Chapter 9
Dominic
The fight video blurs in front of me and I blink hard, forcing my eyes to focus. I glance at the clock. Nearly eight and I haven’t managed to get any meaningful work done. I stifle a yawn and reach for my coffee, only to find the cup empty. Fucking hell.
No matter how hard I tried to sleep last night, my brain tortured me with Brooke on a loop.
The look on her face when she stepped into the circle.
How close we were in that hallway, close enough to taste.
Her legs in that goddamn dress, long and tan and going on forever, until my mind helpfully started supplying images of exactly how I’d like those legs wrapped around me.
I finally gave up and jerked off to her in the shower, which only made me furious with myself. This is a woman who destroyed my career. A woman I can’t stand, but apparently my body didn’t get that memo.
A knock on the door jolts me upright.
“Please tell me you’re decent,” Alex calls from the hallway, and then he’s already pushing through the door without waiting for an answer, two coffees in one hand and a bakery bag in the other. “Morning, sunshine. I brought sustenance.”
“Thanks,” I say, picking it up. “Though you do know I have an espresso machine here, right?”
“I do, but I have no idea how to work that thing the way you do, and I figured I needed a peace offering.” He pulls a croissant from the bag and tears off a piece, crumbs scattering down his Harbor & Ash hoodie.
“Whatever this is about,” I say, “I don’t want to know.”
“So,” he says, ignoring me. “I heard about the circle thing with Brooke. Sounds like I missed out on one hell of a fundraiser.”
“How do you already know about that?” I take the coffee and bring it to my lips. The first sip is perfect, hot and bitter and exactly what I need.
“It’s Dark River, Dom.” He pulls a croissant from the bag and tears off a piece, popping it into his mouth.”Everyone knows everything within approximately fifteen minutes of it happening.”
I narrow my eyes at him, tapping my fingers against the desk. “How did you really find out?”
He shoves more croissant in his mouth and grins at me. “I stopped by the post office this morning and Marjorie was working the counter. She gave me a very enthusiastic play-by-play while I mailed a package.”
“Now that I believe,” I mutter, taking another sip of coffee.
“She said Brooke Bennett knocked you out of the circle in front of half the town,” Alex continues, leaning back in his chair. “That she walked right up to you, pressed herself against you, and you just stumbled backward like you forgot how to stand. Said she’d never seen anything like it.”
“She didn’t knock me anywhere.” I take another sip of coffee. “She distracted me by fighting dirty.”
His grin gets wider. “Distracted you how, exactly? Because from what Marjorie described, it sounded like you forgot your own name the second she got close. Not that I blame you. Brooke’s always been… something for you.”
“Yeah,” I say dryly. “A pain in my ass.”
“Do you want to know what I think?” Alex asks.
“Nope, not really.”
“I think,” he continues, as if I hadn’t spoken, “that the reason you’ve been such a committed bachelor all these years is because, for you, Brooke is the one who got away.”
I rub my temple, feeling a headache forming. “Why am I cursed with brothers who can’t mind their own business?”
“Come on, you gotta admit it’s not a bad theory.
Listen, I’ve hated some people in my day.
Take Jerry Ogilvie, that shady fish vendor who kept trying to sell me rancid halibut.
” He waves the croissant for emphasis. “Swore up and down it was fresh off the boat, meanwhile—okay, I need you to picture this fish, Dom. Picture the worst smelling thing you’ve ever encountered and then imagine it had a baby with a dumpster fire—“
“Charming image.” I cut him off, blinking at him. “Does this story have a point?”
“Fine, fine, yes.” He tears off another piece of croissant, chewing thoughtfully. “The point is that I hated Jerry. Genuinely couldn’t stand the guy. But I’ll tell you what I didn’t do. Obsess about him for years and eye-fuck him any time he walked into a room. Because I actually disliked him.”
I reach over and steal a piece of his croissant. “You know, you talk so much that I don’t even think you need me here for this conversation.”
“Maybe not, but here’s my point.” He brushes croissant flakes off his fingers.
“I suspect that if you stopped being so damn stubborn for five seconds, you’d realize that Brooke has all the qualities you admire in a person.
She’s tough, she’s smart, she’s disciplined, she’s obsessed with work the same way you are.
Hell, you two even have the same weird interests. ”
“Where are you getting this ‘one that got away’ bullshit?” I ask.
