by Nikky Kaye
“Corporate MREs, Dominic. Look into it,” I’d suggested at one meeting. “It could be huge.”
Right now I was immersed in researching possible locations for expanding the Stella toy store. Part of me didn’t want to create another one. It was one of a kind, just like its namesake.
My passion project.
The business part of me, though, knew that it would be a good idea. It was hard enough to be a big retail empire and appear to have a heart and conscience these days. Stella would expand the Stone brand and position it in a positive way.
I hadn’t realized how late it was until I saw the darkness outside the window, and my eyes were burning from staring at the computer screen.
Even with my fists pressed against my closed eyes, I noticed when the lights in the room went on.
“You are still here.” Dom looked just as meticulous fresh as when I saw him earlier. Only the dark shadow on his jaw indicated that time had passed.
I, on the other hand, didn’t even bother with a suit jacket. What the fuck was the point?
“You want to go get a late dinner? Evie’s hungry.”
“Now? That’s a really late dinner.” Although, there was no reason not to, and I could eat.
“She’s always hungry.”
“Wedding stress getting to her?”
“More like my big billionaire dick getting to her,” he joked. “I knocked her up.”
“Dude! Seriously?”
Dom looked ridiculously pleased with himself. “It’s early, but yeah. You know the way they calculate that shit is stupid, right? It should just be counted from the date my guys hit the target.”
I hesitated to congratulate him, recalling a sad, scotch-soaked scene from the fall. Evie had lost a pregnancy at eight weeks, and it had hit them hard. Hopefully Dominic hadn’t just jinxed it by telling me.
“Congratulations, I guess. She okay?”
“Other than puking in the morning—so far, so good.”
“I’d throw up if I woke up to you, too.”
He gave me the finger. “So, you guys want to have dinner?”
“Sure.” It was embarrassing how many things in my body popped as I stood up. How long had I been sitting there? Jesus. I rolled the sleeves of my shirt down. “Are the girls ready?”
“Don’t we have to go pick Annie up?”
I froze in the middle of plucking my leather jacket off the back of the stiff little loveseat in the corner of my office. “Stiff,” because I knew from experience it was uncomfortable as fuck to sleep on.
“What are you talking about? Evie was supposed to pick Annie up after she dropped Stella at Sheila’s.”
It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best we could organize. It had been a clusterfuck of a day, with meetings that wouldn’t end and trying to juggle big and little people’s schedules.
“They told me she went home early,” Evie said as she walked through my office door. “Just call her.”
Irritation flared in me. Why hadn’t she texted me? Why had she left work? Was she sick? Injured? She’d told me about some of the gory accidents that could happen in a restaurant kitchen, and my mind immediately went to the emergency room.
I grabbed my phone off the corner of the desk and thumbed out a quick message to her. Then another. Waited thirty-three seconds, then sent another.
“Jesus, man. Give her a chance to respond.”
Sticky tendrils of tension spun a web between the three of us as we waited for my phone to buzz or beep. Something. The gurgling of Evie’s stomach was the only sound in the room.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “Try calling her. I don’t know why people always text first, every time. I mean, it’s a phone.”
It went straight to voicemail—twice.
“Shit.”
“It’s okay.” Evie patted my arm. “Why don’t we just go back to your place and pick up something on the way? Maybe she’s sleeping or something.”
I sure hoped so.
Chapter Fifteen
Annie
“Mmmm.” I snuggled into my pillow, my eyelids weighed down by sleep and still feeling swollen and gritty.
Oh god, that felt so good. There was nothing like your own pillow. The cool side always felt cooler, and the warm side smelled like your own skin and shampoo.
Actually, that was a little creepy.
I nuzzled the pillowcase anyhow, luxuriating in the comfort it gave me. It smelled… weird. Not like “the dance club odor on your hair after going out” smells, but… laundry soap or fabric softener. Something about it teased at my brain.
What kind of detergent was it? I flashed on the memory of doing Jake and Stella’s laundry—along with my own, of course. Nothing said co-habitation more than washing someone else’s dirty underwear. Of course, Stella was still struggling with potty training; I’d discovered that the hard way.
I’d discovered a lot of things the hard way in the previous twenty-four hours. My head still throbbed, and I kept my eyes closed and ran through the day before like clips from a bad movie.
After lunch, Jake had gotten sucked into a conference call about china suppliers—the toy tea sets, not the country—and marooned Stella and I. I’d already helped her change her clothes twice in the morning, and had become an eagle-eye expert on identifying her “pee pee dance.”
When it became clear that I was going to be late for my shift, Jake prompted me to call Dominic on another phone and ask him for an escort. To say I was irked was an understatement. For god’s sakes, it had been close to a month! Was I going to be babysat like Stella indefinitely?
But that begged another question: what to do with Stella? I didn’t know that much about little kids, but I was pretty sure that three year-olds were supposed to be supervised. This three year-old’s father didn’t appear to be wrapping up his meeting anytime soon.
When Dom arrived, Stella was doing her second lap around the living room without touching the floor. I’d been “supervising,” naturally.
“Nice parkour, kid.”
“Uncle Dumb!”
