by Linda Seed
“So let her come back,” Rose insisted. “That doesn’t mean you have to answer the door.”
“I kind of do,” he said, scratching at the back of his head.
“Oh, bullshit. The goddamned thing probably isn’t even broken. And is there even a meteor shower tonight?”
“I have no idea.”
Will found himself caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, Rose was right: Melinda likely was inventing something to get Will away from Rose. On the other hand, Melinda was right: It really was his job to take care of anything going on at the house.
“It’s my job,” he told Rose.
Rose’s mouth puckered in anger like its purse strings had been pulled tight. “Is it your job to go over there any hour of the day or night? Are you on call all the time?”
Actually, he was. Usually, that didn’t translate into any kind of inconvenience, because the house most often stood empty. But when something did happen at odd hours, he was expected to take care of it.
Explaining that to Rose didn’t do much good. And the fact that she was standing there nearly naked, the rose tattoo rising gently up her smooth, bare shoulder, didn’t make it any easier for him to leave.
Gathering his self-restraint and resolve, he went into the bedroom and began getting dressed. She stood in the doorway, glaring at him.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “It’s probably something easy to fix. It’s probably just that she doesn’t know how to use the controls.”
“Are you believing the pure crap that you’re telling me right now?” Rose wanted to know. “Are you? Because you and I both know she’s luring you over there so she can pull another kiss in the wine cellar. Except this one’s going to be in the observatory.”
Will sighed and turned to her, becoming frustrated. Why didn’t she trust him? Why was she making this more difficult than it had to be?
“I’m not going to kiss her. And I’m not going to let her kiss me. And I’m not going back to her.”
Rose had anger all over her face, but under that was something else. Her eyes were getting red, and they were beginning to pool with tears. The sight of it made Will’s heart flop in his chest.
“Do what you want,” she said finally. “It’s not like we’re a couple.”
That did it. Now she wasn’t the only one who was mad. “Damn it, Rose. Yes, we are. And you know it. And if you’d just admit it, it would make things a hell of a lot easier for both of us. I have to go.” He pressed a kiss to her lips. “I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.”
He stuffed his feet into his shoes, grabbed his cell phone and his keys, and walked out the door. He hoped she’d still be here when he came back. And he hoped she’d still be wearing just the blanket.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rose watched him leave, and her heart pounded. Why had she been so petulant? Why had she whined at him like a spoiled child? Tending to Cooper House was his job. Was he supposed to ignore his job?
That’s what part of her was thinking. But another part, a louder, more insistent part, told her that this whole situation was a big, steaming pile of freshly laid shit. Melinda called with some crisis invented to manipulate him, and he came. Why hadn’t he dealt with her before this? And why was he letting her pull his strings like he was some kind of goddamned marionette?
He was the father of her child, for God’s sake, and he was rushing off to be with another woman. Rushing off while Rose was naked and wanting him, no less. Okay, the fact that he didn’t know he was the father of her child was her fault, maybe. And the fact that he was rushing off to fix something for Melinda—not to ravish her—should have made a difference. But in Rose’s hormone-addled brain, it felt like he was rejecting her because he preferred his ex. No one ever said relationships made sense.
And there was that word: relationship. Who was Will to unilaterally decide they were in one? Who the hell was he to brush aside her opinions on the matter and pronounce that they were a couple, like it was some kind of goddamned executive order?
Flustered and angry, she threw off the blanket and went into the bedroom to find her clothes. When he got back here after attending to Melinda’s every whim, she’d be damned if he was going to find her here, waiting in his bed. Screw that. As she put on her underwear, fastened her bra, then pulled on her jeans and her T-shirt, she grumbled under her breath, words like shithead and idiot. And then, turning her thoughts to Melinda, bitch.
When she was done dressing, she hunted for her shoes and put them on. Then she stood in the middle of Will’s living room trying to decide what to do. Go home? Go up to the main house and tell him off? Find Melinda and claw her damned eyes out? Trash the place first, and then do one or all of those things? The last one had some appeal, but it wasn’t very practical.
She settled on the first option: Go home.
She gathered her purse and keys, got into her car, and drove off of the Cooper House property. She got onto Highway 1 and headed south toward town. She realized she was starving, because she still hadn’t eaten dinner. Will had been planning to cook for her, but they’d become … distracted.
The idea of having to go through the work of cooking for herself before she could eat seemed unworkable. Pregnancy hunger was unlike any other hunger she’d ever known. It wasn’t just hunger, but also sickness, weakness, shakiness. An urgent, desperate need to devour as many calories as possible in as little time as possible, combined with an unfortunate aversion to foods she used to enjoy. A pain in the ass, was what it was.
Instead of going straight home, she turned off the highway and onto Main Street, and headed south through town toward Neptune. The place was expensive and she couldn’t really afford a pricey meal. But, who the hell cared? She needed to eat, she needed it now, and at least there were friendly faces at Neptune. Jackson would be there, and sometimes Kate dropped in at the restaurant after work to eat and to visit him.
