Chapter 39 Sunshine and Sandy Beaches
SUNSHINE AND SANDY BEACHES
brIDGET
When she turned from the stove, her sweater vest blinked at me.
Each side had a tree knitted into it, dotted with light-up ornaments.
“So good to see you, honey. You didn’t have to bring wine when you’re between jobs.
” She hugged me, long and tight, but the tension I’d been carrying for two days gripped me even harder.
“I can still provide for the family,” I said. For now.
She pinched her lips like I’d said it out loud. “You don’t know how long you’ll be out of work. Save your pennies.”
“Good advice, my love.” Dad entered the kitchen, last year’s bottle of Jameson in his hand. Frugal to the core, he only brought it out on special occasions.
“Hi, Dad.” I kissed his cheek.
“Bridget, love.” He lowered his voice. “How’s the job search?”
“I’ll start next week. The good news is one of my connections got me an interview as an executive director of a foundation.” I bit my lip. “It wouldn’t be as much money as I was making before, but I’d be helping families who are new to the country.”
“The money doesn’t matter.” Mom patted my cheek, and my heavy heart lifted. “What’s more important is not being unemployed for long. At your age, it’s harder to find a new job than to find a husband, and we know how that’s gone.”
“Mom!” I gasped. My stomach plummeted to somewhere around the cuffs of my jeans.
“Don’t worry, Deirdre,” my father said. “Bridget’s much better at finding work than men. She’ll get a job.”
“Dad, you can’t say that!” As much as I loved my family, I was regretting coming tonight. Thank Jesus I’d never told them about Cole. The humiliation would be more than I could bear.
He rubbed my back as if it would ease the hurtful things they’d said. “What? I said you were a good worker. And I like the idea of you working to support immigrants. Your grandparents would’ve liked to have a firecracker like you on their side.”
Slightly mollified, I said, “The immigration system is even harder to navigate now. I’d love to support the organization’s mission of helping newcomers.”
“A toast.” He unscrewed the cap from the bottle and produced a pair of shot glasses from the pocket of his cardigan. His sweater was dotted with sparkly white pom-poms to represent snowflakes. “To new beginnings.”
I held the glasses as he poured. “To new beginnings.” We each raised a glass.
“Bridge.” Ciara ran into the kitchen, the bell on her Santa hat dancing. “There’s a guy at the door. Big. Like, The Rock big. Dark hair. Dreamy blue eyes. He says he wants to see you.”
The whiskey went down the wrong way, and I coughed for at least thirty seconds. Dad nipped the glass from my hand, tossed back the rest of my shot, then whacked my back.
When I could breathe again, I said, “Send him away.”
“Wait, you know him?” Ciara asked. “I thought he was one of those stripper-grams. I wanted to see what was under that tux. Except…” She scrunched her nose. “He has a little girl with him. That’s weird for a stripper, right?”
“A stripper on Christmas Eve?” My dad took another shot and wiped his mouth. “Those girlfriends of yours are trouble, Bridget.”
“No, Dad, he’s not a stripper. Is the little girl around eight? Curly brown hair, brown eyes, and a sharp look to her?”
“Cute as a button,” Ciara said. “Already ran off with Ashlyn.”
I sighed. “Then I guess I have to talk to him, at least until you can extract Caitlyn from the house.”
“Who is he?” Mom asked.
“Cole Campion.” The hairs on my arms lifted when I said his name. Who was he to trespass on my territory on Christmas-fucking-Eve?
“Fuck, Bridget.” Ciara’s eyes went wide. “That’s Cole, your nemesis? I could forgive a lot if it came in a yummy package like that.”
“Jesus, Ciara. Language,” Mom said. “But let’s go take a look.” She and my sister turned toward the front of the house.
By the time I made it to the front door, all four of my sisters and my mother circled Cole, who was still on the doorstep.
He wore a crisp black tuxedo, like Ciara said, wide at his broad shoulders and tapering to his narrower waist and hips.
A shiny black cuff link winked at his wrist when he scratched his eyebrow.
Although he looked fabulous in a suit, a tux was next-level, and the steel walls I’d erected around my tender heart melted a little.
I wanted to peel the formalwear off him piece by piece.
No, I didn’t! He was an asshole for working with Ned behind my back.
I rubbed my hands together to warm them with the cold air creeping inside. “Why are you on my parents’ front porch?”
He opened his mouth, but Megan spoke over him. “He won’t come in until you invite him.”
“What are you, a vampire?” I said. “Come in. You’re letting the heat out. But I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Fair.” He stepped inside, his polished shoes as shiny as my mother’s prized collection of Swarovski figurines. He cautiously skirted the display case in the narrow foyer, and Denise closed the door behind him.
All four of my sisters, plus my mother, gazed at Cole and his tux, which clearly cost more than all of our ugly Christmas sweaters combined, including the one I’d ordered from Etsy with eight reindeer snouts hand-embroidered across the front.
I wondered how many of them were as tempted as I was to run a hand down the wide expanse of Cole’s snow-white dress shirt and feel the ridges of muscle underneath.
I swallowed the drool pooling in my mouth.
“He’s so young,” Mom said. “He has to be Ciara’s age.”
I winced. “That’s right.”
But Mom never stopped until the horse was pulverized. “So that would make you—”
“Perfect for me.” He gazed down at me, his habitual smirk gone and his expression soft. “I missed you.”