She squealed and launched herself at him from atop the end table. I dove for the empty juice box that she’d kicked over in her welcome.
“Uncle Dumb?” I hadn’t heard that one before. My giggles ended as soon as one mutated into a snort.
“’Dom’ was hard for her to say at first. I’m sure she’ll figure it out at some point.”
“Hopefully after she’s eighteen,” I muttered.
“Stella, get off me. Isn’t he done yet?” he asked, peeling his niece off his chest and jerking his chin toward Jake’s den slash home office.
Stella vaulted onto the couch again, her curls bouncing around her face. No doubt—kids were cute, but they were hell on the furniture.
“I wanna come with you!” she announced, but it was unclear which “you” she meant.
“I’d better ask him.”
Different voices collided in the den. Clearly his conference wasn’t even close to finishing. Not wanting to interrupt him, I tapped him on the shoulder. He spun around in his chair, away from his computer, eyebrows raised.
“So you’re saying that we need to find a different source for the pattern printing?” he asked. I looked at him blankly, until I realized he was addressing his colleagues.
“I’m going to work. What about Stella?” was an easy conceptual question, but I felt compelled to ask him through some very creative sign language.
Laughter echoed from a speaker.
He whipped his head around. “Just a minute,” he said to the computer—the screen with people’s faces on it.
Oh my god. I’d been in full view of the webcam, miming a preschooler’s pee pee dance. Mortified, I darted to the side, out of the way of the webcam. In my zeal to escape, I bounced off a wall.
Heard more laughter.
Clearly I’d been wrong about the camera’s field of vision.
At that point I just slunk out of the room. When I got back to the li
ving room, I found a red-faced Stella and Dom with his face twisted into a grimace.
“She peed on me.”
“I’m sorry!” she wailed.
Her bow-legged cowboy walk of shame to the bathroom might have been amusing if it didn’t mean another mess to clean up.
I sighed. It was my fault; too many juice boxes, and no “pee pee dance” tutorial for Uncle Dumb. A third change of clothes later for Stella, I was now officially late for work.
Blissfully ignorant of the drama outside his den, Jake popped his head out to ask Dom if Evie was home today. Within a few seconds, it was all arranged that Stella would go to Dom and Evie’s for a few hours. No miming required, except for the X-rated gesture he gave me in silent promise for later that evening.
Since he hadn’t had to deal with cleaning up urine all morning, I offered him a different kind of hand gesture.
The rest of the day was equally pissy. I went over it all in my mind, hoping against hope that if I kept my eyes shut, it would turn out to just be a dream. I wanted to put my head under the covers and not come out.
My manager was close to losing his shit when I rushed in. I was annoyed as hell at being late—and made even later by having to move Stella’s car seat to Dominic’s sleek sedan. If Jake hadn’t been so overprotective, I could have just gone to work by myself and Dom could have waited with Stella until Jake was done his meeting.
Instead, everybody had to be moved around like pawns on a chessboard. And everything was so black and white. I started my shift almost snarling with irritation.
Dom’s patronizing reminder that Evie would pick me up later didn’t help. I waved him off, feeling like a surly teenager. Blah blah blah. Thanks, Dad. Can I have twenty bucks? Only Stella blowing me a kiss from the back seat lifted my grumpies—and only a little.
It had been a long, shitty shift, and it wasn’t even eight o’clock. I was in the weeds all evening, distracted and grumpy. For a professional waitress, I sure wasn’t acting very professional—and it showed.
“What is going on with you tonight, Annie?” my manager asked me as I sucked back a Diet Coke by the bar. “Boy trouble?”
I pasted my second-best “customer service smile” on my face. I didn’t have enough energy for my best smile. “Boys? What are boys?” I blinked at him. “I live for my job, John.”
He snorted. “Yeah, I’ve seen the boys you’ve been hanging out with lately. I’m surprised you still have a job, but I guess they have to let you out of bed sometime.”
I gaped at him. Had I heard him right, or had the constant background noise screwed with my ears? “I’m sorry?”
Another server came up to us with panic on her face. I recognized the expression. So did my manager, who just sneered at me before steering her away to discuss whatever new catastrophe had occurred.
The clinking of dishes and hum of conversation floated around me as I replayed John’s snide comments.
Was he insinuating that I was sleeping with both Jake and Dom? If so, did he mean together, or at the same time? My stomach churned. Jesus Christ, what kind of impression was I giving people?
And had he threatened my job, because of it?
For the next half an hour, I was so distracted that I couldn’t even muster up my fifth-best customer service smile. John’s words echoed in my head, and I waited for the panic over potentially losing my job to paralyze me.
It didn’t.
Huh.
“Get it together, Annie!” John muttered at me when I brought back the second order I’d screwed up. One of the line guys sighed as he took the revised ticket from my hand.
John grabbed my arm. “Do you need to go home early?” It sounded more like a parental threat than a compassionate suggestion.
“No. I’m sorry.” I reddened, my face heating as I waited by the pass.
If I was stuck in a holding pattern, it might be good for me to break out of it. Right?
