Chapter Nineteen
Ava’s meeting went by in a blur. Thank God Naomi took notes, as Ava, for the first time ever, couldn’t remember a thing that was said.
Had Naomi been shooting her sly glances?
But she couldn’t worry about Naomi or meetings or anything else right now. Those thirty minutes with Ransom had been an out-of-body experience. They’d been as in tune as if years hadn’t gone by. Like tactile memories on her skin, all she could think of was his touch, his kiss, his taste, and the feel of him filling up every single minute of those empty years.
His caresses had touched so much more than just her body. They’d touched her soul and her heart. God, her heart. If her heart was involved, it could be broken all over again.
When they broke up, he’d had his career to build and consume him. While he might have missed her at first, at least for a little while, he’d made his choice. And it wasn’t her. The end of their affair had blindsided her. She thought she’d been doing everything possible to make him happy, only to have him show her how he really felt before he hopped on a plane like her parents always had.
She didn’t want to be blindsided again at thirty-six. She didn’t want a repeat of all that angst and heartache. And maybe she’d channeled all her heartache into anger to ease it a little.
Yet she didn’t feel the anger anymore. These past few days with him, seeing him perform so many sweet acts—painting nails, making Myrtle laugh, stepping in to make Gideon and Rosie’s wedding the best it could be—all the old anger had drained away.
Leaving behind only the memory of her broken heart.
If the love she and Ransom had once shared wasn’t real, then why had it hurt so badly to lose it? And why did it hurt her heart now? In answer to that, she’d tried to tell herself it was just she and Ransom that couldn’t work, that they both sucked at love, that they could never make it right, make it good.
But standing in her office, she couldn’t help closing her eyes and remembering the look in his gaze, as if he adored her. The touch of his fingertips, as if he revered her. The kiss of his lips on hers, as if he relished her. The climaxes he gave her, as if he savored every shudder and shiver of her body.
The way she’d savored his.
Could they work?
Her heart leaped at the thought.
It was that very leap that terrified her. He could be playing a game. It could be just for now. He could go on his merry way just as he had before. He could ghost her all over again. She knew, deep in her bones and like a fist wrapped around her heart, that this time she wouldn’t be able to pick up its broken pieces.
But the way he’d left her office, with such tenderness in his voice, in his words. We need to talk.
As if this time he wouldn’t ghost her.
But then she remembered the other thing he’d said. Before he’d kissed her. Before he’d made love to her.
Any other twenty-one-year-old woman would have jumped at the offer.
He’d tried to backpedal, tried to say he hadn’t meant it the way it sounded. But still, those words said it all. Any other woman. As though she’d been just one among many. Nothing special. Easily replaceable.
Her emotions were so mixed up. She was floundering in a way she hadn’t since he’d left her the first time. The one thing she could do was pick up the phone and call her sister. Gabby was the only one who would understand.
As her sister said, “Hell—” Ava cut her off. “I really need to talk to you.” Then she heard the echo of that one syllable: hell. That’s where Ava was right now. In hell.
“It’s about Ransom, right?”
Ava could only mutter, “Yeah.”
“I’m still in the Bay Area. I stayed in Woodside at Canyon Ranch because I needed time beforehand to make a masterpiece of the cake. Then I treated myself to a spa day.” Ava could hear the languor in Gabby’s voice. “I just checked out. You still in the city?”
“Yeah.” That was the only word she was capable of.
“Let’s meet at that steak and chophouse out by the water, the one near all the fancy airport hotels.”
Naomi had brought Ava a sandwich after the meeting, but she’d taken only a bite. “I need a drink. Even more than food.”
“You’ve got it, sis.” Gabby paused a couple of seconds, as though she was looking at the time on her phone. “I can be there in half an hour. Will that be good for you?”
Sighing, Ava said, “I’ll be there. Thank you.” The words wobbled, but she didn’t allow herself to cry.
