Chapter Sixteen
Truett
H oping to fool Taggart into believing we were still at the restaurant, Gwen left the dining room lights on as we ducked out the back door. Using the key fob, she unlocked her white midsized SUV before exiting the building, motioning for me to get inside. Instead, I stayed by her side as she locked the restaurant, not willing to leave her vulnerable for even a second.
Not surprisingly, her car was a mess. Not dirty, just cluttered. Such was life with that crazy, beautiful woman. Books of paint samples covered the passenger floorboard, three stainless-steel water bottles balanced between two cupholders, and a gym bag blocked the seat.
“You can toss all that in the back,” she said, climbing in behind the wheel.
“It’s good to see the old grab-and-toss routine is still a prerequisite when riding with you.”
“I find it keeps out the riffraff.” She flashed me a side-eye as she pressed the button to start the engine. “Or at least it did until now.”
Chuckling, I made quick work of moving the bag and relocating one of the water bottles to the cupholder in the door. I slid the seat all the way back before joining her inside. As she pulled out of the parking lot, turning right to avoid Taggart on the main road, I bent over and collected the sample books, stacking them neatly before tucking them into the pocket on the back of her seat.
“You still a neat freak?” she asked playfully.
“I find I’m heavier on the freak these days, but yeah, I like to keep things organized.”
She laughed, shaking her head.
The drive was quiet and mercifully short. My mind wandered to a time when Gwen and I had spent a lot of time together in a vehicle similar to this one. Mainly with the back seats folded down—naked, fogging up the windows, ravaging each other’s bodies.
I performed the herculean task of keeping my cock from entering the chat, but it was my water bill that was going to suffer the consequences of those memories after yet another cold shower when I got home.
Not bothering with the driveway, she stopped at the curb in front of my house and kept the car idling.
Thank you for the club sandwich.
Thank you for the ride.
I’m really sorry about tackling you tonight.
Goodbye.
I’ll let you know what my attorney says.
Any and all of those would have been the appropriate thing to say before getting the hell out of her car. Instead, I sat there, a sense of dread swirling inside me. The leather seat creaked as I shifted uncomfortably, glancing at the dimly lit dashboard and then back at her.
It wasn’t lost on me that she was doing the majority of her renovations alone rather than paying professionals. I’d seen firsthand the primer she’d rolled on too thick in spots and then too thin in others. That tower of tile she’d broken had to have cost her a pretty penny, while the majority of her tools had rental tags from the local hardware store. Don’t even get me started on when she mentioned Bankruptcy Tetris. It was all I could do to keep my eye from twitching.
I had always been a firm believer in not paying someone for a job you could do on your own, and I respected the hell out of her for taking on a project of that size. But she needed things done, and if I had any intention of sleeping for the next week, they needed to be done faster than she could do on her own.
“I don’t want you going back there for a while,” I stated. “I’ll order blinds first thing in the morning and get someone scheduled to install a new security system. I’ll let you know when everything is set up.”
“You’re kidding, right?” She turned toward me, her hand gripping the steering wheel.
Turning my body in my seat, I faced her, my expression hard. “Not in the least. Taggart’s spiraling.”
“He’s trying to get a story. He’ll eventually learn that we aren’t going to talk, get bored, and scurry off to the next person. Hopefully it will be Caven Hunt, who will spend a bajillion dollars to get him locked up for an unpaid parking ticket Taggart got in high school.”
“I wish. I called his woman the other day. She said they hadn’t heard a word from Taggart yet. Guess he’s not as stupid as I thought.”
Shock registered on her face. “You talked to Caven’s woman?” As she turned fully to face me, her seat belt pulled tight across her chest, dividing her breasts into split screens of seduction.
Fuck me. In the confines of that car, I was barely focusing as it was. I did not need the seat belts plotting against me too.
I cleared my throat and forced my eyes to lock onto hers. “It’s more like she talks to me, but yeah. I know her.”
Her mouth fell open. “Do you talk to Caven too?”
“Fuck no. I’d rather not talk to Red, either. But the woman is relentless. I lied to her a while back and told her I go to the diner on Saturdays so she can’t ambush me anymore. Best decision I ever made. Now, can you please just promise me you won’t go back to the restaurant until I’ve had a chance to get some guys in there?”
“Sure,” she replied, chipper and cheery. “But first, let me say one thing.” She angled her upper body over the center console, bringing her face within inches of mine, and slowly enunciated the word, “No.”
God bless America. Two fucking inches closer and she would have breathed that into my mouth. “No. What?” I asked when my ability to comprehend the English language failed me.
She—thankfully for my brain and unfortunately for my desire to strip her naked and bury my face between her thighs—leaned away. “Truett, be real here. I can’t just stop going to the restaurant. That’s my job, and money is tight as it is. If I don’t open soon, things will go belly-up before I even get my feet on the ground. I appreciate the concern. Really, I do, but I have bigger fish to fry than a producer-turned-paparazzo.”
