Chapter 7 #2
“The apartment? But aren’t you—” At my sharp stare, Erica snapped her mouth shut and quickly recovered. “That’s perfect.” She carefully—purposely—avoided my gaze now. “Well, then I guess I’ll be seeing you around more often.”
“Yeah.”
I went around Daisy and led the way to the bookcase in the back corner of the room, shifting all her bags to one hand.
“Where are we—” Daisy stopped as soon as I pulled the bookcase off the wall, the Murphy door opening to a staircase leading to the second floor. “Did you really…a hidden door?” she asked, an almost childlike expression of excitement on her face as I moved aside so she could go up first.
When I’d asked my cousin, Jamie, to put in the hidden door for me, I told him it was because I thought it would be cool, and I always wanted one.
It wasn’t the whole truth. I wanted one since the day I’d met Daisy at the Bean Bar.
When I’d approached her, the book she was reading was The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
“It’s not a wardrobe, but welcome to Narnia.”
Okay, it wasn’t Narnia up here, but it was a nice apartment.
The main floor was open with a galley-style kitchen at the back, the only full bath tucked off to the side, and a dining table and cozy living space settled against the tall front windows that overlooked Stonebar Harbor. It was to the windows that Daisy went first.
My gut clenched. There were reasons I hadn’t brought her to the shop—reasons I protected this space as my own—and they were all wholly selfish. The fewer parts of my life Daisy touched, the better. The easier it would be for me to finally forget her.
So much for that. My plan was eviscerated by the gorgeous woman standing at my front windows, where anyone walking by would think she was mine. She and her baby. But they weren’t. The only thing that was mine was the pain of wishing it were true.
“I’ll clean up some of this stuff over the next couple of days. I’ve been using it…as a workspace,” I said when her attention finally shifted back to the apartment.
There were papers, folders, my laptop, photographs, and magazines spread all over the couch and coffee table. Along the wall, boxes of my stuff sat unpacked from my house.
“Bedroom’s up here,” I said just when her brows started to pull together, questions starting to string between them. What were the boxes for? Where did they come from? Was I sure no one was staying here?
Her gaze followed me as I climbed the spiral staircase up to the lofted bedroom, the wrought-iron stretching into a metal railing that overlooked the main floor.
The metal trembled under my footsteps and then Daisy’s as she followed me to the loft.
I held my teeth locked, hoping she would’ve stayed downstairs and waited to explore until I left.
“Bathroom was the door straight ahead when we walked in,” I said, trying to keep my back to her when she reached the loft.
The space was small, only fitting a queen bed, a nightstand, and a five-drawer dresser for clothes.
I guessed there was a silver lining to my sleeping on the couch these last couple of nights. The bedding was clean and freshly made, hopefully adding to the impression I wanted her to have: that no one was staying here.
I set her bags on top of the navy-blue duvet, again bothered by their weight and the conversation from earlier.
“Are you sure you have enough clothes? That you don’t want to go out and get anything?” I asked again.
“Yes.” She turned and gripped the railing.
“Don’t lie to me, Daze,” I charged, my voice low. “Because this feels pretty light, and I just want to make sure you have everything you need.”
“No, Max,” she said and whipped toward me, anger shimmering in her sudden tears.
“I don’t have everything I need. I don’t have anything I need.
I don’t have a fiancé. I don’t have a home.
I don’t have—” She broke off, her full pink lips turning down in a bitter laugh as she came over and stopped next to me.
“You want the truth? The truth is that I packed mostly lingerie because I was supposed to be on a honey-baby moon right now.” With an angry yank, she ripped open the zipper and dumped the contents of the duffel onto the bed.
Whites and pale pinks and purples tumbled onto the duvet, the satin and lace pooling like hydrangea petals on the dark cover.
A jolt of anger went through me, and then it was suffocated by a blanket of lust.
My mouth felt like a cave of sand, everything suddenly painfully dry as I stared at the pile of delicate fabrics, imagining them against the pale of her skin. Stretched over the fullness of her breasts. Puckered at her hard nipples. Soft over her growing stomach.
