Chapter 7 #2
Still, why wasn’t my billionaire husband more interested in undoing our little mistake? He clearly spent a lot of time in Vegas. Was the delay because he’d done it enough times that it wasn’t worse than spilled milk to him?
I didn’t think I wanted the answer.
Before I could ask him that or anything else, my phone screen lit up with an incoming call from the man himself.
Against my better judgment, I put it on speaker and answered. “Hello?”
“In a hurry, aren’t we?”
Oh, God. I’d forgotten that voice. Sweet and dark as maple sugar, that deep purr sizzled through the phone and down my spine.
Yeah, answering the phone was a bad idea.
“I have things to do,” I said a bit more curtly than necessary. “I thought you were taking care of it.”
“Well, I also have this little thing called a job.” I couldn’t see Ronan’s laughing expression, but I could imagine it clearly. He liked riling me up.
“You mean drinking and screwing your way through Vegas?” I countered before I could stop myself. “Or is it a different city every week?”
A low, sure chuckle echoed through the phone’s speakers, like he knew I was more irritated by my cutting remarks than he was. “Aww, are you jealous, Laney?”
“Not in the slightest.” I glared at the phone, happy he couldn’t see me.
“Just annoyed that my fake husband can’t manage the one task he was given.
I guess the marital labor gap applies to fake marriages as well as real ones.
Though with you, I guess that’s to be expected with someone who gets married in a drunken spree and doesn’t even have the decency to be surprised. ”
The chuckle stopped, and for a moment, I thought he might be angry. My sharp tongue had gotten me into trouble plenty of times. Mom always said it could slice better than her favorite knives.
“Is that what you think of me? That I’m just a drunk with no direction?” There was still a lilt of humor, but it was paired with something slightly more dangerous. A challenge, maybe. Or a dare.
“I don’t know. If the shoe fits… or the rings, I suppose.”
“I believe there were two of us who woke up hungover in that marital bed, Ms. Fisher.”
“True. But only one of us acted like it was an average Saturday morning.”
I braced myself for another comeback, though if I were being honest, I was enjoying myself. Ronan was smart, and unlike most men I knew, he could take whatever he dished out. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it.
“What are you wearing?”
I frowned. The joking tone was gone, replaced by an overt demand. The man changed the conversation and his mood on a dime. It was yet another reason I felt so disoriented, even when we just texted.
I looked down at my jeans, the fisherman’s sweater Mom had knitted me for my twentieth birthday. “That’s none of your business.”
“You’re still my wife, according to the state of Nevada. It absolutely is my business. And I’m not going to give you an update until you give me a visual. If I’m going to be reprimanded, I want to see who’s doing it.”
Before I could answer, the call dropped. Or maybe he hung up. Moments later, both my phone and computer began to ring, this time with a FaceTime call.
“What? No.” I ignored the call, but it only started up again. Over and over, I rejected it, but eventually, it because clear that my choices were either to turn my phone and computer off completely or answer.
I knew what was the right choice. But I couldn’t seem to make it.
“Ronan,” I said once I answered the call on the computer (admittedly after checking to make sure I didn’t have mascara smeared under my eyes). “You’re a very persistent person.”
“So I’ve been told.”
He looked better than any human had any right to look over a video call. A five-o’clock shadow darkened the lines of his cheeks and jaw, his full mouth half curled in that dangerous smirk, and those big, dark eyes gazing expectantly through the screen.
I was beginning to understand why Mom had called them “bedroom eyes.” With a face like that, all he had to do was blink, and most girls would follow him straight there.
“Where are you?” I asked once I managed to look beyond the face to notice the background behind him. “Home?”
He was sitting on a bed, if the pile of plush, creamy pillows surrounding him were any indication.
Just above his head was a rather unremarkable picture of a rowboat mounted on equally neutral paint, but maybe he wasn’t into decorating.
He certainly looked comfortable, if indecently good in a simple white button-down that was undone to his clavicle, revealing a dusting of dark hair.
A thin silver chain gleamed there through the screen.
He looked around him as if confused. “What? Oh, God, no. I’m on another, um, work trip.”
Well, that explained the boring decor. It did look like hotel art. “So I was right about the new city every week, huh?”
His brows scrunched together at the idea. “I plead the Fifth.” Then his head tipped as he looked me over through the screen. “I’d say you’re not at home, but I happen to know you live where you work. Still in the office, I see.”
I glanced behind me, where the big whiteboard calendar, which still bore my mom’s half-smudged writing after a year, hung on the wall beside the mood boards, samples, and near-empty stock shelves that used to be full when this was her office. Then I turned back to Ronan and shrugged.
There was nothing else to say.
He seemed to hear it all anyway as those bedroom eyes softened. “You look tired, sweetheart.”
There was that twinge again. It was the endearments that did it. When was the last time someone called me their beloved and meant it? “I am tired.”
“Why?”
There was no joke. Not even a hint. Just a direct question he clearly expected me to answer.
“I—there’s just a lot going on.”
“Tell me.”
For a moment, I wanted to. Even through the screen, it was obvious he was used to people following his orders. If he wanted to know something, they told him. If he told them to jump, they asked how high.