Alex laughs. “Emma was watching The Notebook when I was over at Theo’s last night going over some new menu stuff. I got completely sucked in, and somewhere around the part where Ryan Gosling builds the house, I thought to myself, you know who needs some of my newfound romantic wisdom? Dominic.”
“I’m honored to be the recipient of your Notebook-inspired life advice.”
“You should be.” He’s completely unbothered by my sarcasm. “It’s called love, Dom. I only meddle because I care.”
He points the last piece of croissant at me. “Ryan Gosling built an entire house for that woman. You know what that is? That’s a man who commits. You could learn something.”
“From a fictional character in a movie you watched at your brother’s house?”
“Don’t judge me. Theo made those little bruschetta things that I love. I was trapped.” He shrugs. “Besides, I’m secure enough to admit when a movie gets me. It’s called emotional intelligence, Dom. You should try it sometime.”
“Your two cents are noted and ignored,” I tell him dryly.
He stands, making his way to the doorway. “Well, now that I’ve had my morning entertainment, I’ll get out of your hair and hit the gym. But whatever’s going on with you and Brooke, you should probably figure it out soon.”
“See you tonight at Calvin and Maren’s,” I say. “Now get out of my office.”
He pauses and looks back at me. “Try to act like a normal human being for a few hours instead of a grumpy hermit who punches bags at four in the morning and pines after journalists.”
I grab a napkin from the desk, ball it up, and throw it at his head. He catches it and tosses it back at me with perfect accuracy, hitting me square in the chest.
“Love you too,” he says cheerfully, and then he’s gone, disappearing down the hallway with that easy confidence he’s always had, leaving me alone with my coffee and my thoughts.
The Victorian house sits on several acres of waterfront property at the end of a long gravel driveway, the same land all five of us grew up on, and as I pull up I can see the house lit up warm against the dusk sky.
Calvin and Maren have fixed it up since moving in a few years ago, restoring it to what it was when we were kids, before time and neglect and Mom’s illness let it fall into disrepair.
I stop the car and sit there for a moment, looking at the house.
A few years ago, I was ready to let all of this go.
Our childhood home, the land, everything.
After Mom died, when the house was falling apart and none of us were living here, I was the executor and it was my call to make.
The developers had offered good money. It made sense on paper, and I couldn’t see past the grief and the practicality of it to understand why Calvin fought me so hard.
We almost came to blows over it more than once, and said things to each other that took a long time to heal from.
That ugliness between us is something we’ve moved past now, though we still butt heads more than I do with anyone else in the family, probably because we’re too much alike.
But about the house, the property, he was right and I was wrong.
I grab the bottle of wine I picked up on the way over and get out of the car. The evening air has that end-of-summer feel to it, warm but with a coolness underneath that wasn’t there a few weeks ago.
Laila, originally Mom’s golden retriever and now Maren and Calvin’s, starts barking before I’m halfway up the porch steps, and the front door swings open.
She comes bounding out, all seventy pounds of golden fur and enthusiasm hitting me at shin level with enough force that I have to brace myself against the porch railing.
Her tail is wagging so hard her entire back end moves with it, her whole body wiggling with a joy so pure it’s impossible not to smile.
“Hey, girl.” I crouch down and she immediately tries to lick my face, pressing her whole body against me. I scratch behind her ears the way she likes, and look up to see Theo standing in the doorway. His eight-year-old daughter Chloe pops her head out from behind him, eyes bright with excitement.
“Hi Uncle Dom!” She ducks under Theo’s arm and throws her arms around my neck before I can fully stand up. The kid gives hugs like she means them.
“Hey, kiddo.” I ruffle her hair and she pulls back, smiling up at me with the gap-toothed grin of a kid who’s still losing baby teeth. “You’re taller every time I see you, I swear. What’s your dad been feeding you?”
“Lately we’ve all been on a homemade pasta kick,” she says seriously. “Last week we did fettuccine with a brown butter sage sauce, and this week we’re going to try ravioli with a butternut squash filling. The trick is to not overwork the dough or the pasta gets tough.”
I laugh, ruffling her hair again. “That sounds way more advanced than anything I could pull off in a kitchen. I can barely make scrambled eggs without setting off the smoke alarm.”
“It’s not that hard,” she assures me with confidence. “You just have to be patient with the dough. I could teach you sometime if you want.”