Chapter Seventeen
Ella knotted a pink and green paisley scarf around her ponytail. She did it by feel, because looking in the bathroom mirror was a mistake she wouldn’t make again. The first time, after an automatic glance while brushing her teeth, had sent her toothbrush clattering into the sink. Because Ella didn’t see herself. Or not only herself. No, she flashed back to two nights ago. When Gray had stood behind her, fitted himself to her, and they’d both watched in the mirror as she gripped the counter while he plunged into her again and again.
The first thing the memory did was make her hot. An actual flush running just beneath her skin. But then it choked a sob into her throat at the knowledge that it would never happen again. That their perfect idyll was not only over, but tainted.
A knock pounded her out of the flashback of the flashback. “What?”
“You’ve been in there a while,” said Casey.
“It’s my bathroom. Just mine. I’m not back at college sharing with three other girls who time me. If I want to sit in here and floss the enamel off of every damn tooth, then I will.” Not to mention how long it took to put on mascara without looking in a mirror. Ella’s pupils had to be zebra striped from all the misses.
“Don’t snip at me.”
“I’m in a bad mood. I want to be bitchy. If you don’t want to be snipped at, don’t be here.”
“Do we have to keep yelling at each other through a closed door?”
Ella slipped a wide leather belt around the waist of her simple, pine green cotton shift. Then she threw open the door. “Casey, I love you, but fair warning—if you stick around I will undoubtedly take your head off.”
Casey hovered one step outside the bathroom, holding a silver tray piled with tissues, cookies, a club sandwich and beer. She looked like a break-up concierge. Huh. Maybe that was how they could draw business to the Manor in the lean, winter months. Advertise it as an escape from your narrow escape ! Round-the-clock ice cream, sappy movies, a special massage to clear the heart chakra, and a non-judging concierge to constantly refill the tissues and wine.
“I just wanted to check and see if you were finally crying.”
“Nope.” And she wouldn’t. Not as long as Gray was under her roof. Sure, he was down a flight of stairs and half a hallway, but she wouldn’t risk any chance he might hear her shed a single tear. Ella had her pride. No boyfriend to keep her warm at night. Just her ice-cold pride.
“Why not?”
“I’m not ready.” Ella took the tray from her and set it down on the bed. Explaining this to Casey wouldn’t be easy. Since Ella could barely understand it herself. Kind of like back when they were in geometry class together. She could rote memorize the theorems, but found it impossible to expound on them to anyone else. “I think I have to be heartbroken to cry.”
Casey’s horrid polyester uniform khakis swished as she circled around to sit cross-legged on the white duvet. The one Ella had been dying to switch out to a light coverlet with summer right around the corner. The same one that now she didn’t want to remove or even wash, because it smelled like Gray.
Casey rested her wrists on her knees. “Now I’m confused. I thought you were heartbroken? You told us yesterday that you were in love with Gray.”
“And he said it, about me, for the very first time…as he walked out the door.” Wasn’t that just a karate chop to her bruised heart? After the magical weekend they spent together, the most fun and perfect weekend ever, Ella had known. Okay, she’d suspected. Or, at the very least, been fairly certain that Gray was about to drop the L word. He’d had the telltale squirreliness of a man on the verge of making a declaration. And she’d been ready to lob it right back at him.
Instead, he’d laid it at her feet like the spoils of war as she threw him out. Worse still, she hadn’t gotten to tell him she felt the same way. Why did that bother her so much? The fact Ella hadn’t blurted it out saved a teensy, tiny bit of face. Made Gray look more pathetic. And she needed to grab for every darn scrap of anti-Gray-matter that she could, to bolster the righteous anger she ought to be feeling. That is, if she could sort out what she felt.
Restless, she picked up a perfume bottle from her dresser. Sniffed it. Put it back and repeated with another. “The thing is, Case, I can’t figure out if I’m mad or sad. Furious or wistful. Embarrassed or hurt.”
“Screw the multiple choice. Take all of the above, grab a cheesecake or three and let’s start wallowing.”
Ella spun around, more than a little suspicious. Sure enough, Casey wore a look that verged on cheerful excitement. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re being so sympathetic because you just want an excuse to lie on the couch for three days with me, eating junk food and watching movies?”
“Hey, I feel your pain. But if my quest to cheer you up turns into a mini-stay-cation for me, then everybody wins, don’t they?”