After they hung up, Ava stood a moment longer. She couldn’t even think about driving herself. She’d probably have an accident. Naomi called her driver, and the Town Car was already waiting at the curb as she left the building. Ava slumped in the backseat as they made their way out of the city.
Beneath the portico of the chophouse, she stepped from the car just a little over thirty minutes later, delayed by traffic. Since it was between the lunch and dinner hours, thank goodness the restaurant was still open. She hadn’t even thought to check, she’d been so determined to get to her sister.
To the ma?tre d’, she said, “My sister is probably already at a table. Gabby Harrington.”
After a slight bow, the man led her to a table by the windows overlooking the ocean.
And Ava stumbled, catching herself before the ma?tre d’ could reach out.
Seated at the table with Gabby was none other than the inimitable Fernsby.
No. Oh no, no, no. She couldn’t do this in front of Fernsby. She couldn’t lay her heart bare with him looking on and judging her.
She remembered the look Fernsby had given her in Dane’s home theater, after they’d viewed him winning the top prize on Britain’s Greatest Bakers.
A look that said he had matchmaking plans for her.
Oh God, please don’t let him be here to matchmake for me and Ransom.
She almost turned around, but she needed to talk to someone. Now. Not later. Not over the phone either. If it couldn’t be Gabby alone, it would have to be Fernsby too.
Which didn’t stop her from death-glaring her sister as she approached the table.
Fernsby stood, holding out the chair by the window for her to slip into before he seated himself beside her. She was trapped now, Fernsby on one side, Gabby across from her.
Instead of jumping right into her problem, she gave herself a moment. “What have you done with T. Rex?”
Fernsby didn’t smile. Although that might have been a slight smirk on his lips. “Please, Miss Harrington, don’t trouble yourself about Lord Rexford.” She didn’t believe Fernsby had ever called the mini dachshund T. Rex. “He is safely ensconced in the car with perfect temperature control, water, and a bit of food. Not too much.” He wagged a finger. “His owners,” he said with a hint of admonition for Cammie and Dane, “insist on feeding him too many treats.” She suspected—but couldn’t be sure—that Fernsby snuck the dog treats when no one was looking.
He pointed to the champagne flute in front of Ava. “We took the liberty of ordering your favorite libation. I understand you need it.”
Ava took a drink before she could say anything, and the sweetness of the champagne wet her parched throat, the bubbles threatening to go to her head. Though maybe that was a good thing.
Obviously having read Ava’s thoughts written on her face, Gabby said, “I know you weren’t expecting Fernsby. But trust me on this one. He is a wise man. Dane and Cammie might never have seen the light and gotten together if it hadn’t been for him.”
Fernsby added in the drollest of voices, “Having dealt admirably—” He preened as he said the word. “—with Mr. Harrington’s lackadaisical approach to romance—and look how well that turned out—I believe I’m well equipped to provide any necessary advice here. You may not believe this, but I know a thing or two about love.”
Love? Fernsby? She couldn’t believe the man had ever been in love in his entire life, not even as a hormone-ridden teenager. In fact, he might actually have been hatched just as he was. Dane had always speculated that Fernsby was anywhere between the ages of forty and sixty. Ava secretly thought he was far more ancient.
But she put all that aside. “I’m desperate. I need advice.”
She would even take it from Fernsby.
* * *
Fernsby felt himself going a little misty-eyed at the memory of his lost love. But no, it wasn’t appropriate here.
Oh, the woes of young love and all the mistakes we make, he thought. It was obviously up to him to fix Ava’s troubles—he, the inestimable Fernsby. This was yet another job he had been made for.
“One more sip of your champagne, my dear. You need the fortification.” If it was up to him, he’d have ordered bourbon. The shock of it would have brought forth every detail trapped inside her.
Perhaps it was his own failed romance that gave him the ability to fix everything—and he did mean everything—for everyone else. Of course, it had taken him twelve years—twelve years, for God’s sake—to get Dane to realize he was madly in love with Camille. But the timing had to be perfect. They had to be best friends. One couldn’t rush these things. And Ava, by the beleaguered look on her face and those longing glances he’d seen with his eagle eye at yesterday’s wedding, was ripe for his help.