Without my realizing it, Jake had given me a safety net, psychologically and otherwise. After years of taking care of myself, I now found myself in a strange new family dynamic with Jake and Stella—and I liked it.
The new plate slid under the warmer, and I grabbed it. When I looked down at the pasta, my reflexive thought wasn’t relief that the order got fixed—it was “Stella would love this.”
Oh my god.
I was in love with him.
With both of them.
I dropped the plate.
Logically, I knew that not every single person in the restaurant froze in silence to stare at me—but it sure felt that way.
With my nose prickling, I tried to take a deep breath, but my chest squeezed painfully. My vision was blurry with the threat of tears as I fell to my knees to clean up.
“Annie!”
John squatted beside me, his face as red as mine felt—only his didn’t have big, hot tears rolling down it.
“I’m sorry,” I said dully. “I’ll fix it.”
“You’re kneeling in the sauce.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You need to go home,” he said softly.
With shaking hands, I tried to pick up it all up. The pasta slipped through my fingers. “It’s okay, I can—ah!” I hissed as the sharp edge of the broken plate slid over my thumb.
John swore. “Go to my office,” he ordered.
There was a lull in the ambient noise as I rose to my feet and plodded to the back. When I put out my hand to avoid running into a wall, I left an alfredo handprint.
Dammit, why was I still crying? I felt like something had burst inside me, and I couldn’t contain the flood of intense emotions.
Love.
Fear.
Confusion.
They came and came and came, washing over me until I was exhausted.
Even now, lying on my stomach and burying my head under my pillow like an ostrich, I felt drained.
And it still smelled odd. It niggled at my brain. What was it?
Pulling my head out, I propped myself up on my elbows to sniff the pillowcase. My hands curved over the bump of the neck support inside the pillow, squeezing the foam and feeling it rebound like a marshmallow under my fingers.
I opened my eyes, recognition penetrating my brain.
This was my pillow.
Mine. Not Jake’s.
I was in my apartment.
“Good, you’re awake. I knew that gown would suit you.”
Chapter Sixteen
Annie
I felt like I’d just plunged through the icy crust of a winter pond. Dark. Cold. Suffocating. Swirling around me.
Slowly, I looked down and saw the gaping neckline of the white satin gown, like snow drifting over my body. It was all I wore; the fancy bridal lingerie was missing.
But then so were the bra, panties, and clothes I wore to work.
Shit fuck damn.
Instinctively I wriggled down under the blanket.
“Aww, don’t do that. You’ll wrinkle it. I spent a lot of money on that outfit.”
I froze as John stood up from the couch and stalked over to me. Think, Annie, think! “Um, thanks for bringing me home, but…” I bit my lip, unsure what to say.
My head spun as I began to process everything—the notes that came to me at work, the flowers, the chocolate.
Fast forward to the accident at work.
Going into John’s office, covered in pasta sauce and humiliation. He brought me something to drink and bandaged the cut on my thumb while I began to calm down. Then he said I should go home.
I remembered his hand on my lower back as he walked through the restaurant with me. I remembered being out on the street with him. But then that’s it—until now, as he stood over me with a strange smile on his face.
“Oh, that’s right. You don’t live here anymore, do you?” He shrugged, but his hands curled into fists at his sides. “My bad.”
“What? No, I still live here!” Didn’t I? Technically.
“You’ve been whori
ng yourself out to the Stone brothers.”
His knuckles were turning white. The sarcastic phrase “Well, that escalated quickly” came into my head. I needed to defuse this situation.
“No, no. Remember Evie, John? She’s engaged to one of them. I’ve been helping them with the wedding planning.”
Yeah, the wedding that I’d managed to completely put out of my mind. The one that—a million years ago—Jake had proposed surviving together.
I laughed weakly. “You really got the wrong impression. It’s kind of funny when you think about it.”
My manager didn’t look amused. Or convinced that he was wrong.
“Don’t lie to me, Annie. One of them talked to me about your ‘stalker.’” He sneered as he made air quotes.
Think. Think! “He found out that I had a secret admirer. Maybe I bragged to Evie; I was so flattered…”
John shook his head. “No, he said you were scared. Why were you scared?” He reached out to peel down the top of the blanket.
I couldn’t help it; I flinched when he touched my bare shoulder.
“Why, Annie? Why were you scared? I was only being nice to you. I’d never do anything to hurt you.” His expression—well, it drooped, his eyes and mouth turning down.
“I know.”
“I just wanted to show you that I appreciate you,” he said. The flat, casual tone of his words had the opposite effect that they probably intended.
I was petrified.
All my muscles tensed as he pulled the blanket down to my waist. I suspected that if I tried to tug it back up, it would anger him. Instinctively, I curled up on my side. My skin prickled all over, and my nipples pushed against the cool satin of the gown I was wearing. I crossed my arms over my front, folding in on myself like origami.
He yanked the blanket all the way down the bed, until it puddled on the floor at the end. I shivered.
“It does look nice on you.” He smiled indulgently, like he was admiring a piece of art by a preschooler.
Preschooler. Stella! Jesus, Jake must be out of his mind right now, I realized. What was he thinking? Was he looking for me?