The restaurant wasn’t busy, so she got seated immediately. When her server came, Rose dispensed with the drinks-first-food-later formalities and asked her to bring whatever she could get out here quickest. Within just a few minutes, Rose had a bread basket, a green salad, and a bowl of seafood bisque in front of her.
God, this was better, she thought, digging into the soup. But she still needed someone to talk to.
“Is Kate here tonight?” Rose asked the server when the woman, a cute brunette named Marcy, came over to check on her.
“No, sorry.” Marcy shook her head, and her short-bobbed hair bounced. “I haven’t seen her. Were you planning to meet her here?”
“Not really,” Rose said, a hot roll in her hand. “I thought if she was here, I might catch her.”
“Oh. Too bad. I can tell Jackson you’re here, though.”
Rose almost declined—surely Jackson was busy—but then thought better of it. “Sure. Would you do that? Thanks.”
She and Jackson had been friends almost as long as she and Kate had. Rose had been helping Jackson with the wine list for Neptune since he’d started his job here. He wasn’t a girl—and what she really needed was another girl to talk to—but she supposed he’d do in a pinch.
She had finished her soup and salad and had left the bread basket in ruins by the time Jackson came out to her table, his white chef’s coat nearly immaculate despite the fact that he’d likely been cooking all day.
“Hey,” he said amiably. “I see you liked the soup.”
“You could say that. If I wasn’t in public I’d have licked the bowl.”
“You here alone?” He looked around for any sign of Will or some other dining companion.
“Yep.”
“No Will?”
“Oh, no. No Will. Absolutely no Will. At all.” She raised an eyebrow at Jackson meaningfully.
“Uh-oh.”
“Yeah.”
Jackson looked uncomfortable. “Hey, you wanna … Should I sit down? You need to talk about it?”
“Sit,” Rose agreed. “Sit, sit. Even
though you’re not a girl.”
“That’s true.” Jackson pulled out a chair next to Rose and sat.
“Are you super busy?” Rose asked, thinking about how rude it was for her to come in here and dominate his time. “If you have to get back …”
“Nah.” He waved her off. “The place is pretty dead tonight. I’m mostly back there busting the sous chef’s balls just for sport. I think he’d appreciate the break.”
“Okay. Good. Thanks.” Rose nodded.
“So, what’s going on?” he prompted her.
She sighed heavily and shoved aside her empty soup bowl. “I was at Will’s place tonight. Naked. And his ex came in and insisted that he had to go fix the observatory roof. So he went! And there I was, feeling stupid, because, let me tell you, Jackson, naked women do not like to be abandoned in favor of random handyman jobs. Under any circumstances. And it’s even worse when that random handyman job is being done for somebody’s raging bitch of an ex-girlfriend, who has stated explicitly her intention to get back together.”
She paused and took a breath.
“Okay, that’s a lot,” he said, rubbing at his chin.
“I just … I don’t know. I might have overreacted. A little. But I don’t see why he has to be at her beck and call, especially when she’s been very clear that she wants him.”
“But he doesn’t want her,” Jackson said.
“How can you be sure?” Rose could hear the pathetic whine in her own voice.
“Because girls aren’t the only ones who talk to each other. Guys talk. And Will told me he’s not interested in her. Basically, he thinks she’s a pain in the ass but he’s too much of a gentleman to tell her that.”
“Well …” Rose threw her hands into the air in exasperation. “Why does he have to be so goddamned gentlemanly? Why can’t he just tell her to fuck off?”
“Because he’s Will,” Jackson said.
Rose sighed. “Yeah.”
“Say. Speaking of people being very clear about who they are and aren’t interested in, didn’t you tell Will that you don’t want a relationship with him? Didn’t you tell him that repeatedly?” Jackson looked at her like a scolding father.
“I … I guess I might have said that.”
“Uh-huh. So, can I assume that was maybe bullshit?”
Rose avoided his eyes. “Not bullshit. Exactly.”
“And yet here you are, fretting over whether he’s at Cooper House right now oiling Melinda’s joints. Or … something.”
Rose pouted. That was the only way to describe what she was doing: She was pouting. It didn’t make sense, not any of it. She couldn’t account for how she’d ended up like this, pregnant and in love with a guy who might or might not be oiling some other woman’s joints. Because, yes, she was in love with him. She didn’t want to be, but she was.
“I don’t really think he’s oiling her joints,” she said. “It’s not that. It’s just frustrating that she’s manipulating him, and he’s letting it happen. I don’t really believe for a second that there’s anything wrong with the observatory roof, or that there’s even a goddamned meteor shower tonight. She made it all up because she knew I was at the house, and she probably knew I was naked. Or that I would be soon.”
Jackson sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Well, I can see why you’re irritated. And I agree that he’s got to sort out this thing with his ex, and soon. But as far as him being faithful to you, you’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m telling you, he’s one hundred percent on board with whatever you two have got going on together. The guy is crazy about you.”
Jackson’s words made Rose feel warm all over. And she didn’t want to feel warm all over—not for a man. And yet, there it was.
She opened her mouth to tell Jackson the part she’d been holding back—the part about the baby—but she was sure that if Jackson knew, he’d tell Will. And she just wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
“Well,” she said.