“Fair point.”
“Not to harp on it, but if you love Gray, truly and deeply, then why aren’t you sobbing in the fetal position?”
“Because I’ve got a meeting to run in less than half an hour.”
“Bullshit. Dawn’s the mayor, she’ll run the meeting. And Piper’s great at handling crowds. She’ll be her backup. So what if the whole town is massing in your ballroom? The lights are already turned on, honey. You don’t have to go down at all. You can hide away up here. I’ll stay with you.”
Ella snuck a look in the mirror again. “Okay, either I look worse than I thought, or there’s a television show on you really don’t want to miss tonight.”
“You look…” Casey cocked her head, assessing. “You’re put together. No tears, so your nose and eyes aren’t red. But you look a little on the shell-shocked side. Dazed. Distracted. Like you might accidentally try to walk straight through a screen door.”
“Uh, that’s not dazed. I’d have to be drunk to do something that stupid.”
“Love drunk, maybe. Now that Gray’s ousted from your heart, I think that means you’ve got a love hangover.”
A definable condition—one that came with a cure, of course—sounded divine. “I wish I did.”
“Right. Cause then you could cure it with hair of the dog. What would that be for a love hangover—a quickie? A one-night stand?”
“Neither of which is going to happen. I don’t want to get over Gray.”
“You mean you want him back? That’d be the easiest fix of all, seeing as how he’s just downstairs.”
“No. I mean yes, of course I want him back.” Ella perched on the corner of the mattress. “I want the man I fell for, right here next to me. But that man was a lie.”
Casey worried at her bottom lip with her teeth. “You know I’m on your side. Ready to run him out of town on a rail, if that’ll make you happy. But it’s just the two of us here. And I’m trying to get clear on how this all happened. Total honesty time.” She tapped her palms together. “Did he actually lie? Did he ever tell you flat out that he had some other trumped-up career?”
“No. Gray was careful that way.” It couldn’t have been easy. The fact that he’d worked so hard to not lie to her meant…something. Ella was positive. “This was strictly a lie of omission. We never talked about his job at all, really. A few vague references to it going badly, but that was it.”
Leaning over, Casey poked her in the arm. “Which should’ve been a warning sign.”
Yeah. Ella didn’t need that pointed out to her. “At first, it was fun how we didn’t do the usual first-date resume exchange. As the days passed, more than once, I wondered what Gray did for a living. And then the conversation would turn. Now I know he turned it on purpose away from that line of questioning. But I told myself it didn’t matter. I thought I knew who he was as a person. That he didn’t need to be defined by his job. Turns out that Gray’s job defined every single second he spent here.”
“Can I ask you something? As long as I preface it by saying—again—that I will support whatever you say?”
“Of course.” Of course, Ella dreaded whatever question was headed her way. But nothing had been easy since Gray’s secret came out. Why should a conversation with one of her best friends be any different?
“Do you think it was all a lie? Do you think Gray was so diabolical that he played on your attraction? That all your breakfasts and yoga sessions and dinners were a sham? That he’s no more in love with you than he is with me?”
The very thoughts that whirled through her head all night long. “I don’t know. Not for sure. Which is why I can’t figure out if I’m heartbroken or not. How can I trust what Gray said? Now that he’s admitted to basically plotting against me this whole time?”
“On the other hand, the guy had one foot out the door.” Casey grabbed an oatmeal raisin cookie and broke it in half. Offered one side to Ella. “Why bother saying he loved you at all if it wasn’t true?”
“Exactly.” She took the cookie, glad that Casey had come to the same conclusion. “But he knows how much the Manor means to me. He’s been thinking about ripping it out from under me this whole time. How can I trust him?”
Case fell backwards onto the pile of pillows and let her arms flop to the sides. “Please tell me that’s a rhetorical question. I didn’t come here with any answers. All I brought were the necessary ingredients to help you through the breakup. If you want answers, you wait until Piper comes over to cheer you up tomorrow. She’s better at making judgments of people.”
“Tomorrow?” That seemed overly regimented. Planned. And then it hit her. Ella crawled over to glare down at Casey. “Did you guys make a schedule to trade off cheering me up?”
Her whole face crinkled into an apology. “Not so much make a schedule as, um, resurrect one from the last time you were, um, sad.”
