by Linda Seed
Chapter Five
Will had hoped—fervently—that he would be able to avoid Chris and Melinda as much as possible during their stay at Cooper House. They could do whatever it was they were going to do up at the house—he didn’t want to think about it—and he could stay in the guest house or out at the beach working with the snowy plovers. He could keep out of their way, and before he knew it they’d be gone.
That was the plan, anyway.
It was a good plan—one he was determined to stick to, until Chris texted him the day before their arrival, just as Will was walking through the main house to make sure it was ready.
Have dinner with me and Melinda tomorrow night, the message said. I want you to meet her.
This was problematic on more than one level. First, there was the Melinda-as-ex-girlfriend level. Then there was the fact that if Chris wanted Will to meet Melinda, he must be getting serious about her. And if he was getting serious about her, that meant she wouldn’t be going away any time soon.
He thought for a second and then answered the text:
Tomorrow’s no good. I have a date.
He didn’t, but Chris didn’t need to know that.
Excellent! Bring her. That way you won’t feel like a third wheel.
Terrific. Now, not only was he expected to have dinner with his ex, he also had to find a date. Unless he could still get out of it.
Thanks, but I can’t bring her to Cooper House for dinner, I promised I’d take her to Neptune.
He realized the folly of that ploy only when Chris answered:
Perfect. We’ll all go.
Will stuffed the phone into his back pocket and stared into the gleaming stainless steel surface of Chris’s fifteen-thousand-dollar Sub-Zero refrigerator. He saw his own reflection, pointed at it, and said, “You’re an idiot. You know that, don’t you?”
Will was out at Ryan and Gen’s new place helping to work on the front porch when Rose came by to look at dresses. Why she would come to the ranch to look at dresses, rather than going to one of those upscale boutiques women liked, he didn’t know.
He was painting the wood railing a nice eggshell white as Rose came walking up the driveway in a black miniskirt, some kind of clingy top, and shiny black boots with high, skinny heels. Well, to say she walked wasn’t quite accurate. She sashayed. Rose seemed to sashay everywhere, a fact Will found endlessly fascinating.
“Hey,” she called to him. She seemed friendlier and more upbeat than she had the last time he’d seen her. Maybe she was getting over the guy who’d dumped her. She looked appreciatively at the new two-story house Ryan had built for Gen on the ranch property, so they wouldn’t have to live with his family. “This place is looking really good.”
“Yeah, it’s coming along,” Will agreed.
“Where’s Ryan? He’s not leaving you to work on his house without him, is he?”
“No, no. He’s out back working on the deck.” The way she was looking at him, the way she tilted her head and gave him just a hint of a smile, made him puff up a little, as though the job he was doing were much more difficult and important than it was.
“Well, good. Make him give you a beer afterward, at least.”
“I plan to.” Will stood up from where he’d been hunched over the railing with his paintbrush and straightened his glasses, something he tended to do when he was nervous. Though why he’d be nervous right now, he didn’t know.
“So, how’d the thing go with your ex-girlfriend?” she asked him, leaning a hip against a part of the railing that hadn’t been painted. “Did she come to Cooper House yet?”
“This weekend.” Will shook his head in dismay. “And I can’t even lay low, because Chris wants me to have dinner with them tomorrow night. And I said I had a date, which I don’t. So now, not only do I have to see her while pretending we’ve never met before, I also have to come up with some excuse for why the date I never had in the first place didn’t show up.”
She grinned. “Why did you say you had a date when you didn’t?”
He felt himself blush just a little. The curse of having fair coloring. “I was trying to get out of the dinner. I said I couldn’t come because I had plans with someone.”
“And he said, ‘Bring her along. The more the merrier.’ ”
“Pretty much.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, and he saw a glimpse of the tattoo on her left shoulder, peeking out of her top. “You know, you’re supposed to be a smart guy, working on the PhD and all. But I could have told you that would happen.”
He set the paintbrush down on top of the bucket of paint and stuffed his hands in his jeans pockets. “Yeah, well. Now I have to confess that I made it up, or say my date stood me up. Or tonsillitis. I could say she has tonsillitis.”
