Chapter 17
MATTEO
The news arrives at eight in the morning via a two-line email from Nakamura-san's assistant, and it is good news.
The delegation is delayed by one day, maybe two. Scheduling conflict, Tokyo side, sincere apologies, all relevant parties remain committed to the meeting and look forward to our hospitality. Please confirm receipt.
I confirm receipt.
I set my phone face-down on the desk, then pick it up again and read the email a second time, making sure I read it correctly.
I'm distracted, spending my nights like a freaking stalker outside her room.
The first night, she drew the curtains. I know she knew I was there, then again what did I expect, her to say, "Come in!
Got another five thousand you can leave on the nightstand to make me feel worse? "
Shoot, I went there to apologize. Why didn't I do it, either time? Because I never apologize. I never admit I'm wrong. Which is why I'm acting like a fool in love, or is it a fool in lust. Or just a damn fool.
Santos appears in the doorway of the main study at eight seventeen with coffee.
"Nakamura pushed back a day," I say.
"I know. I got the email." He crosses to the chair across from my desk and drops into it with the contained energy of someone running on too much adrenaline and not enough sleep.
His scent is off. Saffron under pressure, the particular spike of it that means he is thinking about something his alpha has decided is a priority regardless of what his brain wants.
He has been getting that spike every time he passes the kitchen path.
I have noticed this, but been quiet, because I'm dealing with my own shit at the moment.
Tomas comes in a minute later with the folder he was reading when I found him in the corridor at seven this morning. He sits on the sofa. He looks at the folder, but doesn't open it.
"We can't keep doing this," I say.
Santos looks up.
Tomas closes the folder.
"We're three alphas, hiding in a house from an omega!"
"You may be, but I'm not hiding. I'm just taking it easy," Santos says calmly. His scent alone tells me that he's lying.
"She is going to be on this island for three months. She is forty meters from where we are sitting. The Nakamura delegation arrives tomorrow, and we can't keep acting like she's not here when she is." I pause. "We have to talk to her."
"I'm not hiding, I repeat. Nor stalking her room like a freaking stalker either," Santos says as he cuts his eyes at me.
Shit, he knows.
Tomas and I both look at him.
"Hiding implies I don't want to see her.
" Santos sets his coffee down on the side table with more precision than the action requires.
"I want to see her so badly that every time I get within twenty meters of the kitchen path my body stages a revolt that is both unprofessional and frankly inconvenient given that I wear fitted trousers. "
I know the feeling.
"Besides, I tried to make contact, then ended up cutting onions like some lovesick teen."
If the shoe fits.
Tomas turns to look at the window.
"I can't stop thinking about her," I confess. "And before you say anything, I know I'm the one who got us in this mess, but I don't know how to get out of it."
The window Tomas is looking at has not changed. It is still a window. It still shows the garden. He is looking at it anyway with the focused attention of a man who has found it genuinely essential.
"Apologize," Tomas blurts out. "That's all you need to do. Get on your knees and for once say you're sorry."
Then he turns from the window, puts the folder on the cushion beside him, and looks at both of us with the expression he gets when he has been holding something carefully for a while and has decided to set it down.
"She drew her curtains," I say. "As soon as she realized I was getting close to her room."
Santos straightens. "What?"
"The first night, I was going to speak to her.
Her light was on and I could hear her on the phone and then the light went off and she drew the curtains and went to sleep.
" I pause. "She knew I was there. Her rose went controlled right before she did it.
She smelled me and she drew the curtains and went to bed. "
No one says anything.
"She's not afraid of us," Tomas says. "She's done with us. Which is different, and worse, and completely deserved." He looks at me with the gray-eyed directness he reserves for moments when he has decided diplomacy is a waste of time.
"You left money on the table, Matteo. She woke up alone, found cash, and understood exactly what it meant.
