by Maggie Wells
“This isn’t about… That just happened.”
But she wasn’t having any of his protests. “Yes, everything ‘just happens,’ to you.” She flung her hand out and James had to resist the urge to duck. “She just happened to get pregnant. She just happened to walk out on her kids one day and never look back. You just happened to kiss me, but a kiss doesn’t mean anything. No. Nothing ever means anything to you.”
“Hey.”
The quiet admonishment sliced through the tension between them like the single strike of a machete. He and Rosie whirled and bumped into one another like a pair of off-kilter tops. Mike stood in the open doorway of his office, his face a mask of grim determination.
“I’d really like to pretend I don’t know what’s going on here,” he began, rubbing the back of his neck and heaving a sigh. “Listen, guys, I’d hoped, we’d hoped…” he amended, gesturing to Colm’s closed door. “We’d hoped you two would be able to work past whatever, or move on without turning this into some kind of corporate crisis, but if you can’t we’re going to have to get involved—”
“No.” To James’s relief, he and Rosie blurted the word at the same time. At least, they were in total agreement on something.
Mike gave a short nod. “Then work it out,” he ordered. He turned to go back into his office, then thought better. “And not here. Go get a drink, or lunch, or something. But no more of this here. If this happens here, we have to do something about it, and believe me, we do not want to have to do anything about any of this.”
A beat passed, then Colm’s gruff voice carried from behind his closed door. “What he said.”
James opened his mouth, but Mike gave his head a preemptive shake. “Don’t. You go back to your desk,” he instructed Rosie. “And you… Don’t you have some sales calls to follow up on? Why don’t you do them in person?”
James clenched his jaw but let Mike plow ahead, because he sure as shit didn’t have anything productive to add.
Mike stared at him, his gaze understanding but unrelenting. “Go. Cool off. Let’s focus on the work. You guys can talk later, but not here,” he added before closing his door again.
James had a baker’s dozen objections to Mike’s high-handed methods, but deep down, he knew the baker’s boy was right. He needed to get out. Get away from Rosie. And Megan. And the kids. He needed some time and space to think. Breathe. Focus on something other than the two women in his life and how they were each wreaking havoc in their own way.
The second Rosie broke eye contact, he spun on his heel and stalked off to his office, grumbling under his breath about his partnership stake in the business, and hoping they wouldn’t notice how relieved he was by the prospect of some respite.
Eyes glued to the nameplate affixed to his office door, he shoved his arms into his coat, grabbed the strap of his bag, and tossed the heavy satchel onto his shoulder. He could go to the movies. He really wanted to go home, but he had no idea where Megan went or what she did during the day. He was pretty sure she ditched the townhouse soon after he did, but he wasn’t positive. Nor did he have any idea when she’d be back.
He strode to the door without speaking another word to anyone. A sharp gust of wind made him gasp, then spend his next full breath on a swear. Tossing his bag into the passenger seat, there was only one thing he knew for certain: he had absolutely no intention of working through his list of follow-up calls.
Fuck follow ups. Fuck them.
If they wanted to kick him out of his own business, then he would do what any self-respecting slacker would do—he was going spend some time day drinking.
* * * *
Rosie didn’t move from her desk for a full hour. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. She typed as if demons from hell were chasing each and every clause she cranked out. He’d kissed her. And there was no way he could claim this was an accidental kiss, either. He’d kissed her well and thoroughly she felt every blessed second straight down to her toes.
Neither Mike nor Colm opened their doors. If she couldn’t see the telephone lines light up and go dark again, she’d think she was alone in the office.
She wished she was alone.
If she were, she could have a good cry and get all this residual…stuff out of her. But she couldn’t. Unlike James, the other two partners were in more than they were out. Dipping her head, she pulled her cramping hands from the keys and rolled back a few inches. The document on the screen looked normal, but she’d bet her next paycheck the contract she’d been revising was filled with bucket-loads of gibberish.
Rubbing the corner of her eye, she reached for her coffee mug, only to find it missing. Puzzled, she glanced from side to side, then spun her chair in a slow semicircle. No coffee. She eyed the door to the kitchenette on her next pass, turning her head as she let momentum carry her to an agonizingly slow stop.
The top of her credenza was cluttered with framed photos. The formal portrait they’d convinced their parents to sit for weeks before the last wedding anniversary they celebrated together. A snapshot of Rosie and her sisters hamming for the camera at their cousin Mariella’s bachelorette blowout. Seasonal school pictures of all five Trident offspring and a photo of Rosie posing with all three partners at her graduation celebration.
Averting her gaze, she rose and walked with deliberate steps to the kitchenette. She barely needed to glance in. The mug sat exactly where she left it. On the counter where James kissed her. Again. A kiss he didn’t even try to pass off as an accident. She stared at the drying pool of sloshed coffee encircling its base.
She’d stopped him.
Where had those pesky instincts for self-preservation been when she’d gone toppling head over heels in love with her boss, huh? Why couldn’t she have been strong all along? If only she had. A lump formed in her throat as she thought of all the nights she’d wasted wondering and worrying about him.
