“Stop telling me what to do, you old fart! Anyway, Isabelle, we have dinner reservations so we won’t keep you. Just tell Vincent we called, and, sweetie, I can’t wait to talk to you again and get to know more about you. I just want to thank you for saving our son. You have no idea what this means to us,” she tells me, getting a little choked up as she speaks. “We’ll be back in the States in a few months, and I look forward to meeting the woman made it possible for Vincent to—”
“Stop. Talking,” Harold cuts her off.
A loud burst of laughter flies out of my mouth hearing just how similar Vincent and his father are.
“Um, it was nice to speak with you both. I look forward to talking to you again soon as well. And I’ll make sure to let Vincent know you called,” I tell them.
We say good-bye and I end the call, staring down at the phone in my hand.
What a weird conversation. I mean, I understand how concerned they must have been about their son after the “gold digging hussy” did a number on him, but saving him? I don’t know if what I’m doing with their son could really be considered saving him. I’m relieved their phone call wasn’t an actual emergency, but now I feel even more guilty that I answered it and invaded his privacy, yet again.
* * *
Ariel and I walk into Charming’s a half hour later. I only had to bribe her with three home-cooked meals to get her to swing by here before she took me into work at the library, not because she hates Charming’s or anything. She’s just stubborn. And sometimes annoying, but I still love her.
The club is empty, since it won’t open for a few hours, but it still takes me a few minutes of searching before I find Vincent standing behind the bar, stocking shelves.
No matter how many times I come in here when they’re closed, I’m still surprised by the place. From what I’ve seen on television and read in books, most clubs are seedy and downright gross when they’re closed and every single light in the place is on, highlighting all of the stuff you don’t see late at night, when the lights are turned down.
Charming’s is a lovely place, even during the day. The main part of the club is somewhere around eight thousand square feet. There’s a stage all along the far wall, draped with a black velvet curtain. A catwalk juts out from the center of the stage, leading to a small square stage with a pole in the middle. The edges of the stages are lit up with hot pink and soft white lights, the same color as lights shining down from the ceiling.
Instead of rickety chairs and beat-up tables, all around the room are small, round, black tables with a hot-pink candle in the middle of each, and each table is surrounded by elegant black-leather club chairs with high arms and deep seats. It’s warm, and inviting, and elegant, and nowhere near seedy and gross.
“I still can’t believe we know someone who owns a strip club that doesn’t make me feel like I’ll get herpes if I rub up against the wall,” Ariel mutters.
Vincent looks up from behind the bar when Ariel’s voice carries across the empty club, his mouth twitches in my favorite way.
I quickly move across the room with Ariel right behind me.
“What are you doing here?” Vincent asks when I get to the other side of the bar.
“We thought we’d take up day drinking. Pour me a scotch,” Ariel tells him, smacking her hand on top of the bar.
I roll my eyes at her and pull his cell phone out of my purse, sliding it across the top of the bar towards him. I keep my head down and refuse to make eye contact, not wanting to see the fury in his eyes when I tell him what I did.
“You . . . uh . . . you left your cell phone at the house.”
Ariel elbows me in the arm and clears her throat. I made the mistake of telling her about the strange, yet funny, phone call on the ride over here, and now I’m regretting it.
While I’m busy trying to come up with the best way to tell Vincent I kind of, sort of invaded his privacy a little bit, Ariel decides she’s tired of waiting and does it for me.
“Belle answered your phone because your parents were calling you, like, a million times in a row, and she was afraid one of them died or something. They want to know when the wedding is and thanked her for saving you, whatever the fuck that means,” Ariel blurts out. “Now, give me my damn scotch. Time’s a-wasting.”
I cautiously lift my head to look up at Vincent, and he’s standing there with his hands resting on the bar and a blank expression on his face.
