Bliss Brothers (Complete Series), page 34
I’ve been so focused on being scared that I missed the more important factor: I’ve fallen for him.
Hard.
15
Driver
“DID you break up with your girlfriend?”
I’m lingering in the bullpen of the resort offices, waiting for a suspiciously late Roman, but it’s not Roman who makes me stand up straight from the wall.
“What? No. Why?” Charlie has his phone in his hand and a portfolio in the other, but his hair is wet, which is weird. “Why are you wet?”
He looks up from the phone and meets my eyes. “I’m not wet. My hair is wet because I took a shower. You know about showers, right?”
“Why are you asking about Holiday? Also, she’s not my girlfriend.” Not technically. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I don’t know.
“Bullshit,” says Charlie. “I saw her on the beach.”
“Why were you on the beach?”
He shakes his head. “What is this, some kind of police interrogation? I went for a run.”
“In the middle of the day?”
“Yes, Driver. In the middle of the day.”
“Why are you running in the middle of the day in August?”
“For stress relief. Not that it makes a difference when you work with your own brothers.”
I put a hand to my chest. “So kind.”
“She looked…melancholy.”
“Melancholy?”
“She looked sad when I saw her.”
“I know what melancholy means, you ass.”
Charlie shrugs. “You never know.”
“All right.”
“You should go see her.”
I let my mouth fall open and stare at him.
“What? You should.”
“I thought all of you wanted me back on the road.”
He gives me a meaningful look. “Roman wants you back on the road. I don’t have a personal stake in whether you go or not, as long as you bring in sponsorships. God knows the travel budget could be reduced.”
“I do plenty to reduce the travel budget.”
“What are you two hens arguing about?” Beau steps up between us, putting a hand on each shoulder. He’s in a ridiculous mood most of the time now, since he and Claire got together. “We’re brothers. Let’s not fight.”
Charlie shakes off his hand. “We’re not fighting. I was giving Driver a suggestion.”
“He was suggesting that I go see Holiday, even though she’s not my girlfriend.”
The two of them exchange a look, and anger flares straight across my chest. “Charlie, what the hell?”
“What?” He looks back down at his phone, then up at me. “Seriously, what?”
“You told him?”
“Congratulations, bud,” says Beau, smiling like an idiot. “Mom’s going to be thrilled. And Charlie here only told me the happy news because he thought I’d say something stupid otherwise. What a guy, am I right? He should know that somebody’s going to say something stupid no matter what he does.”
“Did you tell Roman?” I say through gritted teeth. “So help me god, if either of you told Roman—”
“Told me what?”
Oh, perfect.
“Nothing.” I hope the look on my face adequately communicates how much I will murder my twin brothers if this news goes any further than it already has.
“Fine.” Roman goes past us into his office. Charlie follows behind and puts the portfolio on his desk.
“This is the latest,” Charlie says. “I don’t have anything else.” I follow him in, with Beau hovering just over my shoulder like the world’s most annoying gnat.
Roman picks up the portfolio, scans through it, and gives Charlie a nod. “We’ll talk later.”
“Great.” Charlie leaves without a second glance back at me.
“Driver, I’ve got an endorsement I want you to follow up on. It’s time sensitive, and the flight out is tomorrow evening at six.”
“Hold on. What?”
“It’s a company out of Washington State. It’s a branding deal—we’ll carry their soaps in some of the rooms as a pilot test, and they’ll promote the resort to their following. From what I understand they’ve got quite a bit of their market. I need you on the ground for that meeting.”
“I’m not flying out.”
“Yeah, you are. The meeting’s tomorrow afternoon. There’s no time to drive.”
“When did you find out about this?”
“Yeah,” Beau chimes in. “When did you find out about this? It’s kind of a dick move to spring this on a guy?”
Roman lets out a long-suffering sigh. “How do you find out about these meetings? Isn’t it enough for you that I’m letting you revamp your processes for the events at the resort?”
“What the hell?” My heart thunders like a team of racehorses. I’ve been to a few horse races in my travels, and racehorses are no joke. “Beau gets to keep his own hours and make all his own decisions, and you’re going to send me out with one day’s notice? This is bullshit, Roman.”
“This is the work of the resort.” Roman’s tone is utterly serious. “I asked you to start lining up new endorsements a week ago, and as far as I can tell, you haven’t done anything.”
“I’ve sent emails.”
“You’re here, Drive. You’re never here. You’d have been gone before the sentence was finished a month ago. Did something happen? Because if it did, and we need to make changes, you need to tell me.”
No. No, I don’t need to tell him. My muscles tighten painfully, though I’m not clenching my fists. Maybe I’m having a heart attack.
I’m not going to do this Roman’s way. I’m not going to tell him every little thing that happens to me because he demands it. This has to be illegal. If we had a real Human Resources department, I could probably march down there and file a lawsuit. Except we have one lawyer on retainer, so that would be more than slightly awkward.
“Nothing happened,” I answer flatly. If Beau so much as breathes wrong right now, I will lay him out. “I’ve made it abundantly clear that I’d rather not fly.”
