Chapter 27
RAINA
Once I’m back at my place, things seem less dire.
Vivian managed to keep Kaleb from doing something worse, though she has yet to convince him to actually make amends with Alex, Max, and Vincent. In the meantime, I’m working to settle into a new routine, at least for another week or so—until I make decisions of my own.
My morning coffee is now decaf. I need to make sure I take my prenatal vitamins and drink enough water.
And I need more whole foods in my diet—with that in mind, I text Alex to let him know I’ll be in touch next week regarding The Black Swan, if only to keep that door open while I figure things out.
I make my way across the block to one of my favorite farmers’ markets.
“Hey, Prince,” I say, greeting my go-to guy for the best fruits and vegetables in the entire city. “How are the greenhouse fruits coming along?”
Before me, woven baskets display their early spring harvest. The first berries look beautiful—plump and radiating life in bright reds and blues.
“Miss Redford!” Prince turns around to face me after serving another customer. His watery blue eyes light up at the sight of me. “You’re looking fabulous,” he adds after careful consideration.
“Thank you,” I say as I reach for some blueberries.
“I’m bringing in the field produce by the end of next week, just so you know,” Prince says, then grabs another paper bag and points at the raspberries. “Do you want some of these, too?”
“Yes, please. Oh, and the strawberries look really nice.”
“We worked hard to recreate the natural conditions inside our greenhouse over the winter,” Prince says while filling up a bag. “And, as the Lord is my witness, our berry crop has turned out close to nature’s own perfection. Here, have a taste.”
He gives me a raspberry, and as soon as I eat it, I’m surprised by the freshness, the soft flavors, and the burst of the pulp against my tongue.
“Oh, my days, you’re absolutely right. These will work so well in my yogurt bowls,” I tell him. “And I’m definitely making a strawberry cheesecake this weekend.”
“The reinvented one you bragged about last week?” He wiggles his white, bushy eyebrows at me.
A sour taste settles in my mouth as I remember where I first introduced the reinvented cheesecake. It was supposed to be a sweet memory, but recent events have made me doubt pretty much everything.
“No, I’m going for the classic this time,” I say to Prince. “How is your darling hubby, by the way? I don’t see him around.”
“Oh, he’s back at the farmhouse. Our apricot trees needed a little extra care this season,” he says. “He’ll be joining me next week, though.”
I give him the blueberry bag and start filling a strawberry bag while he weighs everything for me and gingerly sets each wrapped package into a complimentary woven basket of my own. Prince, ever the thoughtful man, knows I collect these for gift baskets and home décor ideas.
“Say, Prince, I’m curious. How did you deal with… you know, people and your private life? Your relationship with Ben and all that? I imagine you grew up in a more conservative era, right?”
“Well, it wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you that much,” he says with a soft chuckle. “For a long time, we had to hide our love from our friends and our families.”
“Weren’t you both married?”
“We had wives, yes. But the girls knew. They helped us. And we took care of them,” Prince says.
“When my wife passed away, Ben cried for days. It damn near broke his heart. We were a family, in a way, the four of us. Then the Nineties came around, and Ben got an amicable divorce. Shelly, his ex-wife, lives with us. She works the farm with us, the reliable old gal.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet.”
“Yes. And she was our maid of honor at the wedding, too,” Prince replies, fondly remembering that particular moment.
“I’ll tell you one thing, Miss Redford, it wasn’t what we wanted at the time, but society was harsh, and our lifestyle could have cost us our careers and our future.
We had to play along. Today, it’s not like that anymore. ”
“Isn’t it, though?”
He shakes his head and smiles. “Oh, no. Sure, there are some societal pressures. But if you hold on tightly to what you’ve got and stop living according to the opinions of others, I promise you’ll never regret it.” He tilts his head. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m just trying to understand, to make some choices of my own, I suppose. Love isn’t always conventional, right?”
Prince shrugs and nods at the same time. “Love doesn’t care about who’s who. Love just happens. We don’t choose who we fall in love with. We choose what we do about it. And Ben and I had choices to make. Every choice we made kept us close in a world that would’ve done everything to keep us apart.”
He goes on to tell me about signing their marriage certificate and inviting their children and grandchildren to the wedding, and I can’t help but feel a little sad for him and Ben that they couldn’t live their true lives the whole time.
“How can I get through to someone in my family—my only family member, for that matter, about my choices then?” I ask Prince as he swipes my card through the POS machine and pulls out the receipt for me.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I told my son.
He had a hard time accepting who I really was at the time,” he says.
“I told him, ‘Connor, I’m not asking you to be happy for me. I’m not even asking you to be happy with me.
I’m asking you to respect my wishes, just as I have always respected yours.
’ No one is going to live our lives for us, so why should they have a say in how we do it? ”
It comes with a tinge of irony considering their younger years, but I do understand.
And it makes all the sense in the world.
After I thank Prince and take my basket, I move toward the eastern side of the market, where I find the Jeffersons’ honey stall fully loaded and waiting for me to take some of the acacia honey jars off their hardworking hands.
A familiar voice draws my attention. “Fancy running into you here.”
I turn around to find Deanna standing behind me, dressed in a dark green Gucci velour tracksuit and white sneakers, her hair pulled into a loose bun, and a wry smile on her face. A purse and a bag of fresh vegetables hang from her arm.
“I thought you were off to warmer lands after Haus,” I say, trying to summon a smile of my own, but out of all the people in the world, she’s one of the last I would’ve wanted to deal with today. I can only pray this exchange ends quickly.
“I was, but then I changed my mind,” she says, then slowly looks around. “Any chance I can buy you a coffee and work things out? I feel bad about how we ended things.”
