Page 12 of Keeping Mr. Sweet

CHAPTER FIVE

SAM

Damn it. Damn Ru and his big mouth. Damn the orders that are still coming in from the dining room, making it impossible to go after Ash. Damn that bastard, Luca too. Ash’s sexual choices aside, she didn’t consent to having a video made. The bastard shouldn’t have done it. And then to make it public. The guy is a real piece of work, and now Ash is suffering as a result.

The way her eyes grow to saucers as she works out Ru’s seen the video too kicks that protective instinct I’ve always had around her into high gear. There’s embarrassment making them water. Shame. Guilt too. I’m reaching for the top button of my coat before she turns and sprints from the room.

“Sorry, Sam,” Ru says. “It just clicked. If you want to go after her, I’ll cover.”

“Nope,” I snap through gritted teeth, moving onto the next task at hand. Taking off after Ash right now is a bad idea. Bad. Bad. Idea. I pick up a steak and throw it into the hot pan. It immediately starts to sizzle. She’d made it out of the bedroom, and then Ru just had to go and fuck it up. I can tell she thinks the tape is all her fault. She’s probably nursing that miserable idea right now as she dives back under the covers of my bed.

Chasing after her now isn’t going to do either of us any good. Not when she’s so unhappy and it’s all I can do to fight the urge to fix it. I glance at the ceiling as I flip the steak, revealing the perfectly seared side. Going up there…it would only end one way. Just one. With her naked body against me. Her lips joined to mine. Frantic hands and words that don’t mean what they should. Whatever it takes to make her feel better. Or just to pretend that she’s mine.

And then what? We coast in some blissful high for a day, or a week, maybe even a couple of weeks? Long enough that I start to believe we can have a future before it all crashes around us? The lows have always been worse than the highs. I used to put it down to her being so much younger than me. How was a man my age supposed to make it work with a girl who hadn’t even seen the world yet? Now I’m not so sure that’s the problem. Not when my sister can make it work. Mandy too. If anything, Mandy was the one who finally got me to push past the idea that things didn’t work out with Ash because I was too old for her.

The urge to follow through fizzles away. It’s better that we don’t reopen old habits, no matter how much I might find myself still wanting her. “No, she’ll hole up in my apartment. I’ll check on her once we close the kitchen.”

“All right.” He nods.

Everyone else carries on around us, pretending they haven’t been privy to a slice of my personal life.

***

“Why don’t you go check on Ash now. I’ll finish up here and lock up behind me.” Ru tosses his coat into the dry-cleaning bin full of linens as the kitchen door shuts on the last of our crew. “Tell her I’m sorry for earlier.”

“Actually, can you stick around?” I ask as I head for the stairs. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Sure.” He heads in the direction of the larder to take stock for our next delivery. “Buy me a beer?”

“Done,” I agree before jogging up the stairs.

Ash isn’t in the bedroom when I walk in. I flip the covers off the bed just to be certain, then check the bathroom. It shouldn’t surprise me that she’s not where I expect her to be. That would be like expecting her to stick around for more than a few weeks at a time. Hell, there’s every chance she’s bolted anyway. Except her case is on the floor at the end of my bed, the clothes she showed up in and her toiletries spilling out everywhere. There’s a half empty bottle of vodka on top of my dresser that wasn’t there earlier in the day. Where the heck did she get that? I roll my gaze heavenward. Probably filched it from storage.

“Where did you get to now, Ash?” I ask the empty room, unsurprised when it doesn’t answer back. I march back downstairs. Sooner or later she’ll show up drunk and sobbing, or call for me to come rescue her from a situation she can’t manage. Won’t she? It’s been a long time, but some things don’t change. Although it’s been a long time since I could rely on her to act the way she has since she arrived last night.

Ru collects a couple craft beers from the bar fridge and plonks down on one of the tall backs as I join him. “She all right?”

“Not really.” I pick up the beer he pushes in front of the stool beside his. “She didn’t realize she was being taped, or she didn’t know what it was for. She definitely didn’t give consent.”

“That sucks.” He takes a pull from the long neck of his bottle, studies the label, which in Ru speak means it’s not a bad brew. “Always knew that kid was going to get herself into trouble, just didn’t expect it to be this.”

I side eye him, curious, but he doesn’t bother to enlighten me. One of the edges of the label on my bottle has lifted, and I wedge my thumbnail under it to push more of it off. “Do I want to know?”

“You,” he says into the mouth of his bottle, so that I’m not quite sure I heard him right. Then he grins at me. “I thought she was going to find trouble in you. The way you used to look at her, man.” He shakes his head, that grin petering into something a little more sentimental as he claps me on the shoulder.

Shouldn’t be surprised that Ru could see what neither Ash nor I could. Does he see how hard it is for me to be around her now? “I didn’t look at her like anything. She was only a kid.”

“Didn’t say you wanted to throw her your bone, did I?” He raises one eyebrow and stares me down. “But you looked at her like she was the sweetest fucking lollipop in the whole candy store all the same. Sometimes I got the impression you loved her more than you did your own sister. Like she had you wrapped around her itty-bitty finger.”

“Shut up.” I smack away his pinkie finger as he wiggles it in front of my face. Maybe he has a point. Maybe Ash and I had this connection, long before it got complicated with adult feelings. But it didn’t help us navigate troubled waters then, and it doesn’t help me work out what to do for her now either. Christ, I hope she comes back. Just so I know she’s okay. No, she will show up. She always does. When that happens, I’m going to have a few choice words for her.

“So what’s she going to do about the video?” he asks.

“I don’t know. That’s what I wanted to ask you about. It’s one of Marco’s, right?”

“Not sure.” He pulls out his phone, thumbs through his messages until he finds the one Marco sent the video in.

He plays a few seconds, and I want to tell him to shut it off. Can’t stand that he’s watching it, can’t deal with the idea of her with other guys, can’t turn off the effect her voice has on me. If I squeeze the glass bottle in my hand any tighter it will shatter. “Turn that shit off.”

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