He put his hand on her shoulder, like a comforting uncle. Fernsby prided himself on playing whatever role his charges needed.
“Start from the beginning, my dear,” he said. “And leave nothing out.”
* * *
Ava put her elbows on the table and her hands over her face. There was just something about Fernsby that had her blurting it all out. Fast, almost without a breath. “We had a bad breakup fifteen years ago. I never talked about it back when it all happened. And now I just had sex with Ransom in my office.” She splayed her fingers so she could see Gabby’s reaction. “Twice.”
Her sister’s jaw dropped. Fernsby leaned over, tapped her chin, and Gabby closed her mouth. Giving her head a shake, Gabby said, “You actually had sex in your office?” With two fingers to each temple, she puffed out a long breath. “I’m not sure my brain can even compute that.”
Ava hardly recognized herself either, as though the time she’d spent with Ransom had opened up a new emotional chasm inside that she’d forgotten was there after all the years of keeping it tightly closed. Before this afternoon, she would never have said anything like this to anyone, not even Gabby. And never in a million, trillion years would she have said it to Fernsby. Yet that’s where she was now—in a place where she’d say whatever had to be said because she needed answers. Badly.
She’d asked herself why it hurt so much. And out of the chasm came the answer—that maybe she’d closed herself off to love when she was much younger, even before Ransom, when her parents were alive and she’d never been able to get them to notice her. To love her.
Was that why she’d been so quick to leave Ransom all those years ago? While she’d been doing everything she could to please him, deep down, had she been waiting for him to prove he’d never really loved her?
And he had. He’d pretty-womaned her. He’d ignored her dreams. And then he’d ghosted her.
Ava closed the gap between her fingers, shutting off her view of Gabby’s face. “What makes you think I’ve never had sex in my office before?”
Gabby rolled her eyes. “Duh.”
Of course. Ava had always been the consummate businesswoman. Then again, maybe there’d never been anyone with whom she wanted to have sex in her office.
Until Ransom came back into her life.
She felt Fernsby’s fingers on her hands then, prying them away from her eyes. And really, she couldn’t do anything but meet his gaze.
“How do you feel about him now?” he asked gently.
Fernsby? Gentle? But there it was.
Before Ava could even formulate an answer, Gabby chimed in. “You were so angry with him back then.” She cocked her head. “But I wonder if he’s still that same man. Do you think he is? I mean, he totally squashed your heart. I just want to make sure he doesn’t do it again.” She reached across the table, touched Ava’s hand. “I never want to see you as miserable and hurt as you were then. If you think he’s going to do that, then that’s what we need to talk about.”
Fernsby let out a low hmmm, then said, “The man has hidden depths that perhaps fifteen years ago he had not yet plumbed.”
“That’s the problem,” Ava said. “I don’t know if he’s changed.” That wound, just as Gabby said, ran deep. “There were times, as I built my business, when things got so hard that I wanted to quit. And part of the reason I didn’t was because I wanted him to know that I’d made my own dreams come true.”
Good grief. Even the success of her business might be tied to him. She’d never truly admitted that to herself until this moment. “After he erased me from his life, I never wanted him to think I’d simply collapsed into misery without him.”
Gabby smiled softly. “You might have been miserable, but you would never have collapsed. You’ve never let anything stop you.”
Ava’s voice trembled. “I just don’t know how to get over what happened. He offered me a job following him around the globe, like a temporary mistress. But while he was on his way up, so busy working to become this megastar, I was just getting started. When I said no to his offer, he was like, okay, things aren’t going to work. And boom. He was gone. He completely ghosted me for fifteen years.”
Fernsby—was that a hint of emotion in his gaze?—said, “I realize that he has a lot to make up for. And you have a lot to forgive.”
She nodded, picked up her champagne flute, took a sip, and finally said, “That was the worst. The total erasure.”
