By the time I’m ready, Dante stands in the bathroom doorway, a pair of dark red athletic shorts hanging low on his hips. A hint of dark hair just above the waistband serves as a silent reminder of the things we did after the sun went down last night and despite my frantic state, I still manage to smile.
But only for a split second.
“Okay, bye,” I say, rising on my toes to kiss him. “Shit. What am I doing? I just kissed you like you were my . . .”
I wave my hand as he drags the palm of his hand under his chin, raking it across the stubble that’s filled in since yesterday. It makes him look slightly older, though the glint in his amber-green irises still captures his youthful spirit.
“What are you doing for lunch today?” he asks.
“You’re crazy,” I say, knowing exactly what he’s getting at.
“Meet me in the sculpture park at noon.”
Chapter 22
Dante
I arrive early, hoping to find a vacant bench under a shade tree since this place tends to fill up quickly come lunchtime, but I’m not expecting to see that Maren’s already beat me here.
“Hey,” I say.
She glances up, with nothing more than her purse in her lap. Her lips are flat, unsmiling.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She glances down, her fingers practically knitting a sweater in her lap. “They let me go. I guess Starfire Industries has a zero tolerance policy on timeliness.”
My jaw tightens, and I fish for my phone from my pocket.
“I’m calling Ridley,” I say, pushing a hard breath through my nostrils
“No.” Her hand finds mine, splaying across the screen of my phone. “Don’t. I don’t want to go back there. It’s done. I don’t need you to pull any favors.”
“It wouldn’t be a favor,” I say. “That policy of his is fucking ridiculous. People run late all the time.”
“Keegan was the one who fired me, actually,” she says.
“Who?”
“My twenty-four-year-old boss.” She says it with a mouthful of bitter resentment. “She says she didn’t want to, but she was just going off policy.”
“Keegan . . . Chamberlain?” I ask, stating her name carefully. “Jesus.”
“What?”
“That’s Lauren’s little sister.” My fingers form a triangle, and I breathe into my hands. “She didn’t fire you because you were late. She fired you because you’re with me.”
“But how would she know?”
“Those two are thick as thieves. They talk. They probably put it all together after Lauren saw us together on Sunday.” I shake my head. “I’m sure she was just waiting for the right excuse to let you go.”
Exhaling thickly, I turn to her, lifting my hand and placing it on her thigh.
“I’m sorry, Maren,” I say. “Can’t help but feel this was my fault.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do this.”
“Work for me,” I say, without giving it much thought.
Maren scoffs, pulling away. “I get that you’re feeling guilty right now, but this just sounds like an all-around bad idea. It couldn’t possibly end well, and I’m not trying to get fired from two jobs in a row. Besides, the whole boss-employee thing is terribly cliché, don’t you think? We’re better than that.”
Groaning, I nod. I agree. Working with the person you’re fucking is a recipe for disaster, and I’m not quite ready for us to go down in flames like that.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I ask.
Maren chuffs. “Little late for that question, don’t you think?”
I shake my head, disagreeing. “What did you do before you had kids? What did you go to school for?”
“I was the vice president of human resources for a local business,” she says.
“Did you love it?”
Her lips jut out. “It was a job. I mean, I was good at it, but it didn’t light my fire, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Okay, so what does light your fire?”
Her expression lightens for a second, her mouth twisting. She’s hesitating, but I’m not sure why.
“You can tell me,” I coax her. “I don’t care how silly you think it is, I won’t laugh.”
Maren exhales, her shoulders lifting and falling.
“All right,” she says. “I’ll tell you. But I’m warning you, it’s really dumb.”
I shake my head. “If it’s your passion, it’s not dumb.”
“I have this thing with paper,” she says slowly, carefully, like she’s waiting for me to judge her. “I love the old-fashioned art of putting a pen to paper, and I collect stationery and notebooks and notepads. I write these lists all the time.”
“What kind of lists?”
“Any kind of list,” she says, her body language becoming more animated the more she gets into it. “Shopping lists, grocery lists, to-do lists, checklists, pros and cons. Anything.”
“All right. Plenty of people do that.”
“But I’ve yet to find the kind of paper I just adore,” she says. “It has to have a certain weight to it, a certain softness, and it can’t be too expensive. And pens! I’m so particular about pens. So many people don’t realize they should be matching their pen with their paper, certain thicknesses for certain weights and so on.”
It’s cute watching her come alive in a way I’ve yet to see on her until now.
“Go on,” I say.
“Anyway, I’d love to run a stationery company,” she says. “But beyond that, I want to offer custom letterpress services and maybe even have in-house design. And I want to work from home. I want to be able to pick my kids up from school and dedicate my evenings to them, because they’re going to be in college before I know it, and I don’t want to have wasted all those precious hours sitting in some cubicle making barely enough to cover my mortgage, you know?”
“Then you should do it. What’s stopping you?”
“I guess I’d never given it any serious thought,” she says, puffing a breath between her lips. “It’s all just a silly daydream of mine. It’s not realistic. But you asked what my passion was and what I wanted to do, so there’s my answer.”
“Let’s make it happen.”
