Role Play (Plaything Book 4)

  I had showered and finished dressing. I decided to play some video games while I waited for her to come home. Two seconds after I sat on the couch, there was a knock on the door.

  "That was fast," I said loudly so she might hear it out in the hallway. I'd expected her to be a few hours longer. I opened the door.

  Diane from marketing and Bonnie from shipping were standing in the hallway. Diane marched in on her high platform shoes, without waiting for an invite Which was usual for Diane. Bonnie was barefoot, with her heels dangling from her fingers.

  "Oh my God, this place sucks, Aidan. How can you stand it?" Diane went straight to the refrigerator for a beer.

  I hadn't noticed the grimace on Bonnie's face until she stepped farther into the apartment. She held the shoes out as if they might bite her. "Gum. All over my brand new shoes. I'm so disgusted I want to just throw them in the incinerator. Do you have one in this building?"

  Diane emerged with her beer. "No, don't burn them. I think they can still be saved. Aidan can clean them for you. He has strong fingers."

  I returned to my game. "Sorry, I'm with Bonnie on the incinerator. Only this building doesn't have one."

  Diane pulled up a kitchen chair to the television. Bonnie went into the bathroom with her gummy shoes.

  Diane watched me as I played the game. "You clean up so pretty, big guy. Expecting company?" She sat forward. "Ooh, are we going to meet the new girlfriend? Chase said she's very cute. When is she coming?"

  "Sometime after you leave."

  "Ah, that's no fun."

  "Where are you two headed?" I motioned toward her leather mini skirt. "You look like you're ready for a night of dancing."

  "Yep. That's where we're headed. Only now my wing girl has bare feet. So Chase says she's a movie star or something like that," Diane continued.

  I sighed and put the game on pause. "She's an actress. She's going to be starting her first big role soon."

  "How cool. Aidan and the movie star. I still can’t believe all you guys are settling down with women. I thought you'd be running the playboy circuit until you were all too old to get it up."

  "Ugh, I hate gum. What kind of pig leaves his gum on the sidewalk?" Bonnie complained from the bathroom.

  Diane tilted her head toward the hall. "She has a big crush on Heath."

  "She's not alone. He's quite a distraction in the warehouse."

  "I'll bet."

  Bonnie came out of the bathroom and dropped her shoes on the floor. "They are ruined. I hope you've got something strong to drink somewhere in this apartment because those shoes cost me a week's pay."

  My face shot up. "You're kidding, right?"

  "I wish I were." Bonnie went to the kitchen to look for something to drink. She found a bottle of tequila. "Jackpot."

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Jane

  I was distracted enough on the way home that I'd missed the parking lot entrance to the apartment. Russell kept warning me not to read anything into the contract not arriving to his office on time. 'Maybe the courier got hit by a car,' he'd said enthusiastically before realizing how bad it sounded. He had put a call in to the casting director while I sat there in his office trying not to crumble into a million pieces. But when he didn't hear back, Russell told me I should just go home so I could go on my celebration date with Aidan. He insisted everything was fine and that they had probably just not gotten the final copy back from the lawyers. And so I left his office with no signed contract, which meant, technically, I didn't have the part yet.

  I found a parking spot and trudged through the building to the side elevator. It was going to be hard to enjoy a celebratory dinner. I hoped Aidan wouldn't mind putting it off until I had a signed contract. He would no doubt tease me about being superstitious.

  I stepped into the elevator. My phone rang as the doors slid shut. It was Russell.

  "Hi, did you get it? I knew it would come the second I left your office."

  The pause that followed made me want to throw up my lunch. "Russ?"

  "Jane." It was all I needed to hear. The tone of his voice said it all.

  I pressed my arm against my stomach and leaned against the elevator wall for support.

  "I'm so sorry, sweetie. In the last minute, Katrina Blake decided she wanted the part after all. That bitch. I will never watch another one of her movies. Jane? Are you all right? Shit, you're not driving are you?"

  "No," I sniffled. "I'm in the elevator having a nice little meltdown. I knew it was all too good to be true."

  "You got so close, Jane. It'll happen again soon. You'll see. And anyhow, you still have that big hunky boyfriend with the magnificent hugging arms."

  Russell always worked so hard to help me through the rejections, but this one was major. This was an equally big blow for him. His success was directly related to mine.

  The doors to the elevator opened. My feet felt heavy as I stepped into the hallway.

  "I'll call you later, Janey. Drink some wine and go hop in bed with that incredible man. He'll make it all better."

  I sniffled and was hardly able to speak. I muttered good-bye and hung up.

  It took me forever to get the key in the lock with my unsteady hands and blurry eyes. I could hear voices coming from Aidan's apartment. Female voices and lots of feminine laughter. It seemed they were getting closer to the door.

  I quickly slipped inside my apartment, not wanting to see anyone in my moment of despair. I closed the door and pressed my ear against it to listen to the voices in the hallway.

