Harper could see she was wearing me down, and her violet eyes filled with happiness. “Come by the office next week, and we can have a serious talk,” she murmured when the others were distracted by Aunt Emmie. “And I promise you, I won’t play favorites. I’ll treat you like any other employee.”
I blew out a long sigh, but I nodded. “Yeah, okay. But things are really crazy for me right now. Between school and this wedding, I don’t know how good I could actually be for you.”
“We can talk about that too. I have several writers who are part time. And, honestly, it’s not like you’ll be working nine-to-five, hon.” She gave me a one-armed hug. “I would kill to have you working with me, Lucy. You know that.”
“All right, all right. We’ll talk,” I promised.
She practically clapped her hands in glee. “Yay! Okay, okay. I’m done now. I’ll be completely serious from this point forward.”
Laughing, I shook my head at her and glanced down at my phone as it vibrated with an incoming text from Harris.
Your dad cheats so bad.
I nearly snorted orange juice up my nose as I read his text, it made me laugh so hard. When I could breathe again, I excused myself from everyone and swiped my finger over his name.
“Hey, sweetness. How’s the shower going?”
“I’ve been asked twice when we’re having kids, got roped into viewing a house, and may have a job starting next week.” I gave him a quick summary as I moved into a quiet corner so I could talk to him in peace.
There was a long pause on his end. If I hadn’t heard the guys he was with laughing in the background I would have thought we’d gotten disconnected. “Harris?”
“I’m here,” he got out in a choked voice. “What… What did you say about the baby thing?”
My eyes widened at his question and the emotion I heard in his voice. My teeth sank into my bottom lip as I wondered what was going through his head right then. “Just curious, but what would you have wanted me to say?”
There was another long pause, but this time, I could hear the voices in the background getting fainter, and I realized he was moving away from the group. “Considering the idea never even entered my mind up until right now, I honestly don’t know, Lu. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t like the thought of us having kids.”
A happy, silly little smile teased at my lips. “Well, I told them we wanted to wait a little while. We should get settled before we start adding to our family, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely.” He still sounded dazed, though.
“What’s this about Daddy cheating?”
“Between him and my dad, they could write a whole book about cheating at golf. Jace and I are getting our asses kicked right now because we’re both too scared to call them out on it. And the fuckers know it too. They’re eating this shit up.”
I swallowed my giggles. “But are you having fun?”
“I’ve had a blast, sweetness.”
“I’m glad, babe.” Kin called my name, and I looked up to find her waving me over. She was standing with Aunt Emmie and Natalie by a cake, and I nearly groaned because I didn’t want to hang up on Harris yet. “I have to go,” I told him reluctantly.
“Okay…” He seemed just as unwilling to end our call as I felt. “I’ll see you in an hour or so, Lu.”
“I’m glad you’re having fun.” I saw Mom join Natalie, and she shot me a look that told me not to argue. “I love you.”
“Love you…” I heard the hesitation and waited, ignoring my mom and every other person in the room for a moment longer. “Don’t get upset if I have babies on the brain now, sweetness. I have this picture in my head, and it’s everything I never knew I wanted, Lucy.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” I promised. “Go, have fun. I’ll see you soon.”
“Get off the phone, and come play, boy!” Dad called in the background. “My baby girl can’t save you. Stop your sobbing to her.”
“Fucking hell,” he whisper-groaned as several guys in the background started laughing. “I love you this much, Lucy Thornton. I love you this fucking much.”
And my heart was one big puddle of mush because of it. Harris loved me enough to put up with my dad for an entire afternoon because he knew it would make me happy.
Chapter 7
Lucy
November
“I need you to decide if we’re having a band or a DJ for the reception,” Mom said as she handed over a list. “These are the three DJs Emmie says will do a good job.”
I dropped my cherry Danish onto my plate and wiped my hands before taking the list from her. When she had dropped by to take me out to eat, I had gotten my hopes up that she actually wanted to spend some time with me. Quality time anyway. Time where we didn’t talk about the wedding she and Natalie had become obsessed with and were giving me ulcers over. Some bonding time, where she asked what was going on in my life that didn’t involve making decisions about a wedding that seemed more and more like some kind of performance rather than my special day.
“And those names at the top are the three wedding singers Nat and I vetted a few months ago. I like the second name more, but Nat was more into the third.”
I grimaced as I read over the list. There weren’t just wedding singers and DJ’s names on there. There were at least twenty ASAP to-do items highlighted in orange, which I had learned quickly meant they needed a decision on now. “Why do you need to know if I want a white car to pick me up or a purple one? What does that have to do with anything?”
“There is an issue with parking at the venue. So we’re parking elsewhere and transporting everyone from the church to the reception in limos.”
“Why not just get a bus?”
Mom made a face. “That’s so tacky, Lucy.”
“But how many limos are we going to need? Have you and Natalie gotten the final guest list sorted out yet?”
“It’s a work in progress. Every time we get down to the number Harris bitched about, we realize there are a handful of other people that have to be invited or they will be offended.”