“Or, you could just find a date.” She batted her eyelashes at him. Was she offering? The idea had some appeal.
“Rose? Are you volunteering?”
“Oh, hell no.” She laughed. “I’m finished with men. I thought I mentioned that.”
A car pulled up into the driveway, and Lacy Jordan got out. Apparently, all of them—all of the tight group of friends with Rose at its center—were coming to look at dresses.
“Hi, you two,” Lacy greeted them. “What’s up?”
“Well,” Rose began, “Will’s ex-girlfriend, who’s dating Christopher Mills, is coming to Cooper House this weekend, and Will’s supposed to have dinner with the two of them tomorrow night, which will be awkward, as you can imagine. Making things even more awkward, he said he had a date, which he doesn’t.”
“Ooh.” Lacy’s eyebrows rose. “That is awkward. I’d go with you, but I actually do have a date.”
“Well, thanks anyway,” Will said. There was that blush again.
“You should do it,” Lacy said to Rose.
“I can’t. I’m done with men.”
“That’s okay. You’d be pretending to be his date. Pretending doesn’t count.”
Somehow, Will had been cut out of the conversation, even though he was the one who faced possible humiliation at the dinner.
“Huh,” Rose said, looking thoughtful. “Would I get to visit Cooper House?”
“Uh … we’d be having dinner at Neptune, but we might get invited to the house afterward.”
“Ooh. I’ve never been to Cooper House,” Rose said.
“Gen said it was spectacular, after she had sex with Ryan there.”
“After …” Will said. “After she …”
“Be careful, Rose. You’re embarrassing poor Will,” Lacy said.
“Am I embarrassing you?” Rose asked.
“Well … kind of. Yeah.”
“Now you really do owe it to him to do this,” Lacy said.
What with Lacy’s dazzling blond-haired-blue-eyed beauty, and Rose’s dark mystery, and the talk of sex, Will found himself feeling a little bit dizzy. It wasn’t unpleasant.
“I guess I could do it,” Rose said, propping one fist on her hip. “But I don’t even know if Will wants me to. We kind of assumed.”
“Of course he wants you to,” Lacy said. “He needs a girl, and you’re a girl.”
“I am,” Rose agreed.
“Perfect.” Lacy rubbed her hands together in enthusiasm. “Will, should she meet you at Neptune, or do you want to pick her up?”
“Uh … I … I guess I’ll pick her up.”
“Great.”
Lacy gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder, and Rose kissed his cheek like she would a brother or a favorite uncle. Then they both went into the house to pick out dresses or make party favors, or whatever it was they’d come here to do.
Will was still standing there, a little bit stunned, when Ryan came around from the back of the house, his dark eyes alive with amusement.
“I heard the tail end of that,” he said. “Seems to me they didn’t really need you for that conversation.”
“I guess not,” Will agreed.
Ryan laughed, walke
d up to Will, and much more firmly than Lacy had, smacked him companionably on the shoulder. “Looks like you got yourself a fake date.”
It was interesting how that had happened, Rose thought. One minute she’d been chatting with friends, and the next, she had a date with Will Bachman. It was a fake date, but still. She was completely done with men—she’d decided that, and there would be no going back on it—but that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy a nice evening helping out a sweet guy.
And Will was a sweet guy. She didn’t know him very well, but what she did know of him was all good. She knew he was a good friend of Ryan, Jackson, and Daniel Reed, a friend of Gen’s who showed his art in her gallery. She knew he was roommates at Stanford with tech gazillionaire Christopher Mills, and had stayed friends with him over the years. And she knew he was smart as hell, with his near-PhD in bird DNA, or whatever it was he was studying.
Aside from that, he was cute, with the sandy blond hair and the trim physique that combined to create all-American surfer boy good looks.
“Hey. I heard you have a date with Will,” Gen said as Rose came into the house moments behind Lacy.
“Wow. That news moved fast,” Rose commented. “And it’s a fake date.”