  "Bye, handsome, we'll see you later. Thanks for the tequila," a woman said with a laugh.

  "Wait, Bonnie"—Aidan's deep voice rumbled in the hallway—"You forgot your shoes."

  A round of giggles followed, and small feet plodded down the hallway back toward Aidan's apartment.

  The anguish from the last few moments was now compounded by the unexpected scene in the hallway. I felt as if I was made of stone as I moved toward the couch and collapsed down onto it. A few seconds later, loud footsteps sounded outside my door.

  "Jane?" Aidan called through the door. "Are you there, Jane?"

  I stayed perfectly still, not making a sound, until I heard him walk away. Then I curled up into a ball on the couch and cried.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Aidan

  “Everything fell apart just like I knew it would."

  I stared down at Jane's text as the elevator made its slow crawl up to the third floor. I had no idea what the hell was going on. I had called her and knocked on her door a few times the night before. Finally, around midnight, she sent the text. It was easy enough to interpret the words. She had not gotten the part after all.

  I was more than a little hurt that she hadn't wanted to see me. Somehow I'd managed to convince myself that I meant enough to her that she would come to me when she was hurting. I was sure unexpectedly losing the part was nothing short of devastating. I could only figure that the disappointment had been so terrible, she just didn't want any company. Not even mine.

  The work day had dragged on, and I never heard one word from her. I knew she had given up her job at Bulk Mart because of the movie role. That was probably weighing heavy on her mind. I hoped at least in that, she'd come to me for help.

  I stepped out of the elevator and a loud vacuum roared through the hallway. It took me a second to understand the scene in front of me. Jane's furniture was sitting along the wall in the corridor, and the door to her apartment was open.

  As I reached her apartment, Milo stepped out of it wearing his coveralls and carrying a bucket of cleaning supplies.

  "What the hell is going on? Where's Jane?"

  Milo's eyes were nearly lost in the bulk of his fat cheeks as he stared up at me with surprise. "Didn't she tell you? She left town. Moved out. She left me an envelope with the three months rent to pay off her lease and the keys to her apartment. By the time I got up here to find out what was going on, she was gone. Closet and bathroom shelv
es empty. She left the furniture. I guess she took just what she could fit in her car."

  None of what he was saying was making sense. Had I fucking misread everything about our relationship? I had never had someone who I counted on and who counted on me, but I thought that was the level we'd reached. Maybe I was just a big idiot in thinking she cared about me at all. I should have gotten my first hint when she wanted nothing to do with me after losing the movie part.

  I stood in the hallway stock-still as if someone had just thrown a fist in my face. I was stunned and hurt and feeling like a fool. Milo walked into the apartment and returned with a trash can. He set it down next to the cleaning bucket.

  My eyes swept down. A lemon yogurt container sat on the top and I thought about her sitting at the kitchen counter laughing about something while she ate her yogurt. It was going to take a long time to get the sound of her laugh out of my head.

  As I lifted my eyes, I noticed a pile of business cards had been jammed into the trash. I reached inside and pulled them out. They were identical copies of the same card. Russell Darby, talent agent. I rubbed my thumb over the embossed phone number a few times before deciding to make the call. Jane had talked fondly about her agent as if they were close friends. There was a good chance he wouldn't tell me a thing, but it would help me if I knew why she left without telling me.

  The phone rang and he picked up. "Hello, Darby Talent."

  "Hello, yes my name is Aidan Swift and I'm a friend of Jane's."

  "Yes," he said with a terse tone. "I know who you are."

  "All right." I cleared my throat. "Guess you've already formed an opinion of me, so I'm just going to ask you straight out. What the fuck is going on, and why did Jane leave town without a word?"

  Russell eased off the sharp tone, apparently deciding I wasn't the enemy after all. "She lost the part after the original actress slated for the movie decided she wanted it."

  "I figured she lost the part, but why didn't she tell me?"

  He hesitated. "Well, she was crying pretty hard and mumbling so I had a hard time hearing exactly what happened, but she said something about you and giggling women and a pair of shoes."

  "What the fuck?" I had forgotten about Diane’s and Bonnie's visit and the stupid gum shoes. But I was still lost. "They were women from work. One of them had stepped in gum on her way up to the apartment."

  "I guess in her despair, Jane jumped to conclusions. She knew you had a reputation with the ladies, and she had just come out of a relationship where her longtime boyfriend had been cheating on her."

  "She didn't even give me a chance to fucking explain. Where did she go?"

  "She went back home. She said she was done with the dream, and she was going to work at the bank. Believe me, I'm just as disappointed as you."

  "Yeah? I doubt that. At least you got to say good-bye. Thanks for filling me in." I hung up and pushed the phone into my pocket.

  I stopped in front of my door and stared at it. I could hear Milo shuffling in the hall behind me.

  "Hey, Milo," I said without turning around.

  "Yeah?"

