Текст книги "The Allure of Dean Harper "

Автор книги: R. S. Grey

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 15 страниц)

Chapter Forty-Six

 

 

 

Lily

 

I had too much pride to call Dean, but I loved him enough to con my way into his dumb awards ceremony. I leaned against the back wall, out of everyone’s way as the skinny bitch on stage read through the descriptions for the three nominees. I thought she smiled extra wide as she read off Dean’s accomplishments, but I was too far away to know for sure. With a flick of her wrist, she tore into the envelope and I held my breath. I wanted him to win. I hated him with every bone in my body, but I wanted him to win.

“Dean Harper! The youngest winner of the Outstanding Restaurateur award in history!”

He was so shocked and so handsome and so alone as he took that stage. My heart sank as he gripped the medal in his hand. He should have been elated, but his voice sounded flat over the mic¸ like he was reading off a farewell speech at a funeral. I nibbled on my bottom lip. I didn’t want to be right about what I’d told Dean—that he was alone, that no one would be there to congratulate him or hold his hand. I’d yelled that at him during a moment of fury, but now my words were coming true. Dean had no one to congratulate him. No one that mattered.

He offered the crowd a small, tight smile and then walked off stage after the shortest speech of the night. The pretty announcer trailed after him, trying to keep up with his quick pace. He disappeared behind the stage and I moved to follow after him. I was in a floor-length gown I’d borrowed from Jo, and I’d spared the time to do my hair and makeup. No one batted an eyelash at me as I swept the curtain aside and stepped into the depths of the opera house. The belly of the building was nothing compared to the ornate detailing in the auditorium. Backstage consisted of a narrow black hallway branching off to separate rooms every few feet. One sign pointed me in the direction of the stage and another directed me to a women’s changing room. I passed a few nondescript black doors and then I heard Dean’s voice over the sound of running water.

Another voice seeped through the door, but I couldn’t make out the conversation. I pushed my ear to the door and tried in vain to hear through the thick wood. It was no use—unless, of course, they were actually saying “geri hrjt hempjrh ggfffnj.” In which case, I could hear them perfectly.

A moment later, the water cut off and footsteps echoed on the other side of the door. The handle turned and the door swung out. I jumped, swiveled, and tried to flatten my body against the wall like a pancake, but the door came straight for me. I held my foot out and caught it just before it broke my face.

Dean’s cologne hit me first, rolling a wave of nostalgia over me. The last night I’d slept with him, he’d pinned me to his bed with his face pressed to the crook of my neck. We were so close it was suffocating and I’d inhaled deeply, filling my lungs with the scent of him until it overwhelmed me. Maybe if I’d known that would be my last night in his bed, I would have breathed in a little deeper, tried to fill my lungs until they burned.

His profile slipped past me and I caught sight of his strong jaw, straight nose, and furrowed brows. He was a vision in his black tuxedo. His broad shoulders filled out the jacket and his black pants tapered down his long legs.

He didn’t see me as he passed. He was already halfway down the hallway by the time the door fell closed with a heavy thud.

It was a few minutes later, as I told myself I had to move, that I realized his chest had been bare.

He’d left the medal in the bathroom.

Why?

Chapter Forty-Seven

 

 

From: Dean Harper

To: Lily Black, Julian Lefray, Zoe Davis

Subject: Ivy & Wine

 

Seems Hunter retired from the restaurant world for good. I put in an offer on the building where he was planning to open Ivy & Wine. The construction team is already halfway through building the restaurant we designed. Maybe we should send him a thank you basket?

 

D. Harper

 

From: Julian Lefray

To: Lily Black, Dean Harper, Zoe Davis

Subject: Re: Ivy & Wine

 

Wow. Lily’s plan actually worked. And all it took was turning my girlfriend into an escort! ;)

 

-J

 

From: Zoe Davis

To: Lily Black, Dean Harper, Julian Lefray

Subject: Re: Re: Ivy & Wine

 

I just went by the building!!!! Hunter actually ended up helping us a ton. That space will be finished in a few months. If we buckle down we could open early next year.