And in my case, if he wanted her to get married, apparently she did that too.
I frowned. “No. It’s not important.”
“It is. Tell me. You’re obviously worried about something. Let me help.”
Part of me wanted to. Part of me looked into those puppy dog eyes and wanted more than anything to believe that he actually… cared.
“Well, you know I run my mother’s business now.”
“Instead of finishing your dissertation, Professor. What happened there?”
He had a good memory, at least. I smirked and enjoyed the way he smirked back. “I took over when my mom got sick again. Then I kept it going after she died. That was about a year ago.”
Once again, humor evaporated from his face. All I saw was sympathy. “Jesus. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. Yeah.” What else was there to say?
“No other siblings? Or what about your dad, if they were still together?”
“I’m an only child. And they were, but he’s never been very invested in the business.” I shook my head. “Ironic, considering she started it here to be with him.”
“But he doesn’t want to keep it?”
I shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. At first, after she died, we grieved together, I suppose.
I moved in with him for a bit, and we kind of took care of each other for a while.
Or at least, I took care of him. Cooked, cleaned, did all the things she did, you know?
But after a few months, it was like… he was fine.
It’s hard to explain. He just kind of checked out. ”
“How so?”
“At first, it was minor. Like, he would avoid talking about her or how he was feeling. And then, he started scaling back from work but spent less and less time at the house. Then, a few months ago, he told me he was retiring early and moving to Phoenix. He sold the house. I moved into the apartment above the shop. We barely talk anymore.”
Spelling it out like that felt so harsh, so simple. Woefully inadequate to describe the complicated way my relationship with my dad had disintegrated over the last year.
A year of grief counseling told me it was more than just a neglectful father.
I knew everything about Seattle, from the shop to the house to even me probably, reminded him of that pain.
I knew that grief looked a lot of different ways for a lot of different people, and he needed space, just like I did, to process his loss until we could heal our relationship.
But there was another part of me that would never stop being the little girl he’d raised. One who needed her dad.
Ronan was quiet for a moment, like he knew I was processing right along with him, but he didn’t look away. In fact, he looked like he was studying me closely through the screen.
“What?” I pulled at a loose wave that had come down from my bun. “What are you looking at?”
“Is it fucked up that I want to kiss you right now?”
I stilled. “You—what?”
He shrugged, utterly unapologetic for his potentially inappropriate desires. “I think I answered my own question. But I do. Or hug you or something like that. I don’t know. This is honestly confusing as fuck. Maybe…”
I couldn’t help leaning closer, like it might help me read him better. “Maybe what?”
If it was messed up that he wanted to kiss me, maybe I should have admitted that I was currently imagining how it felt to be tucked up against that broad, warm chest, those arms wrapped around me, providing a kind of security that was so odds with his otherwise chaotic personality.
I didn’t, though. I just waited and watched.
He had incredibly long eyelashes. A dark fringe that swept over his cheekbones when he blinked, adding to that “bedroom eye” effect. When he looked straight into the camera, I shivered with the need to crawl right into the screen and into his arms.
“Maybe I don’t like to see my wife hurt when I can’t do anything about it.”
My wife.
I searched for a joke, but again found none. We stared at each other for a moment through the screen, like the distance and technology between us was the real farce instead of this conversation.
Is this why people got married? To have a person be there for them? To adopt a new family when theirs left or disintegrated or just couldn’t be that anymore?
It had to be.
Megan had found her person. I knew it the first time I went to dinner with her and Kevin and discovered mid-conversation that he knew something about her before I did. I’d been replaced—and why not? They were getting married. They were each other’s people.
But Ronan Black was not and never would be mine. A trickster, a sly manipulator, handsome, yes, but not even close to the kind of stability he was emanating right now through the screen.
I wasn’t sure what he was doing. But being my person—my real husband—wasn’t it, and never could be. The sooner I got that out of my head, the better.
“It’s fine. I’ll figure it out. In the meantime, there’s just a lot to do before the wedding this weekend,” I said. “Speaking of, the rehearsal dinner is in about an hour, and I need to get ready.”
The odd spell between us snapped.
“Rehearsal,” Ronan repeated. “Right. Yeah. Should be fun. Good little break.”
He went on a bit about dancing and drinks. Babbling a little, if I were being honest. It was oddly endearing.
“It might be fun. If you call ‘fun’ avoiding your cheating ex while forty people ask why you’re not together,” I said, if only to save him from his rambling.
“What?’ Ronan’s strong brow furrowed. “Who the fuck is your ex?”
Mentioning Derek was the metaphorical blast of cold water I needed to get rid of this little infatuation.
“No one.” Abruptly, I pushed back from the desk and stood. “As requested, my fit. Jeans. Sweater. Basically, the Meráki uniform, since that’s what we sell. Happy?”
“I—wait, Laney, you’re clearly—”
“Busy,” I finished as I bent down to take the edge of my laptop screen, ready to close it. “Like I said. Call me when you have the annulment papers for me to sign, Ronan. I’ll talk to you then.”