valerie. He’d taken her out to dinner and for reasons he still did not quite understand, given her back the engagement ring. He’d called Erik that night, and nearly had a nervous breakdown on the phone but the guy had no answers either. Helena was aggressively ignoring them both.
Valerie and his mother had wasted no time getting his ass to the altar. And now, here he was, fuzzy and sluggish from too much booze and too little happiness, his wife whispering excuses for his own behavior in his ear, and his brain awash with misery of his own making. Nicely done, Prufrock. Married is what you wanted to be. Now you are. Deal with it and be a fucking man.
Erik was due in over the weekend and then he’d be out at Denver on their behalf. He said he would find Helena and force her to talk to him and was even convinced he could get her to come back and work with him at the brewery. But Dustin no longer cared. Because to care meant pain beyond anything he had frame of reference for, and besides, he had a good life now. Food on the table, house immaculately clean, a willing sex partner, no matter when or how he wanted it. Man up, Prufrock, and forget her. Live this life you have chosen for yourself.
But he couldn’t. Helena’s voice, face, body, laughter, smartass attitude rose in his head daily, sometimes hourly. Hence the booze and the angry sex and the hole of shit that he raised his head from daily, suited and ready for work.
Chapter Eighteen
Denver, Colorado
The buzz in the huge Denver convention hall reached deafening levels. Helena tried not to look too obvious glancing around yet again for him. She hadn’t seen Dustin in nearly two years. But nothing had softened the harsh edges of her longing for him. Even painted with a bright red coat of anger, the need to see him, touch him, hear his voice choked her most days. She nodded to the media guy still talking to her, no longer listening to anything he said.
Her head-splitting hangover and extreme disbelief that he’d really not show competed for attention in her brain. When a sudden shift in the crowd allowed her to catch a glimpse of a familiar set of broad shoulders and long blond hair, she narrowed her eyes.
Before she could blink, Erik had a strong arm around her waist, his deep German-inflected voice in her ear. She stiffened at his touch as she nearly gagged on the glut of memories his touch encouraged. Dustin. She closed her eyes and let him hold her as the crowd moved around them.
“Let’s sit, shall we?” He gestured for the media gaggle around them to disperse and led her to a couple of seats near the aisle. As the place filled in and got even louder from the fans at the back who had to stand to see the awards ceremony, she remained acutely aware of his touch.
When his hand landed on her leg, she shifted. It didn’t budge. She kept up her inane conversation, completely unaware of what she said or whom she spoke to. Her head spun with too much beer, emotion and now no small measure of something she finally identified as lust.
She took a second to look up at the tall blond specimen who had parked his hot palm on her thigh.
“You’re a day late.” This was not an auspicious start to a working relationship. She let anger replace the renewed sexual tension he’d created despite the huge crowd. She’d made a decision somewhere in the depths of yet another sleepless night. She would come back to Prufrock, work with Erik and get the brewery back on track. She was miserable at TriCity. The challenge of marketing the brewery had been immense but much more satisfying. Erik had claimed Dustin would stay away from them, let them make all major decisions together and not interfere. She’d made him promise that Dustin wouldn’t be around either. Because seeing him in all his perfectly married glory would kill what was left of the human in her. She could be the marketing robot, and wanted to be that again, but not if it meant she had to interact with him in any way.
She’d resigned from TriCity, turned the beer fest tasks over to her assistant and agreed they would announce the new arrangement out in Denver at one of the many after parties.
She glanced down at Erik’s arm, attached to the palm that was practically caressing her leg. On impulse she covered it with hers, swallowing the sudden rush of alarming desire. She picked up his hand and put it firmly back on his own leg. “Surely you didn’t mean to do that.” She forced herself to look angry.
He smiled faintly, not meeting her eyes. “Yes. Actually, I did.”
She frowned, looking straight ahead. The man was too charming for his own good. She’d forgotten. It had been a long time since she’d seen him. She shook her head. This was her moment. She had to convince this crowd, the media, her colleagues, that Prufrock was back.
Her heart raced but she couldn’t figure out whether from excitement or fury at Erik’s possessive behavior. She refused to make eye contact with him and instead watched the announcer on the stage and ground out, “I needed you here yesterday.”