“It’s fine! I told them we weren’t dating or anything crazy like that, but I might have let it slip that I was living with you now and I’m really sorry for answering the phone and saying something I shouldn’t have, but your parents are really sweet and funny and did I mention I’m sorry because I really thought your mom might have gotten hit by a bus and it would have been my fault if your kidney didn’t get there in time!” I ramble.
Vincent still doesn’t say anything, and I start to chew on my bottom lip, waiting for all hell to break loose and for him to pick up a bottle of really expensive liquor and throw it across the room.
“Did you know that in 1954 Joseph E. Murray and his colleagues at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston performed the first truly successful kidney transplant from one twin to another, and this was done without any immunosuppressive medication?” I mumble uncomfortably. “Also, did you know your parents have kind of a strange accent? It was almost . . . Canadian.”
“Oh, thank the sweet baby Jesus, you told her!”
Eric walks up next to me, flinging his arm around my shoulder and giving me a squeeze.
I watch as Vincent’s face finally shows the first sign of emotion since I started talking, but instead of anger, he looks almost . . . freaked out. His eyes are wide and his mouth starts opening and closing without making a sound.
“Told me what?” I ask, looking away from Vincent to glance at Eric.
He looks back and forth between me and Vincent, and the silence stretches between everyone for so long that now I’m getting uncomfortable.
“What the fuck is going on with you two?” Ariel suddenly asks from the other side of me.
“NOTHING!” Eric and Vincent shout at the same time.
There’s another moment of silence before Eric lets out an uncomfortable laugh.
“Oh, you know . . . that thing . . . he . . . uh . . . got a promotion! You’re looking at the brand new floor manager of Charming’s. Gee, Vincent, I can’t believe you didn’t tell Isabelle this really important information,” Eric says, glaring across the bar at him.
“You got a promotion?!” I ask excitedly. “Oh, my gosh, this is wonderful! Congratulations!”
Vincent runs his hand through his hair and lets out a sigh.
“Uh, thanks. It just happened, so . . . ,” he says in a low voice.
Eric drops his arm from around me and moves behind me to stand by Ariel.
“So, hot stuff, how about we go back to my office and I show you how sturdy my new desk is?”
“Eat shit and die,” Ariel replies sweetly with a huge smile on her face before turning away from him to look at me.
“Forget what I said about not getting herpes from this place. If I stand next to this asshole too much longer, I’ll be crawling with that shit. I’ll be out in the car. Make it snappy.”
With that, she gives Eric the middle finger before walking away and disappearing down the hallway that leads to the door to the parking lot.
“One of these days, she’s going to fall madly in love with me,” Eric muses before heading off in the opposite direction, to the back offices, leaving Vincent and me alone.
“I’m sorry you had to deal with my parents. They can be a little . . . overwhelming,” he says.
“You’re not mad I answered your phone?”
He shakes his head, leaning forward to rest his elbows on the bar, bringing himself closer to me.
“Any chance you can get out of work early tonight?” I ask hopefully.
“Possibly. Why?” he asks, looking at me in a way that makes my
whole body tingle, and I’m pretty sure he’s thinking about the last time he got out of work early and what we did on that folding chair.
“I want to celebrate your promotion. Make you dinner or something,” I tell him, hoping he knows I’m thinking about the exact same thing.
The sensual way he was just looking at me disappears in an instant, and his face is back to being completely void of emotion.
“I’ll see what I can do. We should probably . . . talk when I get home.”
I really don’t like the way he says that, and it fills me with dread. Maybe he hasn’t been enjoying what we’ve been doing together as much as I thought he did. Maybe he’s changed his mind and realizes I’m not really worth all this trouble. My heart falls right down into my stomach, and I swallow past the lump forming in my throat.
“Okay, sounds great! So, I’ll just see you when you get home,” I tell him in a rush, turning and fleeing from the club as fast as I can before I do something stupid like cry in front of him.
Chapter 24: The Mess Can Wait
Throwing on my soft, grey T-shirt with the words Book Nerd on it, where the Os are a pair of reading glasses, along with a pair of grey-and-yellow-plaid flannel pajama bottoms, I don’t feel any better, but at least I’m comfortable.