I brushed off his soft, meaningless words. “Why are you here?” It was only when I put my hands on my hips and felt the rough denim of my jeans that I felt underdressed even though he was the jerk who’d shown up uninvited and in formalwear to an ugly sweater party. “And how?”
“Finley knew the address, and I authorized a significant end-of-year bonus before I left.”
Ugh, I’d been too focused on my troubles to think about Finley or any of our other employees before security had escorted me out. I was momentarily glad Cole was still around to take care of them, even if he was a forked-tongued snake.
“Can we talk?” he asked. “Privately?”
“Why should she talk to you?” Denise, the tallest of us, stepped between Cole and me. She lifted her chin to glare at him.
“Because I need to apologize.” He shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Yeah, you do,” Trish said. My usually sweet sister stood shoulder to shoulder with Denise.
Megan’s arm came around my waist. “Want me to call Marv to see him out to his fancy car?”
Cole could snap my kind-hearted brother-in-law to pieces if he wanted. “No. Jesus, it’s Christmas. This will take only a minute. Come on.” I tipped my head toward the living room. “Let’s go out back.”
I led him through the entryway, past my drunk uncles in the den, and to the slider that led out to the back patio. In the daytime, you could see Mom’s carefully tended rosebushes and the succulents that nestled in pots. Tonight, the white camellia blooms were barely visible under the crescent moon.
I crossed my arms. “Make it quick. You’re intruding on my family’s celebration.”
“I’m sorry to barge in like this. Are you cold?” He flicked the button of his jacket and shrugged out of it.
“I’m fine. I’m wearing a sweater.” It was a lie. The sweater was thin and didn’t hold in my body’s heat.
“Take it.” He extended the jacket to me. “You’re always cold.”
“Dammit.” Careful not to touch his hand, I took the jacket from him and stuffed my arms into it. It smelled like him, and it was warm from his body. I crossed it over my chest.
He shoved his hands into his pockets, and his exposed white shirt glowed in the faint moonlight. “I quit.”
“What?”
“The day after they fired you, I called Anita and Ned, and I quit. Apex is without a CEO. I believe Stan stepped in as interim since he has the longest tenure. I texted you and called—”
“I blocked your number. I didn’t want to be…” But I couldn’t admit I wasn’t strong enough to withstand the temptation to talk to him. “Why?”
“What they did to you wasn’t fair.”
“You quit out of guilt?”
“I swear, I didn’t know they’d set you up to fail. Or that they’d fire you. No one told me anything ahead of time. I quit because I couldn’t work for a company that treated someone who’d been there as long as you the way they did. Plus, being CEO wouldn’t be fun without you.”
My chest heated. “Oh, I was just a little fun for you?” Though I was relieved I wouldn’t have to deal with a repeat of the L-word in this conversation.
“No. I mean, I only enjoyed working there because of you. The company is garbage. At least, the board is. I didn’t want to be there, not without you. So, I quit.”
My steel wall was only half the thickness it had been. The rest was a molten puddle. “Good for you. I still don’t understand why you showed up here.”
“Don’t you?” he asked, his soft lips turning down. “Didn’t what I said mean anything to you?”
“You mean the fun part?” I crossed my arms. “Not really.”
“The part where I told you I love you. Because I really do, Bridget. Do you…could you love me too?”
It wasn’t fair of him to ask that while I was wrapped in his heat, in his scent. While he looked so delicious in his crisp white shirt and a hand-tied bow tie that had gone slightly askew when he shrugged off his coat. Love?
“Look deep inside yourself,” he said. “Could you walk away and never see me again? Would you want to?”
I ripped off his coat and flung it at him.
“Goddammit, Cole!” I stepped away and turned toward the house so I didn’t have to look at him.
Earlier, I’d planned to do exactly that: live the rest of my life in the absence of Cole Campion, hoping he’d move to a different city and I’d never hear his name again.
Was that what I wanted?
I took a deep breath of air that smelled cold and fresh and not at all like Cole.
I looked up at the stars, shimmering faintly between the clouds.
I could be like them: burning bright in their spheres, separated from each other by vast distances.
It would be lonely, sure, but it’d also be safe.
No one would mock me for dating a man I’d worked with.
A younger man who didn’t know life before computers could fit in your pocket.
I stood in that reality for a second, then five more.
Then I remembered what we’d so briefly had last weekend. A lover. A partner. Someone who looked after me and saw me as an equal. Someone who told me he loved me and wasn’t afraid to say it in public.
I didn’t want to be a star. No matter what people might say.
I whirled and leaped toward him, flinging my arms around him and burying my face in the starched cotton of his shirt. “No. I want you.”
His arms went around my back. “That’s what I thought. What I hoped,” he amended. “Could you love me? Someday? I’ll wait.”
“I…I think I already do. That’s why it hurt so much when they kicked me out. I could’ve worked with you. Or under you. But I didn’t want you to work there without me.”
“Say it?” His hands pressed into my back. “Please?”
Warm and safe and loved, I looked up into his eyes, which were dark pools in the dim light. “Cole Campion, I love you with my whole heart.”
He pressed me to his chest. “And I love you, Bridget O’Brien, with everything I am.”
“Good. Let’s go inside where it’s warm,” I said. But the truth was, everywhere was warm sunshine and sandy beaches, as long as I was with him.