Severed Rivalry (Aspen & Evergreen #3)

Chapter 1 Sex and Suspicion

sex and suspicion

Sariah

“To new beginnings.”

Glasses lift all around me, and I do the same, plastering the brightest fake smile I can across my face. To new beginnings.

Again.

Damn, I’m so tired of new beginnings. I have them way too often. But at least I get them. That’s all that matters.

“Excuse me.” The rich melody of a man’s voice glues me to my seat. I know that voice.

“Renée?”

“I’m sorry. No. You must have me confused with someone else.”

He doesn’t. But I can’t tell him that, because doing so would give everything away. And that’s not an option.

“I don’t think so.” He hedges as his fingers tap the table top where I sit with my new work colleagues. “I feel like we’ve met before.”

Met is an understatement. Love of my life is more accurate.

“No. But I get that a lot.” That’s a lie. I never get anything like that. In fact, my goal is to lay low and be as unremarkable and forgettable as possible.

I’m an ordinary girl, average height, slight build, mousey light brown hair. I could be a generic American girl slipping through any city and never turn a head.

Nothing about me is captivating.

Except my eyes.

Huge arching eyebrows frame heavily lashed eyes.

I have a beauty mark just outside my right one, as if a fairy dropped a freckle in a place that could be beautiful if it were on anyone else.

My gray blue irises, which are neither clear nor bright, could be generic, but that damn right one has a hazel-amber spot on the outside.

It’s the giveaway. It’s how we both know I’m lying.

“Are you sure?” His gaze bores into mine.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Do you want to join us?” The woman across the table from me pipes in.

“Oh, that’s not a good idea.” I try to quash the thought before anything more can come of this.

“I’d love to.” He slides in next to me, taking up way too much space with his large build and sitting way too close.

The heat from his body warms me from my shoulder to knee. His thigh presses fully against mine. It’s downright intimate. And I know intimate all too well with this man.

There’s something in him that relaxes me even if I can’t afford to be at ease in his presence. There’s way too much at stake.

“I’m Cian.” He extends a hand to me, his gaze lasered on mine.

I know. And I’m so, so sorry.

“Sariah. Nice to meet you.”

“Sariah,” he repeats. My name is a caress on his tongue. It’s sex and suspicion. It’s my fate sealed with his.

New beginnings and old loves.

Again.

Cian

Sariah.

It’s a beautiful name for a stunning woman. A woman I know. Or I knew anyway. Only she was Renée then.

The table is loud and boisterous, chatting about the new venture capital they received for their start up, Connect2Coach. It’s an app that allows teenagers to connect with therapists who do online coaching.

The developers skipped out on the celebration tonight.

Coders don’t tend to be the most social, and their coders sound like they lean beyond introverted toward reclusive.

The people at the table are neither the founders nor the coders, but the project manager, the product folks, the user experience gurus, and the recruiters who are contracting the therapists and making sure nothing crosses from coaching to therapy due to liability and licensure.

I have questions. Like how “Sariah” got involved with any of this. And why? I don’t ask why the kids have to go through an app. The world today is an online algorithm that moves faster than the speed of sound.

Kids are lonely. Hell, adults are lonely. And though real human connection would fix that, the reality of “phoning a friend” who can meet you where you are is better than the possibility for connection later. At least that’s what they’d have us believe.

I think it’s horse shit, but I’m a man who still picks up the phone to call friends and meets business colleagues for dinner and drinks.

Human relationships make a difference.

People don’t buy what we sell, they buy how we make them feel. And live people are so much better than our digitized friends. Just ask every single human since the pandemic.

Do I say any of this? Nope. Not a word. Instead, I listen.

Mostly because the people at this table, aside from Sariah, that is, are saying an awful lot, even while the rest aren’t listening.

The name of the app, the start-up company, the VC firm, where their office is.

All of it flies out at some point giving me exactly what I need—data.

Without meaning to—of that I’m sure—the woman at my side leans into me a little deeper. “Sorry, Ci,” she says just as panic hits her eyes.

I open my mouth to bust her in her lie, but the phone in my trousers pocket—the one stuck between us—goes off like a five-alarm fire.

Sariah withdraws.