Unbelievable. Ella knelt up, hands on her hips. “Do you really think I’m going to fall apart like that again?”
“No.” A couple of blinks. Then a strong, quick shake of the head. “I don’t, honestly. None of us do. We’re just taking precautions. Think of us as your security blanket.”
“You mean like the journal was for so long?” Ella bounded up. “I’m okay with my girlfriends doing the normal post-breakup wallow. But nothing else. No schedule. No parade of people checking on me. No emotional security blanket. I’m past that. As a matter of fact, I’m way past that. And if nothing else, I’ll forever be grateful to Gray for making me aware of just how ready and able I am to stand on my own two feet.”
“Message received, loud and clear.” Then she snagged her arm. “Is that a hickey?”
Ella’s hand flew to her neck. “Of course not.” Casey shook her head, and silently pointed to the opposite side. God, it was too humiliating to even look in a mirror. Ella tugged the scarf off her ponytail and retied it around her neck. What self-respecting twenty-seven-year-old walked around sporting a hickey? Talk about the souvenir she never wanted from this failed love affair. And even that would be gone right about the same time Gray left for good. “Better?”
A nod.
“Then let’s go.” With a little less enthusiasm this time, Ella headed for the door.
Casey followed her, then cast a look back at the tray. “Can I at least eat your sandwich? You know, since you’re emphatically not a wreck and don’t need to be waited on hand and foot.”
“Bring it with you. We’ve got a meeting to run and a town to save.” And really, in light of these much bigger issues, Ella should just forget Gray. Just stop obsessing over how much of their relationship was real and how much was to pad his report.
∞∞∞
The two-story scrollwork of the iron gates had been there all along, blocking off the hallway to the Manor’s ballroom. It wasn’t as if Ella had called in a work crew overnight to install them against traitorous boyfriends trying to crash the town meeting. And yet Gray felt they were more than just decorative, to up the ante on the castle effect. Today, they were both symbolically and in a very real way barring him from joining Ella. Gates that kept him from striding right in and sitting down amidst his new friends. A tangible barrier that, just like always, kept Gray on the outside. Utterly alone.
He doubted they were locked. Probably just closed to keep hotel guests from wandering in to what could potentially be a heated and ugly discussion. The last thing the town needed was for tourists to spread word that their vacation getaway was bankrupt and possibly about to be belly-up. Still, as he paced back and forth across the burgundy-and-gold-swirled carpet, Gray hesitated to push past them.
What sort of reception would he get? Would Ella throw him out—again? Not that he’d blame her. Since the moment on that very first day when he’d learned her name, Gray should’ve kept his distance. From a business standpoint, Ella was superfluous. She didn’t help run the hotel. He hadn’t used anything gleaned from conversations with her in his official R she’s just not that bright.” A ripple of laughter swelled through the room. The tide had shifted. “So consider this a loan—a way to tide us over until the town’s insurance comes through, as we all know it will. You can also consider it my vote of confidence in Dawn Cosgrove as our mayor.”
Another shuffling stir of feet, and then a smatter of applause. It didn’t grow as big as the one for Ella, but the message of support was loud enough. Gray used the moment to shoulder through the rest of the way to the dais. Without stopping to ask permission—because really, the chance of Ella kicking him to the curb stood at about one hundred and ten percent —Gray leapt up and planted himself dead center. Kinda wished he had full catcher’s gear on, too, to protect against whatever might be hurled his way. Curses. Slaps. Chairs. He deserved it all.
“I’ve got a way to help. You can consider it my vote of confidence in this town.” Gray didn’t want to risk looking at Ella. So he stared straight ahead. Ward, front row, about two feet away, glowered right back at him. Great. Better talk fast before he got bounced. “A lot of you don’t know me. I’m Graydon Locke. I’ve been enjoying the hospitality of Mayhew Manor since the beginning of the month. This town impressed me. Which is saying something, because I travel a lot. But you have a spirit of unity here that’s unique.”
“Gray, what are you doing?” Ella hissed in his ear. He didn’t even acknowledge her. Better to plow ahead and get it all out.
