Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
K ellen
Nearly a month of ignoring the last woman I had sex with has been possibly the hardest thing I’ve had to do this year. At first, it was difficult because all I wanted to do was lash out at her for being part of the reason I’m trapped here in the middle of nowhere. Then when the desire to be cruel to her ebbed away, it dawned on me that I want to talk to her.
I just don’t know what to say after being a dick about everything for nearly that entire first week.
In addition, I think I’m going insane from boredom. I thought that might be the reason talking to her became so appealing to me again. I even tried to talk to the giant bodyguard, but he’s about as interesting as watching paint dry.
Memories of my time with her at the resort fill my head, and no matter how much I try to push them out and think of anything else, they always creep back in. That’s the problem with having a good time. It stays with you. When someone makes you smile and laugh and you feel more comfortable with them than you’ve ever felt with any other woman, it’s hard to forget them.
Trust me. I’ve had several long weeks to try my damnedest. Let’s just say it’s been my newest failure.
Swinging my legs off the bed, I stand up and walk out into the hallway, desperate to find anything to do with my time. Is this what being in prison is like? Because if it is, I’ve underestimated how fucking terrible it is to do time.
A noise downstairs gets my attention, and I walk down to the first floor as I hope it isn’t Nathan I’m going to run into. That guy has nothing interesting to say. He acts like his job is to be as sullen and silent as possible. Well, with me. With Salem, he’s far nicer, but I get the feeling he sees her as someone he can respect, while I’m just Matthias King’s younger brother he needs to make sure doesn’t run away.
That night with the car and Max nearly running him over didn’t help. Not that he actually would have done it. Max loves his Porsche, and driving into something the size of my bodyguard was only going to hurt the front end of his car. The giant would have likely walked away without a scratch.
I stop just outside the kitchen and take a breath, ready to encounter the cranky sasquatch again. As I turn the corner, I see Salem, and I don’t think I’ve ever been this thankful.
She looks back and sees me, but I get no response from her. Not surprising, I guess. I haven’t exactly been a great person to be around while she’s been here.
For nearly a minute, I watch her mixing something in a bowl and see flour shoot up into the air in puffs. “Tired of eating the food my family has delivered?” I ask as I take a seat at the island.
She wipes her hands covered in flour on the red shirt she’s wearing, leaving palm prints near her hips. “Not really. I like to bake when I’m frustrated.”
I laugh at her mention of being frustrated, so she quickly adds, “At work. Frustrated at work. Baking helps me get my focus back.”
“Oh yeah? Nobody willing to believe I’m not the world’s biggest asshole?”
Salem returns to mixing whatever she’s making but finally turns around with the bowl in her hands and says, “You know, I do want the world to see the person I saw down in the islands.”
When she brings up our time at the resort, her cheeks grow pink, almost as if she’s embarrassed. She shouldn’t be. We’re both adults, and we had a damn good time.
Not that I believe telling the world about that would help my current situation.
“I’m not sure that’s going to help as much as you think it will. If I recall correctly, your first impression of me was that I was rude.”
That makes her sigh, and she begins mixing whatever that is in the bowl again. “True, but the person I saw afterward is who I think the world should meet.”
Her genuine concern for my reputation with the public impresses me, even if I doubt it’s going to help me now. “Yeah, well, goodness doesn’t interest people. Trust me.”
Setting the bowl down on the counter, she wipes her hands on her shirt again, leaving more white palmprints near her hips. With a smile that reminds me of how much fun she was at the resort, she says, “That’s where I come in. I make the public see what they need to see.”
“So your plan is to show me as a good lay?” I ask, sort of joking.
That makes her smile disappear, and she shakes her head as a frown replaces her happy expression. “They need to see you as the nice guy who excelled at school. Smart and polite Kellen, which I’ve been promoting nonstop since I got here.”
A tiny spark of hope ignites inside me. “Any luck changing minds?”