Out in the office, her cell phone chirped the arrival of a new text message. Rosie glanced back over her shoulder. A foolish, stupid, would-she-never-learn part of her whispered his name. But she knew the message wasn’t from James. He only texted her when calling didn’t work. He was a talker. A schmoozer. The kind of man born with enough charm to sell ice to Eskimos, according to her mother.
Georgie called him a player. Monica called him a wannabe player. The guys alternated between genius and jerk, depending on how the contracts were coming in. Rosie could only believe Megan saw him as a bank machine, or, at least, a soft place to land.
She was the only one who saw him as James. Plain old James with the corny jokes and the awkward lines. The man who could toss those clumsy lines out there and reel in a disheartening number of women. He was James, the guy who complained incessantly about being saddled with two kids, but loved those boys with a fierceness seldom seen outside of nature shows.
But she couldn’t think of him as a possibility anymore. Not if she wanted any kind of a life for herself.
Picking up the mug, she poured the now-cold coffee into the sink and turned on the water. She watched the inky brown liquid swirl and eddy in the slow running drain. The dregs of the sweetener James had dumped in there clung to the sides of the cup. She rinsed the evidence of their encounter down the sink, then placed the cup on the top rack of the ancient dishwasher. She loved Wonder Woman, but she probably wouldn’t be using that particular mug again for a while. Not until all this…tumult passed.
“I want more,” she whispered. “I deserve better. I want more. I deserve better.”
Her knees began to wobble and she couldn’t catch her breath. Knowing there was no way to avoid the panic attack bearing down on her, Rosie sank to her knees, then rolled back until she landed on her butt. Concentrating her every thought on getting squared up, she managed to unfold her legs and kick them out in front of her. She sagged against the worn cupboards with a gusty exhale.
“Rosie?” Colm i
nquired gently.
She didn’t look up. With her gaze fixed somewhere in the middle distance, she lifted a finger to ask for a moment. She took three more breaths before stirring enough to say, “I’m okay. Low blood sugar.”
The shadow across her legs disappeared. He came back a minute later, a few of the foil-wrapped chocolates she kept on hand for the kids in the palm of his hand. She shook her head, but he ignored her and unwrapped one of the teardrop-shaped treats.
She paid no mind to the fat, hot tear rolling off her cheekbone until the drop splashed onto her sweater, but Colm was as susceptible as any man. “Aw, Rosie, don’t,” he begged.
Wordlessly, she accepted the candy thrust at her and popped the treat into her mouth. Chocolate melted on her tongue and clung to the roof of her mouth, but felt as gritty as sand to her. The sugar did little to mitigate the bitterness welling inside her. She wiped her eyes, eager to spare Colm the discomfiture of seeing her cry.
“I’m okay,” she lied again.
He didn’t look as if he believed her any more than he bought the bit about her blood sugar, but nodded obligingly. “I know you are.” He unwrapped a second chocolate and handed it to her.
She marveled for the millionth time over what a good man he was. The ultimate caregiver. “If Monica finds out you were hand-feeding chocolates to another woman, there’ll be hell to pay,” she teased.
“If you don’t tell, I won’t.”
Rosie managed a weak smile. “Deal.”
“What can I do for you, Rosie?” he asked in his simple, straightforward way.
“Nothing.” Somehow she managed to force the word out from under the knot in her throat. She looked up and found him searching her face, worry carving a deep line between his dark brows. There was no use in pretending there was an easy solution to her problem. “There’s nothing any of us can do.” She shrugged. “It is what it is, right?”
“I know, but I’m a guy and guys are supposed to fix things. Or so Monica tells me when she wants shelves put up or her sink unclogged.”
“She’s great.” Rosie gave him a tremulous smile.
His smile came slow but grew wide and open. “Yes, she is…in her own way.”
“Right.”
“And everything has to be her own way,” he added with a pointed stare.
Rosie bobbed her head, her lips curving automatically in response to his obvious happiness. “I noticed.”
“She picked out her ring,” he informed her with grim resignation.
“Ring? You mean an engagement ring?”
His cheeks colored, but he didn’t bother confirming or denying. “Told me I had to get a move on. She’s afraid Mike and Georgie are going to beat us to the punch.”
Rosie’s bark of laughter startled them both. “Sounds like Monica.” A blush heated her cheeks the second the words slipped out. She covered her mouth with her fingertips, but the gleam in Colm’s eyes told her he was well aware of his future wife’s foibles.
“She likes to win.”
“And she likes to boss people around.” Rosie waved off the chocolate kiss he offered.
“Yes, she does.” Shifting his weight, Colm twisted from his crouch to drop onto the floor beside her. “Don’t let her make you do things you aren’t comfortable doing.”
She didn’t need a secret decoder ring to know he’d switched topics on her. “The dating thing was my idea, Colm.”
He raised a dubious brow. “Really?”
“Really.” Sighing, she tugged at the hem of her sweater, then smoothed her skirt to her knees. “I have to move on. I have to do something.”
“Right, but you don’t have to do what she wants you to do,” he interjected.
“And you don’t have to date certain people because other people happen to know them,” Mike announced from the doorway. Rosie and Colm looked up in unison. He stared back at them, his expression bland. “Is this a private party?”