“The meeting is tomorrow.” He enunciates every word, and I want to punch him. “I think you need to clear your head.” Roman bends down and jiggles the computer mouse to wake up his screen. “I’m forwarding an email to you now with some other possibilities I’ve lined up for while you’re out there. Get going on this stuff and we’ll talk when you’re back in two weeks.”
I raise both hands in the air. “Two weeks?” This is so fucking stupid I could die. “You are not planning my schedule for the next two weeks.”
“I already did.” Roman straightens up and crosses his arms over his chest. “Beau, as long as you’re here—we saw another bookings boost from the kids’ day. I don’t want the grounds overrun with too many activities like that, but coordinate with Claire about setting up a schedule for the fall.”
Beau salutes Roman like the happy asshole that he is. “On it.”
“I’m not on it,” I cut in. “This is shit, and you know it. Even Beau knows it.”
“I have been the subject of…management…before, grasshopper,” he says, even though he’s two years older than me and has never struck me as particularly wise. “It might turn out for the best.”
There’s nothing else to say. Roman waits, but I don’t need to give him the satisfaction of an argument. That guy has been on a power trip since the day he was born, and I’ve had enough of it.
“Fine. Great. Anything else?”
Roman chews at his lip, the first sign that he’s not completely confident about this, either. “Show me you’re on board with this, Driver.”
He doesn’t have to follow through with the threat. I know what he means, and it only makes my rage burn hotter.
Asher is never here, and the man in charge of the Bliss Resort is a hypocrite in the first degree.
I don’t have anything to say to him, so I turn and go, moving numbly through the bullpen. He can fly me to Colorado, but good luck getting me to come back.
My chest throbs, a painful reminder—
There’s something else here waiting for me. Someone else.
It’s Holiday I need to be with right now. I pull out my phone, and…
I don’t have her number.
I’ve never exchanged numbers with her.
Outside, the sun plays over the sand, and I stomp along the beach not bothering to look for sea glass. One property, two, three…and then I’m at her house.
I never thought I’d say it, but I breathe a sigh of relief at the sight. I can see why she’s so attached to it, and to this stretch of beach. Maybe we’re not such opposites after all.
I go up the steps to the deck. How many more times am I going to get to do this before she moves to the city? This could be the last one, if Roman has his way.
I hate his way.
I pause at the sliding-glass door and knock on the frame. If she’s napping, I don’t want to wake her up.
It’s not more than a few seconds until she appears on the other side, dragging a suitcase behind her.
16
Holiday
DRIVER’S FACE IS ALIGHT. His blue eyes shine, and even though we’re separated by the glass of the sliding door, it doesn’t distort him at all. He might as well be a sun-god standing out on the back deck. It makes my heart sink all the way to my toes.
“Hey,” he says, his voice muffled by the glass, and raises his hand in a tentative wave.
The tile is cool under my feet as I open the door. Stay grounded, I remind myself. It’s easy to get swept away by Driver, but I can’t do that now.
He steps in through the door with a smile that sings of relief. “I should have known it was a sign.” Driver bends and presses a kiss to my jawline. It feels like a promise, and oh, god, I wish it didn’t. His words sink in behind the kiss.
“What’s a sign?” Every instinct in my body cries out to get as close to him as possible. That will involve taking his shirt off. I cross my arms and pin my hands under my elbows to stop myself from grabbing at it, in light of the new change of plans.
“Your suitcase.” He beams down at me. “Which one of my brothers set it up?”
“Your brothers…”
“I thought Roman was being an over-the-top asshole just now, sending me to Washington for two weeks. And I almost killed Beau for telling him, but I should have expected that he would. Not everything Beau does is a total fuck-up.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I put a smile on my face to cover the fact that my heart is breaking with every word that comes out of his mouth. “Washington for two weeks.”
He takes my hands in his. “It’ll be so worth it, I promise. You’ll never be alone. I’ll find a nicer hotel than what he’s probably booked, and we can spend the whole time together. If you don’t want to go to the meetings, you don’t have to, but—”
I put a hand on his chest and he covers it with his, an instinct that sends me to the afterlife and brings me back.
“I know,” Driver says. “It’s a lot. But for once they got it.” He laughs. “God, who pulls pranks like that? I’ve spent so many years trying to get control of my own corner of this operation—”
“Driver.”
“Have you ever been to Washington? The state, not D.C. It’s gorgeous out there. Miles of road…not that I’ll have too much time for driving. Wait. Are you okay to fly? Is there someone we should call?”
“Driver, I don’t know—” I stand up tall, and it takes a gargantuan amount of effort. “I don’t know about your plans for Washington, but even if I did—” Just spit it out. Get it over with. Stop dragging out the heartbreak into infinity. “I’m leaving for the city tonight. My new job wants me early.”
He blinks once, then twice. “That’s not—what?”
“At the publishing house. They called me a while back and wanted to push up my start date to the end of August instead of the beginning of September, and I—I said yes. I’ve been waffling about it so much that it’s driving me insane, but then an hour ago my new boss called.”
