STORM: A Standalone Romance (48 page)

It didn’t help when I got back and found no phone calls from Roland and still no daily agenda waiting in my email inbox. It was strange. He never failed to send me an agenda, usually endlessly appending it with more meetings and tasks.

In lieu of an agenda, I finished an entire box of documents waiting to be preserved in the cloud. It was the first time I’d completed the requisite box a day since I started working here.

When that was done, there was too much time to think, too little distraction to keep me from the truth: That I was a horrible person who ruined Roland’s future, his happiness, his life.

The air was getting too thick in here. I wanted to leave; I wanted to get out of here. My thoughts jumbled in my own brain, jarring with each other in an infinite loop. I couldn’t control them.

I killed Caro.

I killed my parents.

I killed Roland’s fiancée.

And if Roland ever found out…oh, God. I wished I could tell him. I wished I could tell him it wasn’t what he thought it was, that it wasn’t his fault. He was innocent in all of this, and the person who was guilty for everything was living under a roof he purchased and working at the company he’d fought through tragedy to build and expand. That person was me.

It was me. I did everything. I deserved to be hated, to be cast out, to never belong anywhere ever again.

I couldn’t stay here; I couldn’t continue to accept Roland’s kindness. It was misplaced. It was based on a lie. And if the truth ever came out, if he ever realized whom he’d taken under his wing, that I was the cause of all of his nightmares…

I didn’t think I could handle the consequences, as much as I deserved them. I wasn’t brave enough to face that.

Eyeing the clock, I chanced a glance at the camera mounted high on the wall, toward the ceiling. Was Roland watching me now, trying to figure out how I was coping with the truth he thought he’d told me? Surely not. Surely there were much more important things the president of a busy company needed to attend to.

It wasn’t yet four thirty, but I couldn’t do this any longer. The digitizing would get done, but just not this afternoon. I simply grabbed my wallet and left my purse, almost as if I were just stepping out for a quick errand, slipping my car keys into my jacket pocket. If I held my arm against my side, I could muffle their jangle.

I tried not to walk too fast; I tried not to give anyone more fodder for gossip. I only gave Sam a cursory smile as I waited for the elevator, not the extended goodbye I’d usually exchange.

If I got in trouble, I could just say I felt ill. I didn’t think Roland would call me out on my early exit. He would probably assume it was because of what he’d told me about my parents. I cringed, as the elevator opened and I stepped in. Then he’d feel guilty for causing me this ongoing extended suffering. I should’ve just stuck it out for the rest of the hour. I was weak. However, the magnitude of this new information was too much for me. I needed…something, and right now the only something I could come up with was to slink on home early and remove myself from this place.

As the elevator door shut and the box began its lurch down to the lobby, I exhaled heavily and removed my car keys from my pocket. Wallet, phone, keys. That’s all I really needed. My purse would be fine at the office overnight. I was the most dangerous person there, after all.

The elevator door rolled open again, and I almost jumped out until I realized that I was still several floors above the lobby.

Then, I jumped backward.

“Well, well, well,” Dan said, grinning as he stepped into the suddenly too small elevator. “Look who’s playing hooky.”

“I’m not playing hooky,” I protested as the door rolled shut once again, making the space even more claustrophobic. Couldn’t I just make a clean escape?

“Oh, no?” he asked, his handsome face the very picture of innocence. “Where are you going? Errand for my brother?”

“Yes, that’s it,” I said, a little too eagerly. “An errand for Roland.”

“On a first name basis with him already?” Dan asked, stroking his beard. “It took years for Myra to get on that level.”

I swallowed hard. We’d only gotten to that first name basis because tragedy had linked our pasts together. There wasn’t any other magic to it. We were only on a first name basis because of something terrible I’d done.

The elevator saw fit to have mercy on me and admit another person into the car who peppered Dan with small talk all the way to the lobby. I edged past them and attempted to walk across the lobby like a normal person when all I wanted to do was sprint to my car. I just wanted to bury myself in my bed, sleep to forget all of my horrible thoughts, plop my ass down in front of some mindless television, even drink on top of this lingering hangover. It didn’t matter. I needed something to keep me from thinking about what I’d done, or I would go crazy.

“Beauty.”

I had to stifle a loud groan, as I turned around on the sidewalk just beyond the entrance to the building. Dan had followed me outside. What did he want? Couldn’t he see that I was about to lose my shit?

“I happen to know that my brother canceled all of his conference calls today and told me, personally, that he was sick and wouldn’t be coming in to work,” Dan said, looking like a gleeful child.

“What do you want me to say?” I asked, fighting against the rising tide of my anger. “What are you looking for here? An apology? You want me to beg for your pardon?”

“Relax,” he said, laughing. The sound of that laughter was so rich that it almost instantly disarmed me. “I just wanted to know if you were playing hooky or not so I wouldn’t feel bad doing it myself. Some days, I don’t care what my paycheck is, I just don’t want to be there.”

