Chapter 19 #2
“Sure,” Laney said, nodding and heading back into the kitchen.
It didn’t take long for the kitchen staff to return with wine glasses and a bottle of a local rosé. Then, four plates of appetizers were brought out to the table. Marlowe took a long sip of the wine. “So,” she said. “Now, can we talk?”
“I feel like… This has become a way bigger deal than it was supposed to. I actually mostly feel weird about it because I couldn’t tell you in the first place. But I’m… I… I’m seeing Zane.”
Marlowe looked up, then back down at Cara, and nodded slowly. “Well. I’m not actually that surprised by that.”
“What did you think I was going to tell you?”
“I don’t know. That you were pregnant, but then you took the wine, so I figured probably not. Or maybe that you were leaving, or… I don’t know, something that Cody would have information about that I didn’t, so I was thinking maybe business.”
“He saw Zane and me together today. I would’ve told you right away, but Zane didn’t want anyone to know. Well, he didn’t want Cody to know. Because apparently Cody warned him off of me, and Zane said that he wouldn’t touch me. Then he did. Multiple times.”
She laughed. “Oh. Well. Is that why you didn’t want to go out with Jackson?”
“Yes. I’m really sorry that I lied to you. Except what I said was true. I’m not interested in him like that. I’m not interested in him in any way at all. Because Zane is the only one that I’m interested in.”
“Wow. That is a lot. I’m assuming that this is a…”
“Sexual relationship,” Cara said softly. “It’s not going to be anything more than that. Not ever. He’s… He’s broken. I’m just kind of figuring everything out.”
The word broken stung her lips. It felt wrong. She felt bad. Like she had fundamentally betrayed him in some way, like giving his whole backstory might have been better.
“Well, he certainly is a tough nut to crack. I’m not surprised because I could tell that you had a crush on him from the moment that he started working in your bakery.”
“Do you know he thought I was paying him with pastries?”
“What?”
“I leave pastries out for him every morning. I’ve been doing it ever since I opened up the bakery. He thought I was doing it because I felt like I had to pay him.”
“Oh. So he didn’t know that you had a crush on him.”
“Not really.”
“Is it spectacular?” Marlowe asked, lifting the wine glass to her lips.
“I don’t have anything to compare it to.” Marlowe smiled. “Okay. But you were a virgin who decided to jump into a sex-only relationship, so I’m assuming it’s amazing.”
“Yes.”
That also felt wrong, not because it wasn’t amazing, it was. It felt wrong because it was more than that. It felt wrong because she had gotten to know him first. In a really deep, profound way. And he had shown her parts of herself that she hadn’t seen before.
Reducing it to sex-only felt so dismissive, just like saying he was broken. It oversimplified everything, but there was no way to get into the complexity of all of it.
It would make her feel too exposed. She had no practice sharing parts of herself with another person.
Not things that were this deep. It had been easy enough for her to be with Marlowe through everything that she’d gone through.
But actually exposing her own stuff just felt… That wasn’t her function.
She was there for other people. The only person that she had ever really burdened with her stuff was Zane.
“You know, this actually cheers me up,” Marlowe said. “Because I wanted to believe that you were getting what you wanted out of this. You said that you wanted to be brave, and expand and have new experiences, and he seems like a lot. But he’s hot.”
“He’s very hot,” Cara said, taking a sip of wine.
There was a ripple in the restaurant, and even though Cara and Marlowe were sitting at the back of the room, she could feel the energy shift. Could feel everybody watching someone.
Both she and Marlowe craned their necks, just in time to see Walker striding through the dining room, looking glorious in a pair of black slacks and a well-tailored shirt, his blonde hair pushed back off of his forehead, the cuff of his shirt rolled up to his elbows.
And the expression on his face was furious.
People were watching him because Walker Grayson was a beautiful man, and when he was in the room, there was really nothing else a person would want to look at.
The view out the windows of the large green lawn at the back of the hotel, and the glorious mountains, was a stunning sight. But it wasn’t Walker.
Marlowe stood up. “Hey. Is there a hotel emergency?”
“No. It’s not a hotel emergency. Not yet. It might end up being a crime scene.”
“Why?”
“Oh, because I might kill Addison Carey.”
“Why is that?”
