by Doyle, Mae
There was a pod coffee maker in the back not being used, and I’d dusted it off and brought it out on a small table, setting it up by the sofa. Not only had I sprung for some regular and decaf pods, but also some that made hot chocolate and apple cider. He wanted his office to be homey and comfortable, and I had a pretty good feeling that I’d nailed it, although I wouldn’t know for sure until he told me what he thought.
Nick turned back to me, a little smile on his face.
“You did all of this? While I was gone?”
I couldn’t read what he was thinking, but I nodded.
“Just you and Linda?”
“Oh, don’t drag me into it,” she said, spitting the words like they were daggers. “I had absolutely nothing to do with all of the changes that she made. I told her that you would hate them and that she was making a huge mistake.”
“You did?” Nick raised his eyebrows and turned to look at his aunt. My stomach dropped and I suddenly realized that I may, just maybe, have gone over the top. I had a tendency to do that, I guess.
Linda looked pleased with herself. “I did.”
“Good to know that this was all Katie,” he said, turning back to me. “Because I love it. “It’s amazing and fresh and light and I can’t believe how much work you put into this.”
“Really?” My jaw was practically on the floor and I made the conscious effort to close my mouth so that he wouldn’t think I was crazy. “You really like it?”
“Of course I do,” he said. “What’s not to like? My patients are going to feel so much more at home, I can just feel it. It’s…great. Much more me, I think, even though I didn’t really know that something was missing.”
We stared at each other for a moment, and I noticed how he got tiny little smile lines at the corners of his eyes when he was looking at me. I had them, too, I was pretty sure, and while most people hated theirs, I loved mine.
I wanted to laugh my way through life, and the thought of having someone with me to laugh with was thrilling.
“Well, I have a surprise that I’m sure you’re going to love,” Linda said, her voice so strong and confident that I somehow managed to tear my eyes away from Nick. “Actually, I have a few surprises, but we’ll space them out throughout the day so that you don’t get overwhelmed, okay?”
Could this be with she had been so sneaky about being on the internet for the past week? I couldn’t help but notice how quickly she shut everything down when I walked by, like she was afraid of me seeing what she was up to.
Had she ordered her nephew a gift? Was her heart really big enough for her to think outside of herself and do something like that for another person?
I wasn’t sure, but the good feeling that was growing in me from the way Nick kept looking at me had me interested.
Maybe Linda wasn’t so bad.
Maybe she and I just got off on the wrong foot.
Call it the holidays or the crazy amount of endorphins running through my body, but I honestly wanted to see the surprises that she had planned.
I’d forgotten one little thing: Linda hated me.
With the fire and passion of one thousand suns.
When she pointed over our heads at the front door, a wicked grin on her face, I should have known better than to turn around.
Chapter 24
Anything would have been better than what walked through the door.
The mailman bringing a present that she’d ordered him as a surprise? Great. That would be great.
A food delivery from his favorite restaurant to remind him that, even though Americans couldn’t make pizza and pasta like the Italians, we still made a mean French dip? I would have loved that and been very happy to watch him eat something that I didn’t make.
A giant singing telegram of a heart welcoming her nephew back into the country? Fine, whatever. It definitely wasn’t top of my list, but it wasn’t anywhere near the bottom.
It wasn’t what walked in.
Well, walk is a relative term.
She wiggled.
Sara.
All six foot whatever of calves and perfectly shaped thighs, professionally tweezed eyebrows, and a salon dye job wiggled her way in through the door, gasping when she saw Nick.
Like she thought that he’d died and come back from the dead, not just come back from a trip to Italy.
“Nick! You made it home!” She cried, wiggling as fast as she could across the office to him. She had on the same teetering heels that she always wore, and I was watching with horrified, detached interest as she grew closer and closer.
Like a charging rhino on the savannah, and I didn’t have a single place to hide.
What happened next all happened so quickly that if I had blinked, I may very well have missed it all. Sara obviously didn’t look down at her feet to see where she was going, because if she had, she would have seen the rug.
She wouldn’t have tripped on its edge.
And if she hadn’t tripped on its edge, she wouldn’t have fallen face first towards us, her arms pinwheeling out from her body.
I had the sudden thought that this was what I looked like that day when I fell coming out of the bodega, but I didn’t have very much time to entertain that thought, because she was grasping for something, anything, and I happened to be within arm’s reach.
To be fair, so was Nick, and although I didn’t want to be crushed to death by his supermodel ex-girlfriend, the thought of her landing on him and smashing him to the ground was even more terrifying.
I’d like to think that I stepped in front of him and took one for the team, but that isn’t what happened. I never moved, unless you count the fact that my mouth fell open in horror and I felt adrenaline start to course through my body as she fell.
Maybe she corrected course in mid-air in the hopes that her landing on me would squash me flat and get me out of the picture, but it all happened so quickly that I don’t think she even had time to consider what was happening.
She was just falling, and I happened to be in the way.
“Ahh!” She screamed, at the same time that I shouted “no!”.
