Chapter 4
Ford
Shame coils in my gut the longer I stare at the red blinking button that indicates I have a message on my answering machine. My palms are sweaty. After an eternity, I force myself forward on wooden legs and press the play button.
My brother’s voice booms across the line.
It’s Nate. He went to Montana over Christmas to help a stranded single mom.
He fell in love with her while he was there.
When he returned to Courage County, he called me and invited me to his impromptu wedding.
I didn’t go, even after promising I’d be there.
“Hey, I figured something must have come up,” Nate starts his message, giving me more grace than I deserve.
“It was a beautiful wedding. Callie looked incredible in her dress, and Danny–well, you have to meet them both. Maybe we can have dinner. Just the four of us. Something nice and quiet. We’ll even come to your place if you want.
Just…call me sometime. When you can. Love you. ”
I’ve been avoiding my brothers since Nate’s wedding day. I don’t know what to say, and the longer I don’t call them, the harder it gets to figure out what I should say.
I could bring it up to Joy. I could ask for advice, but that would mean telling her what happened this week. Would she judge me? Nope, can’t afford to take that risk.
There’s the sound of a car in my driveway, and my heart rate spikes. It’s time for our weekly meeting. I’ve been looking forward to it for days, waiting for the moment that I could see Joy again.
I take a deep breath and force myself to act casual. Can’t tip my hand just yet.
I wish I’d taken the time to trim my beard and cut my hair this week. I know I look more disheveled than usual thanks to the increased nightmares.
“At least, you look the part of the unkempt mountain man,” I murmur to myself. She’s never said a word about it. Maybe she secretly likes it?
Before I can ponder that thought, she’s on my sidewalk.
She’s wearing a gray dress that hugs her hips just right.
It’s not her usual clothing. Normally, she’s dressed in something bright and cheerful.
But this is pretty too. I still want to reach out and pull her against me and breathe her sweet scent in.
She looks up when I open the door, some emotion I can’t define flickering across her features. It’s gone before I can decide what it was, but I don’t think I liked it. I think it may have been sadness.
“Hey, boss,” she says.
The words are right, but her tone is wrong.
“How was your Christmas?” I repeat the phrase that I’ve spent three days practicing. With everyone else, I grunt and grumble. But Joy makes me want to remember how to be human.
“I got to spend some time with my sister. I really enjoyed that,” she answers as she enters the cabin uninvited. She ducks under my arm, brushing against my side.
I swallow a groan. Will there ever come a day when I get to feel all of her curves, when I can map her body with my hands and know what she feels like underneath me?
I follow her to the den, trying and failing not to focus on the way her hips sway so gently.
As soon as she’s in my space, I flop down on the couch and grab a blanket to cover myself.
I have a permanent hard-on around her, but I’d never want her to know.
Not unless I knew she returned my feelings.
I might be the horny boss, but I won’t be the creepy boss.
She settles in the armchair that I always leave open because I love seeing her in my seat, swallowed up and tiny and looking like the perfect gift.
If she’d agree to marry me, she could live in that chair if she wanted.
“You should just set your thermostat higher. It’s not good for you to be cold all year long. ”
I shrug rather than confess the reason for my constant blankets around her. “So, what did Santa bring you for Christmas?”
“Something unexpected,” she answers casually. “Now, let’s get to the Henderson case.”
I fight a wave of disappointment that she doesn’t mention the all-expenses-paid summer trip to Italy to take art classes. She “won” this while on Christmas vacation.
I know because I secretly arranged it, but I couldn’t let her know it came from me. I want to spoil her day and night, give her every good thing in the world until she has a million reasons to smile.
She digs in her bag and passes me a stack of papers then she turns her attention to the laptop. A second later, the schematics for the new mansion flicker onto it.
I swear under my breath as soon as I see it. “There are fourteen million entry points in the place and half as many blind spots.”
“This guy is a fuckin’ idiot,” Joy agrees and immediately claps a hand over her mouth.
I chuckle. “The wealthy usually are.”
We spend the next three hours reviewing every possible entry point and how to mitigate a potential threat. I’ve made dozens of notes and drawn countless arrows on the papers she’s given me.
At one point, I notice the blanket has slipped and my shirt has ridden up. I tug it down quickly, hoping she didn’t see the shrapnel scars on my side. I don’t want to advertise to pretty, innocent Joy that I’ve seen the horror of war.
As the hours pass, the tension between us doesn’t melt. I thought maybe she was just feeling awkward because we haven’t seen each other in a few days. But at the end of the meeting, I’m convinced it’s more than that.
“What did I do?” I finally ask when I’ve walked her to the door. We finished our work early today. Usually, she stays and chats with me after, but she isn’t lingering.
She frowns.
I manage to croak out the words from a raw throat, “Have I done something wrong?”
Whatever it is, I’ll make it right. I’ll show Joy that I’m more than just the grumpy ogre living on a mountaintop. I can be the kind of man who makes her happy.
The same sadness that was there when she first arrived is back again. “No, you’ve been a great boss.”
She leaves my cabin, and I watch her car getting smaller and smaller. With every passing second, the hollow feeling in my gut grows bigger. I’m definitely missing something.
It feels like I keep fucking up everything this week. I grab my phone and call Nate before I can talk myself out of it. He answers on the first ring.
“Hey! Congrats on getting married,” I put as much enthusiasm in my voice as I can muster.
He chuckles, but it’s more of a relieved sound than any actual mirth. Fuck, I hate what I keep doing to my family. “Thanks. Are you doing OK? Too hard to drive? You know, one of us would have come to pick you up.”
It’s what I should have done. I should have called Hunter or any of the other guys that live in these mountains. All of them would have given me a ride without batting an eye.
“My tire blew,” I admit in a small voice, feeling like a kid who wet the bed again.
He swears under his breath. He knows I was the one driving the day my patrol went over the roadside bomb, that the tire blowing took me back to the worst moment of my life. “You could have called. I would have–”
“Put your whole damn wedding on hold for me. I didn’t want you to do that,” I answer then because I don’t want to talk about it anymore, I say, “Tell Callie I’m looking forward to meeting her.”
Nate understands that I’m done and launches into the latest cute thing Danny is doing. Every time he talks about the eight-month-old baby, he sounds like a proud dad.
While he talks, I walk back to my den. Joy’s perfume still lingers in the air. What I’d give to smell it all the time, to always have her in my space.
Something crinkles under my sock, and I frown when I find a piece of thick cardstock. It’s black with gold lettering and a single word on it: Crave.
I flip it over, my eyes scanning it. It’s an invitation to a New Year’s Eve party.
There’s an address, but I’ve never heard of this club. Not that I’m into clubs. Even when I was young, I avoided them. Being raised by addicts means I don’t care much for the party scene. I’ve seen where it leads.
“Have you ever heard of a place called Crave? I think it might be Club Crave.”
“Nah, you want me to look it up for you? Hold on, got my laptop right here.” He types on his keyboard then lets out a slow whistle. “It’s a playground for billionaires.”
“A playground?” I repeat.
“You know, the way grown-ups play,” Nate keeps his voice so low that it makes me think Danny is in the room. He’s been trying to clean up his language ever since he met the little boy.
I let loose with a string of profanities. No one is hooking up with my pretty assistant. If she wants a date for New Year’s Eve, I’ll be her date. No one else.