After a mentally exhausting day that started with Vincent being weird and confusing and ended with a phone call from the board president telling me that I should start preparing myself now for the library to close, even an hourlong soak in Vincent’s Jacuzzi tub with one of my favorite romance novels didn’t brighten my spirits.
On top of that, I completely forgot to have Cindy take me to the grocery store before she dropped me off earlier, on her way to do a bachelor party. I was so excited about cooking for Vincent tonight and celebrating his promotion, and now I just want to go to sleep and pretend this day never happened.
I pull my hair out of its messy bun and slide the hair tie on my wrist as I head down the hallway, thinking I’ll just look through the takeout menus I saw in a kitchen drawer the other day and order something for dinner. When I emerge from the hallway, my feet stutter to a stop.
“I didn’t know what you wanted to make, so I just grabbed a little of everything.”
Vincent is standing behind the island, which is currently covered in what looks like one of every single item in the grocery store. I slowly start moving again until I’m standing on the other side of the island, staring down at everything in awe.
“You got asparagus. And risotto. And . . . kale?” I ask in shock, picking up the bag of leafy greens.
“That’s kale? I thought it was giant parsley,” he mutters.
To say I’m shocked is an understatement. Vincent’s fridge is filled with about thirty takeout containers, a bottle of mustard, and at least a hundred sauce packets from Taco Bell. He brings takeout home every night on his way home from work, making sure to buy enough so I can eat it the next day. I’ve eaten so much takeout in recent weeks, I’m surprised I haven’t gained thirty pounds. I didn’t think he even knew where a grocery store was, let alone how to shop. Granted, he pretty much just bought out the entire store, but still. He actually bought vegetables. And from the look of things, enough ingredients for me to make fifty different dishes.
“You still want to make dinner, right? I probably should have called and asked first. . . .”
My despondency from moments ago vanishes in an instant. He sounds so nervous and unsure that I can’t help but comfort him.
“I’ll make dinner, but on one condition. You have to help me.”
He lets out a low growl under his breath, and I laugh.
“You’re going to give yourself a heart attack if you keep eating the crap you do. We’ll make something easy. It will be fun,” I promise him.
I come around the island, and together we start putting everything away that we won’t be using. He tells me about his night at work, and I complain about the stupid board at the library. The mood is light and easy, and I start wondering if I imagined the way he said we needed to talk earlier. Maybe this is what he meant. Maybe he just wants us to get to know each other better, since he seems to think I’m still not ready to have sex with him yet. I know I should be an adult and just come out and ask him, but I don’t want to ruin the moment if he’s going to say something that will break my heart. As long as he hasn’t changed his mind about liking me and wanting to see where this goes, I don’t care about anything else.
Twenty minutes later, we’re standing next to each other at the counter. I smile at his profile as I watch him concentrate on what he’s doing.
He made a fuss when I initially told him we’d make lasagna, saying that was in no way an easy first dish for him to learn how to make. When he realized how simple it actually was using precooked noodles and jarred sauce, he stopped complaining.
“Just keep layering everything. Sauce, cheese, noodles. Lather, rinse, repeat, until you get to the top of the pan,” I instruct as he spreads a spoonful of sauce on the third layer, slopping it all over the counter in the process, before grabbing a bag of mozzarella cheese.
“I’m getting shit all over the place,” he complains, his big hands unable to delicately sprinkle the shredded mozzarella on top of the dish.
“It’s fine. It doesn’t need to be perfect. The lasagna will still be delicious even if you get half the cheese on the counter,” I joke. “Did you know lasagna originated in Italy during the Middle Ages and the first recorded recipe was written in the early fourteenth century?”
“Your brain is like Google,” he mumbles as he crumples up the now-empty bag of cheese and tosses it on the counter. “Telling me this stuff has been around for centuries doesn’t make me feel any better about how much I probably fucked it up.”