Kate, who was already there when Rose and Lacy had arrived, said, “Aww. Does it have to be a fake date?”
“Yes. Yes, it does,” Rose replied.
Gen and Ryan were in the process of moving into the new house, which he’d had built on the Delaney Ranch property about a hundred yards from the main house where he’d grown up and where his parents, uncle, sister, and nephews still lived. The living room, an inviting space with wood floors, butter-colored walls, crown moldings, and a big fieldstone fireplace, was still cluttered with cardboard boxes full of Gen and Ryan’s various belongings. The big, comfortable-looking sofa in the middle of the room was strewn with a selection of bridesmaid dresses Gen’s wedding planner had sent over for their perusal. Amid the chaos of the dresses and the mess of unpacking, Rose’s friends were chatting and fingering dresses in the shades of blush and gray Gen had chosen as her wedding colors.
“No, it doesn’t have to be fake,” Lacy insisted. “That’s the beauty of a fake date—it doesn’t have to stay that way. You just see how it goes. If you like him, it can be a real date. If you don’t, you can just say you were helping him out, and walk away at the end of the night with no hard feelings.”
Rose was happiest like this, when she was with her friends: Kate, who ran the bookstore in town; Gen, freshly in love and excited about her upcoming wedding; and Lacy, the best barista in Cambria and possibly the town’s most sought-after single woman with her kind manner and her ethereal beauty.
“I will walk away at the end of the night,” Rose insisted. “Will seems like a good guy, and I’m glad to help him out. But men are too much trouble.”
“Aww,” Gen said, looking sympathetic, as she put a hand on Rose’s arm. “Jeremy really hurt you.”
“No, he didn’t,” Rose insisted. “Well, yes. He did. But it’s not about Jeremy.” Rose thought about how to explain. “It’s just … Look. I get that having a boyfriend would be nice, because of the sex, and because of the cuddling—I like cuddling as much as the next person—and because it’s nice to have somebody to go places with, and do things with … and to ask about your day and actually care what the answer is.”
“But?” Lacy perched on the arm of the sofa to avoid crushing the dresses. She had the little vertical line between her eyebrows that she got when she was worried.
“But, men … God. They come with so many demands. So many expectations. They want you to change for them, but with every change, you feel a part of yourself dying and being replaced with … with this artificial part that you don’t even recognize as you.”
“I don’t know if that’s fair,” Gen said. She was sitting in a little side chair next to the sofa, looking as concerned about Rose as Lacy did. “Ryan never asked me to change. Maybe the men who want to change you just aren’t a good fit. And maybe it’s not fair to generalize about all men everywhere.”
“I know. I know,” Rose said. She hadn’t intended to make a speech, but now that it was out there, she could feel the truth of her feelings thrumming through her veins. “I know there are good guys. And I know that both Ryan and Jackson are good guys. But … they’re not the kind of guys I seem to find, or who seem to find me.”
“That doesn’t mean you should give up,” Kate said. She had just emerged from the kitchen with glasses of iced tea for everyone. She handed a cold, sweating glass to Rose.
“And I just don’t see why it’s that important!” Rose insisted. “Why should I open myself up to yet another person who wants to criticize me? I mean, now that my mother’s been invited to this wedding, all she’ll be able to talk about is how I’ll never achieve anything in life if I don’t change my hair back to ‘a respectable color.’ ” She made air quotes with her fingers. “And change my makeup. And get rid of the piercings. And she knows a guy who’s just a genius with lasers who can take care of that ‘thing’ on my shoulder.”
“Oh, God,” Gen said miserably. “I’m so sorry about Sandra inviting her.”
“She didn’t know,” Rose reassured her. “The point is, to my mother, I’m nobody if I don’t play the part of the perfect society woman. And I think it should be enough for me to be me.”
“Oh, sweetie, it is enough,” Lacy said, her eyes moist, her face full of compassion and love. “You’re enough. If the men you meet can’t understand how wonderful you are, how unique and loyal and beautiful and … how special you are, then they don’t deserve you.”