 

Zoe

 

From: Dean Harper

To: Lily Black, Julian Lefray, Zoe Davis

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Ivy & Wine

 

Is everyone available to meet this week? I have a list two miles long of shit we need to get done.

 

D. Harper

 

From: Lily Black

To: Julian Lefray, Zoe Davis, Dean Harper

Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Ivy & Wine

 

Glad we got the space. I’m under the weather, so could someone take notes and email me what y’all discuss at the meeting? Thanks.

 

-Lily Black

…

Lily

“Pretending you’re sick so you don’t have to see Dean will only work for a few days,” Josephine said as she pushed off the back of the futon. I slammed my laptop closed and shot her a glare.

“Jeez. Snoop much?”

She shrugged and went back to the kitchen, where she was halfway finished making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Apparently my typing had distracted her from her lunch.

“Julian says Dean is—”

I held up my hand to silence her. “I don’t care what Julian says Dean is. I don’t care if Dean is dating Miley Cyrus or jumping off skyscrapers because he wants to win me back. I. Don’t. Care.”

She smirked and eyed me over the jar of peanut butter. “I don’t think suicide is the best avenue for regaining your affection. It’s kind of counterproductive, don’t you think?”

I groaned and slid down so I could shove my head beneath the pillows. “Please stop talking about Dean! Do I need to remind you about the Dean Jar again?”

She laughed and I knew she was glancing over at the giant empty cheese puff container I’d labeled “DEAN JAR” a few days ago. It worked like a swear jar:

$1: Referring to the likeness of Dean in a way.

$2: Discussing Dean in this apartment.

$5: Making me watch a TV show with an actor who looks remotely like Dean. Examples include: Men with blond hair. Men who wear suits. Men who live in New York City. Men who are lovable in a rough-around-the-edges sort of way.

$1,000,000: Saying shit like “Let me set you up with someone.” I don’t want to date. I want to stab someone. If you set me up with a man, I will stab him. His blood will be on your hands.

I was planning on using the money raised to buy a swimming pool full of ice cream.

“I see you added a new one to the list today,” she said, walking around the futon and pushing my legs aside so that she could sit down.

$0.50: Using words that start with the letter “D”.

“Yes and you’ve already broken it quite a few times,” I groaned, reaching for her purse. “It’s not that hard, Jo.”

“You don’t think you’re asking a little too much of me?”

“Jo, I don’t expect you to understand. You’re basically living out a Lifetime movie with Julian. You live in a magical fairy world where real problems don’t exist.”

“That’s not true. Just this morning, a bug flew up my nose as I was walking to work.”

“Did you just make that up?”

“Want a bite of my sandwich?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Yeah.”

“Should I just shove it under the pillow and assume you’ll find it?”

“Yeah.”

I chewed on a bite of the sandwich she slipped under the pillow for me. It was soft and simple and reminded me of my childhood. After slipping me another bite, Jo spoke up. “Are you still wearing his medal?”

The futon’s cushion pressed the cold medal against my chest. It was heavy and unwieldy and I wore it every day, like an albatross. I’d nabbed it from the opera house bathroom with the intention of giving it back to him—surely, he hadn’t meant to leave it behind—but then I’d slipped it around my neck and the weight had felt good. The medal represented everything Dean had struggled for in life and when I wore it, I pretended that included me.

“I’m not not wearing his medal, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Lil, we need to set you up with someone already, just to get you focused on someone new.”

“YES!” I cried.

“Really? You want me to find someone?”

“Of course not, but I can finally afford my pool!”

Chapter Forty-Eight

 

 

 

Dean

Julian and I were halfway through a Saturday morning bike ride when his phone rang. He waved me over to the side of the road. We hopped up onto the sidewalk and I pulled out my water bottle, guzzling down half of it while he spoke on the phone.

“Yeah, I can be there in a second,” he said. “I’m actually biking right by your place now.”

He flashed me an apologetic smile, but I shrugged him off. If it weren’t for Julian, I’d have been working my way through a pile of building plans.