There was no stopping the tension stringing through my muscles. The uptick of my pulse. The hardening of my cock. Reality was dipping its toes dangerously close to the deep end of my fantasies, and I wasn’t adequately—hell, I wasn’t even inadequately prepared.
“I’m sorry, Max.” She reached for my arm, jarring me, and not in a good way, from my thoughts.
Her left hand rested on my biceps. She was close to me now.
Too close. “It’s not you. You’ve been…so amazing.
” Then why did she make it sound like that was a bad thing?
“I’m just overwhelmed, and I need time. Time to figure out everything all over again.
” Her big, luminous eyes melted into mine.
“And I need you to stop treating me like I’m glass,” she murmured.
“I can’t afford to be broken right now.”
“You’re not broken, Daze,” I said, my voice tangled between lust and loathing.
Shaking her head, I felt her pull her hand away, but it didn’t draw my attention until she placed it on her stomach.
Then I saw it—her engagement ring still anchored around her finger like a giant beacon of hope.
She said she knew Todd wasn’t coming back, but she still wore his ring. She still…belonged…to him.
“I’ll let you get settled,” I said and stepped back, my skin still burning under my shirt from her touch. “I’m going to give Erica a rundown of what you’ll be doing, and then when you’re ready, she can go over the details with you as far as routes for the upcoming days.”
“I can start—”
“Tomorrow,” I finished firmly. “You’ll start tomorrow. Today is…orientation.” I defined this single day off in a way she’d be able to accept it.
“Okay.” Her head lowered, and her shoulders slumped. She looked like she just wanted to sag against something—against someone—and let them take all the weight from her for just a few minutes.
I wanted to be that someone.
I almost reached for her. Almost drew her to my chest, the words, “It’s going to be all right, I promise,” perched at the tip of my tongue, along with all the other ones I’d buried for years.
He never deserved you.
You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
You’re not broken.
You’re going to be an incredible mother.
You’re so strong.
I’ve been in love with you all this time.
But then she folded her arms. It wasn’t the subtle barrier that made me step back, but the glare of the cool fall sun reflecting off her engagement ring that spurred my retreat.
Idiot.
Guilt hammered in my gut.
Daisy was having the worst week of her life.
Her fiancé had left her basically at the altar, pregnant with his child, with no explanation.
No place to live. No…nothing. And all I could think about was wanting to have her in my arms and if she’d accept my comfort.
If she’d want it. If she’d feel even a little of what I felt for her.
I cleared the knot of selfishness from my throat and walked back to the spiral steps. “If you need anything, just text or call me. If not, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Forty minutes later, I was sitting at the counter in Dad’s kitchen, taking a can of cold seltzer from his hand.
“So what brings you out here?”
I popped the cap. “I was wondering if I could stay here for a little while?”
His brows rose, an audible response in the case of George Hamilton, but when I didn’t reply right away, he spelled out what I already knew was going through his mind.
“You have a house, an apartment, and you want to stay here?” He set his can down. “You know you’re always welcome, but can’t say I’m not confused.”
I took a deep breath. There was no point in hiding the situation from him. He’d find out sooner or later. “I still have the house up for sale, so I don’t want to interfere with the showings or whatever Aria has planned, and the apartment…Daisy is staying at the apartment. Temporarily.”
“Daisy? Harp said she was staying at the inn.”
“She was.” I took a swig of the prickly water. “But she doesn’t want to impose…and I don’t want her going back to that apartment in Portland. Not with the baby…”
I trailed off as bare footsteps slapped on the wood floor. My younger brother, Nox, appeared from the hall.
“Well, look who finally woke up,” Dad drawled with a chuckle as Nox dragged a hand through the mess of his sandy-brown hair and then stopped when he saw me.
“What are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you too.” I shook my head and gulped down another mouthful of water, wishing it were something a little stronger.
“Apparently, your brother is moving back in with us,” Dad declared, making Nox stop again on his way to the coffee machine.
“Seriously?” Nox blinked twice, probably wondering if he was still dreaming.
I hadn’t lived at home since I left for college a dozen years ago.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love Dad’s house or being around my siblings, but I’d always wanted my own space.
