Authors: Addison Fox
“It’s time to decide, Grier.”
He left before the confusion clouding their gray depths could pull him back or make him forget why he was so furious.
Grier sorted the receipts into piles by month, the simple exercise going a long way toward calming her shaking hands. Rationally, she knew why Mick was upset. And it had more to do with Jason actually being
in
Indigo rather than the idea of Jason.
She hoped.
But no matter how she spun it, she couldn’t blame him for being upset. At the same time, no matter how many other ways she turned it in her mind, she wasn’t sorry she hadn’t mentioned Jason to Mick.
A woman was entitled to some dignity. And since Mick was the man who’d given it back to her, there was no way she wanted to discuss with him the one asshole who’d taken it away.
“Is it safe to come in?”
Grier glanced up at the heavy knock at the conference room door. “Chooch. Of course. Come on in.”
“I left Hooch at home. I had a few things I wanted to say and couldn’t say ’em this morning with him around.”
Since the two seemed to be either joined at the hip or arguing, she figured Chooch’s pronouncement didn’t require a comment. “I’ve made a dent in the receipts but still don’t have everything organized.”
“Oh, honey, that’ll take several days. Take your time.”
Grier glanced at the endless piles that covered the table and thought Chooch was being awfully generous on her timetable. “If you’re sure?”
“Of course. I only brought this stuff over so you’d have something to do.”
A shot of heat suffused her neck and Grier knew an embarrassing blush was creeping up her cheeks. “What?”
“You’re too smart a girl to sit around bored out of your gourd.” Chooch pulled out one of the high-backed leather chairs that circled the table and sat down. “Come here and sit down with me for a minute.”
“All right.”
Grier braced herself for a lecture and couldn’t have been more surprised by what came out next.
“I wasn’t ever able to have children.”
“Oh, Chooch—”
The normally gregarious woman waved a hand. “Let me get through this.”
Grier nodded. She might not have fully known where
the conversation was going, but she did know when someone had something he or she needed to say. “All right.”
“I spent a lot of years mad at the world because of it. Nearly drove my Hooch away because of it, too.”
Afraid to say anything, Grier gave her another nod, encouraging her to continue.
“Point is, we all get some shitty deals in life. And it’s okay to be pissed about ’em. But when you start fucking up the other things in your life that are good, you’ve got to start questioning if
you’re
the shitty deal.”
When Grier didn’t say anything, Chooch added, “You gonna say anything?”
“Can I?”
The older woman cackled at that one, her smile broad. “’Course.”
“How do you know if it’s you or the situation? Not to contradict anything you just said, but you had a great husband who loves you to distraction. I realize not being able to have kids was really hard, but you already had him. You two got off track for a while and then you got back on.”
Chooch leaned forward and Grier felt weathered hands take her own in a surprisingly strong grip. “That’s where you’re wrong, sweetie. We had to get on a new track.”
Before Grier could question her, Chooch added, “The track’s never the same. If you want to move forward, you have to get on a new one. A new track, a new path, a new journey. The one you thought was right isn’t any longer and you can’t go backward.”
“But I don’t want to go backward. That’s why I’m here.”
Chooch’s sharp brown gaze was unyielding. “Hiding in a conference room doing my taxes instead of spending time with Mick O’Shaughnessy?”
Mick’s earlier words had a dangerous echo to Chooch’s and Grier wondered for a moment if they’d planned this together.
“Why does everyone think this is about Mick?”
“It isn’t about him. It’s about you.”
“Well, that doesn’t seem fair to him.”
“He can make up his own mind. In fact, I suspect he already has.”
“What if I’m not made for this? Or him.” As the words slipped from her lips, Grier wondered how she’d come to say the deepest fear in her heart to this odd little woman who hailed from one of the most remote—and harshest—locations on the planet.
“Then you’re stupid.”
Grier snapped back in her chair as her mouth dropped in surprise.
“Oh, don’t look at me that way. I know you’ve got all those smarts. Natural God-given ones and college ones. So don’t go being stupid over a man. Especially not one as delicious as Mick O’Shaughnessy.”
