Fourteen
FOURTEEN
Mia
AFTER SHOWERING AND stuffing food in my face, I wavered for some time before grabbing a fresh Post-it note from the supply on the kitchen counter and jotting down a short message for Zalen. Hurrying back upstairs in the empty house, I stuck it to the couch arm where his note for me had been.
I think Julie would thoroughly approve of what you’re doing. Thank you for telling me about her and Jake .
Dressed in a faded sweatshirt and leggings, I grabbed a jacket and headed out, bracing for whatever awaited me at the Elderflower Inn. I hadn’t set foot in the place since the night I’d stood helplessly by as screaming patrons ran for the exit, fleeing a scuttling wave of cockroaches.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked in. Worst case scenario, the dining room would be full of abandoned food filling the place with stink as it rotted on the plates. Best case, magical cleaning fairies would have descended in my absence, scrubbing the place from top to bottom.
Unsurprisingly, the reality lay somewhere between those two extremes. I should have known that Nat would do as much damage control as possible, probably with the help of at least some of the staff.
The dining room had been cleared; there was no whiff of decomposing food. There was , however, an unpleasant smell of chemical pesticide in the air. Bizarrely, I felt a brief pang of sympathy for the clueless roaches that had been dumped in a strange place, just long enough for a single night of wild partying before being summarily poisoned to death. I shook my head sharply, dispelling the image.
Nat poked his head out from the kitchen.
“Hi,” he said. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”
The words sounded stilted, as so many of our interactions did these days.
“It’s my restaurant, too,” I told him mildly. “Of course I came as soon as I could. What’s up?”
He came fully into the dining room and gestured me to a table. Once we were both sitting down, he sighed.
“So, the good news is, the pest control company submitted a formal report to the health department, to the effect that they found no evidence of an established roach infestation in the kitchen or food storage areas. Combined with the police report about Joe, I’m confident they’ll let us reopen very soon.”
“That is good news,” I agreed. “What’s the bad news?”
He blew out an unhappy breath. “The bad news is, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, we’re a roach-infested disease pit that probably bribed someone to get our Michelin star. And, yes, some guy actually posted a review to that effect on Yelp.”
I swelled up with outrage. Nat raised a hand, palm out, like someone trying to calm a wild animal.
“I know, I know,” he said. “But this is my point. We can’t afford to keep the restaurant closed while also continuing to pay the staff. But we can afford even less to open back up, with all the food costs and overhead, if no one’s going to eat here.”
I clenched my jaw, knowing that my instinct to rage and yell about the unfairness of it all wasn’t productive.
“Fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “I get it.” With difficulty, I forced myself to take a couple of slow, deep breaths before continuing. “So... we need a third option. A way to get the word out that this was willful sabotage, and we’re the victims.”
Nat was watching me closely. I could see the misgivings in his expression.
“And if we make a fuss about it, will that open us up to additional retaliation from this dangerous street gang?” he asked pointedly.
Unfortunately, a bit of deep breathing hadn’t banished my burgeoning rage. It had just redirected it.
“What would you say if I told you I’m not sure I actually care?” I said, holding his gaze with mine.
Nat hesitated, in that careful way he did when he was thinking about his words before he spoke.
“I’d say that if everyone knew we’d been targeted, and then later, something really bad happened... it would be pretty obvious who did it, even to the police.” His dark brows drew together. “And also, that if we don’t manage to clear our names somehow, it would be difficult for us—” He cut himself off. “—for you to start over with a new restaurant. That kind of thing tends to stick with a person.”
I frowned at the uncharacteristic verbal stumble, but set it aside for now. “Who do we know in local media who might be interested in a juicy exclusive about high-stakes sabotage in the restaurant world?”
Nat tapped his fingers restlessly on the tabletop, thinking.
“ Metro Lifestyle ?” he suggested. “Or Town and Home ?”
“I vote we shop it to both of them and see who’s more interested,” I said.
“We wouldn’t be able to name names,” Nat warned. “That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. Plus, no one would print it.”
“So, we keep it vague,” I replied. “Although I think we could get away with naming the gang, maybe. Then use social media to shape speculation and hopefully get the article itself to go viral.”
Nat’s restless fingers stilled. “You’re really serious about standing up to these people, huh.”
Right now, I was so mad at SSG and Blake Berlusconi that I could claw out eyeballs.
“I am deadly serious,” I told him.
“As long as that’s a figure of speech,” Nat said carefully.
I thought of Luca’s broken soul... of my fantasy of shooting his rapists over and over, of watching them bleed out slowly and in agony.
Blake Berlusconi.
Blaze .
“Of course,” I said. “Just a figure of speech.”
He gave a slow nod. “Right. I’ll contact the press. Though they’ll probably want to speak to you as well, assuming they go for the story.”
“I’ve got plenty to say, believe me,” I replied grimly.
Nat nodded again, before straightening in his chair and squaring his shoulders. “There’s something else we need to talk about. Something, erm, unrelated.”