To me, it was part of becoming the person I wanted to be.
The guy with the big ideas. The entrepreneur.
I was the weird kid who was thinking about the legacy I’d leave behind when I was eighteen.
It was that part of me that admired Daisy so much because I got the same sense of determination from her.
On the one hand, it made me wonder what drew her to Todd in the first place, but that was the pot calling the kettle black because I was drawn to Todd too, for probably similar reasons.
He was fun. Personable. He didn’t worry about the future because he’d never had to.
He was the kind of person you just felt like you could let go with, and it would all be okay.
And it would be…until it wasn’t. His kind of life was really attractive and shiny at first. It drew you in, thinking it was some kind of gem.
Only once you were in the thick of it did you realize it was nothing more than a spotlight in a hall of mirrors.
“Seriously.” I nodded.
“What happened to the apartment?”
My hand tightened on the can. “Daisy is staying there.” Period. End of story.
Nox’s brows rose. “Daisy Daisy?”
My chin lowered again, feeling his question like a noose around my neck.
“Well, all right then, old sport,” he said, shaking his head, and I caught the distinct bump of his shoulders in amused disbelief as he continued toward the coffee machine. “Welcome back to West Egg.”
Old sport. West Egg. I didn’t miss his allusions to Fitzgerald’s famous Jay Gatsby…another self-made man whose greatness was rooted in his unrequited pursuit of a woman. Another Daisy.
“Don’t you have to go blow something?” I grumbled at my brother’s back, hearing the coffee machine wake back up.
Only two years younger than me, Nox and I couldn’t have been more opposite.
I was an early bird, he a night owl. I was reserved.
He was outgoing. I was type A. He was type fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants.
While I’d always known I wanted to start some kind of business on my own, Nox had been content to work with Dad and Aunt Ailene at Stonebar Farms or help Jamie deliver his custom furniture or pick up other manual labor jobs in town.
Until a year ago, when he suddenly decided he wanted to learn glassblowing and make his own glassware.
Even for someone flying by the seat of his pants, the decision seemed a little out of left field.
Especially because he decided he was going to learn glassmaking from the famed artisans in Murano, an island just off the coast of Venice.
He had his ticket, and by the end of the week, he was on a plane.
“Looks like the next couple of weeks are going to be fun with the two of you here,” Dad drawled, crunching his empty can in his fist. “Maybe I should see if Harp will let me sleep on her couch.”
Dad’s property originally belonged to two farmers.
He purchased one parcel and then the second a few years later, when he and Aunt Ailene needed more growing capacity.
Because the pieces used to be separate, there were two residences on the combined grounds—this house, and a much smaller cottage that Harp commandeered when her hobbyist beehives turned into a full-fledged apiary.
The cottage was older and nestled well into the fifty-acre property, but she enjoyed the solitude.
She got her social fix helping Lou out at the inn.
“I don’t know about you, but I’ll crash in the barn if Max gets too lovesick and weepy,” Nox said.
Nox worked out of one of the barns nearby.
The building used to be used for the manufacturing and preservation process for Stonebar’s jams, but when they outgrew this property and moved to a much newer plant on several thousand acres inland, the barns—and the fields—sat empty.
I’d commandeered the fields, and Nox had taken one to transform into his glassmaking shop.
I flipped him the bird, muttering, “Dick,” as he took his coffee and walked out of the kitchen.
“You sure this is a good idea, Max?” Dad asked, drawing my attention back to him. Unlike my brother, there was only concern in his voice.
“No, but I don’t have another one.”
“Well, you’re always welcome here as long as you want,” he said, patting my shoulder. “Have you heard anything from him?”
I shook my head. “No.” Nothing.
In spite of my anger, it hadn’t stopped me from reaching out to him every day.
Multiple times during the day. But there was no response.
No trace. I checked with his parents—torn between hiring a private investigator to find him and not wanting word to get out that their son had done something shameful.
Dad let out a heavy sigh and muttered, “Never ends well.”
“What does?”
“When you hide how you feel.”
Somehow, I knew he wasn’t just talking about Todd.