Chapter Six
Rick
You had to kiss her, didn’t you, you dumb ass,I say to myself, paperwork wavering in a rush of frustrated anger. Of course I did. How could I not after feeling her hands roam my back, her touch a miracle, taking away the pain? How could I not after falling asleep with her, her inhales and exhales in time with my stupid heart? How could I not after sitting on the couch with her as she leaned her back against my chest, languid and trusting?
“It wasn’t a kiss,” I mumble aloud, reclining in my chair, the screensaver of my desktop blinking on because I haven’t been able to focus on work for the past twenty minutes. It wasn’t a kiss. I brushed my lips over her jaw. The fact I did it with my lips and not my fingers would turn it into a kiss by annoying people who focused on insignificant details. I didn’t ask her to turn around. I didn’t press my lips to hers, tease her mouth with my tongue asking her to let me in. I didn’t push my hands up her sweater, warm them against her skin. I didn’t pull her to me and ask her to let me make love to her, and I think with as lonely as she seems, she might have let me, boyfriend or no.
My scar doesn’t bother her, and she saw plenty more yesterday.
I sigh, rub my face.
I’d braved the snow and the wind to put in a few hours of work in my home office, a small cottage near the lighthouse where I set up a desk and my computer, filing cabinets, and a landline phone in case cell service ever blinks out. I thought after the day we’d both had, we could use some space, and I left Devyn to her own devices. She’s a grown woman, and though I don’t know her well, I trust her. Trust her not to email pictures to her editor in some strangeHouse and Gardenarticle instead of the interview she knows she’s not going to get out of me, no matter how long she stays. Come to think of it, my living space may be of more interest to the paper’s readers than rehashing an accident that’s two years old.
Fuck it.
She said everything is off the record, and I believe her.
But maybe I should pull my head out of my ass and ask her to sign a non-disclosure agreement before she leaves. Just because she doesn’t take pictures or get her interview doesn’t mean she wouldn’t write a “The Week I Spent with Rick Mercer and What He Eats for Dinner” article. There are several ways she could spin this snowstorm, and as a reporter, I bet she knows every single one.
Adding sex to the mix would muck it up even more and should be avoided it all costs.
My desk phone rings, and I pick up. Only a handful of people have this number, my ex-wife among them. We haven’t spoken since the judge signed our papers and she ran off with twenty-five percent of everything I had per our prenup plus some.
“Mercer.”
“Rick, how’re you doing, buddy?”
Only Beau Hendrickson, my co-CEO and good friend, can get away with calling me buddy.
“I can’t see two inches in front of my face, but it’s going. What’s up?”
“I saw on the Weather Channel you’re up to your eyeballs in snow. Nothing here, just a dusting, enough people are driving like they don’t know how.”
“I don’t miss the traffic.” The roads are nasty in a city of over four million people, but in Old Harbor, I learned to ease off the gas or the next thing you know you’re hitting a kid chasing a ball or running over a dog.
“Sometimes I think you’re a lucky son of a bitch, that’s for sure, yet, I’d miss the fine city living.”
He means he’d miss dining at five star restaurants, his penthouse, car service, and his model of the week. Beau’s a good guy, the best, or I wouldn’t be working with him, but he parties how he works: hard. One day he’ll meet a woman who knocks him onto his ass. I wish I could be lucky enough to see it.
“Is there a reason for this call? Did Renata reach out?” Reach out? I sound lame, and I don’t give a shit if she “reached out” or not. She knows how to get a hold of me. She can pick up a phone.
Beau pauses. “No. Did you want her to?”
Did I want her to. Now there’s a loaded question. Yes, if just for the chance to ask her why.
She blames me for being on the construction site that day, said this never would have happened if I’d been doing my job from my office the way I’m supposed to. That’s only part of it. The other part, the part that’s more the truth, is that she can’t stand to look at me. She sure as hell wouldn’t have jumped onto the bed to rub me down like Devyn did yesterday. Hell, Renata’s inked in for a deep tissue massage every Tuesday, she wouldn’t know the first thing about how to give one.
She can’t look me in the face, but I want her to. I want her to prove to me she’s that vain, except, her leaving me already did that, so there’s no point in rubbing salt in my wounds.
Maybe I just want to see her again. I loved her once. When she loved me and not my money.
“No. Yes. Maybe. For old times’ sake.”
“I’m sorry, Rick.”
“What for? You didn’t make her leave me. Getting my face split in two did that. If she didn’t ask you to call, what do you need?”
Beau changes the subject with his usual nonchalant attitude. “Declan Everett’s been asking about the land.”