Page 8 of Right With You
“I told him I couldn’t marry the person he had in mind because I was practically engaged to someone here.” Impulsivity in response to familial stress wasn’t only confined to the past. And hopefully, he’d let me off the hook. The whole marriage requirement thing was so I’d show I could be responsible. Great, but it didn’t have to be with someone he’d hand-picked.
Kenny clapped. “Oh, well that’s brilliant. Way to throw him off the scent.”
Stone’s gaze narrowed.
“Kind of. I was pretty sure he’d buy it and now, I just heard he RSVP’d yes to the gala.”
Kenny’s mouth dropped open. “Oh, damn.”
I nodded.
“And who did you tell him you’re almost engaged to?” he asked, voice tentative.
I scrubbed my hands over my face and back into my hair, the full idiocy of my lie hitting me like a wayward shooting star.
“Elise.”
CHAPTERFOUR
Elise
Half an hour left until I could shut down my work and freshen up before heading out to see my friends.
And maybe Luc.
Ugh, Luc.
A man who was apparently my boyfriend now.
In no fantasy of mine had I ever conjured that up. Except, maybe I had imagined those words during the Callum-Luc confrontation? Luc hadn’t mentioned it again, so had I somehow hallucinated it?
For now, I had to finish the handful of tasks remaining in my queue for my virtual assistant job I did to supplement my income. I’d never fooled myself into believing I could quit my job outright when I opened Glazed, but I’d hoped to pull back on hours. Maybe go truly part time. Alas, as we straddled ski and summer seasons, the shoulder season had already confirmed quitting altogether this year was a pipe dream.
At least I still had two part-time employees and one of them, bless her, loved the early Saturday and Sunday starts. The first ten months after opening, I’d been at Glazed every single morning we were open at the crack of dawn. When I hired Marisol and discovered she genuinely wanted those early morning weekend hours, I could’ve cried.
Actually, I totally cried. A lot. Because I’d been stressed and exhausted but also proud and happy, and finally having someonewantto take the toughest shifts had been a dream. I didn’t want to go back to the place where I did the jobs of three employees, or what should be more like four during ski season.
Couldn’t a girl just sell perfect donuts by day and read books and sip champagne by night? Was that not a reasonable expectation?
My phone buzzed, and Callum’s name flashed across the screen. It should’ve been silenced altogether during my timed working hours, so I didn’t answer. Zero temptation to talk to the man who’d been hounding me since Luc gave him the oldtouch her and die.
Gah. I mean… seriously.
Talk about fantasy meeting reality with bubble-shattering swiftness. I had spent so many mornings daydreaming fictional tales about the man, I’d somehow forgotten he was an actual badass. He just looked so… polished. Had it been Jess’s beastly husband sitting there, there would’ve been no forgetting he was a soldier. Even Bruce, who was far more traditionally handsome than Jude, had thislookthat said he was a little rough around the edges and had maybe once been a man of violence.
A man whose nickname wasCookie?Who’d supposedly spent time modeling and looked every bit like he knew his way around a skincare regimen but magically didn’t need it? The whole “touch her and die” moment shook all my illusions away, and I saw him.
Him.
I couldn’t get distracted with thoughts of sexy Luc yet again or I’d never get this stuff done, and I wanted to run away from my dingy little office and into the loving arms of my friends and a bustling pub and feel like a young professional launching into an exciting weekend instead of a woman strapped with responsibility and worry and an ex who still had his fingers twisted into her life. Call me Carrie Bradshaw and watch me trot across cobblestones in my ridiculous Jimmy Choos for drinks with the gals with my day job far behind me… though I didn’t want Carrie’s life or friends. I loved my girls, even if I didn’t always let them in.
Twenty-seven minutes later, I sent the last email and shut off my timer, submitted my timesheet, and sighed.
My phone lit up again, and I squinted at it as though seeing it this way would make it less dreadful Callum was callingagain.
No, you jerk. I’m not selling my shop, and even though you think you can coerce me into it, it ain’t gonna happen.
See? I could be strong up against that egomaniacal tyrant. It just happened to be harder outside of my head.