“You do?” I sound surprised.
“Yes. Come on, walk with me,” she says and pulls me away from the honey stall. I glance back with sudden yearning but figure I’ll get her out of my hair a lot faster if I just go with her. “We’ll get you the honey later. They’re not going anywhere.”
We walk along the edge of the market, the traffic thinning to our left as we take a turn down a less crowded street. As the noise around us fades, I glance at Deanna. She seems tired, weighed down by her own poor decision-making, I’d venture to say.
“I wanted to apologize, first and foremost,” she says after a rather long and uncomfortable silence, “for the way I treated you while we were at Haus of Sin. I guess a part of me never truly got over Vincent, and I hated how intensely he felt about you. How intensely they all felt about you.”
“It’s not like we planned any of it.”
“I know, Raina. It was never about you. I ended it with Vincent,” she says. “I’m the one with the remorse and the things left unsaid. And I should’ve done better. You were never to blame.”
“Well, thank you for saying that.”
“I’m not just saying it, I’m going to prove it, too. You know what they say, actions speak louder than words,” Deanna replies. “You’re going to head their kitchen at The Black Swan, right?”
“That was the original discussion, yes.”
My stomach tightens ahead of decisions I have yet to make, thoughts I’ve yet to revisit, if only to give myself some time to breathe and adjust to my new condition.
I look at Deanna, briefly admiring the delicate profile of her face.
She’s different without any makeup on, paler. There are dark shadows under her eyes.
“The original discussion?” She raises a curious eyebrow. “Not anymore?”
“No, it’s still pending. There isn’t a timeline yet, though. I’m taking this week off from everything to figure a few things out, so I don’t know the details yet.”
“I see. And have you spoken to Alex or Max or Vincent lately?”
The question hits like a punch in the gut. She might like the fact that I walked out on them, that I put an end to it on account of my brother’s reaction, and I’d hate to give her the satisfaction.
She might’ve said she’s sorry, but it doesn’t mean she actually meant it. I remember when Jeremy found me and tried to get back with me, just so I could get him an in with the guys’ corporate offices for his law firm.
“Not about The Black Swan, if that’s what you’re asking.” I decide a little white lie is better than a big, fat one.
“Thing is, Raina, without Haus of Sin and my decision not to go to Brunei, my winter options are limited—or worse. I’d like a chance to talk to them face-to-face, but they haven’t been taking any of my calls. I need to make it right,” Deanna replies.
We pause in front of a gangway leading off into a separate side street.
Long shadows reach from the darkness, along with a shiver that trickles down my spine.
I look up and down the alley, and there’s barely anyone around.
I see a waitress wiping down a couple of tables outside a coffee shop, but I don’t see any interested passersby.
“I understand that,” I say to Deanna. “I’m just not sure what you want from me. It’s not my place to get involved in their business decisions.”
A cold smile cuts across her face. “It kind of is your place, considering you’re the reason they ended their collaboration with me in the first place.”
Aha. So her apology was bullshit. “Pretty sure it was your behavior that led to their decision.”
“I just need you to talk to them for me,” she says, trying so hard to soften her expression when every atom in her body is clearly screaming at me to die. “They’ll be more inclined to take my call, if you talk to them first.”
For a moment, I get a sense of déjà vu, of Jeremy asking me to do the same thing while trying to reconcile. My God, they’re cut from the same cloth. I can see it now. They’re the same self-serving, smug-smiling, selfish garbage, wrapped up in a nice body and a pretty face.
Rotten on the inside.
“So that’s what this was all about,” I scoff. “It was never about you actually apologizing or changing your ways. It was about you getting through to them with my help. That’s what you’re here for.”
“No, Raina, I’m really trying here—”
I cut her off. “Try somewhere else. I’m done being a puppet. Sort your own life out and leave me alone.”
I turn away to walk back to the market, but I feel something hard and cold pressing into my back, followed by a spine-tingling click.
“Move or scream, and I will shoot you,” Deanna hisses in my ear.
“Is that a gun?” I whisper, my blood running ice-cold.
“Well, I tried being nice about it. All you had to do was say yes, and I probably would’ve spared you from what comes next.”
“I don’t understand.”
Looking around again, I notice the waitress must have gone inside.
I don’t see anyone. The alley is empty, and Deanna is poking me with a gun.
Fear gets the better of me, my fight-or-flight response frozen, as I try to understand what’s happening and what I can do next.
One bullet from this proximity would kill me.
Worse, even, it would kill my unborn child.
“You and I, Raina, are about to have a very different conversation,” Deanna says and grabs the back of the neck. “Move!”
“Where?”
She yanks me away from the sidewalk and pushes me through the gangway. In the fleeting panic, I drop the fruit basket and let her guide me into the side street where a yellow Beetle awaits.
“Get in,” she says.
“Please, don’t hurt me,” I tell Deanna. “We can work this out.”
“There’s nothing left to work out between us, you fat, uppity bitch. We’re doing this my way. And it starts with you getting in the fucking car!”
I’m startled and terrified, yet I have no choice but to comply. With a trembling hand, I reach for the passenger door.
“You’re driving, Raina, do I look stupid to you?”
I must do everything in my power to survive whatever comes next.
“Okay, Deanna, I’ll drive,” I calmly reply and move around to the driver’s side of the car. She fumbles through her jacket pocket and tosses the keys to me.
I catch them with shaky fingers and fail to unlock the door as quickly as she’d like.
“MOVE!” she snaps.
Trembling like a leaf, I manage to get behind the wheel.
She slides into the passenger seat with her gun still very much pointed at me. “Now drive,” Deanna says.
“Drive where?”
“Wherever I fucking tell you.”