I lean away to reach my phone.

And shit hits the fan.

Liam: Ma’s in the hospital. CU-Anschutz.

How is the timing on everything in my life so fucked?

I slide out of the booth, look around its occupants but hold Sariah’s eyes, the ones that reveal her identity if my heart hadn’t known it when I saw her across the room. “My brother just texted. My mom has been admitted to the hospital.”

Her eyes drop shut.

“I have to go. I’m sorry. Let’s catch up soon.” I smooth my thumb over her cheek and head for the door.

My phone vibrates nonstop, but the real buzz is in my mind. Renée—or Sariah—is in Denver.

I’m pissed.

I’m hurt.

I’m jealous.

I want answers. I want to walk back into that bar, throw her over my shoulder, and haul her out like a caveman.

I want to hover over her writhing naked form, poised on the brink of entering her, and know that the moment I return to her body, it won’t be a lie.

What I need is the truth… Why did she run away? Why couldn’t she trust me to be with her?

I hit the red light at the onramp and grab my phone

Me: En route. Any news yet?

Liam: Not that I’ve heard. I just arrived.

Ayla: We’re downstairs. Where are you?

I weave through the streets and am at the offramp near the hospital when I see the rest.

Liam: Stuck at security. What the fuck.

Christian: Cian, room 3112. Show ID at security and you’ll be let in.

Me: Thanks

Ayla: Stop texting and driving.

Of course my baby sister who swears she’s not the mothering type is always the one pulling that shit. How I survived the nearly seven years before her arrival, I’ll never know.

Not true. It was raucous and fun. Then Liam showed and it was more raucous, more fun, and a bit more dangerous. But when Ayla came home, everything shifted.

My brother didn’t need protection. He was the kid on the playground that would pop someone in the face if they bullied another kid. My sister, though… Neither Liam nor I would let her face something if we could take the brunt first.

She called us overprotective.

Hell, in the last several months since her accident, that protectiveness has skyrocketed.

Ayla, Liam, and I aren’t the three musketeers. It’s never been we three and no more. But it’s always been two at the third’s back no matter what wall that back is up against.

I’ve parked and am exiting the elevator when I see my brother-in-law, Christian, looking pissed as fuck. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

He lifts a hand, dismissing me, and stalks into the elevator.

“All righty, then.”

What the fuck happened? We were literally just together at his bar chatting about business when I saw Renée… I mean, Sariah.

They were heading out when I went to talk to her.

Sariah.

Where has she been for the last fifteen years?

And why is she back? Or did she never leave?

My collar is too tight. The blue tie is trying to choke me. I pull the knot down, unbutton the neck, and press the security button to be allowed onto the ward after offering identification, heading in the direction of the nurse’s station.

“Janie Murphy?” I ask.

The nurse points at a door in the corner. I don’t miss that she wants to say something, but now’s not the time.

I push the door open to find Dad locked in a stare-down with Liam while Ayla is butt to ankles against the wall crying.

All of this is bad. Ayla crying sets off every protective instinct I have. Until Christian, it was my job to protect her. Feisty grown woman, successful businesswoman, or not, she could count on me.

She still can.

But Liam and Dad are like lighter fluid and a match… they’re going to combust. It’s never a matter of if, but of when.

“Ayla, are you hurt?”

She shrugs. If she doesn’t know, she isn’t in a situation I need to fix. Well, not first, anyway.

I place myself firmly in front of my brother, facing my father. He’s red in the face, veins protruding on his forehead, and he’s sweating. I push a hand to his chest. “Step back. Dial back the anger. What happened?”

His stubby, fat finger points dangerously near my face as he speaks through me to Liam. “Tell him that. None of this is my fault.”

Still facing my dad, I speak to my brother. “Li, take Ayla and get some fresh air please.”

He says nothing, but steps around me to my sister and extends a hand. They exit the room, and I exhale for the first time since before… her.

“I want to know what happened, but first, where’s Mom?”

“Testing.”

“Testing?”

“Did you miss when I said it the first time?”

Yeah, I’m not doing this.

“’Kay. Take a minute and do something to reduce this situation.” I mime a circle near his face. “No sense in having a heart attack when Mom needs you.”

