He checked his phone once more on the way home from the gym, like an addict. He was going to wear a hole through the screen with his thumbprint from all the times he’d swiped it. He needed company; he needed someone. He showered and headed uptown, reasoning that if he wasn’t going to find an answer from her, he could at least ask questions of someone else.
When he arrived at the building off Park Avenue with the green awning, the doorman buzzed her apartment. “You have a visitor. Clay Nichols is here to see you,” the man said, then paused. “Very well.”
He hung up.
“She said to come on up,” the doorman said, gesturing to the elevator.
Clay hadn’t been here in a long time. He hadn’t needed to. Now, he did.
When Michele opened the door, she was wearing a tank top and slim jeans, her hair pulled into a high ponytail, showing off her neck.
A neck that he’d once kissed.
He didn’t mince words, or bother with preambles.
“Are you in love with me?” he asked as he walked inside.
“I have been for years,” she said, as the door closed behind them.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I’ve been thinking of new names for cocktails. Well, Craig and I have,” Kim offered during a lull in the crowds on Monday night.
“Yeah? Do tell.”
“We came up with a whole list of great names while you were out of town.”
“Your hubs is usurping my spot as a partner-in-crime?” Julia asked, resting a hip along the bar as she wiped down glasses.
“Ha. Hardly. But he does like to name drinks. Here’s what we’ve got. A shot called the Long, Hard Night. A stiff drink called the One Night Stand. And a variation on the lemon drop martini that we called Lemon Drop Your Panties,” Kim said, and the edges of Julia’s lips lifted in a smile.
“Great names,” she said, then looked away from Kim because all of them—every single one—reminded her of Clay. He’d been her One Night Stand, her Long, Hard Night, and she’d dropped her panties countless times for him. Every time, he’d risen—no pun intended—to the challenge, stripping her down to the bare essentials of pleasure and desire, and somehow all that desire had morphed into so much more. Into a mad and passionate love. The kind of love that thundered down the road with wild hoofbeats after midnight. Desperate, reckless, and headfirst.
That was the problem. She needed to pull back and analyze. To think. To consider. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”
“Fire away.”
“Has Craig ever lied to you about something because he thought it was for the best?”
Kim shot her a quizzical look. “Well, how would I know?”
“I mean something he eventually ‘fessed up to,” she added.
“Ah, gotcha,” Kim said, scrunching up her forehead as she considered the question. Then she thrust her finger in the air. “Yes! He used to tell me he loved my pot roast when we were first dating, and it turned out he really thought it was dry and stringy.”
Julia laughed. “Tell the truth, Kim. Is your pot roast dry and stringy?”
Kim threw back her head and chuckled. “Evidently, I make the worst pot roast in the entire universe. It’s that bad. But you know what?”
“What?”
“Now if he ever bugs me by leaving his dirty socks on the floor, or failing to put the toilet seat down, I just threaten him with my pot roast. Keeps that man in line,” she said, straightening her spine like a drill sergeant issuing orders.
A pair of young men in suits sidled up to the bar and Kim turned her attention to them. Julia’s mind stayed put on Kim’s story and how it had a happy ending. Wasn’t that what everyone wanted? A happy ending? But was a pot-roast fib the same as an omission of the truth?
She didn’t know, and wasn’t sure how to arrive at an answer. Her brain had grown cloudier in the last twenty-four hours, fuzzier with the distance. Had she overreacted? Been too quick to anger? She was a hot-tempered woman. She knew that about herself. But she valued independence more than anything. Even more than love. If she were to give up her independence, her job, her bar, her home, her sister, even her hairdresser, she had to know with the same clarity she had about how to make a kick-ass cocktail that uprooting her whole damn life—like she were picking up a carpet and shaking everything off it, come what may—was as right as right could be.
Come what may.
That was the real risk, wasn’t it? Charging headfirst into the great unknown. Throwing away the self-protective armor she’d built since Dillon’s betrayal, and shedding all her fiery independence for a chance that could flame out and fade away. Living in close quarters could turn the two of them—two strong-willed, stubborn, controlling people—into a collision course for disaster.
Or they could become better together, come what may.
“Hey Kim,” Julia called out as her co-worker deposited the drinks to the customers. “I just thought of another name for a drink. Come What May.”
“What’s in it?”
“Something risky. Something that makes you want to take a chance. What do you think?”
“I think we need to break out our beakers and start mixing,” Kim said, bumping her hip against Julia’s.
“Ouch, I think you whacked me with your gigantic belly.”
“It’s a weapon of mass destruction. Beware,” Kim said, rubbing her hands over her beach ball-sized stomach as she reached for spirits to test. “Let’s start with— ”
But Kim’s suggestion was cut short by the clearing of a throat. Julia swiveled around to the bar and spotted a familiar face. She couldn’t connect a name to the man, or why she knew him, but the older, dapper gentleman was giving her a serious case of déjà vu, and she hoped he’d alleviate it soon.
“Good evening. I was hoping to find Julia Bell,” he said, and that didn’t help her one bit. In fact, all her instincts told her that he was working for Charlie, or looking for Dillon, or somehow that she was going to be in a heap of trouble again. A fleet of nerves launched inside her, and she could feel the inklings of flight or fight kick in.
“That’s me,” she answered, calling on her best tough-chick-behind-the-saloon-bar persona.
“We met briefly before,” he began, and something about his classy voice tickled her memory. He wasn’t one of Charlie’s men after all. Charlie’s men were rougher around the edges. This man was proper and finished, like a gentlemanly professor. “And you made me the most fantastic drink I’ve ever had.”