“Don’t be angry.” His lips brushed her ear, made her skin pebble. “I’ve got an alibi. Things are going to be looking up for Prufrock Brewing.” He clutched her thigh once more, claimed it as his territory while his voice rumbled in her ear. “We need to talk later. Alone.”
Her entire body zinged at his words. He had no business changing the tenor of their newly forged professional relationship. She tried to focus.
She must have blocked his gorgeousness from her memory banks. Tall, nearly six foot five, the broadest shoulders she’d ever seen on a man, long blond hair tied with a strip of leather, square jaw covered with light, reddish beard and those eyes—the term “lethally blue” floated through her increasingly foggy brain. She shook her head and kept frowning, blocking out the rest. The memory of his incredible body, talented lips and hands and his face beneath her, curtained by the fall of her hair.
Suddenly the pressure on her leg eased. Erik stood, put a finger to her cheek and gave her a knee-melting smile before going up to the stage. What the hell? Erik? National Brewer of the Year?
She gulped, clapped and acknowledged the congratulations of those all around while her eyes locked on his amazing, denim-covered ass moving down the aisle. Her entire body broke out in chills.
The crush of media and fellow brewery owners afterward frustrated her. She got separated from him at one point and she was resigned to another evening shaking hands, drinking too much and falling into her hotel bed alone. Tears burned behind her eyes.
“Helena! Hold up!” She turned and came face to face with him, closer than was necessary, but suddenly she didn’t care anymore. “Can I talk to you a minute?” The immediate crowd around them fell silent. She frowned as her skin pebbled, scalp tingled. Shit. Get control of yourself. He’s just being nice. He probably has some size-two skinny bitch fan club waiting somewhere. How could he not? He couldn’t be interested in her anymore. They were friends now, at her insistence. Just that. They were colleagues. And besides, the extra pounds she carried around lately put her right out of serious consideration as “sexy” anymore.
She lifted her chin, resisted the urge to tug on her too-tight shirt, and gave him a look she prayed he’d interpret as cool and aloof, not panting and horny.
Horny? Jesus, where did that come from? She tried to move away, keep her balance, maintain her distance.
“Congrats, Erik. A celebrity now, eh? Glad your salary negotiations are done already.” She gasped when he took her arm and guided her firmly away from the cameras, his lips inappropriately close to her ear. Her skin blazed at his touch. She bit the inside of her cheek.
“Remember, we need to talk. In private.” She gulped and let herself be led out of the cavernous hall filled with increasingly drunken idiots, past the line of security, and into a darkened hallway. Once they were alone, she pulled her arm out of his grasp.
“What the hell? We need to be in there, you know, with the press?” Her throat closed up when she made the mistake of meeting his eyes. The deep sapphire snap of
his gaze held her, bringing back way too many memories of their time together. She repressed a groan at the long-blocked images racing through her skull.
Reaching out, she put a hand on his face, ran a finger across the rough red of his jaw, unsure why she wanted to touch him, but needing it more than she needed to breathe. He closed his eyes. The moment stretched between them. She remembered his reticence when it came to anything resembling emotion and decided to speak first.
“I have no idea what you’re doing right now, but…” Her voice barely registered in her own ears. The pounding heart she’d sustained all day grew louder. “I should go.” She took a step to the side. Go. Now. Before you make a giant mistake. Before you go any further with this man.
He mirrored her, let his tap handle-shaped trophy fall to the floor. He cradled her face in his huge hands. “I don’t know either, but—” He swallowed, looked up at the ceiling, then back at her. “I’m going with it, if that’s okay with you.” His lips hovered over hers. She could barely breathe. The sounds of the fest echoed down the empty hall. Familiar odors of stale beer stung her nose. “Because if I can’t kiss you in the next five seconds, I will make a huge, embarrassing scene.” His infectious grin forced a smile and a sigh when he finally touched his mouth to hers.
It started out tentative, but picked up urgency. He parted her lips with his tongue, kissed her so hard her ears rang. He kept his body separate at first, but by the time he’d swept into her mouth, she had no more qualms.
She wrapped her arms around him, clutched him close and moaned when he moved her against the wall. Tearing herself away, she struggled to get control. He touched his amazing tongue to her cheek, tasting her tears. “I can’t,” she murmured, eyes tightly shut. The unmistakable bulge of his erection pressed hot against her. “I. You— This is…” Dustin’s face passed across her vision.
