“Knock it off, Sutton,” Vince warned but Laird was gunning for a fight and welcomed the chance to plant his fist in Sutton’s smug face. Vince saw the violence in Laird’s eyes and told Sutton to beat it. “Don’t start trouble in my house. You’re a guest, try to remember that.”
“No worries,” Sutton said with a frosty grin. “Maybe I’ll just pay a visit to that sweet Lana…maybe show her what an upgrade to a real man looks like.”
With a snarl Laird lunged at Sutton and knocked him to the ground. Sutton landed a solid punch to his gut but Laird got him on the chin until Vince jumped in and pulled them apart, yelling expletives. “What the fuck is wrong with you two? Are you in fucking high school? Jesus!”
Sutton winced as he stood and glared at Laird. “Just let me know when you’re ready to finish this, poor boy,” Sutton challenged as he walked away and all that held Laird back was the knowledge that Vince could knock him out flat if he tried.
Once Sutton had left the room, Vince turned to Laird with a hard expression and demanded answers. “You better talk because I’m not in the mood for this bullshit.”
“Sutton’s always been a dick,” he said with a jerk of his shoulders. “Nothing new there.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve never been one to go fuck-all-crazy either so something is biting you in the nuts so fess up. Stop being such a whiny bitch about it and just spit it out already.”
Laird cast Vince a sour look but he was a pressure cooker and needed an outlet. “Fuck, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he admitted with a frustrated snarl. “Everything’s just falling to shit right now.”
Vince withheld his comment for a long moment then shook his head and threw his hands up, with a frustrated, “Are you that stupid?” and Laird didn’t know if he ought to punch his best friend or beg him to explain. “Please God, tell me I wasn’t this thick when I started to have feelings for Emma,” he muttered.
Laird scowled. “Everything in life doesn’t have to come down to falling in love with a woman.”
“In my experience, it really does. Look, you’ve got feelings for her. I’ve known it for a long time but you’re so wrapped up in your own denials that you can’t see what’s right in front of your fucking nose.”
“Such as?”
“You’ve fallen in love with the woman.”
“Bullshit.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this straight: you can’t think of anything but her, you did something stupid and hurtful to push her away because you can’t handle the realization that it’s actually happening, and you fly into a jealous rage when you think of another man touching her. Yeah, sounds like love to me.”
“Sounds to me like someone with anger issues,” he quipped like the true smart ass he was because he didn’t like that Vince was making a whole lot of sense. Just because he missed Lana and wanted to kick his own ass for hurting her feelings the other night didn’t mean he wanted to walk down the aisle with her. “Look, am I dealing with something that feels like a guilty conscience for being a dick? Sure. Am I wishing I’d handled things differently? Of course. And do I sometimes think that maybe if things were different in my life that maybe, I might like something to happen with Lana…perhaps, but that doesn’t mean that I’m the kind of guy who’s ready to throw away a good thing just because there are a few lingering questions bouncing around in my head.”
“Sounds to me like you’ve already thrown away a good thing,” Vince said flatly and Laird suffered an unwelcome drop in his gut because he knew, no matter how he tried to reshape it in his mind, Vince was right. He’d fucked up royally. Vince sighed. “The question is, how do you fix this before my wife finds out that you broke her sister’s heart?”
Laird looked to Vince. “She got a temper?”
“You don’t even know the half of it.”
Laird’s heartrate banged like a drum against his breastbone and he oddly felt ready to pass out. Something big was happening, something scary but he knew it was the right thing. He’d, in fact, known for quite a while that what he felt for Lana, wasn’t just a passing phase. Lana had gotten under his skin from the moment he’d laid eyes on her. And it wasn’t because he’d wanted to fuck her. Something deeper, a connection that defied explanation and frankly, scared the ever-loving hell out of him. What if he’d screwed up so bad that there was no fixing it? What if he’d held in his hands a golden opportunity to actually start living life with the woman of his dreams and he’d just tossed it like day-old garbage? Fear struck him cold and he looked to Vince, almost in a panic. “Can you help me pull my head out of my ass?” Laird asked, his lip trembling as he felt ready to take a step off a cliff for a woman who was too good for him. “Fuck, I think I really screwed everything up.”
“Do you love her?” Vince asked, cutting no corners. “If you do, it’s fixable. If you don’t just keep walking because she deserves better and you know it. And if that’s the case, maybe Sutton would be a good fit after all.”
Laird snarled and Vince burst out laughing, which told Laird he’d said that just to get a rise out of him. “Point taken. Yes, I love her,” he bit out, still scowling. “Now are you going to help me or just keep making jokes?”
“Stop being such a pussy and just do what you know needs to be done. What is she looking for from you?”
“A commitment, I suppose.” He paused, adding sheepishly, “and a job, I think.”
“Yeah, it’s probably about time. You’ve been dicking around for quite a while now. I was wondering if you were ever going to figure that out.”
Laird did a double take. “Are you kidding me? How long have you felt that way?”
He shrugged. “My perspective has changed on a lot of things since getting married and now that Emma is pregnant…shit, I don’t even recognize the man I used to be. And you know what? I like my life ten times more now than I ever did when I was out whoring around every night. You call it whipped, but it’s a good gig with the right woman.”
Laird nodded, feeling a little wobbly in the knees but it was a good feeling. It felt…like a step in the right direction. “So…is Buchanan Enterprises hiring?” he asked, half-joking.
Vince clapped him on the shoulder with a wide grin, “We’ll figure something out. Now, go get your woman.”
Laird grinned, his heart light for the first time in six days and left to do exactly that.
***
The good news was that Lana was out of tears. The bad news was, she was not quite sure she wanted to ever leave her house again.
Depression, it was a wicked bitch.
Emma had stopped by but Lana hadn’t been in
the mood to hear how Laird had been the bad guy after all so she’d cut the visit short and the information scarce, sending Emma back on her way, a little confused but otherwise in the dark over what’d happened between her and Laird.
The thing was, she wasn’t so much mad at Laird as she was mad at herself. What had she expected from him? He’d been plainly just being the person he’d ever been. It wasn’t right of her to expect him to change. She was thankful that it was Laird who’d gently shown her that sex didn’t have to be bad. For that, she couldn’t hold too harsh of a grudge but her heart ached for something that’d never truly been hers to begin with.
Lana passed by the hallway mirror, catching a glimpse of herself and grimaced. Yikes. She was devolving as a human being. Try showering and running a brush through your hair, Lana. She made a half-hearted attempt to finger comb the snarls from her head and then gave up because who cared? It wasn’t as if she were planning on entertaining anytime soon. She took a detour to the fridge and pulled out the remaining Chinese food from last night’s delivery and settled on the sofa to watch reruns of Friends because that show always managed to put a smile on her face no matter her mood.
She’d just managed to find the channel when a knock at her front door interrupted her Friends marathon. Lana paused, wondering if she remained still as a door mouse, they would go away. But no such luck. The knock became insistent and she groaned in irritation as she put her Chinese on the coffee table and walked grumpily to answer the door. Heaven help whoever was on the other side of the door…
And of all people — Laird.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, immediately aware of how wretched she looked (and smelled.) Why hadn’t she showered? Or at least brushed her teeth? She probably rivaled an orangutan out in the wild. Oh, who cares? She wasn’t looking to impress anyone, least of all Laird Tiechert. To prove the point, she crossed her arms and glared. “I said, what do you want?”