He starts in with some chatter, but I don’t have the patience. I leave the room, pulling the door behind me.

My siblings are nowhere to be seen. The nurse’s station is empty.

I knew exactly the hell I was signing up for when I left Sariah’s side. If it weren’t my mom… That’s not true. Anyone in my family, except maybe my dad, and I’d have done the same.

Somehow it always comes down to this. If given the choice between disappointing my family or disappointing myself, I tend to take the fall.

And I really should stop.

My sister is married.

My brother isn’t vulnerable. Hell, he’s the threat.

My mom wants peace at all costs, usually the price is mine to pay.

And my dad? There’s no making him happy. I never could. He doesn’t even know—he wouldn’t even care—that I’m leaving Murphy Enterprises and starting my own thing.

His legacy, the one he built on ego and ego alone, is expected to fall to me. But I don’t want it. I don’t trust that it’s wholly legit. Liam has indicated it’s not.

When it comes down to it, I’d rather find new clients and take a risk on me, than trust that man with any more of my time. More importantly, I want him out of my head, out of my decision matrix, and out of my finances.

I want out from under his thumb. Under his thumb is why I’m choking. Thirty-six years old and stuck sounds pathetic for a grown man.

Better now than later.

Better now than never.

Better now than live with regret.

With that thought in mind, I pull my phone out of my pocket, go to an online florist, and order a bouquet of bubble-gum-colored peonies to be delivered to Sariah at Connect2Coach in lower downtown Denver tomorrow morning.

I’m done sacrificing myself for everyone else’s happiness.

It’s time I found my own.

Before

“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” I think those are her words.

I don’t even know what she asked because I’m rendered deaf… and apparently mute. The girl in front of me has flipped a switch that I didn’t even know could be tripped. I just stare.

The guys around me talk, and she writes things down, but the world has melted away. There’s no one here but us, no earth under my feet, certainly no bar noise or sticky tables.

“Hi, I’m Cian.” I hold her gaze, mesmerized by the beauty in her eyes alone.

“Renée,” she offers while tilting her chin and fidgeting with her notepad.

“It’s nice to meet you, Renée.” I wonder if I ever knew this feeling could exist, the utter falling away of everything but the girl in front of me. It’s like floating while anchored, but not to the ground.

The guys must order for me, because I won’t tarnish the moment asking for a beer, or anything other than who she is, where she’s from, how I’ve never seen her before.

And I’d know if I had. I’d so know.

But I say none of that.

Instead, she comes and goes, dropping off drinks to the guys I came with, until one by one they find a partner for the night, and I’m left alone.

I’ll sit right here all night, for a chance to talk to her, and if I’m lucky, to walk her home.

I get hit on by a girl or two or three over the course of the evening. They approach to flirt, bat their eyelashes, and try to touch me. I pull back and do what I can to make my face as neutral as possible. In my head, I’m afraid I look as if I smelled something that stinks.

Renée comes and removes my empty, dropping another bottle of beer near me. “Is there anything else I can get you, Cian?”

‘A date’ would sound cheesy, so would ‘your phone number.’ So I shake my head, and lift the bottle, adding, “No, but thanks for this.”

When the bar lights come on, I realize the place has practically cleared out. I leave money on the table and head outside but can’t bring myself to leave. I lean against the wall, the brisk spring night a bit too crisp without a coat, and yank a beanie over my too long hair.

It’s not much after close when this little college town gets a bit quieter and the crew from the bar comes spilling out, scattering in all directions.

Renée looks around as if searching for someone when her gaze falls to me. She takes a step my way, and I shove off the wall, meeting her more than halfway.

“Can I buy you breakfast?”

Her eyes hold surprise, and I realize one has a different color on the outside.

“I don’t mean tomorrow morning. I’m not being presumptuous. I meant now.” There. That’s less creepy than what it could’ve been.

“And that’s not presumptuous?” she asks with a cock of her head.

I could be wrong, but I think she’s flirting back.

“Does the right answer get me breakfast with you?” I extend my elbow.

“Maybe.” She loops her hand through, until we’re side by side. It’s then that she gazes up at me and I know my life will never be the same.