“Fine,” I said, throwing my hands up in the air. “You caught me. Guilty as charged. I’ve got a shit hangover, and I just want to go home and take a nap. Call it whatever you want. That’s what I’m doing. I did everything that I was supposed to do. There’s not really anything left if I’m not running around the office, doing things for Roland.”

“You had me at hangover,” Dan said, shaking his head. “You’re not playing hooky. You’re taking half a day because you’re feeling ill. A hangover is a serious sickness, Beauty. It requires the proper care—usually more drinks to soften the edge.”

I chuckled in spite of myself. “Do you take a lot of sick days complaining of headache, nausea, and general malaise?”

“I’d say it’s my most common affliction,” he confessed. “So, how about it? Can I take you out to get a hair of the dog or three? I’d consider it a humanitarian mission.”

I snorted. “Hair of the dog isn’t usually my style,” I said. “I usually take more of a junk food and naps approach.”

“We all approach it differently,” Dan allowed. “What about later? Once you’ve overcome your consequences, can I take you to dinner? Or do you have a crockpot meal waiting for you, threatening to burn your apartment down?”

“No, no slow cooker waiting for me,” I guffawed. “I wish. But drunk me wasn’t that interested in hungover me last night.”

“Then it’s a date,” he said, clapping his hands.

“Not a date,” I corrected, shaking my head. “Dinner. The last part of the cure. A meal. Whatever. But not a date.”

“You can call it whatever you want,” he said, those bright blue eyes sparkling even more than usual. “In fact, you know what I’m going to call it?”

“What?”

“I’m going to call it the dinner you better not try to flake out on later or else I’ll tell my brother you were skipping work.”

“I think most people would call that blackmail,” I said in mock shock, putting my hands on my hips and raising my eyebrows. “Are you attempting to blackmail me? All I’m doing is taking half of a sick day to nurse this rotten…illness.”

“I’m doing what I think is essential in getting you to go out for a night on the town with me,” Dan said, that wide grin even brighter nestled in his neatly trimmed beard. “I hate the word ‘no,’ Beauty. Please don’t tell me no. I really like you. Seattle’s new to you, and I want to show you the best parts of it before my brother ruins this city for you by being a dick to you all the time.”

“He’s not that bad,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “I mean, after that first day, I don’t think anything would worry me anymore.”

“Even so. Promise me you’ll call once you wake up from that nap of yours,” he said. “Don’t flake out, Beauty. I’m a good time. I can promise you that.”

I pretended to ponder it for a long count to sixty, just to fuck with him, but my mind had been made up. Talking to Dan these past few minutes had been a godsend. He distracted me so effectively from all things Roland and my terrible past that part of me wished I could just forgo that nap and spend the rest of the day with Dan.  I didn’t want to come off as overeager, though, so I needed to play it cool.

“Fine,” I said, flipping my hair a little. “I guess I’ll talk to you later about our little blackmail date.”

“You’re making me the happiest man in the world,” Dan said, waving, as I walked toward the parking lot.

That made me the most nervous girl in the world.

Back at the apartment, I tried to lie down for my nap, but my anxiety had blossomed fully inside of me, filling me with uncertainty.

Dan was so handsome he could get anyone he wanted. Instead, he’d picked me. Ever since that evening in the parking lot when he’d asked me for dinner, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that he’d want anything to do with me. Could it really all stem from that night at the bar when Dan had found me? Could that initial attraction have lasted that long? It seemed to me that a man like Dan would be less single-minded than that. He could have anyone.

I was a nobody.

And it didn’t help that if Roland had asked his brother to find me so he could give me a job out of pity, then Dan knew about the wreck. About my parents. It was pressure I didn’t want or need.

I should’ve just gone out with Dan right there and then, after he’d chased me from the building, to try and save myself some of this crushing anxiety. If I’d done that, there wouldn’t have been time to lie around in my apartment and think about all the reasons why him asking me out were so improbable.

I wouldn’t have had to think at all.

I took a couple more aspirin, washing them down with some orange juice I seriously considered putting vodka in, and tried for a nap on the couch. Maybe a change of scenery from the bedroom would help.

I jammed my head under a pillow, wrapping myself fully in a blanket, like a cocoon, against the muted light from outside. For such a rainy place as Seattle, it was surprising just how bright an overcast sky could be.

My breathing slowed, my mind started to clear, and I slipped into a dream, jumbled with faces and words, people I’d never seen before, people I’d never see again.

Roland on the side of the road, handsome and whole, with a beautiful woman, angry but in love, knowing that this fight would pass, that they only fought because they cared so much about each other.

Dan with his hands on my hips, guiding me against him, his erection pressing against the meat of my thigh, hurting in just the right way.