Rose felt tears come to her eyes, and she wiped them away with her fingertips.
“I love you,” she said to Lacy. “Do you want to marry me?”
“I would, but … you know. Penises matter.”
“Okay,” Gen said brightly. “On that note, let’s figure out which one of these dresses will make you guys look least like a dollop of meringue.”
Will still wasn’t too sure about this date-that-wasn’t-a-date as he pulled his car up to Rose’s house the following evening. Going out with Rose—that part was fine. Better than fine. The trouble was seeing Melinda again, along with the stress of having to pretend not to know her.
He got out of his car and crunched his way over a bed of pine needles to get to the front door of the cottage. The weather was warm and pleasant with a cool breeze rattling the branches overhead. He smelled earth and pines and the tang of ocean air.
The house, with its dark wood siding and big lot, made him feel like he’d arrived for a stay at summer camp. A sign hanging on the front door said, NO SOLICITING UNLESS YOU’RE DROPPING OFF WINE OR WANT TO DO MY LAUNDRY.
He looked for a doorbell, didn’t find one, and knocked instead.
Rose opened the door and Will stood there looking at her, transfixed. She had the same multicolored hair in deep blues, purples, and pinks, and she was wearing some kind of short black dress with a skirt that poofed out like a bubble. Looking closer, he saw that the tiny pattern on the fabric was hundreds of little white cat faces. She wore heavy black boots with shimmery black tights. The top of a tattoo peeked out above the sleeve of the dress, and he found himself wanting to see the rest of it.
“Wow,” he said.
She did a little twirl. “Too much for Neptune?”
“No,” he said. “I like it. You look … fun.” And she did, but fun was only part of it. She looked sexy and dangerous and … Well. He was right the first time. Fun.
“Come on in while I grab my stuff.” She stepped back to let him come inside, and he looked around, speechless, enveloped by color and warmth.
“Is this place yours?”
“You mean, do I own it?”
He nodded.
“No. I’ve been renting here for the past couple of years. I love it out here with the trees, and the feeling that there’s no one else around—even though my neighbors are jus
t fifty yards up the road. If I ever got a chance to buy it, I’d do it in a second. Not that I make enough at De-Vine to buy a place.”
“I Dream of Jeannie,” he said when he finally thought of a way to describe the place.
“Excuse me?”
“Your place. It’s like the inside of Jeannie’s bottle, but with camping.”
She laughed, clearly delighted with his assessment, and her laugh made him feel things he didn’t fully understand.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “Just let me grab my purse and my jacket, and we’ll go.”
He didn’t want to date Rose Watkins, and she didn’t want to date him. They were clear on that. But when she took her hand away, he felt the lost warmth like a fond memory.
Chapter Six
They arrived at Neptune at seven twenty-five for a seven thirty reservation. The hostess, an attractive blonde Rose knew from the salon where she got her hair colored, told them that Mr. Mills was already at his table. She led them into the restaurant and toward a table at the window looking out onto Main Street.
Rose had expected Christopher Mills to be tall. Somehow, when you knew someone was a billionaire, you expected height. But in fact, he was no more than five foot eight. With her boots on, Rose was easily as tall as he was. Mills had bland Midwestern good looks, with a ruddy face and clear blue eyes. His date, Will’s ex-girlfriend, was a medium-sized brunette who was probably pleasant-looking in her natural state. But she wasn’t in her natural state; she’d clearly spent a lot of money polishing herself up to attain the next rung on the attractiveness ladder. Expensive clothes, expensive haircut, expensive makeup, and probably expensive plastic surgery, judging by the immobile monuments that were her breasts. The woman’s eyebrows alone probably represented fifty dollars worth of spa visits and waxings.
All of the requisite introductions were made, and when Chris saw Rose, when he allowed himself to fully absorb the sight of her, his eyes widened slightly with the impact. She was used to that reaction. He rebounded admirably, she noticed.
That first moment, when they stared or froze in discomfort, was a given. It was what they did next that would reveal whether they and she would get along.