Three months later she is on our island not because she wanted to find us but because she needed work, and the first thing she did when she recognized Santos was introduce herself by her full name and pretend they had never met. "
He lets that sit. "She is not confused about where she stands. She has decided. And if we want any chance of her hearing us at all, we have to start by being honest about what we did, or rather what you did."
I have known all of this since the study, since Santos told us she was here, since I walked the perimeter of this island for four hours trying to think of a way to approach it that didn't begin with the fact that I made a decision on behalf of all three of us without asking and called it the right call.
I acted like a dick.
I have been sitting with that quietly since Milan, and last night, standing outside a wall in the dark, listening to a woman laugh on the phone and knowing she had no idea the island she was laughing on belonged to us.
"We apologize," I say. "Not just me. All of us. We're in this together. We're a pack."
Santos looks at me.
"Properly," I add. "We say what we did and what it cost her, and we do not follow it immediately with a justification."
Santos nods once. There is no humor in it, which tells me how seriously he means it.
"I suppose we could have agreed on what was in the note. We all hurried out of that suite because we were cowards. We could have done it differently. Leaving matters of the heart to you was a mistake. We knew that and we still did it," Santos admits.
"Before the Japanese arrive," Tomas says. "Before lunch. She'll be in the kitchen by five in the morning and service ends around two. We find a moment in there and we do it."
"Together," Santos says.
"Yes," I confirm.
Before we have a chance to say anything else, there's a knock at the door. I know it's Carmen. Usually, she's here around this time to discuss any details that are outstanding.
"Yes, come in," I say, getting ready to greet her.
The door opens.
Carmen steps in with her clipboard and greets us all. "Good morning. The Nakamura email."
"Confirmed," I say. "One additional day."
"Good. I'll adjust the linen rotation and the welcome arrangement." She makes a note. Then she looks up. "One other thing. Daniel called this morning."
I look at her.
"He would like to be considered for a return. He said the terms he walked over were, and I'm quoting directly, a misunderstanding he would like to revisit."
The three of us are quiet.
"How is Jennifer doing?" Santos says.
Carmen considers it for a brief second. "She is doing very well," she says.
"The guests had no complaints from day one.
Last night's dinner got the Italian couple asking about the olive oil, which means they were paying attention to more than just the food, which is the best kind of compliment.
She reorganized the compost system, identified a better position for three pieces of equipment, and her handover notes are already more thorough than Daniel's were after a full season.
" A pause. "She also fixed the knife strip so the handles face the same direction.
I didn't ask her to do that. She just did it. "
Santos looks at me.
I look at Tomas.
"Tell Daniel no," I say.
Carmen nods and makes another note. "I'll let him know the position is filled." She tucks the clipboard under her arm. "Anything else?"
"Yes. Tell Jennifer we would like to see her before lunch," I say. "Thank you, Carmen."
She hesitates before she leaves, then nods. She's probably happy we don't want Daniel back. It wasn't a secret that they didn't get along.
Once we're sure Carmen can't hear this conversation, we say what's on our minds.
"We need to keep our heads in the game," Tomas says.
"That's why we swore off omegas," Santos says. As a statement of what used to be true.
"Yes," I say.
"After Chiara. She was messing with our heads. One minute she wanted to be part of the pack and the next, she was running around with the Drownstone Pack. How many deals did we mess up during that time?"
No one answers. We know we let her ride us for five years. We agreed to never let that happen again.
Santos is looking at the window now, the same window Tomas stared at twenty minutes ago, and I understand the appeal of it.
It shows the garden. The garden shows the path.
The path goes around the hill to the kitchen, where Jennifer Sullivan is forty meters away doing her job with more care than the situation asks for, smelling of strawberry and soft rose, carrying a baby she hasn't told us about, sleeping with her curtains drawn against men she has every reason to keep on the other side of them.
"But not all omegas are the same," Santos says quietly. "Jennifer could be different. We didn't even give her a chance."
The thing we're not agreeing to, and haven't discussed, is whether we're ready to give it a try again.
I'm not sure if I can go through all that pain again, but then again, who says there has to be pain?