My righteous anger drained away abruptly, replaced by unease. I had a good idea what this might be about, and I desperately didn’t want to have to deal with it now, on top of everything else that was going on.
“This is about us, isn’t it,” I said, not making it a question.
“Yes,” he admitted. “Sorry. I know the timing isn’t great.”
I didn’t reply, because saying, ‘ No shit, Sherlock ,’ wasn’t really a productive contribution to the conversation.
Nat cleared his throat and looked down at the table. “It’s just... it’s become pretty clear to me recently that you’ve moved on from the marriage, which you have absolutely every right to do, given the mistakes I’ve made.” He glanced up. “If you’d like to pursue a divorce, I will do everything in my power to make it as easy and painless as possible—up to and including taking on the bulk of the restaurant debt.”
It felt as though someone had poked a nest of angry hornets inside my stomach.
“I don’t think we should do that.” The words were out of my mouth before my brain had even registered them.
His brows twitched in confusion. Silence settled over the table for several seconds.
Eventually, he spoke again. “I... just thought that you might want—”
“A divorce?” I said, my voice rising despite my best efforts. “When did I ever give you the idea that I wanted a divorce? I’m not the one who blew up the fucking marriage! I didn’t even realize anything was seriously wrong !”
The last sentence emerged as a straight-up shriek. I realized that fact at the same moment I realized I was shaking—wracking, full-body tremors that made me feel like I might pass out. Possibly, I’d been suppressing a few more feelings around this subject than I’d realized.
Nat half-rose from his seat, but not to get away from me. Instead, he reached toward me with an abortive movement, as though my outpouring of almost hysterical distress caused him physical pain. He froze, clearly unsure if he was allowed to touch me.
Perversely, the urge to throw myself into that familiar embrace and break down sobbing rushed over me like a tidal wave. Appalled at myself, I shoved my chair back from the table. Nat’s suspended hand fell to rest palm-down on the tabletop. He slumped back in his seat, defeated.
I was breathing hard; ugly gasps that barely seemed to fill my lungs. We stayed in this wary standoff for what felt like centuries.
“We don’t have to,” Nat said, at length. “I just wanted you to know that the option is there... and it will continue to be there, should you change your mind later.”
A terrible thought came to me. “Did you find someone else? Is that why you’re bringing this up now?”
It was the height of hypocrisy, and I knew it. I just didn’t care .
Nat let out a harsh breath that might’ve been the distant relative of a self-deprecating laugh. “No, nothing like that, believe me. The sad truth is, I’ve had a grand total of one hookup partner. It was fairly early on. Nothing recent.” He hesitated, swallowing. “And I don’t like some of the things I learned about myself after it happened.”
I blinked at him, my chest still heaving. “You... what?”
He gave a tiny, sheepish shrug. “It’s true. You found yourself a house full of rich alphas who absolutely dote on you. I met a stranger in a hotel room three times, and I’ve spent pretty much every spare moment since then reevaluating my life choices, now that it’s too late to do anything about them.”
My mouth opened, but I didn’t know what to say. I’d assumed Nat had been fucking random women more or less non-stop since demanding the open marriage. He was freaking gorgeous —not to mention ripped , thanks to his gym addiction. He was well-spoken, polite, attentive...
“Are you lying to me?” I asked, bewildered.
The wry, open expression on his face as he shook his head was what finally convinced me. It was an expression which clearly conveyed that he could see and appreciate the sick humor inherent in the situation, even if the joke was at his expense.
“Trust me,” he said, irony lacing his tone. “That single damned hookup ended up being a colossal mistake. You don’t even know the half of it.”
I struggled to rearrange my assumptions about the last several weeks in light of this new revelation. It was too much, though. I needed time to process it.
My bout of enraged hysteria had subsided, at least—leaving me feeling shaky and wrung out. I licked my lips, trying to drag my focus back to what mattered.
“Okay,” I said. “Look. As I’m sure I’ve just demonstrated, I have some strong feelings about what happened between us. But trying to finalize a divorce right now would be a financial nightmare. Divorces are expensive, and we can’t afford expensive when we’re trying to drag the restaurant back from the brink.”
Nat looked wary, but after a moment his shoulders relaxed a bit. “It would be complicated, it’s true,” he allowed. “The debt is under the name of the LLC, but it’s secured by our personal assets, and anyway, we’re both listed as officers of the company.”
I nodded, relieved for an excuse to kick this particular can of roaches down the road. “Exactly. Why rock the boat if we don’t have to?”
That same relief was visible in the lines of Nat’s spine. “All right. I just wanted you to know that if you decide to abandon ship, I’ll happily hop into a dinghy and disappear without making a fuss.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I get it.”
From there, we awkwardly discussed a schedule for getting the restaurant cleaned and restocked for opening, agreeing to hold off until Nat talked to the local press about running our story.
Afterward, I got in my car and drove back to Ladue on autopilot, trying very hard not to think about Nat fucking a stranger in a seedy motel room... the same way I’d fucked Byron in some twisted attempt to get revenge for what Nat had done to our marriage.