“We need to pause the ride?” I asked as he hung up.

He nodded. “Josephine wants me to come take a look at their dishwasher before she calls in a maintenance request.”

I smirked. “You ever fix a dishwasher before?”

He laughed and hopped back onto his bike. “Never. My plan is to bang on it a few times and then tell her to call in the request.”

I shook my head and pulled out onto the road after him. He stood and pedaled fast to set our pace and I raced after him, appreciating the lack of weekday traffic. By the time we reached Josephine’s apartment complex, my legs were on fire.

I locked my bike up beside Julian’s and thought of Lily. It was a maddening game, trying to convince myself that she and I were over. I knew I’d ruined it. It’d taken so long to peel back her stubborn, annoying, controlling layers so that I could catch even a single glimpse of her vulnerable side, and in that same night, I’d taken whatever measly amount of trust I’d earned and tossed it out the window.

She wouldn’t give me a second chance. Lily was too smart to waste her time on a guy who didn’t have his priorities in order.

I followed Julian up the stairs to their apartment and debated whether or not I should wait for him outside. I hadn’t seen Lily in two weeks and she’d made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want to see me. Her emails about being sick were obviously a ploy to get out of having to endure an awkward situation.

Julian knocked on their door, and I took a deep breath. My heart was racing from my bike ride. I’d pedaled fast and that’s why it was hard to breathe. That’s why.

Josephine pulled the door open and greeted us with a smile that faltered for only a moment when she saw me.

“Dean! I didn’t realize you were with Julian.”

Julian dipped down and gave her a kiss as we stepped through the front door.

“We were on a bike ride when you called,” I explained, scanning the apartment for Lily. It was a tiny space and it only took a second to realize she wasn’t there.

I hadn’t considered the fact that she wouldn’t be home and I hated the ideas that cropped up in my head for why she wasn’t there. Had she spent the night out somewhere? With the blind date guy?

I stepped farther into the apartment and caught sight of an enormous empty jar with my name on it on the countertop. Josephine caught my line of sight and bolted toward it, ripping it away before I could make out all of the words.

I smirked.

She cleared her throat and hid it as best as she could. “That was nothing. Just a…dumb game we were playing.”

I opened my mouth to reassure her that I hadn’t seen all of it as the front door opened behind us.

“Jo, I know I said I was going to run errands, but the bakery downstairs had a sale on croissants, so I had to stop and get some.” The three of us turned toward the door to see Lily walk into the apartment clutching a brown bag full of croissants in her arms. “And then I couldn’t keep walking around with a bag of croissants, right?” She dropped her keys in a little bowl by the door, dropped the bakery bag on the kitchen table, and then froze in place as her gaze met mine.

“What the ever-loving fuck are you doing here?” she asked, narrowing her eyes with a fierceness I hadn’t seen in weeks. I forgot how quickly her claws could come out.

I laughed and then quickly stole back the sound. Laughing wouldn’t make her less angry, even if she had just said something funny.

“He came with me—” Julian began, thinking he could throw me a lifeline.

“I came to help fix your dishwasher,” I said, crossing my arms.

She shook her head. “We don’t need your help.”

I stared as she waltzed over to the dishwasher to prove her statement. She locked the door, pressed a few buttons, and then the dishwasher emitted a noise that sounded distinctly like metal scraping against metal. I cringed as it echoed around the apartment.

She smirked and shot me a glare. “It’s supposed to make that noise.”

She paused the cycle, opened the door, and pulled out a fork bent into three different directions. “See? It’s clean.”

I held back my smile. I missed her so much. This. The fiery woman who wasn’t afraid to challenge me every step of the way. She infuriated me, but I’d trade it all to have one more fight with her, one more indignant glare from her bright brown eyes.

“Lily, do you want to, ah, come with me into the bathroom really quick?” Josephine asked with a clear strain to her voice.

Lily titled her head, trying to piece together what she meant.