“What?” Her gaze flicks to mine, half-hopeful and half-humoring.
“Let’s do it. Let’s make it happen. Do you have a name? We need to get you incorporated and trademarked, and we need to go over startup expenses. I assume since you want to work from home that this’ll be an online company.”
She nods. “Ideally.”
“Okay, easy enough. Your startup and overhead should be relatively low. You’ll need a website though. The best one you can afford. And you’ll need a marketing budget for ads and billboards and commercials.”
“This all sounds amazing and everything, but I’m not sure I can afford it. I have a little bit of money set aside from the divorce, but that’s for emergencies,” she says. “If I blew through that trying to get this thing off the ground and it didn’t work out, I’d never forgive myself.”
“I’ll give you the money.”
“No!” Maren scoots away a couple inches, her expression serious.
“Yes.”
“I won’t take your money. You’ve known me less than a month. And you don’t even know if I’ll be able to pay it back.”
“I have faith in you.”
“Maybe you want to have faith in me, but you don’t actually have faith in me.”
Laughing, I take her hand in mine. “I know you’re a very rational, levelheaded person. You’re not going to squander the money or spend it foolishly. The way your face lights when you talk about paper of all things . . . I know you’re passionate about it. I know you’d want it to succeed, and I know you’d try your damnedest.”
Maren’s eyes hold on mine, like she’s teetering on the edge of possibly agreeing to my offer.
“Six months,” I say. “Let me fund
you for six months. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll call it a wash. I’ll write it off like a bad investment. If your business takes off, you can pay me back at your own pace.”
“Dante,” she says, “that’s extremely generous of you. I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes.”
“What if things go south between us?” she asks. “What if we have a falling out?”
“What could we possibly fight about? This thing we have, it’s pretty simple and low-key. All we do so far is screw and send each other naughty texts. Trust me, I’ll never fight you on any of that.”
Maren’s lips pull up at the sides. “You make it sound so simple.”
“That’s because it is simple.” I lean into her, brushing my lips across her forehead and kissing her smooth skin. “Trust me. It’ll all work out exactly the way it’s meant to.”
“Fine,” she says. “I trust you, Dante.”
Checking my watch, I sigh. “I have a meeting in twenty minutes. I should head back.”
Maren stands.
“Do me a favor,” I say, rising at her side. “Put together some kind of proposal for me. Treat me as you would any other investor. I want to see overhead and supplies and a marketing plan and all of that.”
“Absolutely.”
“I know you think it’s some silly dream, that it’s not a viable career, but I’m telling you, Maren, you can make it happen.” I take her hand in mine as we pass between a sculpture of a child flying a kite and a bear riding a bicycle. “I believe in you. Do you believe in you?”
She licks her lips, her gaze flicking onto mine as a cloudy sky reflects in her irises.
“I do,” she says. “It’s just unnerving, you know? Stepping into the unknown.”
“It always is.”
We reach a crosswalk, and I turn to face her, slipping my hand on her side and leaning down to kiss her before I go.
A younger woman, early twenties, passes by and stares, her face settling into a judgmental frown that I hope Maren doesn’t notice.
“That’s just not right,” the woman says as she elbows her friend, her gawking becoming painfully obvious at this point.
Maren notices, pulling away. Bringing her fingers to her lips, she steps back but says nothing. I try to read her face, wondering if she feels silly being seen with me. She’s an incredibly attractive woman, but anyone with an eye for detail would be able to see our minor age difference.
The crosswalk turns white and the group of people around us walk, but I stay. Pulling her back to me, I lean into her ear and whisper, “Maren, I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks. And you shouldn’t either.”
Chapter 23
Maren
“God, I love playing hooky.” Saige groans, sinking into the back of a massaging pedicure chair, her body wrapped in a fluffy robe and chilled cucumber slices covering her eyes.
The mud mask covering my face is drying and cracking and beginning to itch, but I focus on the delicious foot massage I’m currently receiving instead.
“Sorry you lost your job. That really sucks, Mar. But I think you’re onto something with the stationery company,” she says. “Nobody, and I mean nobody, knows paper like you do.”
“I don’t know if that makes me special or nerdy.”
“Both,” she says with no hesitation. “But that’s why I love you.”
I smirk, inhaling the spearmint and eucalyptus fragrances currently infusing our spa treatment room.
“I’m still waiting for you to tell me I was right,” Saige says with a proud huff.
“Right about what?” I play dumb.
“About screwing a millionaire,” she says it casually, like it’s the kind of thing a person says everyday. “It solved all your problems.”
Shaking my head, I say, “I’m still kind of weirded out by his generosity.”
“Rich people are generous like that,” she says. “Correction, most rich people.”
“So am I a charity case?”
“No, you’re just someone he really, really wants in his life, and he wants a reason to keep you around just in case the sex isn’t enough.”
I laugh. “That’s not him. He’s not insecure like that.”
“Then he’s just a nice guy. Can’t someone just be a nice guy without someone trying to rationalize it like he’s got ulterior motives?” Saige clears her throat with intention. “Stop questioning it and just go with it.”
