Chapter Sixteen #2
“Well, I was right in the middle of my oh shit, I might be in love epiphany and trying to figure out how to tell Knox and Jesse that I screwed up our no-strings arrangement when my aunt—who’s also my boss—came in, put two and two together, and said me dating two men would be a bad look for her business and implied she might have to fire me. ”
“That’s a lot,” Sawyer decided as Lou spewed hot chocolate beside him.
“She said what?” Lou shouted.
“Easy, baby.” Sawyer patted her shoulder, his gaze steady on Chloe. “Then what happened?”
“Knox and Jesse got mad,” Chloe recalled. “And things got kind of loud.”
“I bet,” Lou muttered, yanking napkins out of the holder to mop the table.
“I walked out.”
Lou tossed the sodden napkins aside. “Good for you.”
“It doesn’t feel good,” Chloe confessed. “I probably am fired, and I don’t make enough from jewelry sales to pay my bills.”
Lou’s eyes narrowed. “You sell the earrings you make?”
Chloe looked at her. “Yeah.”
“Online?”
“Yeah.”
Lou tapped Sawyer on the arm. “Babe, phone. What’s your website?”
“Ah…” Confused, Chloe rattled it off, watching Lou’s fingers fly over the screen. “What are you doing?”
“I’m looking at your stuff,” Lou said, buried in the phone. “Is this inventory up to date?”
“Yes.” Baffled, Chloe glanced at Sawyer.
He shook his head. “Don’t worry about her. Chloe, you need to talk to Knox and Jesse.”
She sighed. “I know. I just don’t know what to say to them.”
“The truth is usually best.”
She stared morosely at the marshmallows floating in her hot chocolate. “Okay, but the truth makes me look like an asshole.”
A smile quirked his beautiful mouth. “No, it doesn’t.”
She snorted. “Yes, it does. ‘Hey, I know we had a no-strings agreement, but sorry, I went and fell in love with you, is that okay’ is totally an asshole thing to say.”
“It really isn’t,” Sawyer said. “Not least of which because they’re in love with you, too.”
She stared at him for a full five seconds. “They are not.”
“Oh, they really are.” Calmly, he raised his cup for a sip. “Lou?”
She didn’t look up from the phone. “Hmm? What?”
“Are Jesse and Knox in love with Chloe?”
“Yeah. Can you do these malachite twists in different stones, different metals?”
Chloe blinked. “Ah, yeah.”
“What about the hoops with the amethysts? Different stones?”
“I can pretty much do any stone you want,” Chloe said. “Did you mean it?”
“Mean what?” Lou said absently, then gasped. “Oh, I love what you’ve done with these seed pearls and the hammered silver. Funky.”
“Lou,” Sawyer said.
“What? I’m busy.”
“Put down the phone for two seconds and tell Chloe that Jesse and Knox are in love with her.”
Lou lowered the phone, her brow wrinkled in confusion. “Of course, they’re in love with you. They tried to beat Sawyer up.”
Chloe gaped. “They what?”
“They didn’t try to beat me up,” Sawyer corrected.
“They wanted to,” Lou said. “If I hadn’t been there, they might have.”
“Why?” Chloe asked, baffled.
“Because they’re in love with you,” Sawyer said.
“Because they thought Sawyer was banging you, and they were jealous,” Lou said at the same time, and shrugged at Sawyer’s exasperated look. “What? It’s true.”
“I was trying to be discreet,” Sawyer told her.
“Why? We all know the deal,” Lou said and looked at Chloe. “You know I know he had a date with you, right?”
“I assumed,” Chloe said faintly, head spinning.
“See? It’s fine. Shit, I have to pee again.” Putting the phone down, Lou hauled herself up. “Don’t leave until I get back,” she told Chloe and waddled off.
Chloe looked at Sawyer. “Is she always like this?”
Sawyer laughed softly. “Pretty much. Lou’s a bit of a whirlwind.”
Understatement of the year, Chloe thought.
“Anyway,” Sawyer said. “We were talking about Knox and Jesse being in love with you.”
Chloe shook her head and ignored the wild leap of hope. “You’re wrong.”
“I’m not,” Sawyer said, and his voice was so firm and sure that she stopped to stare at him. “I’ve known them a long time, in Knox’s case longer than I’ve known my wife, and I can honestly say I’ve never seen them this way with anyone but each other.”
That hope wanted to leap again, forcing Chloe to ruthlessly tamp it down. “It doesn’t matter. It could never work.”
Sawyer’s gaze was steady, those peridot eyes watchful. “Why not?”
Chloe stared at him, anger rising at his oh-so-reasonable tone. Couldn’t he see, didn’t he know how much this hurt?
His gaze gentled. “Let me rephrase that. Do you want it to work?”
The yes was there on the tip of her tongue, ready to spill out. She bit it back. “I don’t know.”
He nodded. “Well, then I guess that’s what you have to figure out.”
Lou came hurrying back, face flushed. “What did I miss?”
“Not much,” Sawyer said easily.
Lou rolled her eyes. “Right. Is she going to talk to them?”