Caro’s face lit up in a sudden moonlight that wasn’t moonlight at all, but a pair of cars stopped on the side of a country road, spinning into a terrible weightlessness, and then an even more horrible nothing.

My eyes popped open. The light outside was a little less bright, and the hair stuck against my damp forehead. I’d gotten too hot in my cocoon of avoidance…that was all. My past had been on my brain, and that’s why it had haunted my dreams.

The thought wasn’t lost on me that it had been a long time since I’d dreamed of the wreck. Sometimes I was in the car with Caro, and other times I was watching from above, like a camera filming a scene in an action movie. Once, I’d been standing alongside my parents, watching that car come spinning in.

I wondered whether I would ever—with my new knowledge of the situation—go to sleep and find myself inside the car with Roland and Mina. Had either of them known what was about to hit them? Did they see it coming, like Caro, or had they just blacked out, like me?

I took another shower to wash the unpleasant aftereffects of my dream off, then had another drink of juice…this time, with vodka. My hangover had all but vanished, and I was working on eliminating my nerves for my impending date with Dan.

The more steps I took—another screwdriver, drying my hair, perusing my closet, putting on makeup—the more I looked forward to calling him. I was eager to get back to that place of distraction where I wasn’t thinking about what Roland had told me or what I’d done to cause him such heartache. I wanted Dan’s audacious flirtations and more booze and something else to join that cheeseburger from lunch in my stomach.

I laid out a couple of dresses that Roland had deemed too provocative for the office, figuring that at least one of them would probably be provocative enough for a date, and picked up my phone.

Dan answered on the first ring like an eager little boy.

“You don’t know how happy I am to be taking this call,” he said, making me smile.

“I hope you haven’t been just sitting there, waiting for me to wake up,” I responded, holding a pair of heels over one dress, then the other, before making my decision.

“I did that for a while,” he confessed. “Then I started drafting emails to my brother to find the best way to tell him about you skipping off from work.”

I gave a short laugh. “You did not.”

“Well, doesn’t matter, now,” he said. “You called. We’re going out, right?”

“That’s right,” I confirmed, smiling as I put in graceful hoop earrings. I changed my mind and went with sparkly studs. “I’m starving.”

“I trust you’re done with your hangover,” Dan said.

“Chasing away the last of it right now,” I said, swilling my screwdriver.

“A woman after my own heart,” he crooned. “And I have just the place in mind for you. Best seafood in the city. Please tell me you eat seafood.”

“Are you kidding?” I scoffed. “I eat everything.”

“That’s something I will definitely keep in mind.” I flushed once I understood his meaning. I tried to sputter a retort or an excuse but ended up lapsing into embarrassed silence.

“What time can I pick you up?” Dan asked calmly, as if he hadn’t just commented on receiving oral sex from me.

“Thirty minutes?” I squeaked. I really only needed ten, but the other twenty minutes were needed to get my flush under control.

“I’ll be there.”

Another screwdriver helped me relax, and I was well back on my way to somewhere between nonchalant and eager by the time Dan buzzed my door.

“Come on up,” I said into the speaker and let him in. “I just need to finish my drink.”

He whistled when I let him in the front door to my place, admiring the view and my new furniture.

“This is a leap above living out of the old car, wouldn’t you say?” he mused, running his fingertips over the countertop.

I didn’t think he meant anything by it, but the statement made me flush in shame. It had been stupid to ask him to come up. I should’ve left my stupid drink in the fridge—or dumped it down the sink—and met him downstairs. The apartment was only nice to me because I’d never had anything like it before. It was a leap up from living out of my car, and it was embarrassing that I’d done that in the first place.

Dan probably lived in a museum or a palace or something. This was probably downright quaint to him.

“Can I make you a drink?” I asked, forcing myself to smile as I slipped on my heels.

“You’re kind, but no,” he said. “I have some beverages in mind for dinner, and I wouldn’t want to imbibe before driving.”

Another unintentional barb, but one that hit me right where it hurt the most. Why was I being so stupid? It was only a cocktail, but of course he wouldn’t want to drink before driving. That was how he’d lost his future sister-in-law, and how his brother had gone from being a whole man with a life ahead of him to a marred monster.

And I was the cause of all of that. Maybe I’d learned nothing. Maybe I’d just drifted around until I got comfortable again, then settled into my awful ways. I just wasn’t a good person.

“The restaurant has an enviable wine cellar,” Dan said, still examining every detail of my apartment. He might as well have been rifling through my underwear drawer for the attention he was giving things, squeezing the arm of the chair, glancing over the covers of the magazines I’d spread over the coffee table. I’d picked up a little while I was getting ready, having an apartment of my own was still too much of a novelty to me to let it get good and dirty. I enjoyed keeping it clean and tidy. It was a lot easier to do than it had been in my car.