“Which is why I said I’ll handle it. It won’t cost you a penny.”
“Yeahhhhh, that’s not happening, either. No offense, but I’m not accepting investors at the moment.”
“What are you talking about? This isn’t Shark Tank . It’s free money.”
She rolled her eyes. “What is it with men thinking the answer to every woman’s problem is for them to strut in with a fist full of dollar bills and save the day?”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“No? Then why didn’t you ask me about blinds and a security system before magnanimously announcing that you were going to handle it?”
“Because currently you have neither.”
“I also don’t have bathroom stalls or a cash register, but I don’t see you worried about those.”
“Those aren’t safety concerns. Right now, anybody can walk by and see you inside alone, shaking your ass in those tiny black shorts and the pink tank top that gapes open every time you bend over.”
She arched a knowing eyebrow. “Are we discussing the men walking by or the man sitting in at the booth inside?”
Busted! Though I’d caught her doing a little creeping of her own that night, so at least I wasn’t the only one. “All I’m saying is—”
“I don’t need you to say anything,” she snapped. “I’ll handle it. I always do.”
I clamped my mouth shut so fast I bit the inside of my cheek. I didn’t think she’d intended for those words to be a TKO punch. But that was exactly how they landed.
Gwen was easily the strongest woman I had ever met. With me traveling for military training or stationed halfway across the world, she’d had to figure out an entire life on her own. And then again, when I’d forced her to start over after she’d lost her brother, she’d grabbed life by the horns with such strength and grace that I truly believed I’d done the right thing by letting her go.
I sighed, guilt filling my veins. “I just want to help.”
“And I get that. Which is why I kept the booth and made you a sandwich tonight. But maybe find a way that isn’t throwing money at a problem when I have no idea if and when I would be able to pay it back.”
I ground my teeth, fighting the desire to argue. Or more likely, say fuck it and hire a full crew to show up at her restaurant first thing in the morning. She’d get pissed. That was nothing new, but then what? We wouldn’t go home together, bickering about who was right. We wouldn’t make love long into the night where I could show her just how determined I was to make sure nothing, and no one, ever touched her because that was what a man did to protect his woman.
She wasn’t mine anymore, no matter how deep that cut me.
Resigned, I sank deeper into my seat and dropped my head against the headrest. The leather was cold and unyielding against my skin. “You’re right.”
She smiled. “I know.”
“I just worry about you,” I confessed.
“I know that too.”
“But I’ll cool it with the money thing. Though that’s not to say, I’m not going to spend a shit-ton of cash. Because, heads up, I’m about to drop a small fortune in attorney’s fees to rain legal hell over that bastard. But I’ll try to keep my worries from overflowing onto you so I don’t cross eighty-four thousand boundaries in the process.”
Her face lit, a soft smile curling her mouth. “Just eighty-four thousand?”
“I was lowballing it, hoping you wouldn’t notice.”
She laughed, soothing my soul. In the span of less than an hour, my emotions had been on a full-tilt roller coaster, and that was saying a lot for a Wednesday.
I’d smiled. I’d laughed. I’d lusted. I’d panicked. I’d raged. I’d marveled. I’d hoped.
Little did I know, the ride was far from over.
“Listen, before you go, we need to talk about next week.”
“What about it?” I asked.
She reached into the back seat to retrieve her purse. After setting it on the center console, she dug inside, saying, “I’m not even sure if you’ll want to come back after that shitshow tonight, but in case you do, I had this made for you.” She extended a single silver key in my direction.
A grin radiated through my body as I took it from her hand. “Is that the key to The Grille?”
“The Rosewood,” she corrected. “But yes, and I’m trusting that you can use this responsibly and I won’t show up one day to gold-plated blinds and a million-dollar security system.”
“Wow. Clearly, you have not seen my paystubs. I hate to break it to you, Gwen. Despite the lavish mansion before you, I am no millionaire. You were going to get faux wooden blinds and an alarm that came with a monthly bill—addressed to you.”
She laughed. “Damn, now I’m regretting saying no.”
I waggled my eyebrows. “It’s not too late.”
“Truett,” she warned.
I lifted my hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’ll drop it.”
“Good. Now, back to what I was saying. I can’t meet you at the restaurant next Wednesday.”
My stomach dropped as if I’d been hurled from the top of a skyscraper. The freefall happened in slow motion as my mind frantically tried to figure out a way to make it stop.
“Why not?” I blurted more loudly than intended.
She sighed, glancing out the window before meeting my eyes again. “It’s a long story, but I had to switch days with my ex-husband so he can take our son to a Yankees game.”
I carefully schooled my features so I wouldn’t look like even more of a basket case than I’d already proven myself to be. “Oh, okay. Makes sense.”