Sawyer glanced at Chloe. “Undecided.”
“Uh-huh. Well, for the record, I think you should.”
Chloe looked at her, this woman who’d married a sex worker and was fine with it—more than fine, from all appearances. “Can I ask you a question?”
Lou’s eyebrows went up, her only indication of surprise. “Sure.”
“You know what your husband does for a living, right?”
Amusement sparked in Lou’s eyes now, curved her lush mouth. “Yes, I do.”
“So you have what most people might call an…unconventional relationship.”
The smile deepened. “I suppose that’s true.”
Chloe lifted her hands, let them fall. “How do you do it?”
“I remember that what matters is here.” Lou pointed at Sawyer and then at herself. “Between us. The rest isn’t my problem.”
Chloe waited a beat. “That’s it?”
“Pretty much. You gotta decide if it’s worth it. Once you do?” She shrugged. “Other people’s opinions are just noise.”
“It’s not quite the same situation, Chloe,” Sawyer said quietly. “Not everyone sees my job, the way they will the three of you. You’ll have public speculation, public disapproval. There’s no avoiding that.”
“Noise,” Lou repeated with a sneer, then sighed. “But it’s not that simple.”
Chloe closed her eyes. “My head hurts.”
“I’d offer you drugs, but I don’t have any.”
Chloe opened her eyes to smile at Lou. “I appreciate the thought.”
“We’ll give you a lift home,” Sawyer offered.
Chloe started to thank him, then hesitated. “Actually, I think I’d rather go somewhere else, if it’s not too much trouble. It’s not far.”
“Happy to play taxi driver.” Sawyer looked at his wife. “Do you want to pee again before we go?”
“Shut up. Chloe, I want to talk to you about earrings.”
“Okay,” Chloe said as Lou pushed to her feet. “Did you find a pair you want?”
“Yes. All of them.”
Chloe blinked. “Pardon me?”
“I want all of them, and more besides. Dammit, I do have to pee. I’ll be right back, we’ll talk in the car.”
Chloe stared at a grinning Sawyer. “Did she say she wants all of them?”
Sawyer gathered up the mugs and carried them to the counter. “Yep, that’s what she said.”
“There’s fifty pairs of earrings in my shop right now,” Chloe said, baffled. “Why would she want fifty pairs of earrings?”
He pulled her coat from the hook by the door. “Probably for the store.”
Chloe took the coat he handed her. “The store?”
“Lou is short for Tallulah,” Sawyer explained.
“Tallulah,” Chloe echoed blankly, not understanding, then her eyes went wide. “Wait, Tallulah as in Tallulah’s? The boutique in Chicago?”
Sawyer shrugged into his coat and pulled his cap out of his pocket. “She wants to expand the accessories lines. Been looking at designers for months.”
“There’s a Tallulah’s in New York,” Chloe said, numb with shock. “And San Francisco.”
“And in Baton Rouge,” Sawyer added. “She gets pissy when people forget that one.”
Chloe just stared at him. “She wants my earrings for Tallulah’s?”
“Seems like. You should put your coat on, it’s still snowing.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“No, it’s really coming down. We’re going to end up with half a foot at this rate.”
“I didn’t mean—” Chloe broke off to shrug into the coat. “Sawyer. Is this for real?”
“I don’t know exactly what she has in mind, but if Lou says it, she means it.”
Chloe gaped at him while the implications swirled through her head. “Holy shit.”
Lou waddled up, belly leading the way. “Holy shit, what? What’d I miss?”
“You want my earrings for Tallulah’s?” Chloe all but shouted.
“Yes, but we’re going to have to up your prices. You’re seriously underselling yourself.”
Chloe stared at her for a moment. “I swear to God, if you’re fucking with me right now…”
Lou hooted out a hearty laugh while her husband helped her into her coat. “I never fuck around about money.”
Sawyer pushed open the café door and stepped out, holding it open. “She doesn’t.”
Chloe nodded. She was tempted to pinch herself, to make sure she was awake, but between the blast of cold air and her soaking wet feet, she was too uncomfortable to be asleep. “Just checking.”
“Well, now that that’s settled, let’s talk turkey.” Lou hooked her arm through Chloe’s and ushered them out into the cold. “The fifty pieces you’ve got in your store, consider them sold. How soon can you make more, and what have you got besides earrings?”
* * * *
“You keep clenching your jaw like that, you’re gonna crack a tooth,” Jesse warned.
From the driver’s seat, Knox shot him a look.
“I know you’re worried. I’m worried, too. But a root canal isn’t going to make things better, so maybe take a deep breath, babe.”
Knox made a conscious effort to relax, and was marginally successful. “We should be at her place, waiting for her.”
“We are not lying in wait like a couple of psychopathic stalkers,” Jesse snapped back, and the bite in his tone had Knox biting back a snarl. “Sawyer texted half an hour ago that he was giving her a ride home, so we know she’s safe, and that’s enough for now.”
Knox stared through the windshield at the fat snowflakes that continued to fall. “It doesn’t feel right, leaving while she’s upset.”
“She’s the one who left,” Jesse reminded him.