“Okay, then how about we discuss the book I finished reading today? It was called Until the End and it was a second-chance romance about—”
“A single father who falls in love with his new next-door neighbor who never wanted kids until she met his precocious three-year-old daughter, who stole her heart,” Vincent finishes, shocking the hell out of me. “I saw it on top of the stack of books you left in my library the other day. I read it while you were at work.”
He grabs the canister of parmesan from the counter and sloppily sprinkles it all over the top of the dish, bits of grated cheese flying all around like snow.
“I thought you didn’t do romance,” I remind him, repeating the words he said to me the first time we spoke about books at my library. “I can’t believe you read a popular contemporary romance.”
He sets the container of cheese down on the counter and looks back over his shoulder at me.
“Did you like the book? What did you think about the plot twist?”
It’s not at all what I expected him to say. One of these days, I’ll learn that this man isn’t what he seems. I spend the next ten minutes completely forgetting about the lasagna and going on a tangent about the crazy plot twist that involved the man’s horrible ex-wife coming back to town to try to reclaim her family after she left them, and to get rid of his new love interest. Vincent leans against the counter smiling at me the entire time, and when I finish talking, I feel happier than I have in a long time. I have a feeling Vincent asked me about the book because he remembered me telling him about how my dad and I used to cook together all the time and talk books, and he knows how much I miss that.
The kitchen looks like a war zone, with grease from the ground meat he browned splattered all over the stove, tomato sauce slopped all over the counter, and mozzarella, parmesan, and ricotta cheese dropped on the counter and the floor—but he was a quick learner and the pan of lasagna looks amazing.
“Alright, now, we cover it with foil, and put it in the oven for thirty minutes,” I instruct him.
He rips off a sheet of foil and covers the pan. While he’s busy washing his hands, I slide it into the oven and set the timer.
“We should probably clean this mess up whil
e it’s cooking.”
“The mess can wait,” he says softly while he dries his hands on a kitchen towel before tossing it on top of a puddle of sauce. “How about we . . . talk.”
Just like earlier at Charming’s, my heart drops right into my stomach with the way he says the word talk all serious, with a concerned look on his face. Before he can say anything else, I quickly move to stand in front of him, resting my hands on his chest.
“I’m not exactly stripper material and considering you were engaged to a stripper, I’m sure you’re used to a much higher-caliber type of woman. I don’t have legs a mile long. I don’t have big boobs. I wear glasses, my hair is always a mess, I’m a huge nerd, and I tried to wear false eyelashes to work once and one of them fell off and was stuck to my cheek for four hours. No one told me I had what looked like a huge spider on my face. I don’t know how to do basic stuff normal women know how to do. I’m not a normal woman. I’m just me.”
Vincent’s chest is heaving and his nostrils are flaring by the time I stop word vomiting.
“What in the fuck are you talking about?” he says in a low, borderline ticked-off voice.
“That was my way of asking if this talk has anything to do with you changing your mind about liking me and wanting to see where this thing between us can go. I mean, I get it. Look at me,” I whisper, dropping my head to stare at my hands still pressed against his chest.
One of his hands comes up between us and his fingers press under my chin, lifting my head back up until our eyes meet.
“I am looking at you. I’ve been looking at you since the day you first came to Charming’s. I tried to slam the door in your face, and you put your hands on your hips and told me off,” he says with a fierce look in his eyes. “You are the highest caliber of woman I have ever met in my life. You don’t take my shit, you aren’t afraid of me even though you should be, and you have absolutely no fucking idea how goddamn beautiful and sexy you are.”
My eyes start clouding with tears and I quickly blink them away.
“You should be the one changing your mind. You should be running as fast and as far away from me as possible before I hurt you. Every damn time I walk through that front door, I thank Christ you’re still here. I only agreed to help you out so you can be a good stripper because I wanted more of you. I need to tell you—”