“Okay…”
“I guess it’s busier than they thought, and they need me now. Tomorrow. As soon as I can get there. So I’m driving into the city tonight and starting tomorrow morning.” A weight lifts off my chest. There—it’s out in the open. “It’s for the best, because I’ve honestly been thinking that I should stay here. But I can’t stay here, because that would be giving in to all the constraints I’ve put on myself already, and—”
“You’re not going to Washington.” Driver takes a step back. “No, of course not. How would they have planned that with you? I realized on the way over that I don’t have your cell phone number. How would any of my brothers have your number? Unless you met them too and were waiting for the right moment to mention it.”
It’s a dig that lands so softly it takes a few moments for it to register. “I’ve known about the change in the job for an hour, and I’ve spent the whole time packing.” I force the words through my aching throat. “My next stop was the resort. I was going to find you, and I was going to tell you.”
“So you…you thought about staying, but you’re not going to? You’re going to go to New York and start your job and never look back.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Then say what you were going to say.” Driver sticks his hands in his pockets. “You chose the new job. That leaves me with either following you to the city, or…”
“Or going on with your life.” It’s a mad struggle to keep my voice even. The urge to cry is strong. “We can—we can coordinate some long-distance schedule for the baby.”
“A long-distance schedule,” he echoes, looking out through the sliding-glass door. “You’d rather have a long-distance schedule than give up a job you don’t really want?”
“I do want the job,” I insist, wishing he would look at me and wishing I didn’t have to see the devastation in his eyes. “I’m sure…I’m sure I can get used to a job in the city. And this is the only job that will give me connections in the publishing industry. I want to sell my book one day—”
“Then sell your book. You don’t have to move to New York City to do that. Do you even—” He looks incredulous. “Do you even have a book to sell?”
“I have part of a book.”
That hangs in the air like a lead weight, crashing to the floor between us.
“I want to be a writer.”
“Then be a writer,” Driver says. “Come with me to Washington and spend all day writing, if that’s what you want to do. Spend all day writing.” Hope gleams in his eyes. “You don’t have to go to the city to do that.”
“I do if I want to prove that I can do it. And that matters to me.”
“Proof that you can be unhappy for the sake of a job?”
“Who knows if I’m going to be unhappy? I don’t. I won’t know until I try.”
“Have you lived in the city before?”
“Yes,” I admit.
“When?”
“When I was in high school.”
“Which city?” Driver looks me square in the eye.
I look back.
“Oh, my god,” he says.
“We lived on the Lower East Side. Okay? That’s where—you know what? It doesn’t matter. I want to prove to myself that I can survive there. I have to be able to survive there if I’m going to be a good mom. You could stand to think about that.” I spit the words into his face.
“Are you asking me—seriously, right now—are you asking me to move to the city to prove that I can be a good father? Is that what you’re asking me?”
“I’m saying, you haven’t offered any compromise.” My voice trembles.
“How am I supposed to compromise with move to the city or be out of your child’s life? Tell me, Holiday. How is that a compromise?”
“I didn’t say you’d be out of the baby’s life. It would only be harder for you, since you—since you won’t give up traveling.”
“I’m not going to give up my work and my life because you want to be in the city.”
“I’m not going to spend my life on the road because you won’t settle down and do the right thing.”
I wish I could take it back as soon as I’ve said it, but that’s not how life works. Instead, I get to watch the words sink into Driver’s chest like a quiver of arrows. His body flinches back at the impact and then he forces himself back upright. My heart twists at the sight.
“I’ve got a flight out in the morning,” he says, ending the longest silence I’ve ever endured in my life. “If you change your mind, you can come to my house and let me know. Otherwise…” He rubs a hand over his mouth, the movement as ginger as if he’d been punched. “Otherwise, you can always get ahold of me at the resort.”
He leaves me standing by the door, watching the waves until it’s too dark to see.
17
Driver
THERE’S a knock at the door sometime after ten. I throw myself off the sofa with such force that my knee hits the coffee table and I fall back down, writhing in pain.
It’s nothing compared to how I felt leaving Holiday’s place.
I don’t understand.
I don’t understand any of it. I’ve never been at the top of the class or the front of any race, but this level of struggle when it comes to figuring out another human being is…beyond. This is not the life I’ve set myself up to live. Most obnoxious of all is the small part of me that lit up at the idea of settling down. It’s a lie, and it would never last. Sometimes, when I’m out on the road, I get so homesick for Ruby Bay that it chokes me. But then, when I’m back…
I’m pissed as hell at Roman, but I’ve been feeling the call of the road for days now. A week, at least. This divided loyalty shit is not for me.
And Holiday?
She lived in the city before, so she knows it’s not her cup of tea. What’s so wrong with admitting it? Why is she so willing to throw herself back into the belly of the beast to prove a point?
My heart stops and starts again at the prospect of her standing outside on my porch. If she’s out there, I won’t get on the damn flight to Washington. I’ll bring her inside and we can figure out what we’ll do. We’ll plan out every single day of the rest of our lives, if that’s what she wants. I run through a mental list of everything that’s in my cupboards. I could pull together some pancakes, if she’s hungry.