Josephine cleared her throat and wrapped her hand around her neck, rubbing back and forth a few times. When I glanced back at Lily, her eyes were wide. Josephine’s warning clicked for her at the same time I noticed a familiar ribbon hanging around her neck. It dipped down into her black tank top, tucked away so that I couldn’t see the bottom. I didn’t need to; I recognized the medal right away.

“How did you…?” I asked, stepping forward and reaching out for it.

Lily stepped back. “I went. I was there at the ceremony. Not for you specifically,” she said, swallowing down her nerves and trying for a new approach. “I saw you leave the medal.”

I smirked. “You were in the bathroom?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “No. It wasn’t like that.”

This was it, the only second chance I’d ever get. Lily still cared about me. She cared enough to wear my medal around her neck.

The medal and that ridiculous jar told me everything I needed to know.

It wasn’t over.

Chapter Forty-Nine

 

 

 

Lily

I was doing my best to devour the entire bag of bargain croissants when Josephine set down two cups of coffee on our kitchen table.

“Did you check with the nunnery in Sweden to see if they had any openings?” I asked, shoving more of the flaky pastry into my mouth before I’d finished my question.

She studied me over her coffee cup. “You aren’t religious.”

“I could be, Jo. After this afternoon, I’m willing to try anything.” I shook my head.

“It wasn’t that bad.”

HA.

I glared at her. “HE SAW THE JAR. He saw me wearing his medal like a freaking crazy person!”

“He didn’t technically see the medal, only the ribbon…”

I dropped my head so that my forehead rested against the edge of the table. “Jo. He ran out of this apartment so fast I thought there would be a Dean-shaped hole in the door.”

She grimaced. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It was bad—really bad—but you still have a trillion guys in the city to date. Just because Dean thinks you’re psycho doesn’t mean every guy will.”

“I don’t want to date any other guys.”

I don’t want to date any other guys.

It hurt worse every time I repeated it in my head.

I wanted Dean.

I wanted the one man who now definitely wanted me locked up in a mental institution.

Lovely.

…

In a normal situation, I’d go through the stages of breakup grief and move on like I had from every other man in my life.

Stage One: Eat a bag of croissants. Done.

Stage Two: Try to land the role of next season’s Bachelorette. The producers never emailed me back.

Stage Three: Consider, but don’t actually make, a major life change…like a belly button ring or a tattoo. In the end, I parted my hair slightly more to the left.

All three stages were complete, it’d been three weeks since Dean had walked—no, ran out of my apartment, and I still couldn’t stop thinking about him. I no longer wore his medal, but I did sleep with it under my pillow. I touched it every night before I went to sleep, just to confirm it was still there.

With a usual breakup, we’d part ways and stop seeing each other. With Dean, that wasn’t possible. He was still my boss and I still had to see his name pop up in my email every morning. His messages always pertained to work and they always made my heart sink. I’d hold my breath, read through them, and then spend half an hour constructing a single sentence that I thought came off as equal parts bitchy and aloof.

Seeing him in person was the real danger, something I’d tried my hardest to avoid but could no longer put off.

He’d scheduled a meeting for early Monday morning. Zoe, Julian, and I were sitting in his office in the back of Provisions, waiting for him to arrive, and I swore my lungs weren’t working.

“Is it hot in here to anyone else?” I asked, waving a hand in front of my face to get some airflow. Why was it so hard to breathe?

Zoe glanced over at me. “You’re being weird.”

“Am not.”

Julian fired off an email he’d been typing on his phone and angled his body toward me. “You good, Lil?”

I didn’t look him in the eye. I couldn’t. It’d be like looking my dad in the eye when I was on the brink of tears. The floodgates would open whether I wanted them to or not.

“Peachy.”

The A/C unit kicked on and I sighed with relief. At least I wouldn’t be sweating buckets when Dean arrived.

“Jo said you might still be feeling sick,” he offered.

We both knew sick was a euphemism and a poor one at that.

I shrugged. “I think I’ll be sick for a while.”

Zoe blanched. “What the hell do you have? Ebola?”