“It’s just weird. He’s not even my boyfriend, but he clearly likes me. And he’s always kissing me and touching me and texting and calling,” I say. “But we haven’t discussed labels or what this means or where we’re going. And then he just dumps all this money into my lap like it’s pocket change for him.”
“Right, right,” Saige says sarcastically, “because things are always supposed to go a certain way in Maren’s World. First you meet. Then you go on some dates. Then you make it official. Then you have sex. Then you get engaged and then married, and then it’s okay for him to share his wealth with you.”
“That’s not what I mean.” I sit up taller. “You know how I am. I like to know where I stand. I like labels and categories, and I like things to go in their neatly organized little boxes.”
“You’re Type A,” Saige says. “Believe me, sweetie, I know. We all know. But that’s not the way the world works all the time. Sometimes there’s not an order to things. Sometimes there are square pegs and round holes.”
“I know you’re right,” I say with a sigh.
“Do you want to date him? Do you want to be his girlfriend?” Saige sits up, letting her cucumbers fall into her lap, and turns to me.
“It’s only been a few weeks now. I honestly haven’t given it much thought. Just going with the flow.”
She tilts her head. “Psh. You know what you want, Maren. I know you know. And you know that I know that you know exactly what you want.”
Chuckling, I roll my eyes. “Okay. Maybe I’d like to date him officially. But I don’t think that’s what he wants. He’d have said so by now. He doesn’t hold anything back. What you see is what you get with him. If he wanted me exclusively, I think he’d have made it crystal clear.”
“Right, because you know him so well after just a few weeks,” Saige says, her voice laced with sarcasm. “Maybe he’s waiting for you to make the move? Or to at least send him a sign. Or it could be that he’s having fun and going with the flow because, you know, that’s what most normal people do.”
I grab a magazine from the side pocket of my massage chair and flip to the middle. My eyes scan the pictures and words, but nothing registers. I can’t stop thinking about earlier today, by the crosswalk.
“Is it super obvious that he’s younger than me?” I ask.
Saige furrows her brows. “Not exceedingly . . .”
“Are you sure? This girl earlier today saw us together. She saw him kiss me, and she was staring with this really judge-y look on her face.”
“Fuck that bitch.” Saige lifts her brows, then turns to the woman working on her feet. “Sorry.”
“If some stranger on the street notices, I’m just curious if it’s super obvious,” I say.
“Let me ask you this,” Saige says, “when you’re with him, do you notice the age difference?”
I ponder her question for a bit and come up with a resounding no. I don’t even think about it. When he looks at me, I sometimes can’t think straight, and when he’s screwing me, I sometimes can’t see straight, and all the while, I’m not giving his age a single thought.
“No,” I answer her.
“Then it’s simple, stop giving a shit what anyone else thinks.” Saige shrugs. “Most of them are just jealous anyway.”
“Jealous or not, it’s still a jagged pill to swallow.”
“Judgers gon’ judge,” she states in all seriousness. “Anyway, it’s like when Kate Hudson was hooking up with that Jonas brother. It was kind of weird at first and then we all got used to it and n
obody gave it a second thought. If anything, people applauded her because she’s not afraid to go after what she wants. And she really wanted that cute little Jonas brother.”
“Saige.” I shake my head, trying not to laugh.
The sound of tires in my driveway at five o’clock signal that Nathan’s here to drop off the boys. For the first time in forever, I’m feeling refreshed. The ladies at Spa Ciesto massaged and kneaded and pampered and polished the hell out of me today, and God, I needed it. And with the prospect of my stationery company on the horizon, I’m in a pretty damn good mood, all things considered.
I even decide to greet Nathan with a smile.
“Hey, how are you?” I stand in the doorway as he lugs the boys’ bags up the sidewalk.
He returns my greeting with a harsh look, and my smile fades. It takes everything I have not to ask if there’s trouble in paradise.
“Boys,” I say, ruffling their messy mops as they walk past and make a beeline for the kitchen. I’m not sure why it’s so hard for their father to feed them dinner before he drops them off, but I’m not in the mood to argue with him about it tonight. I yell to the boys, “There’s leftover ajiaco cubano in the fridge.”
Nathan stands in my doorway, staring hard. It’s a look I’ve seen many times before, and it always seems to be a prelude to a fight.
“What?” I ask, lifting my palms and shrugging my shoulders. “Why do you keep staring at me like that?”
“You knew,” he says.
“I knew what?” I laugh, because I have no idea what he’s talking about, but the fact that his milky complexion is turning a shade of beet red is something I find to be absolutely hilarious.
“You knew Dante was Lauren’s ex,” he says. “And that’s why you’re fucking him. Matter of fact, I think he moved in next door just so the two of you could taunt me.”
My jaw hangs. “Right, Nathan. Because the entire world revolves around you. We’re doing it like rabbits and laughing at you all the while.” Rolling my eyes, I add, “Trust me, you’re the last thing I think about when I’m hooking up with a man who gives Jake Gylllenhaal a run for his money.”
Priceless (An Amato Brothers/Rixton Falls crossover) Page 58