“You noticed that?”
Whatever compassion or thoughtfulness the woman had shown evaporated like smoke. “I’m not dead. And have you seen those feet?”
“Well, yeah.”
“They’re huge and you know what they say about
feet. I, for one, have no doubt that man’s got quite a package and the moves to go with it.”
Grier sputtered, desperate for some response as Chooch’s words floated over her.
And came up with exactly nothing because damn it all if the woman hadn’t hit the target square on the bull’s eye.
“Um, well—”
“Um…well…nothing. Mary’d die if she knew I was talking about her grandson that way. Add to it I saw that man the week he came home from the hospital thirty-five years ago and I have no business acting like a horny old woman over his assets. But what I will tell you…” Her gaze was so sharp, Grier could have sworn she felt herself pinned to her chair.
“What’s that?”
“There aren’t many finer than Mick O’Shaughnessy. And I’m not just talking about his body.”
“I know Mick’s a good man.”
“The best.”
Grier hesitated for the briefest moment, then said what she thought before she could chicken out. “Why is all of this easier to hear from you?”
“Sometimes the people who don’t know us very well make better mirrors. Too often, our friends feel they have to stand off to the side so they can protect us from the hurt of seeing our true selves.”
“Or what an ass we’re being,” Grier muttered.
The sly grin was back, along with a heavy cackle. “Now there you have it. That’s my job with Hooch and
I do it with gusto. Speaking of that man, if I don’t get home, he’ll think I’ve gotten up to something.”
“Don’t you want your boxes?”
Chooch shot her a wink. “You keep ’em. I trust you.”
“I’ll do that.”
Grier smiled as the woman crossed toward the door and had almost turned back to her computer when Chooch’s voice stopped her. “You want to know something else?”
“What?”
“In all those thirty-five years I’ve known Mick O’Shaughnessy, I’ve never seen that man set his cap for anyone the way he’s set his for you.”
And with that pronouncement, she turned on her heel and walked out of the room, her gleeful laughter following in her wake.
J
ason hadn’t felt this nervous and uncomfortable since his first presentation to the partnership. He took a tense sip of his scotch, well aware the people who’d assembled in the lobby bar of the Indigo Blue hotel were checking him out.
It was creepy, in an Alfred Hitchcock
The Birds
sort of way. And like the birds that had gathered on the swing set in Hitchcock’s masterpiece, the residents of this backwoods town Grier had ensconced herself in had started to multiply.
Two in the lobby. Then four. Then eight.
On a slight shiver he couldn’t quite chalk up to cold, he took another sip of his drink.
Where was Grier, anyway?
The urge to turn around and look for her was strong, but he tamped down on it, reaching for his BlackBerry instead. At least the CrackBerry would let him look busy, even if he’d just checked it before coming downstairs.
The birds—no, the
residents
—didn’t know that.
A movement at the corner of his eye caught his attention and he looked up from the device, thinking it was Grier come to rescue him.
And instead he stared at a profile as startling as it was familiar.
“Grier?”
The small woman who stood next to him at the bar waiting for a drink glanced sideways, her irritation at being called another woman’s name more than evident. “No, I’m Kate.”
“But—” Jason broke off, at a loss for words. While he could clearly see the woman standing next to him wasn’t Grier, the resemblance was shocking.
On a small sigh, the woman extended her hand as the irritation that rode her striking features dimmed. “I’m Grier’s half sister.”
“What?”
“Which word didn’t you understand?”
If the lobby’s patrons had him thinking of
The Birds
, the sheer disorientation he felt staring at this woman was straight out of
Vertigo
. “You’re her sister?”
The woman smiled, her gray eyes crinkling at the corners. “Half sister. And you mean you haven’t heard of me? And here I thought you were a good friend of Grier’s. A very good friend, if you trust the town gossip.”
“She and I have a bit of catching up to do.”
“Is that what they call groveling these days?”
