“I have a policy against employees dating,” I lie. What’s another one?
“What about Catrine and Jon?” she asks, thinking she caught me.
“They were already married when I hired Catrine,” I say, and it’s the truth.
“So employees can be married, but not dating?”
“Jon is my oldest friend,” I say. “It’s different. I can’t have employees dating and breaking up and bringing all that to work.”
“We weren’t dating,” she says, her voice growing soft. “He was my friend.”
I hate the sadness in her voice. This was never my intention. “And he’s not anymore?”
She shrugs. “You know how I take Finn to see the horses in the morning. Clay would usually meet us there. We’d just talk. This morning, he blew us off and would barely talk to me. He hardly even looked at me.” She looks up at me. “Did you do that?”
“Paige, you have to know he didn’t want to be just your friend.”
“Did you do that?” she yells.
“Yeah, I did,” I bark. I expect her to yell some more, but she turns and starts to walk away. “Paige?” I reach out, catching her by her elbow.
She looks up, her eyes wet with tears. “I don’t have a lot of friends,” she says. “It’s hard when you’re trying to take care of a baby. I was just trying to start over.” Her head shakes, and she pulls away, disappearing down the hallway.
I’m an asshole. It’s official. The thing is, I don’t regret saying what I did to Clay. He needed to know she’s off-limits. I do regret that it ended like this. My intentions were selfish, I know that, but I never wanted to hurt her or make her sad. That’s the last thing I want.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PAIGE
Catrine and I have been out most of the day, meeting with the party planner and going over the menu, flowers, band, and various other details for the opening of the golf course. Not much of a party girl myself, I wasn’t sure I’d be any good at planning this sort of thing, but now that I’ve seen everything, I’m actually kind of excited about it.
The clubhouse at the golf course is the venue, and after doing a walkthrough of the space, I know it’s going to be wonderful. The place is so beautiful, I could serve them baby food, play nursery rhymes, and give diapers as party favors, and it would still be a great party.
I’ve never been anywhere like it. I only saw the golf course’s greens from a distance because I was more focused on the clubhouse. The woodwork is exquisite—a hand-carved spiral staircase leading up to a viewing area, two bars, and windows offering a view of the beautifully landscaped course.
We have everything handled from the food, to the band, to the table arrangements. That narrowed our to-do list to finding something for Catrine and me to wear, so we decided to stop at a little boutique dress shop on the way home. She’s only weeks away from giving birth, so I knew she was stopping at this store for me. There wasn’t a maternity dress in sight.
So presently, I’m in my underwear in a dressing room as Catrine shoves dresses at me over the door. A blue sequin number comes flying at me. “I said nothing with bling.” I laugh.
“Finn picked that one,” she says. “He says it matches your eyes.”
“Finn can’t talk.” I giggle, not adding the fact that he was fast asleep in his stroller when Catrine shoved me in here. She’s been pushing him and picking out dresses for a good half hour now. Poor Finn, it’s hard to be carted around all day and still get your naps in. But he’s a trooper.
“Try it on,” she says, and I know she’s taken a seat outside to wait. Stepping into the dress, I know this isn’t the one before I even have it over my hips.
“I felt a distinct chill in the house when I walked in this morning. Something happen with Slade?” she asks.
“When does something not happen with Slade?”
“You two should just screw and get it out of your systems,” she says.
I pull the door open to the dressing room so fast, I forget I’m not zipped up. “Why on earth would you say that?”
“Please,” she says, motioning with her hand for me to turn around so she can zip the dress. “The sexual tension between you two is off the charts.”
“No, that’s just hatred and disgust.”
She laughs, then wrinkles her nose at the dress. “Jon thinks the same thing I do.”
“If Slade’s so into me, then why does he stay gone all the time?” I ask, hoping to shut her up.
“A couple of reasons maybe,” she says. “You’re a lot younger than him. And he thinks he wouldn’t be good for you.”
I step back into the dressing room, closing the door, but we continue to talk through it. There’s no one else in the dressing rooms to hear us. “The age thing is just stupid. I’m sure that wouldn’t stop him,” I say. “But why would he think he’s not good for me?”
Catrine doesn’t know about my upbringing, but Slade knows some of it. Why would he not be good enough for me? He’s handsome, successful, and surely has no problem finding women.
“You haven’t been around long enough,” she says. “Slade’s complex.”
“How?”
“He’s just very guarded. No one is close to him, except maybe Jon. I’m not sure anyone else knows who Slade Turner really is,” she says.
“What about his family?” I ask, feeling slightly hypocritical. I don’t like to talk about my past. I shouldn’t pry into his, but for some reason, I care. I know I shouldn’t, but I do. Besides, I should know who my employer is, who I’m sleeping down the hall from.
“His mother is dead. And he can’t stand his father. No one else I know of.”
She throws another dress over the door. This one is black, and something about the illusion neckline piques my interest. You think you know what you’re seeing, but you really have no idea. That’s me in a nutshell.
Slipping it on, I say, “So he’s private. That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Maybe,” she says. “Or maybe he’s got things he doesn’t want anyone to know. Especially a young, sweet single mom.”
Nothing he’s hiding could possibly be worse than what I am. Donning the black dress, I open the door. The look on my friend’s face tells me this is definitely the one.
She raises an eyebrow at me, saying, “Just know when Slade wants something, he usually gets it.”
The truth stirs deep inside me. I want him to want me.
*
Catrine goes home for the day, and I head back to Slade’s. It’s hard for me to call it home. Such a simple word carries a whole lot of meaning. Is home a building? A place? Is it where the people who love you are?
I’ve always thought of home more as a feeling. In fact, I think the word home should be an emotion—the best emotion. Imagine if someone asked you, “How are you feeling today?”
Like I’m home.
People say all the time that they want to be loved, feel love, find love. They search their whole lives for it.
Really, they’re searching for a home. The place where they are accepted for who they are. Sheltered and protected from the outside world and all the things that bring them harm.