She’d always said it was the Pretty Woman thing that got to her. But even more, it was the ghosting. It was being erased. As if they’d never been together at all.
Fernsby touched her hand. “You told us the two of you broke up. But you were a bit scant on details.” His mouth stretched in a grimace as he said the word. “Not those details.”
He didn’t want to know how fantastic the sex had been. He didn’t want to know how utterly amazing the lovemaking had been in her office today. He wanted to know how it had all gone down.
Ava’s stomach clenched even before she started. “He was supposed to fly out that night to Paris. We wanted to enjoy a marvelous dinner before he left, so we cooked together. I was always his sous-chef, helping him.”
Fernsby nodded knowingly. “You were his helpmate. I’d be willing to wager that many of the recipes he later came up with were from those nights you cooked together.”
“I suppose they were.” Recipes made out of love, at least on her side.
While she’d tried never to stalk Ransom, there’d been times in a bookstore when she couldn’t resist opening a cookbook and had discovered many of the recipes were ones she’d loved making with him. The memories had hurt her even then.
Feeling herself going under with the pain of all the good memories, she plunged into the story again. “We were on dessert. Rice pudding with raspberry sauce.”
Every detail came to her, even the sweet taste of the raspberry sauce on her tongue mixed with the creamy flavor of the pudding. She felt Fernsby’s and Gabby’s gazes on her, both well aware that the memories had never been erased.
She pushed ahead. “And lattes.”
God, the delicious coffees he’d made for her. Just like he had that day in his office when she’d barged in and asked him to help her with the catering emergency. It had never been the sex that made her fall for him. It was all the other things—the cooking, the food he prepared for her, even the coffee beans he bought with her in mind. The trails they hiked in the hills, the ferries they took to Sausalito, Tiburon, Treasure Island. The times they’d walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, hand in hand, through packs of tourists. The late-night strolls through quiet neighborhood streets, the sound of voices and laughter rising up from Union Square or Chinatown or Fisherman’s Wharf or Ghirardelli Square. It was watching him with his grandmother and holding him while they’d grieved together after she passed.
Stop it stop it stop it,she wanted to scream. Concentrate on the story of that last night.
The anger she’d harbored for years was now only grief.
“Then he asked me if I’d come along with him on his trips, that he’d find me a job, make one up if he had to. That we had so little time together between our work and my classes, but that he wanted me with him.”
“But he never seemed to consider your dreams,” Fernsby said wisely.
“That’s what I told him. I was going to night school, and I wanted to get my degree.” She’d needed that degree even after her parents died, as if somehow they would know she’d done it. But there was so much more. There were people she wanted to help. “I wanted to manage nursing homes and make life better for the residents. Even then, I wanted to own those nursing homes. I wanted to make them places that people would choose over anywhere else.” And she’d done it. Despite him. “He told me I could do all that later, after he’d established his career, when he would be home more. And he would help me do it. But for now—” She thought of his words, of how they’d hurt. “He said I’d get so much more life experience seeing the world, that I could step back into my education later.” She turned her champagne stem on the white tablecloth, stared at the tiny bubbles still fizzing to the top. “But I’d already given up my education once before, when our parents died.”
“You gave it up to take care of us,” Gabby said, her voice tremulous. “Then he wanted you to give it up to take care of him.”
Ava looked at her sister, awed at her insight. “He wanted me to give up my dream to help him attain his. He wanted me to trail after him like a groupie. Even worse, like a mistress who had a job title, but what she really did was crawl into bed with him every night. And everyone would know what I was. I told him he was treating me like Vivian, where everyone knew she wasn’t Edward’s niece or his ward or whatever the hell he called her. That she was just a kept woman he took to his bed every night.”
Fernsby, with his usual stern countenance, said, “He pretty-womaned you.”
Ava gaped. Gabby did too. And Fernsby, nose in the air, said, “It’s a butler’s job to keep up on all the latest movies, Broadway plays, and TV shows. In case their employer should need a recommendation.”
Good God. Fernsby had actually watched Pretty Woman.