An irresistible tug of interest pulled at him as he stared into Kate’s face. The resemblance to Grier was oddly unsettling, but underneath the discomfort beat the insistent drum of instant attraction.
Ignoring the spark, he focused on her words. “I haven’t told anyone why I’m here. And Grier’s so private, I can’t imagine she has, either.”
“Neither of you had to say anything. I know how to use the Internet.” A light, flirty smile played at the corners of her mouth and his interest ratcheted up another notch.
“I didn’t put my trip on the Internet.” The words were inane, but for the life of him he had no idea what the Internet had to do with his visit to Indigo to win back his fiancée; nor did he have any idea why puzzling through this woman’s mysterious words felt like so much fun.
Kate leaned in and the light scent of her swamped his senses, a barely there peach that was just indistinct enough to intrigue. “No, but those fancy New York papers did put your engagement on the Internet. And seeing as how Grier’s been here for almost two months and you’ve been nowhere in sight, my powerful skills of logic and deduction have figured out the real story.”
“Oh.” He reached for his drink, not sure what else there was to say but enjoying the conspiratorial way she leaned toward him. “Well, what do your amazing powers of deduction tell you I’m up here groveling about?”
“Two months apart is a long time in the land of the happily engaged. You must have done something to piss my big sister off.”
The sweet moment was broken by the reality of why he was here, flirting with someone other than the woman he wanted to win back. And as Jason looked into the charming, sexy face next to him, for the first time he felt more than embarrassment for his actions with the office temp.
He felt shame.
*
*
*
The apocalypse was upon them,
Grier thought in panic as she took in the sight of her half sister sitting next to her ex-fiancé while sharing happy-hour cocktails.
Somewhere in the depths of her heart she tried to muster up a tiny smattering of jealousy, or annoyance or, hell, she’d even take a slight case of indigestion.
But nope…nothing.
In fact, the only thing that actually did register was what a cute couple Jason and Kate made.
Which was just insane.
And most likely another mark in the petty column for her, since pushing her cheating ex-fiancé off on her prickly half sister was an insult to the sisterhood of all women.
Once a cheater, always a cheater
floated through her mind. She’d heard the adage through the years, but each time she’d tried to use that as an argument to herself for what a jerk Jason was, something held her back.
While she didn’t want him any longer, she also couldn’t quite shake the fact that Jason wasn’t really an asshole. And she never could really reconcile her discovery of him in flagrante with the man she knew him to be.
“Jason. Kate. I’m glad to see you two have met.”
The bar behind her was so quiet, Grier thought she might have heard the snow falling outside the window.
“Grier!” Jason’s voice was overly bright in the tense silence as he stood to press a light kiss on her cheek. “You never told me you had a sister.”
With an overly bright smile to match his tone,
she kept her voice low, hoping beyond hope he’d get the message. She’d always hated his “let’s address the partnership” tone, a trait that hadn’t changed in three months. “That’s because I didn’t know I had one.”
Jason’s impeccable manners and good breeding finally kicked in and he scooted down and offered her his seat. “I’m sure it’s been a difficult few months for both of you.”
Kate shot her the gimlet eye and Grier had the insane urge to laugh as she pulled Jason’s barstool out to create a half circle. Her sister clearly wasn’t going anywhere.
And difficult?
That was a polite understatement. Being kept from Jonas’s things while she and Kate hammered her father’s will out in the legal system had been more challenging than she could have ever expected.
Of course, Jason didn’t know that and she wasn’t interested in having him know any more about her new life. He was part of her past and she couldn’t shake the subtle feeling that he was trespassing on her new one.
So she opted for politely bland. “Grief is a difficult thing.”
The three of them sat there in stilted silence and Grier had the perverse thought to keep her mouth shut, just to see how long they could possibly sit there, quiet as church mice.
And then there wasn’t any silence, because an incredibly familiar voice piped up from behind her.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in.”
* * *
Grier swirled her wine around in her glass to avoid looking at Jason. Avery had unlocked the conference room for her again and they currently sat at opposite sides of the table, as far away as possible from the snowfall of receipts that littered the other end.