“I’m sure some. These things take time. I have to reconstruct the public Kellen King, highlighting the best parts of you. I want them to think of good things when they hear your name instead of what Gina’s been putting out there for all to hear.”
“She has been busy. No doubt about that. Are you sure you don’t want to mention how I am in bed?”
That gets me an eyeroll. “Not exactly what I want to focus on. In fact, I don’t want a soul to think of sex when they hear your name. To them, you need to be anything but sexual. That’s what got you into this mess in the first place.”
I let out a heavy sigh as I think about how a few dates with a single woman made me persona non grata in the world. “When did it become so bad to enjoy a women and them enjoy you?” I wonder aloud.
Salem quickly answers my question. “When you chose to enjoy a woman who wanted more than you did.”
And that right there is the core of my problem. Gina wanted more than I did, and when I made it clear she wasn’t going to get it, she decided I sexually harassed her.
Salem’s words filter through my brain, and I realize she might not think I’m the bad guy everyone else does. “So you believe that I didn’t sexually harass her?”
“I can’t make a judgment on that. Your legal team gets to wrangle with that issue. My task is to make you someone people don’t want to hate. If I’m really successful, they won’t want to hate you and might even want to defend you. I’ll be happy if they like you, though.”
She returns to mixing what’s in the bowl as I admit to myself for the first time since everything happened between us that I don’t want her to hate me. Nothing I see now, though, shows she has any interest in me at all. I want to tell her I regret all the things I’ve said and especially abandoning her at the villa.
If only I could change things.
Needing to get out of my own head because I’ve spent way too much damn time there these past few weeks, I crane my neck to see what’s in that bowl. It looks like a yellowish mixture of some sort.
“So what are you making?” I ask, eager to change the subject.
She smiles and says, “Cupcakes. They’re my favorite go-to recipe when I feel stuck.”
What does she mean by stuck? Is it that she can’t fix my reputation and she doesn’t want to admit that? After a month hidden away in this house from the rest of the world, am I still the bastard everyone hates?
Is no one willing to forgive me?
I don’t ask any of those questions mostly because I don’t want to hear the answers. Instead, I hop off the stool and walk over to where the mixing bowl sits on the counter. Dipping my finger into the batter, I take a taste of what I think are going to be yellow cupcakes.
“Tastes good. When my brothers and I were small, my mother used to make a carrot cake that tasted delicious. She’d let us lick the beaters and the bowl. Ronan and I loved it the most. Since we were the two youngest, we always got the biggest portion of the leftover batter.”
My comment makes Salem smile, and she asks, “Did you have a nice childhood?”
“The best,” I answer with a big grin as memories of those years fill my mind. “I grew up at the house where that lovely meeting took place. Summers were filled with long days in the pool and winters were all about building snowmen and sledding down the front lawn. I had four brothers, and the five of us were a handful.”
Salem smiles as I talk about my childhood, but her happiness dims and she says, “I’m sorry about your brother’s passing.”
Like always when I think about Theo or someone mentions him, my chest tightens. “Theo was the best. He loved having fun.”
“He sounds like a great guy.”
I nod and take another taste of the cupcake batter. “He lived every day to the fullest. I want to say I do that, but I’m not sure I can. These past few months definitely haven’t been an example of that.”
She crouches down to open a cabinet and pulls out a muffin pan. Setting it on the counter next to the bowl of batter, she grabs a pack of pink and yellow cupcake liners and starts putting one in each muffin cup.
“This isn’t meant to be a form of punishment, Kellen. I know you think it is, but I swear that wasn’t my intention.”
I hate that she thinks I’m some asshole who doesn’t understand why she did what she did. “I know. I didn’t act like it, but I get it. Every minute I’m out in public even just doing innocent, everyday things, there’s a chance someone is going to misinterpret something.”
Every muffin cup lined, she looks around like she’s lost something. “What’s up?” I ask, unsure what else she could need.
“I thought I had a scooper out. I know I saw one when I was getting everything together.”