I bit my tongue to keep from saying something I knew I would regret later. Harris hadn’t bitched about anything. He’d just told his stepmom he didn’t want the guest list to exceed five hundred. That number was just to make me happy, because if given leeway, the moms would have invited over two thousand people. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t been relieved when he’d stepped in on that point. But the truth was, I was freaking out a little on the inside at the idea of five hundred people being at our wedding. The majority of those people were practically strangers to me. Why did they have to witness something so personal, so intimate and mine? What right did they have to be a part of that day with us?
But, as I had on everything else, I remained quiet. At this point, I didn’t even know why I was still keeping my mouth shut. Hell, by now, I wasn’t even sure why I was even needed. Between Mom and Nat, they could have planned this entire wedding without so much as a nod from me. Yet they continued to keep me in the loop, and by default, made my life a waking nightmare.
“I was just thinking of the cost, Mom,” I muttered.
She made a noise in the back of her throat. “You don’t need to worry about the cost. We’ve got everything covered.” Her phone went off, and she glanced at it but sent the caller to voice mail. Almost immediately, it went off again. “Damn.”
I caught a glance at the screen and saw it was Dad, but she sent it straight to voice mail yet again. “Is something wrong?”
She gave me a smile that seemed forced. “Nope. Everything is perfect. Or, it will be as soon as you get me the answers on this list.”
I wasn’t buying it. “Are you and Daddy still going to Paris at the end of the month for your anniversary?”
“Of course we are.”
“And you two aren’t fighting?”
She made an impatient noise. “Of course not.”
“So why aren’t you taking his calls?”
r />
“Because he’s being an ass. I told him I was meeting you today, and he got pouty because I told him he wasn’t invited.”
“But I would have liked seeing Daddy today.”
“And when he’s around, we don’t ever get anything done. And you two ignore me when you get together. It’s like I’m not even here.”
All I could do was sit there and blink at her. Mom picked up her water glass and took a sip, looking flustered. “Are you jealous, Mom?”
Pink filled her cheeks. “No, of course, I’m not jealous. What’s there to be jealous of anyway?”
I pushed my plate away and set my elbows on the table as I leaned forward. “I don’t know. But that’s the way you’re making it seem. Are you jealous of how close Daddy and I are? Are you upset that we like to spend time together?”
“Lucy, no!” She rushed to assure me. “It’s not like that. I’m not jealous of your relationship with your dad. I’m…” She blew out a long huff. “All right, fine. I’ll admit it. I’m kind of jealous of your dad.”
Now I was even more confused. “Can I ask why?”
“When Jesse is around, it’s like no one else exists for you. That is, unless Harris is around too. You love your dad so much, baby. And I’m so thankful you two are as close as you are. I’ve wanted that for you from the moment we adopted you. But…you tend to forget about everyone else. It makes me feel like an outsider. Today I wanted to spend time with you. Just me and you.”
I didn’t know if I was more touched or upset. Touched she had wanted to spend this time with me or upset she had wasted the time she had wanted to spend together. Before everything happened, before I ruined everything with my cutting, we had been closer than any other mother/daughter relationship I had ever seen before.
She wasn’t just my adopted mother or my biological sister. She had been my friend. I had trusted her with nearly every secret I had—except the one I had kept from everyone who mattered to me. Lunches like this had been a regular occurrence, even though we had lived under the same roof. It had been our time to catch up. To confide in each other and reconnect.
I couldn’t honestly remember the last time we had done something like that, and I felt guilty I was the reason we now had this invisible wall between us. But she had to take responsibility for some of the bricks in that wall too. Because she had hurt me deeply when she reacted the way she did to my dark secret, And deep down, I wasn’t even sure I could ever trust her the way I once had.
“You wanted to spend time with me, but you couldn’t ask me how my day was? You haven’t once asked how work’s been going since I started doing freelance for Harper.” I didn’t even realize how angry I was until the words came out of my mouth with so much venom behind them. “No, Mom, this is not spending quality time with me. This is a damn business lunch.” I grabbed my purse and phone and stood, leaving her sitting there staring up at me with a gaping mouth. “I love you, and I miss how things were before you found out about everything. I miss you. I miss who you were before this came between us. I miss the mom who would call to talk to me about nothing and everything. I miss the woman who would make me laugh and put me at ease. But I guess I killed that woman the morning you showed up at Georgetown and I had to tell you about the cutting.”
Tears filled her eyes. “Lucy, I—”
“I realize this divide between us is my fault, Mom. I take responsibility for that. But you don’t even try anymore. You don’t call me unless you want to talk about the wedding. You don’t ever ask me if I’m okay or about my meetings. You are the one person in my life who knows about everything, but you don’t ever talk about it.”
I grabbed the to-do list and crumpled it into a ball before tossing it on the table. “You go ahead and make the decisions for this round. I’m done for now. I’ll see you next week at Lana’s for Thanksgiving dinner.”
“Lucy, don’t leave like this!” she called after me, and I could feel the eyes of every person in the restaurant as they watched me walk away. Could feel them judging us and me as a daughter. This was going to end up on TMZ or on the front page of some trashy magazine, and for once, I didn’t give a damn. “Lucy, please come back and talk to me.”