I laughed. “No.” I began to clarify, and then Dean’s office door opened so I paused.

He walked in…and I could hear my heart thumping in my ears…and I gripped the arm of my chair…and I inhaled his cologne. It’d been three weeks since I’d last smelled it and no department store sample could compare.

I knew I wouldn’t last another day working for him. Working with Dean had been a dream come true, but now it felt like living through a nightmare. His intensity would never dull. His dark eyes would never lighten. His sharp mouth would never cease to amaze me. It’d been a foolish fight from the very beginning.

“Lily,” he said.

I’d wanted so badly to fall in love with him. I’d wanted it so badly that I’d ignored the warning signs. I was the naive girl from Texas, swept up in a man who’d only ever thought of her as a stepping stone along the path to success.

“Lily,” Julian said, shaking my hand on my chair.

I blinked and glanced toward him.

“Dean’s trying to get your attention and you’re completely zoned out,” he said with a laugh. “Have we ruled Ebola out?”

I smiled halfheartedly and glanced at Dean, trying to guard my heart as best as I could. “Sorry about that.”

His dark gaze held mine as he leaned over his desk. His mouth was pulled into a thin line. He was a statue of a man, unyielding at his core. “I just need you to hang back after the meeting for a few minutes. Is that okay?”

I nodded, not because I relished the idea of having alone time with him, but because it would give me the perfect chance to put in my two weeks notice.

Chapter Fifty

 

 

 

Dean

Lily closed the door behind Julian and Zoe, but she didn’t turn to face me right away. We’d been there before, alone in my office. It was a recipe for disaster, and we both knew it. She rotated around to face me slowly, keeping hold of the doorknob behind her back like a lifeline. She rolled her lips together and I opened my mouth to speak first, but she beat me to the punch.

“I’d like to put in my two weeks notice.”

I took a deep breath, processing her request.

She wants to leave?

I shook my head, just once.

“No.”

Her eyes blazed with a new fury. “No?”

I glanced down and started to scroll through the calendar on my phone. I tried to focus on a specific date, but I kept scrolling through the months, right into the next year. “We need to plan a time to meet. The kitchen will be finished next week and I’m bringing Antonio out—”

“You’re not listening to me,” she argued, releasing the doorknob and stepping closer.

My gaze shot up to her and her eyes focused in, narrowing until I knew I had her undivided attention.

“Yes I am. I’m just ignoring you.” I glanced back down at my phone. “I don’t accept your resignation.”

“What the hell—”

“Now, what day can you meet for the menu sampling? Monday?”

She paused on the other side of my desk and put her hand over my phone, blocking next year’s calendar from my view.

“Dean. Let me go.”

“No.”

“Fire me.”

I shook my head and clenched my jaw to keep from saying something too soon.

She stepped back and threw her hands up in defeat. “What’s the point of this? Do you really want me working for you still?”

“Yes. I do.”

She put her face in her hands and shook it back and forth, so defeated.

What did she think? That I would let her walk away from me? After everything? She kept my goddamn medal around her neck and she was going to give up that easily?

“Monday at 5 PM, meet me at the building where Hunter was going to open Ivy & Wine.”

She furrowed her brows, trying her hardest to keep her tears at bay. “Please don’t make me.”

Two taps sounded on the closed door and a moment later, Zoe’s head popped through the gap. “Boss-man, the Provisions staff meeting starts in ten.” Her gaze shifted from me to Lily, and then her smile faded. “Should I postpone it?”

I shook my head and rounded the desk, pausing as my shoulder brushed against Lily’s. “If you still want to quit after Monday, then I’ll respect your decision.”

Her fiery brown eyes turned to me. Her lips were the closest they’d been in weeks, red and swollen from her rubbing them together. It was painful to keep my distance, but I wouldn’t win her back with a half-baked speech in my office. She deserved more, and I was prepared to give her everything I had.

“I’m not coming,” she said, so softly that Zoe couldn’t hear.

I bent toward her, brushing my hand against hers and squeezing once before letting go.

“Please.”