Chapter 5
CASH
The party thinned gradually, the way good parties did. Not all at once but in small groups drifting toward the door until only the people who mattered most were left. Most of my family members owned homes out here. I suspected they were all sticking around for the weekend.
By ten o’clock it was just Austin, Melody, Kent, Sylvie, Cleo, and me.
We sat around the fire pit on the deck. The gas flames were a pretty shade of blue and orange.
My brothers and I were drinking. Sylvie was breastfeeding and Melody was pregnant, so they opted out.
Cleo abstained in solidarity with the women or she just didn’t want to be the only woman drinking.
The sky had gone fully dark overhead. The carpet of stars out here never ceased to amaze me. Sometimes, it was easy to forget what a real night sky looked like. I was rarely outside at night, and if I was, it was in the city.
I wasn’t the sitting-around-a-campfire sort of guy. There was always something to be done. A crisis to manage or a brother on the edge and about to make a mistake that I would ultimately have to deal with. It was strange to just sit.
“I want it simple,” Melody said. “Right here on the beach. Barefoot, maybe. Just the people we love.”
“I know. That’s exactly what we’ll have.” Austin kissed the tip of her nose. He looked at her like she’d personally hung every one of the stars above us, which was the expression he’d been wearing more or less since she arrived in his life.
I watched them from across the fire and wondered what it felt like to be him. Or Kent. Or any of my brothers that had recently gotten hitched.
I shifted my gaze to Kent and Sylvie on the lounge chair beside me.
They’d arranged themselves the way couples did without thinking about it.
Her legs draped over his lap, his hand resting low on her hip, their shoulders pressed together.
Every few minutes one of them would glance at the baby monitor sitting on the armrest.
They whispered to each other occasionally. Private things. Sylvie would say something and Kent would dip his head toward her to hear it better, and then he’d smile in that particular way he’d developed since meeting her, unguarded in a way I’d never seen from him before.
I wasn’t even grossed out by all the lovey dovey shit. But when I thought about me and my future, this was not it. I didn’t see myself canoodling and talking about babies.
I thought about my corner office. The view from the forty-second floor at seven in the morning, coffee in hand, the city spread out below like a circuit board coming to life. Or my window seat on the private plane. Quiet. Controlled. Mine.
Female company had its obvious merits. I wasn’t a monk.
But there was a cost to it that most men didn’t seem to factor into their calculations.
The distraction was the biggest drawback.
And there was the emotional overhead. Too much drama.
I hated drama. I liked facts and numbers and measurable goals.
I didn’t envy my brothers. Or at least, I was fairly certain I didn’t.
I looked back at Austin just as he leaned forward and placed his hand over Melody’s stomach. He said something to her. Whatever it was, it was probably ridiculous. But it made Melody smile in a way that said they were talking about R-rated things. I cleared my throat and looked away.
Directly into Cleo’s eyes.
She was watching me from across the fire. I didn’t know for how long. Her expression was unreadable before she looked away, back toward the flames. I looked away too.
I’d been doing that all evening, looking at her and looking away. Trying to figure out what had happened after the announcement. I wasn’t a total dolt. I understood basic human emotions, even if I didn’t particularly enjoy them or participate in them.
I’d seen it in her face when she walked out of the bathroom. Something was wrong. Had been wrong since the announcement, or maybe just after it.
She was acting fine, but I kept catching the occasional moments.
The way her expression went quiet when she thought no one was paying attention.
I noticed she positioned herself slightly outside the circle instead of inside it.
On the deck, she stayed on the outer fringes.
She was hurting. That much I was sure of.
Why did I care? I barely knew the woman. We had a mutually antagonistic dynamic built on six months of well-crafted insults and strategic avoidance. Her emotional state was not my area of responsibility.
That was Melody’s job. Melody was her best friend. If something was wrong with Cleo, Melody would notice and handle it. That was how this was supposed to work.
Except Melody was in a haze of pregnancy hormones and wedding excitement. I wasn’t entirely sure she had noticed anything beyond her own beautiful news.
Every time I looked at Cleo too long, she caught me and shot me a glare.
“I cannot wait to go dress shopping,” Melody said. She was looking at Cleo. “I can’t do it without you. You’re the only person I trust to tell me if something makes me look silly.”
