Page 9 of A Forbidden Spring
“Fine. Give me an update when you have one.” Belatedly he adds, “And call your mother,” before hanging up.
Letting the phone drop to the desk, I drag my hands over my face and sigh. Times like these I wish it wasn’t so easy for me to detach myself from reality. Pick up and move myself across the country on a moment’s notice? No problem. With no wife, girlfriend, pet, or actual friends to miss me, it’s an easy transition.
Loneliness has never bothered me before.
You know why.
I grunt as I stand and grab my phone, a certain dark-haired vixen making me want all kinds of things I shouldn’t—and now I need a distraction.
“Not enough excitement in New York tonight?” my cousin says in lieu of hello as I put the call on speaker.
“I’m in Montana.”
Roan is silent as I pour myself another glass of whiskey, having drained the other at my desk earlier in the night. “I thought Shaun was running it.”
“My parents rushed him off to rehab to avoid a bigger scandal, and instead of going to Colorado, I’ve been relocated here until he can get his shit together.”
Roan lets out a low whistle. “Besides the obvious, what’s the problem?”
“I don’t want to be here, there’s money missing and I can’t figure out where it’s going, the daughter of the former owner is trying to take all kinds of liberties?—”
“Like with you?”
“She’s trying.”
“Yikes,” he says, obviously reading the disgust in my tone.
“I have to meet with one of my brother’s rich, douchebag friends, and I got my ass handed to me this week by a pint-sized hellcat.”
“One of yourotheremployees?” he asks with a chuckle.
“Yeah, and don’t get me wrong, I was a dick, but I’m pretty sure her telling me she’d set my life on fire if I fucked with her or anyone else again was not a metaphor.”
“Not your usual type,” he muses, and I’m glad at least one of us is finding humor in this situation. “But looks like you’re pretty popular over there.”
He’s right; Wren Sterling isn’t my usual type.
She’s like trying to down a shot while it’s still on fire, and I have no idea why I find the concept so appealing.
“I don’t want to be popular; I want to get out of here. How’s Chicago?” I ask as I sip my whiskey. The lights are off but the moon is bright with so many stars I’d never be able to count them all. I’ve been to places without light pollution, but this is something else—it’s incredible.
Mesmerizing.
And lessens the blow that this isn’t where I was supposed to end up.
“Busy. I could use a vacation.”
“When was the last time you took one of those?”
“When we were ten and our parents took us to Florida and we swam in the pool from sunup to sundown.”
A smile graces my lips because I remember that fondly, the two of us without a care in the world for the fancy dinners or excursions where we were meant to be seen rather than heard. We’d been thick as thieves back then, our relationship changing over the years as we grew up. We’d grown apart but we were never truly distant—even when he’d gone to college and found two new friends, the three of them a powerhouse trio on and off the baseball field.
I didn’t have that—I just had him.
“How are the guys?”
“Giving me gray hair. Well, Garrett is. Colt is…Colt,” he says like that explains everything about being friends with a rock star and baseball player.
