Chapter 26 Watching the Door
Watching the Door
JAMIE
“Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” blasted through the speakers for what felt like the third time that night. I gritted my teeth, taking a swig of my whiskey as Bob McIntyre droned on about concrete foundations next to me. The place smelled like booze and sweat and too many people.
This was normally one of the hotel’s restaurants, but they’d cleared out all the tables and hung tinsel and garland all over the damn place.
I’d already had to brush the silvery strands off my shoulders twice.
In the corner was a giant Christmas tree, still only half the size of the one out in the lobby.
It was too early for Christmas.
But I was in a strange mood. Pissed off. Amped up. Fucking desperate.
There was an air of ‘fuck it’ vibrating through the room too. There normally was at this thing, but it was dialed up to ten with rumors of tomorrow’s snow storm rolling in early.
I scanned the room from my post at the bar, hoping the whiskey would calm me down. I wasn’t a big drinker. I generally appreciated whiskey for the complexity of the flavor only. But I was not in a tasting mood.
The place was packed. The chair of the committee this morning said we’d beat our all-time best attendance at nearly two thousand visitors.
I should have noticed at my keynote this morning, but I’d been more than a little distracted.
I’d ended up throwing away the speech I’d planned and going off the cuff. It had gone all right.
I took another sip of whiskey, scanning the room for Sarah for the thousandth time as Bob moved on to his woes with concrete supply companies.
Had she skipped the social? Was she in her room right now, celebrating the success of her presentation on her own?
She deserved to celebrate; she’d knocked it out of the park.
Seeing her up there speaking with absolute fucking authority—it had been magnificent.
And it was all her. I may have helped her smooth things out a little in her delivery, but I couldn’t have worked with nothing. She’d have dazzled even without me.
“So I said, you’re joking if you think that’s worth a hundred bucks, let alone ten thousand.”
Bob was killing me. At least Rav and Jen, who’d come by earlier, had gotten the hint that I wasn’t in a social mood. Ironic, for being at a social I knew.
I would have made my excuses to Bob too, but I didn’t want to move.
I needed to see Sarah. I needed to see her in the glow of her success, without all of the nervousness that came with her presentation earlier, as well as she hid it.
I needed to see her happy and glowing and free-spirited, and then maybe I could finally close the door on all of this.
Maybe I could make Sam drive us home and I’d try to sleep in the back seat of my cab, cutting down on the time I needed to spend with her.
I knew the plan was foolish, but I didn’t like not having a plan. It was something to hold onto.
From the corner of the bar, I had a full view of the dance floor and a perfect view of the front door. I glanced in that direction now as a woman walked through the entrance in a blue gown, cut high up her leg. But I scowled when I saw who it was.
Not Sarah. Alexandra.
Bob slowed down on his story to ogle her.
“Well hello, again,” Alexandra said when she reached us.
“Hi!” Bob said enthusiastically. His wife had indeed left him, for the head of a rival concrete company. I’d tried not to choke on my drink when he told me.
She smiled politely at Bob before her eyes bounced back to me.
“I didn’t think it was possible, Reilly,” she murmured, “but you look even bitchier than the other day.”
Her voice grated. Just like everyone who wasn’t Sarah Cooper grated. And she was blocking my view of the entrance.
But I tore my eyes away from the door. I told myself, like the last time I’d seen her, that it wasn’t her fault I was all cut up inside about Sarah. I could be civil.
“How are you, Alexandra?”
Except the moment she started talking, all sound fell away.
Because that’s when I saw Sarah.
She was with another woman I couldn’t have described if you asked me to. But Sarah—I could tell you every last detail about her in a matter of seconds. Her hair was loose, falling in soft waves around one shoulder. Something sparkled in her earlobes.
But my heart beat like a sledgehammer against my ribs, because she was wearing the same fucking dress she’d worn in the wine bar. The crushed green velvet with the low V.
I’d dreamed of that dress. I’d felt all my life’s regrets over that dress. Her wearing it again, here, after what happened this morning? I genuinely felt like I was going to throw up. Or keel over. Or walk over there and throw her over my shoulder.
I didn’t want anyone seeing her in that dress.
At least the shirt this morning didn’t come with all the pain of the past. At least, not as much.
I still wasn’t over this morning. Not even after slipping back to my room ahead of my committee meeting and vigorously fucking my hand.
Fuck if my cock didn’t thicken right there in my pants thinking of her then and now.
Alexandra wasn’t an idiot. She followed my gaze. “Ahh. I understand now. Got your sights set on someone else this season.”
She didn’t even sound insulted, just resigned.
I didn’t bother denying it. “Sorry, Alex. Maybe…” Maybe what? Next time? No, maybe never. I never wanted to sleep with her or any other woman again.
I didn’t bother finishing the sentence.