“I know you’re in a tough spot right now. So I spent all day on the phone, pulling strings. You’ve heard of Ithaca’s annual Fourth of July marathon?” Nods. Murmurs. It was enough. “Their sponsor dropped out last week.” To be more exact, their sponsor, a workout-gear line, was fielding a slew of ugly accusations about child labor in China. They’d contracted into survival mode, which meant not putting their logo anywhere for the next few months. Or shelling out any money to anything besides a crack team of lawyers. “They’ve got thousands of runners signed up to participate, but without a sponsor, they can’t pull it off.”
In a noisy clatter of heels, Piper crowded up next to him. “We’ve got no sponsor, no runners, and we’re not Ithaca.” She ticked each point off on her fingers.
“No, but you’re only an hour away.” Gray kept facing out. He wanted not just Piper to hear the response, but the whole room. “Close enough that the runners can keep their hotel rooms. We can shift the entire race—the 10k, the half and the full marathon—to Seneca Lake. With Agon as your sponsor.”
Casey, sitting next to Ward, goggled at him. “Agon Athletics? They’re the biggest name in running shoes, gear, apparel, you name it.”
“Which is why this switch will work. Ithaca’s on board with handing it to you if they can keep a quarter of the profits. Considering they were about to call the whole thing off as of yesterday, this is a win. Allows them to save a little face, reap a little profit. And Agon will only kick in the money if the race moves here.” It had taken four phone calls and most of the night to convince them to hold fast to that condition. Gray still couldn’t believe he’d pulled it off.
Ward stood. Spread his legs. Planted his fists on his hips. Could not have looked more menacing if he’d added a shield, a sword, and a semi-automatic. “The Fourth of July’s right around the corner. This would be a shit-ton of work.”
“Sure. You need it, though. A big race, with a mammoth sponsor, won’t just bring you people and tourist dollars as they fill hotel rooms, eat in your restaurants, drink in the bars. It’ll bring you goodwill. Something you’ll need once the story of your missing money hits the media.”
“Why would Agon help us?”
“I called in a favor.” Sure, it was a favor he’d been saving for more than ten years. A lengthy and complicated story that boiled down to alcohol, stupidity (Josh’s, not his), and lying his ass off to prevent expulsion (Josh’s, not his). When your ex-college roommate was on a meteoric rise through one of the biggest corporations in the nation, it paid to hang on to your chit. To save it for the one time it’d really make a difference. Gray couldn’t think of a better use than cashing it in for whatever small way it might repair some of the hurt he’d caused Ella.
“Look, I know it’ll be work. But it’ll bring in guaranteed money, exposure and free advertising. All things you need. Desperately. I promised Agon that if anyplace could pick up Ithaca’s slack on a moment’s notice, it’s here.” And that had taken some fancy talking with not just Josh, but Josh’s boss, the head of the marketing department, and half the Ithaca city council. “Like I said, you’ve got something special here. Tenacity, genuine caring and a feeling of community that is as strong as that lake out there is deep.” He handed a piece of paper to Dawn. “This is the number for Ithaca’s mayor. He’s expecting your call. This can be a done deal before you all leave tonight.”
Dawn took it, but said nothing. Instead, she looked at Ella. As did Ward, Piper, Casey and most of the room. Unable to resist one last look himself, Gray finally turned. Dawn might be the mayor, but now more than ever Ella was the heart of this town. They’d all follow her lead. Would she take his olive branch? Or throw it back in his face?
Her green eyes were as cool as the moss on the trees he’d jogged by every day. Not a hint of emotion flared behind them. And since her knee wasn’t connecting with his nuts, he’d take it as a win. But that coolness iced around his bleeding heart. He couldn’t stand the distance between them. Or knowing that it would grow with every mile he drove out of town, never to be repaired. Shit, this sucked.
“Thank you, Gray. We appreciate the lengths you went to on our behalf.”
“It was the least I could do.”
Before she could hit him with a snarky response, Gray nodded at his friends—or at least, the people who’d been his friends for ten amazing days—and hopped off the dais. Any more time in Ella’s presence was too painful. He’d done what he came to do. No need to torture himself with her proximity. Now that he’d helped save her beloved town, Gray could leave with a clear conscience. Hell, far from clear. The smog-filled air of Beijing was a million times more clear than his conscience. But this was the most he could do to right the wrongs he’d heaped upon Ella. That…and clearing out as soon as possible. She’d already kicked him out of her life. But he’d finish the job and clear out of her hotel, her town, tonight. Because there was nothing left for him here.