Nick didn’t move, or if he did, he wasn’t fast enough, because the next thing that I knew, I was falling backwards, Sara grabbing onto me like I was a floatation device and we had just been in a plane wreck.
I had the floating, disembodied thought that it was good that she only weighed about 120 pounds soaking wet because otherwise this was really going to hurt.
But I was wrong. Sure, she didn’t weigh very much, but an extra twenty or fifty pounds wouldn’t have much much of a difference when I slammed back onto the ground, my head hitting the floor with a hollow thud.
Immediately, my vision went dark, but then everything exploded into light as bright fireworks shot off behind my eyelids. Every muscle in my body hurt and I pushed her off of me, trying to free myself from under her.
When I opened my eyes, I saw Nick grab her and lift her to her feet. She turned and clung to him, and I shut my eyes again.
If that was what I was going to have to see, then I didn’t want to see it. They could enjoy their little reunion and I’d just be here on the floor until everything was over, then I could crawl off to my office where I could examine all of my life choices in fine detail. Alone.
“Katie, are you okay?” Nick’s voice cut through my self-pity and I opened my eyes into slits — just enough to see that he was bending over me. He ran his hands along my arms and I shivered, then he carefully slid one under my head and helped me sit up.
His arm was around my waist and I had to focus hard not to turn into him and snuggle up against his chest.
“Can you sit? Can you stand? That was a crazy fall,” he said to me, slowing pulling me up. “Linda, get an icepack,” he said, and I heard her scurry away.
The throbbing in the back of my head was like nothing I’d ever experienced before, and I kept my eyes closed tight as he carefully led me across the office to the sofa. When I sat down, the jol
t of moving increased my pain, and I moaned a little.
“Look at me, Katie,” he said, and I forced my eyes open. If I was going to die, which definitely felt like a possibility, at least I would die looking at the sexiest man in the world.
He held a finger up in front of my face and moved it back and forth. I watched him, then winced as he gently touched the back of my head.
“You’re not bleeding, not concussed, but you’re going to have a hell of an egg back there later,” he told me, grabbing the ice from Linda when she walked up. “I want you to keep this on the back of your head so that it will keep the swelling down and help with the pain, okay?”
I nodded, then immediately wished that I hadn’t as more bright lights exploded in my vision. “I’m glad you’re back,” I told him, reaching out with my free hand to rest it lightly on his. “We missed you around here, you know.”
It felt bold and maybe a little stupid to tell him these things, but when you may not make it to the next day thanks to a terrible head injury, there really didn’t seem to be anything for me to lose.
“I missed you,” he said, or at least I thought that he did, but then he was standing up and turning around to look at Linda and Sara. “Are you okay?” He asked Sara, but I noticed that he didn’t go to her, didn’t try to comfort her.
“I’m fine. She broke my fall,” Sara sniffed. “I was just so happy to see you back, Nick, and when your aunt called me and told me how much you’d missed me, I just had to come see you right away.”
Wait, what?
That made me open both eyes, the pain be damned, and I looked at Linda, who had a smug expression on her face. She caught me staring and threw me a wink, making my blood boil.
“It was just so nice of you to be missing me while you were gone, Nick,” Sara purred, stepping closer to him. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
I was going to throw up, I knew it.
“Hold on, Sara,” he said, putting his hands up as a barrier between them. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t ask my aunt to have you here. I’ve tried my best to make it clear time and time again that you and I are over.”
She paused for a moment, but I knew women like her. She wasn’t going to believe him.
“You don’t mean that, do you? Not really, right? Nick, you know that you and I are good together.” She reached for him and he grabbed her hands, squeezing them a little and then pushing her gently back.
Yes. I wanted to jump up and scream, but that much movement was sure to make me throw up. Besides, I’d never been the type of person to rub it in someone else’s face when I won something.
That would come later, in private.
“Sara, you’re great, but we’re over. I’m sorry that Linda called you here today, but there’s no reason for you to have come. I appreciate all that you do for Marshall Medical, but this isn’t going to continue.”
“You’re insane,” she said, her eyes darting to me and then back to him. “You’re insane if you think that she can give you one half of what I can! You and I are good together, Nick, and you’re stupid if you’re willing to throw all of that away.”
For a moment, he was silent, and even though I could only see the side of his face, I could tell how sad he looked. He was staring at her like she was someone that he didn’t know anymore.
“Goodbye, Sara,” he said, and she turned, huffing, to leave.
Her shoes were loud and angry as she stomped — not wiggled, for once — across the room and to the door. There she paused, her hand on the handle, and looked back at us for just a moment before shaking her head and walking out.
All three of us were silent as we watched her go by the window. I knew that I should feel bad for her, or sorry that she had just had her heart crushed, but I couldn’t.
Nick had stood up to her for me. He’d told her to get out and she had. I just hoped that he really wanted me the way I wanted him, that our late night texting wasn’t just a joke to him.
“Are you okay?” Nick asked, turning back to me. My fingers were going numb from holding the icepack to the back of my head, but for the first time in a very long time, I felt wanted, and I nodded.