“She’s cute, Jamie. But be careful. I was at her talk today. She doesn’t think too highly of men.”
I bristled, finally turning my attention fully to the woman in front of me. “She’s not cute, Alexandra. She’s fucking perfect. And if that’s what you got out of her talk, you missed the fucking point by a mile.”
Alexandra’s eyebrows lifted, but she didn’t say anything else.
Hopefully she was rethinking what Sarah’s talk had tried to get across—not that all men were bad.
Just that we’d all failed women in this business.
That we had a moral obligation to provide extra support to women to make things equitable. Hell, Alexandra should know that.
But Alexandra had already moved on, clearly in search of someone who might be better company. I didn’t blame her. Bob had moved on, too, following in her wake. I didn’t blame him, either.
I didn’t care about either of them, anyway. All I cared about was keeping eyes on Sarah. If this was my reaction to seeing her, I could only imagine what the other men in here might be thinking. I had to set my glass down so it didn’t shatter in my hand.
A crowd of people doing a round of shots had gathered between me and her, and for a moment, I lost her.
I cursed, willing them to get the fuck out of my way as they cheered.
After drinking, they stood there altogether too long, and I was half tempted to shove through them to see her again.
Instead I ordered another whiskey, and by the time it arrived, they’d shifted enough for me to see.
I clenched my jaw. She was still there, but now her friend had started dancing with some other women, and Sarah was talking to a man. A handsome man who looked to be in his late thirties.
Her age.
“Hey, Mr. Reilly.”
I whipped my head in the direction of the voice, relaxing when I saw it was Sam.
I grunted something like a hello, then went to take a sip of my whiskey, but found it empty. That was fast.
That was also enough. I wasn’t drunk in the least, just warm. But I needed to maintain a clear head.
“So, I, uh, wanted to thank you for getting me a pass to the conference,” Sam said. “I’m assuming it was you.”
I turned my attention to the kid. “Don’t assume anything.”
He had a beer in his hand, and he frowned as he took a swig. His eyes darted to the dance floor, and if I wasn’t mistaken, his eyes were on Sarah’s friend; the one with the bobbed hair who was dancing with her arms above her head.
“You’re right,” he said, tearing his eyes away from her. “But I know it was you. And I wanted to thank you, because I got a job offer today.”
I turned to him. “With who?”
He told me. It was a company I knew well. In Colorado.
“I thought you came home to be close to your family.”
He grinned. “So you were listening in the truck.”
“Didn’t give me much choice. You never quit yapping.”
He laughed and took another swig. “‘Well, change hurts, but the best things are on the other side of that pain.’”
He was quoting my keynote.
I scowled. “Don’t listen to me, kid.”
I’d been talking about business, about how I’d been pissed when Seamus took off to do the job in New York State.
How he’d left me juggling everything when I hadn’t even wanted to expand the business.
But expanding meant taking the Rolling Hills renovation, and that meant hiring Sarah.
And for all the pain it had caused me, getting to know her over the past few years had changed my life for the better.
She’d made me realize I still had room in my chest to feel.
Of course, that scared the hell out of me.
Wasn’t any good, either, given she’d likely toss her drink in my face as soon as talk to me again after this morning.
“So you don’t think I should take the job?”
I looked over at Sam. Then I reached into my back pocket and pulled out one of my cards.
“When you get back to town next week, drop me a line. I know someone in town looking for people with initiative like you. And I can get you into the trade college outside the admission cycle once you decide what you want to do.”
Sam blinked, his expression a little stunned. “Why are you helping me?”
“So you’ll leave me alone.”
The kid grinned again. It faltered when he saw the woman with the bob dancing with another man. But he put it back on as he said goodbye to me, thanking me so hard I told him to give me the card back.
Still, I almost chuckled as he swaggered around me to the other side of the bar. “’Scuse me,” he said to a group of women standing there. “Is this where they serve the beer?”
I sighed, and for the next few minutes, watched Sam.
He interacted with the women in an easy, charming kind of way.
I’d never had that. Not that I’d had any opportunity when I was young.
I’d gotten my long-term girlfriend pregnant in our senior year.
We were married at eighteen, the parents of two boys by twenty.
After my divorce, I’d still been too wrecked by Kevin to date.
Now I was too old and set in my ways to want to start something new.
Except when I met Sarah, I wanted to start something new. I’d felt like the whole world was something new around her, and that still stood true today.
It was fucking terrifying.
Sam glanced over at me, lifting an eyebrow. There were a few women there closer to my age there, and he made a face like maybe I should be looking.
I ignored him, settling my gaze back toward the dance floor.
But the moment I did, my whole body went cold.
Because the young man Sarah had been talking to was gone, and out there swaying on the dance floor was Gary.
It was a thousand percent him.
And he was talking to Sarah Cooper.