“Because. We are changing the menu for the sixth time, and nothing that we do seems to be good enough. So I have to re-imagine where we’re going to put everything in the back, we have to figure out a new seating arrangement for the barn, and I have to ask Laney again to make adjustments to dinner.”
“The wedding is in like… two weeks.”
“I’m aware. Thank you. But this is the most expensive event that we’ve had here so far, and the Careys are Mustang River royalty, so as much as I want to drown her in the river, I can’t.”
“I thought I heard you out here.” Cara looked and saw Laney leaning against the doorway.
“I have another menu change from bridezilla.”
“Oh, good grief.”
“Yeah. You’re telling me.”
“It’s fine. I haven’t bought anything yet, but this time next week she’s going to have to stop.”
“It’s not fine. She’s taking advantage of the fact that we are new and we need the reviews.
I have never dealt with anyone or anything that made me this angry.
” As if on cue, his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He picked it up and looked at the screen.
“One moment.” He answered the phone. “Addison, our meeting just ended.” He paused, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his aquiline nose.
“Well, yes. Of course, we can do that. I haven’t even submitted the new changes to Laney yet, so I’ll just…
Yes. Of course. Uh huh. Yes, please send it to me in text, though there is no need.
I will remember, in spite of the fact that it is the sixth menu.
Yes. You take care. Bye.” He hung the phone up.
The barely leashed violence reverberating around his body only made him all the more appealing.
“Never mind. Whatever I was going to tell you is moot.” He rattled off a selection of food that Cara never would’ve remembered, even though she had a decent memory for ingredients, and Laney scribbled down some notes. “The hard deadline is next Wednesday.”
“I will tell her that. But I don’t know that it will make her stop.”
“Sorry,” Marlowe said as Laney melted back into the kitchen. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No. I mean, you’ve got the spaces reserved, you have the guests coming in, and that’s all taken care of.
There’s not a whole lot you can do. I’m just having to continually liaise with Laney, the florist, rearrange all of the different decorations that we have for the ranch, and pull out a different set every couple of days when she says she actually wants a different theme than the one she decided on before.
I think she’s doing this for fun,” he said, his tone fierce.
“What do you mean by that?” Cara asked.
“I mean that she used to torment me in high school, and she’s doing it now because she can’t stand that I’m not the same kid from the wrong side of the tracks anymore, but she wants to remind me of where I came from.”
“It would be pretty elaborate for her to make her whole wedding about you,” Marlowe said.
“Most things are about me,” Walker said, smiling, suddenly, convincingly, even though he was still vibrating with rage.
That was the terrifying thing about Walker. He was smooth like a shark. He could go from angry to charming in ten seconds, could convince anyone of anything.
She had thought of him, only recently, as being someone who wasn’t at all mysterious, and right then she wondered if she had misread that.
Right then, she wondered if anybody knew Walker at all.
Then she wondered if that was by design.
People handled trauma in all kinds of different ways. She knew that his life hadn’t been easy, none of the Grayson siblings had had it easy. Lila was a bit feral, Cody was guarded and protective, and Walker exuded charm.
So powerfully that he was a lot like the sun. You couldn’t look directly at him, and it made her wonder now who that was for.
She also felt strangely gouged by that realization, because she had to wonder if she did a similar thing.
Zane was intense, and that kept people at a distance.
She was sweet and polite, and it was one reason that letting Jackson down, even the way that she had, had been so difficult, because she just wasn’t used to having to be direct with people.
She was nice, she did her best to minimize conflict, and that had something to do with being exhausted, she knew.
They made it so she didn’t have to take on any more than she already did, get deeper with people than she had the energy to, because she was always maxed out taking care of her mom.
But she was in a different space in her life now. She was doing different things.
She wanted to believe that this relationship with Zane was a great primer for figuring all that out. Because this was definitely deeper and more demanding than anything she’d ever had before.
She wasn’t as blindingly charming as Walker, probably because she wasn’t as good-looking, but very few people were.
Right then, she could see that the whole thing was a little bit hollow, and she knew she didn’t want that.
“Well, let me know if you need me to tap in. If you feel like you’re actually going to commit a murder, keep me up-to-date, because I would prefer to deal with a difficult bride than have to help you move a body.”