“Listen,” Jackson said, piercing her with that Jackson look that made busboys and salad chefs scurry for cover. “I think you’d better tell him—sooner rather than later—that you’re in love with him. Cut the bullshit. It’s not doing either one of you any good.”
“But I—”
“Do not tell me that you’re not in love with him.” Jackson pointed a finger at her, making her freeze in midprotest. “Because we both know that’s a load of crap.”
Rose opened her mouth to argue, then let out her breath in a whoosh, her shoulders slumping. “Yeah. It is,” she admitted.
“Fine. So tell him already. Jeez.”
“It’s complicated,” Rose said.
Jackson gave her a stern side-eye. “You think it is, but it’s not. If you could just let go of whatever fucked-up narrative you’ve got going on inside your head that tells you it’s complicated, you’d see that it’s simple as hell. He loves you, you love him. That’s it. Simple.”
He got up abruptly, kissed her cheek, and said, “I’ve gotta go. The guys have probably set the kitchen on fire by now.” Without waiting for a response, he stalked off into the kitchen, leaving her alone with her unspoken justifications.
“Well … shit,” she said.
Any doubts Will had about whether Melinda was manipulating him vanished when he got a look at the problem in the observatory. Of course the roof wasn’t working. How could it, when it looked like the control panel had been hit with a hammer?
He picked up a broken piece of the panel from the floor and held it in his hand. “How did this happen, Melinda?”
She rolled her eyes. “How in the world would I know? It was probably the cleaning crew you had in here. You really should check their backgrounds more closely.”
He sighed and set the broken piece on a table that held maps of the night sky. “Chris has used that same cleaning crew for as long as he’s owned the place. There’s never been any problem before.”
“Well … I don’t know. Maybe Chris broke it the last time he was here and forgot to mention it.”
“He didn’t,” Will said.
All at once, Will felt like an idiot for being here. For leaving Rose just because Melinda wanted him to. For participating in this charade that he was just doing his job. For having dated Melinda in the first place. And finally, most importantly in the whole scheme of things, for having taken this job—this easy, overly comfortable, dead-end job—instead of vigorously pursuing his career the way he should have all along.
Will pushed past Melinda and walked out the door of the observatory, heading for the stairs.
“Where are you going?” Melinda demanded.
“I’m leaving.”
“What?! You need to come back here and fix this!” She was flustered, sputtering at him.
“I don’t know anything about the retractable roof, except how to use it. I’ll call a repair guy in the morning.” He didn’t slow his pace as he descended the stairs to the second floor, and then to the first.
“Will!”
He paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked up to where she stood on the landing.
“What? What do you want, Melinda?”
She began walking down the stairs toward him, and the expression on her face changed from anger and frustration to something softer. “I don’t know why we can’t just talk. About you and me. About us.”
“There is no us,” Will told her. “There’s no you and me. There’s just you, and there’s just me. And as for me, I’m leaving.”
As he reached the front door, she said, “I’m going to tell Chris.”
Will turned to face her. “Tell him what?”
“About what happened in the wine cellar.”
He felt his pulse quicken as his anger rose. He could feel his face turning hot. “What happened in the wine cellar was you making a pass at me and me turning you down. Do you really want to tell him that?”
“That’s not how I remember it.”
Will gaped at her in disbelief. �
�I don’t know why you’re doing this,” he said finally. “I don’t get it. You’re with Chris. I don’t see the point.”
She came the rest of the way down the stairs and stood just inches in front of him, so close he could smell her perfume and feel the warmth of her body.
“I don’t want to leave Chris,” she said, her voice a gentle murmur. “He and I work. We just … we work. But you.” She moved even closer so that the fabric of her blouse brushed against his shirt. “What you and I had … We could have that again, Will. He wouldn’t have to know.” Her voice was a whisper against his cheek. And then she moved just a fraction and pressed her lips to his.
With her mouth on his, her breath mingling with his, her body pressed against him, he felt …
Nothing.
He put his arms on her shoulders and pushed her back from him, gently but insistently. “You need to stop this. I’m with Rose.”
And he walked out the front door and closed it behind him, hoping to God that Rose hadn’t left. If she had, it would be because he’d been a fool to leave her in the first place.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Rose and Will didn’t see each other again until the following night, at the wedding rehearsal. The rehearsal itself, held at the Cambria Pines Lodge, was a straightforward affair, and both of them were kept busy, she in her capacity as a bridesmaid, and Will as a groomsman. They shot looks at each other—hers angry and seething, his pleading—from across the gazebo where the ceremony would be held, but they didn’t get a chance to speak. Or, more accurately, Will didn’t get a chance to speak, because every time he approached Rose, she had some urgent matter to attend to, about who was going to hold what bouquet, or about how the ring bearer—one of Ryan’s nephews—should walk, rather than run, down the aisle.
It was possible she was avoiding him.
At the rehearsal dinner afterward, though, she couldn’t put him off any longer. Ryan’s family had reserved a private room at Neptune, and there were place cards specifying who would sit where. Why there would be place cards at the rehearsal dinner, Will didn’t know—but he was grateful for it, because Mrs. Delaney had put him next to Rose.