Knowing exactly where that utensil was kept when I was a kid and visited my grandparents, I open the drawer next to the one that holds the silverware and see an ice cream scooper. I hold it up in front of her and smile.
“Is this what you want?”
Normally, I’d work with the double entendre, but today, I’m having too good a time just hanging out with Salem to work the sex angle. Not that I don’t want her. Of course, I do. She’s gorgeous, smart, and great in bed.
But even more, she’s trying so hard to help me even after I was a complete and utter jackass to her that I have to admire her. She’s the whole package, and for a single day, she was mine.
I can only hope once this stage of my life is over and I can show my face in public that she’ll be mine again.
Salem takes the scooper and says, “Do you know what one of the best secrets to making great cupcakes is?”
Pointing at the scooper as she dips it into the batter, I say, “I’m assuming it involves using that.”
“It does,” she says with a smile as she begins to fill the empty muffin cups. “You want to fill each one about two-thirds of the way up. Overfilling is one of the worst things you can do.”
As I watch her carefully measure out exactly enough to fill each cup to the same height, I joke, “I’d put murder and stealing from old people up at the top of the list of the worst things you can do, but maybe overfilling when you’re making cupcakes could be third on the list. I’ll agree to that.”
That gets me a serious look and an eyeroll. “You know what I meant. One of the worst things to do when you’re making cupcakes.”
“I know. I was just trying to make you laugh.”
“Ah.”
So much for comedy being the way to melting a woman’s heart.
“Well, I’ll leave you to your cupcakes. Maybe you’ll let me have one later. What kind of icing are you putting on them?” I ask as I move away from the counter.
“I was thinking of doing what I call my world famous cream cheese icing.” She stops and looks back at the muffin pan before she adds, “It’s not actually world famous. It’s just what I like.”
“It sounds incredible, so I’ll definitely be up for trying one, if you’re cool with that.”
I’m rewarded with a big smile that lights up her entire beautiful face. “I am. I’ll let you know when they’re ready to eat.”
Turning to go back up to my room, I stop. “Great! I’ll have one for dessert after dinner tonight. By the way, I was thinking about ordering a pizza around five. Would you want to join me? I can get your favorite topping, if you like.”
“Mmmm, that sounds great! Not that I’m not loving the delivery food your brothers provide because those meals have been pretty good too, but pizza sounds like a nice change. I like sausage, but only if it’s the crumbled kind. If it’s the big circular kind, then no.”
I want to make a sexual joke about sausage, but I hold back as I try to figure out the difference between those two types of sausage. I can’t, so I ask, “Do you mind telling me why you don’t like the round sausage on pizza?”
She sets the filled muffin tin in the center of the preheated oven and closes the door. Without missing a beat, she explains, “The round kind makes everything greasy on the rest of the pizza. Same with pepperoni. I’ll eat it by itself, but the minute it’s on a pizza, it makes it a greasy mess.”
Salem stops and winces. “Oh, I probably just insulted your favorite topping, didn’t I? It’s okay. I can eat pepperoni on pizza too.”
Quickly deciding I won’t get my favorite topping, I shake my head and say, “No problem. I’m not really into pepperoni anyway. I like green peppers, which go great with sausage, but only the crumbles and not the round pieces because they’re too greasy.”
With a stare that tells me she thinks I’m making fun of her, she says, “Okay, then sausage and green peppers it is. Do you think we should ask Nathan what he likes? It seems rude not to include him too.”
I glance over my shoulder to make sure he’s not anywhere nearby and look back at her. “We’re going to need more than one pizza then. I bet that guy could eat ten pizzas with the size of him.”
That finally makes her laugh. “I’ll ask him if he wants to join us. If he mentions loving a certain kind of topping, then I’ll let you know. Okay?”
“Okay. See you for dinner.”
“See you for dinner, Kellen.”
While I walk back to my room more excited for pizza than ever before in my life, I’m not sure I’m where I want to be with Salem, but it’s a start.