Chapter 3 #3
She supposed if she were in her marriage still, it might be even weirder to be next to a man who made her this hot. But this really wasn’t better. Because her heart still felt tangled up in Aiden, and this job suddenly represented much more than it ever would have otherwise.
Without it, she was alone in the world.
Without it, it was like free-falling off a cliff.
Being hot for your boss was a bad idea at the best of times, but in this scenario? Impossible.
Absolutely impossible.
Also, she was still technically married. How the hell were they going to do a long-distance divorce?
You already divided up your assets.
Her thoughts were spinning in terrible circles, and she didn’t like it.
She gritted her teeth. “This is great.”
She said it because if she didn’t, she was going to cry.
“I’d like to get to my house,” Cara said. Then she giggled. “I’ve never had my own house before. I’ve just always lived with my mom, and I’ve been taking care of her. So… This is… I’m just really excited about this. Thank you so much, Cody, and I promise I’m not going to let you down.”
“Right,” he said.
Clearly, he was very uncomfortable with the fact that they had so many emotions tied up in this work. But… didn’t he?
He’d told her all about his dad and how he had inherited this place. If that didn’t tie your emotions up in something, then what did?
They walked out of the bakery and got back into the truck.
Marlowe basically spaced out the entire drive back.
Then Cara got into her SUV, and Marlowe realized that meant that she was going to be alone with Cody.
Because her place was… Here. And none of her things were here yet.
The moving truck was going to be here tomorrow.
All she had was an overnight bag. The same things that she had been using for their whole road trip out here.
“You can text me if you need anything, and I’ll come right back,” Cara said. “You’re going to have to get a car.”
“Yeah,” she said.
She had car money. At least… There had been car money in the bank account that she and Aiden shared.
She hadn’t thought to check it. They really didn’t have very much, but they had set aside all kinds of money for this move.
And some of that money had been to buy a car when they got to Oregon, because while they hadn’t needed one in Brooklyn, they would need one here.
That worry, for a moment, overtook her worry about being left alone with Cody. And her anticipation of seeing the apartment.
But then, she looked up, her eyes meeting his, and she was right back to worrying about being alone with Cody.
“Your place is on the fourth floor,” he said. “All the way down at the end.” He pulled open the door to the lobby, and she walked inside. Was he going to walk her into her room? The idea of being in a room with him – next to a bed – that made her throat go all dry.
He walked behind the counter and reached down, taking out a set of keys. “Every other room has a card. You have actual keys. It’s room number 46. I think it should be pretty easy to find.”
She let out a breath, and her lungs felt so sore. She wasn’t going to have to be worried about being in a room with him in a bed just yet.
She reached out and took the keys from him, and their fingertips brushed. She tried not to react. But she could feel her face getting warm, and she had a feeling that her face was pink.
“Thank you. I suppose…” She had taken over operations before, but she had never been involved in getting one up and running from the ground up.
The idea of it was both exciting and terrifying.
She realized that creating a flow and setting standards with the employees was going to be up to her.
She realized that all of this was her responsibility, and she was going to have to please this man who didn’t look like he would be pleased by anything short of a vault of gold he could swim in Scrooge McDuck style.
And even then, he didn’t seem like he was motivated by money. There was something else.
What would his personal pool be full of?
She thought about what he’d said about his father. Well. It didn’t take Freud to figure that one out. Daddy issues. But who didn’t have them? She had mommy issues on top of it. And now she had… husband issues.
She was collecting familial traumas like Pokémon.
That took some of the heat out of her face. Made it burn in her chest.
“Let’s have a meeting tomorrow. Lunchtime?”
“Yeah. Sounds good,” she said.
It would give her the morning to explore the place. And her moving boxes would arrive in the late afternoon tomorrow, so that would give her time to bring everything in and start unpacking later.
He turned and walked away from her, and she stood there for a long moment, watching him go. Watching his broad shoulders, the confident way that he strode through the building, as if it were his kingdom. It was.
She let out a hard breath and walked into the hallway that led to the elevators.
She looked behind her and saw a staircase with dark blue carpeted stairs.
The floor in the entry of the lobby was hardwood, but deeper into the hotel, it was a plush blue carpet, likely to help dampen the sound.
There was ample wood trim to keep the modern look, though.
She liked it. She wondered what kind of flooring her apartment would have.
That was a nice distraction.
She was ready for distraction. She decided to go up the stairs, taking two at a time, her thighs burning by the time she got to the fourth floor.
Then she went down the hall as quickly as possible, her eyes on room number 46.
Someday she would know this place so well, and it would all be familiar. Someday, this place would feel like hope.
“Or,” she muttered as she shoved the key into the lock. “I’ll be out on my ass so quickly that it will all barely be a memory.”
That wasn’t even funny. She didn’t think she could take any more emotional whiplash.
She walked into the apartment, her bag making her shoulder ache.
She set it down on the floor.
It was beautiful. There was minimal furniture, but that was just fine. A dining table and chairs, a kitchen area that was small but serviceable. She knew there was a bed in the bedroom. That was the furniture that had been promised to her.
Her antique loveseat was coming along with the rest of her things in a truck that was now half full because it didn’t have Aiden’s stuff.
She walked deeper into the space and set her keys on the counter.
Then she walked over to the window and opened up the dark blue curtains.
The view was stunning. The window overlooked a sprawling green lawn, there were evergreen trees in the distance, and sharp blue mountains rising up behind them, snowcapped and glorious.
This place was unlike anywhere she’d ever been before.
This place was real. It was where she had moved to. It was her new life.
And for the first time since all of this had started, she started to cry.
Because now it felt real.
Now she was across the country, starting this new existence without her husband.
Now she was by herself. For real.
Here across the country, with her boss, who was both a stone cold fox and just stone cold in general.
“What is my life?”