I clenched the phone in my hand. I remembered what Beale had said about embracing Hagatha. About owning it. “And HiWire needs me.” I swallowed hard. “And while I would never willingly break the NDA, if someone has somehow found out, we’ll simply have to deal with it. Your threats only go so far.”
Jeanette made a frustrated noise. “What the hell happened to you in the past week? Is there something noxious in the air in the Maldives?”
“I’m not in the Maldives,” I informed her. “I decided to visit a friend out of town, instead.”
“A friend.” She snorted. “You mean your one friend who lives Upstate somewhere?”
Except he didn’t, because Mason had moved down here. “No, actually. I haven’t seen Mase in months. A different friend.”
“Hmm,” she said once more, like she couldn’t believe more than one person put up with me.
Honestly, I couldn’t believe it either, but evidence suggested it was, indeed, possible. I had Littlejohn now. Maddie. Mason…
Beale.
“Fine,” Jeanette sighed. “Keep your secrets. But I expect you back next week or so, and no more calls from our rivals.”
After she disconnected, I grabbed a hank of my own hair and tugged roughly.
Next week was the new timeline, and I sure as hell hoped Mason had a good idea of how to get this resolved by then, because from what I’d read online earlier, it didn’t seem like Jayd would be coming forward anytime soon.
Keep your secrets, she’d said. But the trouble was, I didn’t want to keep my secrets anymore. I had to tell Beale what was going on. We’d passed a point, sometime in the middle of sex last night, or maybe long before that and I’d pretended not to notice, where keeping secrets started to feel a lot like betrayal. I had to tell him and Mason the whole sordid story when Mase got home tonight. I’d let the chips fall where they might.
Beale picked that exact moment to walk into the backyard, and my heart gave a crazy stutter before it settled into a feeling of rightness.
He looked good, yes, and it was impossible not to notice it, but it wasn’t just that. As insanely sappy as it sounded—and yes, I was not unaware of how very, very sappy it sounded—life just seemed more possible when Beale was around.
And Jesus, wasn’t that a scary thought for a man who’d avoided relationships for his entire life? Still, the way I’d felt this morning waking up in Beale’s arms—safe, warm, happy—was probably worth the constant terror. Right now, after the conversation with Jeanette, I craved his arms around me.
Beale caught sight of me, and I smiled. I expected him to smile back and head my way, but he stopped to talk to Levi somebody and then with sweet, blind-as-a-bat Barbara Patenaude.
I bit my lip. That wasn’t weird. He was being polite. Besides, my legs worked, too, right? I could go to him.
So I did.
Except when he saw me coming, he excused himself from Barbara and went to hold Juju’s stepladder.
Okay, no, that was definitely weird. I wondered if something had gone wrong on his tour or with his brothers. I wondered if he was upset and didn’t want to show it.
“Heya,” I said, sliding into the typical Whispering Key greeting, even though I was pretty sure I’d never greeted anyone that way in my life before. I wrapped an arm around his waist in a supportive way.
Beale’s body stiffened, and that… okay, that was 100 percent weird.
“Hi,” Beale said. “Um. Kinda busy holding a ladder here.”
Ooookay. In the hierarchy of brushoffs, that one was… transparently transparent. Even Juju looked down from where she was hanging bunting to blink at him. “It’s a four-foot ladder, honey. I told you, it’s fine.”
“You can’t be too careful,” Beale said, resolutely holding the ladder with both hands. He wouldn’t meet my gaze.
He didn’t seem angry. He didn’t seem upset. He seemed… disconnected. And that was when the penny dropped, and I took a step back.
Oh, Lord. It had been a week tomorrow since we started this, hadn’t it? So short, and yet… maybe too long for Beale? Had he remembered that I wasn’t his soul mate? Better question: how the heck had I forgotten, even for a minute, that he was holding out for someone way better than the likes of me?
I looked down at the bracelet on my arm, the bracelet Beale had lent me just yesterday and that I’d conveniently forgotten to give back because I liked seeing it on my wrist so much, and felt ridiculous, reactionary tears prick behind my eyes.
Well, fuck.
Was this how Cinderella felt after the ball?
And, in the end, I hadn’t even had to share with him the full extent of the poor choices that had brought me here, which was kind of a relief. I wouldn’t have to tell Beale about Jayd Rollins, ’cause Beale had remembered I was a bad bet all on his own.
“Hey, Trey! Silvio’s here and he’s brought some vodka. Also, Jon Davis has a tray of brownies,” Barbara called, like she’d set herself up as the royal announcer for the party.
I summoned a smile. “Acceptable offerings. Let them pass.”
I’d swear I heard Beale make an amused sound, but when I looked back at him, his face was blank and his eyes—those expressive eyes that could tell me entire paragraphs with just one glance—were empty, which was so unlike the Beale I thought I knew that I felt a deep ache in my solar plexus.
I wondered idly what kind of yoga move could fix that, but it didn’t matter. I’d probably kill myself if I tried it.
Whatever. This was okay. This was good. This was fine. This I could handle. And better sooner than later.
It was not my first rejection rodeo—fuck, not even my twenty-first—and I needed to cowboy up, in a sexy, refined, Timothy Olyphant cowboy sort of way, obviously, and handle this with dignity. If there was one thing I was good at—one skill I could add to my unofficial resume thanks to catty friends in high school, losers I dated in college, and my family back in Ohio—it was this. I knew how to smile vaguely, nod along with whatever they said, and give the overall impression that parting ways had been my idea in the first place.
Step one: stop looking like a needy asshole.
So, I made myself busy, throwing myself into the last of the preparations in the way that only a person who really didn’t want to think about his own life could. I didn’t glance in Beale’s direction. I smiled hard and laughed harder. I directed my volunteer decorators with aplomb. Several people made the effort to tell me how great the decorations were and how yummy the food was, and I made a mental note to send out a thank-you message to my Facebook group.
And through it all, even though Beale was less than a hundred feet away, I ached for him like he was on the damn moon.
This rodeo was gonna suck.
The downside of having half the town on the party committee was that there really wasn’t a point where I could slip away to get changed. But when a few early birds showed up and someone switched the sound system on, and then Lorenna and Jeremy-Someone started dancing, I realized that unless I wanted to experience this party in a manky tank top and casual shorts, I needed to grab a shower while I could.
I passed Littlejohn my clipboard and asked him to hold down the fort and keep everyone out of the guesthouse so I could change quickly… and then I nearly bumped into the guy I’d been avoiding, who was heading into the guesthouse at the same time.