“I’m fine,” I told him, slowing standing up. “I mean, I’m a little worse for the wear, but you’re back and I’m fine.”
“She’s not fine,” Linda said, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.
What this woman had against me, I would never know, except I had a pretty good feeling that she hated me just because I wasn’t Sara.
“What do you mean?” Nick asked her. He sounded tired, which could have been from the jetlag, but it was also equally possible that he was just tired of putting up with her crap.
“She’s not fine. This…Katie is a liar. She’s been lying to you from day one and there’s no reason to think that she’s going to stop now.” Linda’s voice was stronger and more confident than ever, and even though I heard every single word that she said, I almost couldn’t believe that she was actually saying what I thought she was.
It didn’t make sense. I’d done everything I could to cover my tracks.
I’d been so careful.
But then Nick turned to look at me and it was like everything that Linda had just said made sense to him.
Chapter 25
Nick looked back and forth between the two of us like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.
“What do you mean, Linda?” He asked, and I noticed, for the first time since meeting him, that his voice was shaking a little. “What do you mean that Katie’s been lying to me?
Linda looked triumphant. She pulled herself up to her full height, obviously enjoying the fact that she was finally getting the attention and appreciation that she deserved. I could tell that she was getting ready to let it all out, but she took a deep breath first.
Ruining someone’s life requires a lot of oxygen, and she was getting ready to do just that.
“Tasty Foods doesn’t exist,” she said, finally looking from her nephew to me. As soon as those four words were out of her mouth I felt my shoulders sag. It didn’t make any sense.
How did she know?
“That’s a serious accusation, Linda,” Nick said, looking between the two of us. When I didn’t say anything, he turned back to his aunt. “You want to tell me how you came up with that?”
“I’ve been looking into Katie while you were gone,” she said, and suddenly all of the times that she had minimized her screen when I walked by made sense. It wasn’t porn. Or, if it was, it wasn’t porn most of the time.
If she was looking me up online or trying to find out information about Tasty Foods then of course she wouldn’t want me to know exactly what she was doing.
“The Tasty Foods website was just recently set up and all of the pictures on it are from a stock photo site. None of it is real, Nick.” She took a step towards him and put her hand on his shoulder. “That’s why I invited Sara here — so you would be able to remember what it was like to be with someone who wasn’t a liar.”
Nick shrugged her hand off of his shoulder and turned to me. “Is this true, Katie? Is Tasty Foods not real? Did you make it up for some reason?”
I didn’t know what to tell him.
Obviously, I had to tell him the truth, but the thought of him knowing the truth about me was enough to make me feel sick.
“Tasty Foods is not real,” I finally admitted, and I watched in horror as Nick’s eyes narrowed. “I had originally hired Nu Wave Catering to cater your first luncheon but they had to back out the night before and I knew that I couldn’t leave you hanging because I really needed this job.”
“So you lied about it.” His voice was flat, like he wasn’t quite sure if he could believe what I was saying to him, and I nodded. “Who made the food? Where did you buy it?”
I thought about how terrifying it had been when the cinnamon slid out of the jar and plopped into the stew and how scared I had been making food for him and his friends o teat, and I realize
d that none of it even compared to how I felt right then.
“I made it,” I told him, and the look of surprise on his face was obvious.
“You?” Linda asked, leaning around Nick to get a better look at me. “You’re the one who almost killed me with the cinnamon?”
“I didn’t know that you were allergic to cinnamon! I was just doing my best to make sure that nothing fell apart for Nick and then everything kinda did anyway.” I felt like a little kid who had been backed into a corner, but I couldn’t blame anyone but myself.
“So all the times that I’ve been texting Marie?” Nick asked, his voice fading a little as he finished the question. He cleared his throat and tried again. “That was you? It was always you? On what phone?”
I was done for now and didn’t see any way to make anything better. “It was a burner phone. I’d bought it so that I could text anyone who wanted to hire Tasty Foods without the messages coming to my cell phone.”
The office was suddenly so quiet that I thought I could hear my heart beating. Swallowing hard to try to get rid of the lump in my throat, I reached out for Nick, but when he stepped back, I let my hand fall down by my side.
“Katie Marie,” Linda said, and I jerked my head up to look at her.
“What?” Nick asked, turning a little to face her.
“Katie Marie,” Linda repeated. “That’s her name. That’s how she came up with the name for the caterer.”
Nick didn’t have to ask me if it was true because it was all over my face. “I’ll go clean out my office,” I told him, then walked by him without giving him a chance to speak.
Nothing he said would matter, anyway. I didn’t see him coming after me, begging me to stay, telling me that nothing would make him happier than to have me still working with him.
Of course, he didn’t, because this wasn’t a Disney fairytale. It was real life, and I didn’t have anyone to blame for what was about to happen to me but me. He wasn’t going to suddenly realize that he was madly in love with me, or that my decorating skills were so impressive that he couldn’t live without me.