“I’m done for now, Mom.” I turned back to look at her, not giving a damn who heard us. “I’m just done. I love you, but I’m not sure I’m strong enough to deal with your bullshit right now. You’re jealous of Dad? Maybe you should ask yourself why that is all of a sudden since it wasn’t the case even a year ago. Nothing has changed between us. Nothing. I’m just as close to him now as I always have been. The only difference is you. You’re the outsider because you’ve made yourself one.”
I didn’t give her a chance to say another word, didn’t give her time to grab her things and follow me. It was Marcus’s day off, and Mom had picked me up for our lunch date. I grabbed a cab as soon as I stepped outside and tossed out my address before falling back against the seat. My eyes ached with tears that I refused to shed. I couldn’t let them fall, not yet. Because as soon as the first tear fell, I was going to break, and I was tired of breaking.
Harris
I wasn’t planning on going in to the club since Lucy and I were viewing the house everyone was so adamant we needed to see. But Barb ran into a few issues with a liquor order, and I couldn’t put it off until the next day. It was only supposed to be for an hour, though, so I wasn’t worried about missing our appointment. Just as I walked into First Bass, I shot Lucy a quick text to let her know where I was going since she was out with her mom.
“We’re missing three cases of Jack and two of the champagne that those VIP dickheads love so much,” Barb groused without so much as lifting her head as soon as I entered the office. “This new distributor is killing me with the late and sometimes no-shows of the shit we order, boss.”
“I know. Fuck, I know.” She stood, and I dropped down into the chair behind my desk even as I was examining the order form I had done myself only two days before. “Let me see what I can do, Barb. I’ll get this sorted and get out of your hair.”
“Thank you. Sorry I had to bother you on your day off.”
“Nah, it’s fine. I’d rather sort this out now than be without something tomorrow night. That case of Jack will be needed this weekend, and the customers get pissy when we don’t have what they want to drink.”
“Maybe we should find another distributor,” she muttered.
“I’ve been looking,” I assured her. “But after what happened with Cal, most of the field team of the distributors refuse to deal with me.”
And I was okay with that. I wasn’t going to kiss anyone’s ass, especially not someone who had talked to Lucy the way Cal had. I wasn’t desperate anyway. I just had to put my boot up someone’s ass at the current distributor I had.
Two hours later, after being put off by six different people, I was pissed and out of patience with everyone. “I want to talk to your CEO, and I want to talk to them right fucking now,” I snarled at the idiot who was currently on the other end of the phone call. “Because if I don’t get this figured out in the next ten minutes, I’m dropping your asses and telling every bar in a hundred-mile radius to drop you too.” There was an amused huff from the other end which only hiked up my bad mood. “Don’t think I can do it? Do you even realize who the fuck I am?”
“Who are you?” the guy taunted.
A grin lifted my lips at the same time Barb opened my office door. Seeing it, her eyes widened, and she turned and left in a hurry. I hung up, so fucking mad I was ready to make every person within the distribution business piss their pants right then. Muttering a curse, I dialed the trump card I had but had never used before. I hadn’t let Nat help me when I first opened the club, had wanted to make it a success on my own. I’d done that tenfold, but I couldn’t keep it running the same way without a steady supply of booze to make the customers happy.
But Nat wasn’t going to be able to help me now either. I needed someone a little scarier than my stepmom
.
“What’s up, kid?” Emmie answered on the third ring.
“Hey, you busy right now?”
“Not this very moment, no. I’ve got a few minutes I can kill. You okay?”
I put my pride aside and did the one thing I had hoped never to do. “I have a small issue. Can you help me out?”
Not ten minutes later, I was talking to a very apologetic CEO as he assured me everything I had ordered would be delivered later that night. “And I’ll oversee every order personally from here on out, Mr. Cutter,” the nervous man promised. “We appreciate your business, sir, and would hate to lose you as a client.”
I rolled my eyes but kept my voice professional. “Make sure the liquor is here on time next week, or I’m done with you. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. I can assure you you’ll have everything you ordered on time from here on out.”
After I got off the phone with the man, I texted Emmie to thank her for whatever she had done. I wasn’t about to ask questions because I was pretty sure she hadn’t used any normal methods to make the liquor distributor give me what I wanted. Emmie had friends in just as many low places as she did high ones.
A glance at the clock on my phone told me I was going to be late for the appointment if I didn’t leave now. Grabbing my keys, I called a goodbye to Barb to let her know I was going and left through my private exit. As I pulled out into traffic, I called Lucy.
“Hello?”
I stopped at a red light, but my senses were on high alert. Something was off in her voice. It sounded almost lifeless to my ears. “Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Are you okay?” My stomach was in knots now because that one word in that empty tone was putting all kinds of images in my head.
“I’m okay. Did you get everything sorted at work?”
“Yeah, it’s done. I’m on my way home now if you want to meet me downstairs. I think we should be able to make the appointment still.”