“Hey,” she whispered, seeing right through my act. “That’s why I gave you the key. You can still come on Wednesday. Just let yourself in, and lock up when you leave.”
I should have been elated. I’d spent the last week dreaming of just such a situation. If she wasn’t around, I wouldn’t have to worry about that magical calm of hers and I could get back to my routine. That was exactly what I wanted—what I needed.
Yet the blood drained from my face, disappointment hitting me like a freight train. Two weeks. It was going to be two weeks before I saw her again?
A rusty dagger twisted in my stomach. I loved my Wednesday mornings, but fuck me, for the last few weeks, whether I was willing to admit it or not, a part of me looked forward to the afternoons too. I was conflicted, confused, and totally uncomfortable with the loss of predictability. But it was Gwen. I’d been starved for her for far too long, and just a taste of having her back in my life had made me an addict.
Desperation swirled inside me, but what was I going to do? I couldn’t very well ask her to hire a sitter and sacrifice time with her son so I could get my weekly fix.
Hell, with as hot and cold as I’d been recently, she probably needed a break from me and made up the whole baseball thing to buy herself a night of peace and quiet. The thought burned like I’d face-planted into a pile of embers, but I couldn’t blame her. I was giving myself a first-class case of whiplash too.
The fact was, just like with the booth, the sandwich, and now the key, Gwen had been going out of her way to make life easier on me. I couldn’t repay her by panicking and making her feel even an ounce of guilt for spending time with her kid.
This wasn’t her problem.
I wasn’t her problem.
Forcing a smile, I lifted the key. “Thanks. I appreciate this.”
“No problem. Don’t lose that. It cost a solid three dollars, and now that I have to add blinds and an alarm to my to-do list, I might have to mortgage my house to replace it.”
Pulling my house keys from my pocket to add the new one to the ring, I tried to lighten the mood— my mood . “Oh, so you can spend money on me, but I can’t spend it on you?”
“Three dollars is a far cry from—” She abruptly stopped talking when she caught sight of the key chain dangling in my fingers.
It was a picture of Kaitlyn when she was around two, sitting on my lap. We were both laughing, her mouth wide open with surprise. I was looking directly at the camera, tickling her sides. So much happiness filled that cheap three-by-two plastic keychain that I hadn’t been able to get rid of it even when the corners started to chip.
Gwen reached out, catching it in her palm as she leaned forward to get a better view. A massive smile split her face. “Oh my God, that is such a cute picture.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, pulling it away and tucking it back into my pocket. “I appreciate the drive home.”
“No problem.”
I reached for the door handle, everything inside me screaming not to open the door. “I guess…I’ll see you in a few weeks?”
“Hopefully it will look like a real restaurant by then.”
“I’m sure it will. You’re doing a great job. It’s going to be amazing.”
Pride lit her eyes. “Thanks. I needed to hear that.”
An awkward silence fell between us, the weight of unsaid words and unresolved feelings hanging heavy in the air.
“Well, goodnight, True,” she said, and I could have made it up, because it was what I wanted to hear, but I swear there was a tinge of regret in her voice.
“Goodnight, Gwen,” I replied, opening the car door and stepping out.
I watched her drive away, the taillights disappearing into the night before I headed up the front steps.
The warm evening air gave way to my air conditioning when I stepped inside, but a sweat broke out across my brow when I closed the door behind me. My heart raced as I flipped the light on and then stood in the foyer scanning my house. It was the exact same as it always was, and my old couch called to me from across the room.
If I followed the routine, that would have been my first stop. I’d sit down. Take a deep breath, remind myself that I was home, safe, and all was right with my world again.
Only this time, everything felt so fucking empty. I slid down to the floor, my back pressed against the front door. As I stretched my legs out, I accidentally kicked the shoe rack, causing mine and Kaitlyn’s sneakers to tumble off into a messy pile. And if that wasn’t symbolic of the mess my life had become, I didn’t know what was.
I buried my face in my hands, feeling more lost than ever. My home was my sanctuary, yet everything suddenly felt wrong. For the first time in God knew how long, I didn’t want to be in that house.
I wanted to be with Gwen. Back at the restaurant, laughing—or hell, even arguing and dealing with that prick Taggart. And now, I had to wait two weeks to see her again?
Fourteen days?
Half a fucking month?
What the hell was I supposed to do for that long without her?
Oh, right, the same thing I’d been doing for almost two decades—Existing alone.
Always alone.
But what if I didn’t want to be alone anymore? The thought was equal parts terrifying and liberating.
I dug my phone out of my pocket before pulling up Daniel’s name in my contacts. He’d know what to do. I hadn’t pressed the call button before his words filtered through my mind, causing a wave of panic to crash over me.
“News flash, Truett. You created the schedule. You can change it too.”