A bitter laugh escaped her. “Nothing’s private around here.”
Mike offered her a lopsided grin as he stepped into the narrow room and leaned against the opposite wall. “I hate to break this to you, but the thing with you two was never a secret.”
Her ears burned. “So I’ve heard.”
He lowered himself into a squat to look her in the eye. “And, Rosie, he’s an idiot and a moron, but he does love you.”
“In his way,” she added facetiously.
“No, he loves you,” Colm stated quietly. “He may never figure out how much, and he might never be ready to act on it, but he does.”
“And not exactly like a sister,” Mike added.
“And part of this mess is our fault. We warned him off, Rosie,” Colm confessed gruffly. “We told him to stay away from you. You were too important to us—”
“Stop.” She gave him the flat of her palm, much like she’d given James earlier. “I can’t… Don’t tell me this now. Don’t tell me he might feel the same way. I have to move on, and I can’t afford hope,” she insisted. “I’ve wasted too much time wishing and hoping.”
“Hoping for the best is never a waste of time.” She hit Mike with a death glare, and he raised both hands in surrender. “And, you’re right, holding out for the kind of love you deserve never a waste of time.”
“Yeah. He’s right.” When she and Mike both turned to face him, Colm dragged a hand over his eyes. “Look, I’m not exactly sure what we’re supposed to say here. I feel like we’re supposed to takes sides, but not take sides.”
“You guys don’t have to do or say anything.”
She swung her legs to the side and clambered to her feet without waiting for a hand up. Mike sprang to a standing position, graceful as ever. She probably looked more like a newborn giraffe stumbling from side to side, trying to catch her balance and simultaneously put her clothes in order, but she couldn’t lean on Mike. She wouldn’t lean on either of them. It wasn’t fair. Dragging in a steeling breath, she swiped at her face and batted her hair back as Colm pushed to his feet once more.
“Thank you.” She gave Colm’s arm a squeeze.
Turning to face Mike, she pinned him with a glare. “And for the record, I like Charlie.”
“Okay.”
“I’m reserving judgment on the guy who didn’t see you home safe,” Colm announced.
“Not his fault,” she protested weakly. “I insisted.”
Mike squinted at her. “Uh-huh.”
Mike’s tone said he wasn’t entirely sold, but Rosie didn’t have time for anyone else’s doubts. She had enough of her own to deal with. “I’m finishing up the Paulson contract, then I’ll finalize the lists for the Carson election night party,” she informed them. Georgie had forbidden the use of the word ‘victory’ in the discussion for fear of inadvertently jinxing her brother’s campaign. “I’ll have the files to you by the end of the day.”
Head held high, she walked back to her desk, sank into her chair, and checked the time on the computer. Barely past ten. A glance at her phone showed two messages from Charlie. Sweet Charlie, who was nursing a broken heart of his own. What a pair they made. With a grim smirk, she placed her hands on the keyboard and stared at the jumble of words on the screen. Seven long hours to go.
Chapter 8
James parked his SUV in the circular drive, something his mother did on a regular basis since his father had passed. Not out of laziness, but because the controlling old coot used to have a cow if anyone paused there for more than a drop-off.
His plan to spend the day drinking had been thwarted by the fact that he’d made his dramatic exit from the Trident Security offices at exactly 9:18 a.m. He’d driven around for a while, drumming along to the backbeat of whatever was on the radio, but his mind was somewhere else entirely. He couldn’t seem to shake himself out of the fog of disbelief plaguing him.
Lucki
ly, a loud blast of horn did the trick, catching him before he blew a stop sign.
Startled and shaken, he’d lifted his fingers from the wheel in silent apology as a woman in a dented and dinged minivan glared at him as if he were the one tooling around in a bumper car. Glancing at his mirror, he saw a delivery van riding his back bumper. The second the intersection cleared, he darted across the street and into the narrow parking lot in front of a convenience store. There, he sat gripping the wheel, inhaling and exhaling his boys’ names as he gathered his wits enough to pull into traffic again.
Climbing the steps on wobbly legs, he huffed a laugh when he spotted a plastic planter shaped like a swan cowering in the corner of the porch. The dried brown leaves and vines clinging to his back had been the twins’ pride and joy the previous summer. Flowers they’d grown from seeds. All by themselves. With some help from Grandma.
“And God,” Jamie had added with appropriate gravity.
The planter was another one of his mother’s declarations of independence, though the neighborhood association probably considered such cheesy ornamentation a blight. He hadn’t realized his mother was a rebel at heart until she was a year into her widowhood. If the metamorphosis hadn’t taken place at the same time Jamie and Jeff were transitioning from infant to toddlerhood, he might have missed the changes in her altogether. As it was, James and his mother had come into their own at about the same time—he as a father, she as a woman standing on her own.
He rang the bell, as he always did. Megan thought waiting on the doorstep of his family home like a guest was odd, and once told him so, but James disagreed. He hadn’t lived there since he moved into the college dormitories at eighteen. Now, he was a grown man with a home of his own. This was his mother’s house now, and she had every right to expect common courtesy. She would never walk into his house without knocking first.