“Seems like this place has everything,” I said, drinking the last of my cocktail before rinsing the glass out in the sink and putting it in the dishwasher.

“You’re very neat,” he observed, as I set the dishwasher’s cycle to on.

“I didn’t have one of these bad boys in the car,” I said, patting the machine’s door as it hissed to life inside.

“I wouldn’t imagine you would,” he said drily. “Fun playing house, isn’t it?”

And there was another little spike of venom. Did he come to flirt with me, castigate me, or take me out on a date? I couldn’t really tell—and it was making me feel more insecure than usual.

“Should we get on the road?” I suggested a little forcefully, grabbing my purse. “The traffic might be bad, and if we’re trying to make an eight o’clock reservation, it might take time to get there. Of course, I don’t even know where we’re going, yet, so I could be full of it.”

“Perhaps,” Dan allowed absently, adjusting my window blinds, and I felt a spike of anger.

“Or I can tell you to fuck on off out of here and I can order a goddamn pizza,” I said. “What’ll it be, Dan, my man? I could make a pizza last for four whole meals in my car. That shit never goes bad.”

He blinked at me, taken aback, before bursting into loud, helpless belly laughs. He held his middle and practically tripped and fell onto my couch, hooting and hollering.

“What’s funny?” I demanded, but then a smile was creeping up on my own face. Had I really just told him to “fuck on off out of here”? Damn.

“I can see that my brother’s foul mouth has rubbed off on you,” he observed when he could speak again, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “Poor thing. He is offensive on his best days.”

“Excuse me, but I had this sailor mouth all to myself before I so much as stepped foot in Seattle,” I said, putting my hands on my hips.

“You sound pretty proud of it,” he said, grinning at me.

“It comes in handy for breaking the ice,” I said, feeling better—excited, once again, for the opportunity to spend time with the strange man who’d invaded my apartment and my life. “Now, take me to dinner. I’m starving, and that seafood isn’t going to eat itself.”

Dan drove fast and flashy to match his sports car, and I alternately gripped my purse—as if it would somehow magically make Dan drive slower—and mashed an imaginary brake with my heels. The pedestrians and buildings whipping by kept me from enjoying the sumptuous interior of Dan’s car—the moon roof that practically encompassed the entire ceiling panel, the buttery soft leather that coated nearly every surface, the new-car smell. To live in one of these would be a real luxury, I decided, even if it would be a bitch to keep the leather clean and cool.

Of course, these days, I didn’t live in cars. I lived in apartments, like a real person.

On the way to the restaurant, Dan peppered me with questions: What did I like to do for fun? What was my favorite food? Favorite drink? Color? Sport? Where had I been in the city already? What did I want to see?

My answers mostly depressed me and made me feel stupid.

“Watch TV and clean house.”

“Everything.”

“Vodka.”

“Black.”

“None.”

“Nowhere.”

“I don’t know.”

“Beauty!” he exclaimed, exasperated. “What am I going to do with you? Are our dates going to be sweeping the floor of your apartment with the TV on? Take pity on me and tell me what you like doing so I can take you to things you actually want to be doing. Do you like movies? The theater? Art? Sailing? Hiking? Swimming? Clubbing? Karaoke? I already know you like dancing, of course.”

I blew my breath out at him. “I don’t like that kind of dancing,” I corrected. “That was just for money.”

“We do lots of things for money,” he said, sighing in agreement.

I laughed at him outright. “Who’s the ‘we’ you speak of? Just what is it that you do for money? Did you take your clothes off for this fancy car?”

We rolled into the valet parking for the restaurant, and Dan revved the engine suggestively, leering at me.

“You’re such an ass,” I said, unable to stop myself from laughing at him. “And just what makes you think that I’m going to let you take me out on any more dates after tonight? You haven’t impressed me much, yet.”

“That’s what dinner’s for,” he said, winking as he got out of the car. The valet helped me out of my seat, and I tried my very best to get out of the car in a ladylike manner.

“It better be an amazing dinner, then,” I said, rolling my eyes as Dan offered me his arm. “What a gentleman.”

“All I’m trying to do is get to know you better,” Dan said, walking me inside the establishment. The smell hit me instantly—hot, delicious food. I was definitely ready to eat.

It was as fine a restaurant as I’d ever been in, all quiet, polite conversation and violin music. I’d done right by wearing a dress, but I still felt out of place, afraid that, despite my makeup, everyone would realize that I had no business being here, let alone on the arm of this man.

“Reservation, please?” A concierge in a tuxedo was scribbling in a book on a podium at the front of the restaurant.

“That won’t be necessary,” Dan said.

“Won’t be necessary?” the concierge repeated drily. “This is one of the most exclusive restaurants in the entire city. Reservations are a requirement. We’re booked for weeks.”

“I said it won’t be necessary,” Dan reiterated, putting his hand down on top of the book the concierge was writing in.