“Everything makes you look incredible and you know it,” Cleo said with a genuine smile. Whatever she was feeling underneath, it didn’t show.
“I need honest, not flattering. That’s why I need you.”
“You need me because I’ll tell you when a dress makes your ass look like a throw pillow and I won’t feel bad about it.”
Melody laughed. “Exactly. And you’ll need your maid of honor dress. We can do it all at once.”
“You know, usually the dress takes a good year to get done,” Cleo said.
“Well, I don’t want to wear a tent down the aisle and I am absolutely going to be married before this baby is born,” Melody said.
Cleo flashed another smile. “I might know someone who can help us out on such short notice.”
“I knew you would.”
The conversation drifted to tomorrow’s plans. The women would go to the spa. The men would head out to the golf club. It was the kind of easy division that happened naturally in a group like this. It worked for me. I was glad there wouldn’t be cake tasting or anything to do with wedding planning.
No thank you.
A morning of golf and business talk with my brothers sounded considerably more comfortable than whatever this evening had turned into.
Around midnight, the cool of the ocean breeze was enough to signal the end of the night. Four of us had someone to snuggle up with. Four of us were eager to get to bed.
At least one of us was not looking forward to bed.
I wasn’t tired.
I glanced Cleo’s way. She didn’t look super thrilled about bedtime either.
“I’ll take care of the fire,” I said to no one in particular.
Everyone filtered inside. I turned off the fire pit and stayed to make sure it was completely out. The night was quiet around me, other than the sound of the waves rolling in and the occasional chirp of some nocturnal bug.
I went inside last. The house was silent. The ground floor was dark. I was heading toward the stairs when I found Cleo standing at the bottom of them, holding what looked to be a toiletry bag. I could not imagine she stuffed everything she needed for a weekend in the thing.
She looked up when she heard me. “My other bags are in my car. I forgot to bring them in earlier.”
“I’ll get them.”
“I don’t need you to be my porter.”
“Just give me your keys.”
She looked at me for a moment with an expression that suggested she was weighing whether the argument was worth the effort. She handed me her keys.
I found her car in the driveway. It was a sensible sedan with a back seat that had clearly transported the personal belongings of a woman who was prepared for any situation.
Two bags. One large, one medium. A canvas tote full of what looked like camera equipment.
I carried them all in because I wasn’t sure what she might need.
When I came back inside, she was still at the bottom of the stairs. She looked faintly annoyed that I’d actually done it.
“You didn’t have to carry all of them at once.”
“I’m bringing in your bags. I don’t think you get to decide how I do it.”
She didn’t have an answer for that, so she just took the canvas tote from me and started up the stairs. I followed with the other two bags.
Her room was on the second floor, far side of the house—the quiet side, away from where Kent and Sylvie were. Austin and Melody had the ground floor to themselves. I set her bags inside her door and stepped back.
She stood in the doorway, looking tired in a way that had nothing to do with the hour. “Goodnight,” she said.
“Goodnight.” I turned and started toward the stairs. It was one flight up to my suite, a shower, and several hours of sleep before tomorrow’s golf game. Simple. Clean. Exactly what I should do.
I made it four steps before I stopped. Looked back.
She was still standing in her doorway, one hand on the door frame, not quite ready to go inside.
She looked terribly sad. Not crying. Not falling apart.
Just quietly, privately sad in the way of someone who’d been holding something heavy for too long and was too stubborn to put it down.
I stood there for a moment, genuinely uncertain. This wasn’t my terrain. I didn’t do this. I didn’t notice women’s sadness and feel compelled to address it. That was a different kind of man. A softer kind.
But she was still standing there, and I was still looking. And I wasn’t ready for bed. I needed to wind down. I rarely crawled into bed before one in the morning. Usually I was working, dealing with people in different time zones.
“There’s prosecco in the fridge,” I said. “Upstairs. I asked for it specifically.”
She looked at me like I had sprouted a second head.
The silence stretched long enough that I was certain she would say no.
I started composing a reasonable exit from the offer that didn’t involve explaining myself.
I felt like an idiot. Why would the woman, who made her disgust for me known, want to have a drink with me?
“Okay,” she said.
I had to replay the word in my head to make sure I heard it right. Well, shit. That was not what I’d expected.