  "You're going to need to order another door." Shards of paper thin wood flew around me as I plowed my fist right through it.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Jane

  Heather, the senior teller and perfectly suitable replacement for Horrible Hilda, tapped her long, pink nails against the counter. "I didn't see you count that twice. Let's stick to the rules, Jane." The only difference between the H named supervisors was that Heather was my age, much prettier than Hilda and she had actually gotten her guy, Kenneth Rowe, most popular guy in school, to the altar. I had also grown up with Heather Wagner, and in a small town that meant we knew just about everything there was to know about each other. We had always had a sort of one up-man-ship competition growing up. Most of the time, Heather had managed to come out on top. I had been senior class vice president to her president. She had graduated sixth in our class, and I was number seven. Something she never let me forget. When I had finally managed to beat her at something, namely the position of head cheerleader, I immediately broke my leg and lost the spot. Heather was runner up.

  I forced a grin and bit my lip to keep from saying anything. My mom was bank manager, and I was pretty sure that made Heather dislike me more because she knew I got the position because of family ties. It wasn't a position I wanted or coveted, but for the time being, it was a paycheck.

  I started to count the stack of money again. Thankfully, Heather walked into her office. Mom came in from a dentist appointment. She walked to her office and returned a few minutes later. "How are things this morning? Busy?"

  I glanced around at the empty bank. "We did have two customers. Oh, and Nelson's cow had twins. He was expecting one calf and was shocked when another set of hooves popped out." That was what my life had become, small talk about calves being born and scornful derision from an ex schoolmate who had been as much a friend as an enemy.

  "How was the dentist?"

  Mom waved in disgust. "I'm going to need a new crown in the back. And it's so expensive." She looked back toward the offices. "How is Heather treating you? I know there was always a little rivalry between you two."

  "A little rivalry? If I cut my hair, she went straight to the salon to cut hers. If she bought a new backpack, I made you take me into town for a new backpack. But now she has won, and I have no way to catch up. She even landed the senior class big man on campus."

  My mom leaned a little closer. "He's a big man all right. About thirty pounds too big. And he's going bald." She whispered the word bald as if it was a four letter word.

  "Mom, I think you're taking a little too much glee in a man going bald."

  She nodded. "You're right. Shame on me."

  I snuck a peek toward the office and looked back at her. "How bald?"

  Her smile popped back up, and she spoke with enthusiasm. "Big patch on the back and that forehead gets bigger every time I see him."

  She straightened and put on her professional tone when the door to the backroom opened. It was only Tara coming off break. Mom relaxed back to her mom tone. She even decided to straighten the collar on my shirt. "You know, Janey, the old Rowley place is up for sale. It's priced very low."

  I pulled the paper bands out of my draw to wrap the money. "Yes, that is because it's been on the market since I was twelve and since creepy Mr. Rowley keeled over in front of his porch steps. They normally put a low price on haunted houses. They just aren't top dollar properties."

  Mom huffed. "How ridiculous. That haunted rumor is just something you kids came up with in school. There is nothing scary about the place. It just needs some love and attention. Maybe Dad and I could help with that."

  "Since I grew up with a firm belief that the place was haunted, I wouldn't be inside for more than two minutes before I started hearing noises." I looked up at her. "Mom, I'm not sure if I'm ready to make Sheffield my permanent home. I love being near you and Dad again, but I don't think I want to make this bank my future."

  She twisted her lips slightly to let me know that I hurt her feelings with that statement.

  I put my hand on her arm. "I know you enjoy working here, but I don't think it's for me."

  "Well, after the disgusting way Brock treated you and then the incident with that second man, who was just as awful, I would think you'd be happy to be back with people you could trust."

  "I am, Mom. But face it, playing Monopoly with you and Dad on Saturday night is not exactly riveting. You know I love spending time with you guys but I need my own life. Besides, I don't know if that second man was being all that awful. He actually treated me very well. I felt safe with him. I was just in a bad way when everything happened and I ran. I needed to be home. Like you said, with people I could trust."

  She hugged me. "And people who love you more than life itself. Since Tara is back from break, why don't you go take your lunch. I packed you your favorite—peanut butter and raspber
ry jam."

  "Hmm, keep that kind of special treatment up and I might just stay with you and Dad forever."

  I finished locking up the money and headed into the break room. I went to my locker and pulled out my purse to check my phone. I wasn't sure why I bothered since there were never any texts or calls anymore. Guess it was a habit leftover from my independent adult life where I had dreams and future plans and hot men waiting for me at the apartment.

  Not a day had gone by that I didn't think about Aidan and how things should have turned out much better than they did. But self-implosion was sort of my thing, and once a fuse was lit I tended to go for the whole meltdown.

  I was thrilled to see I had a text from Russell, for no other reason except it reminded me of that former life when I’d thought I was on my way to being someone.

  "Call me first chance you get. Very important."

  I dialed his number, hoping his important news wasn't about his new lover or winning a weekend in Vegas. He picked up on one ring.

  "What took you so long?"

  "I was counting money . . . twice. What's up?"

  "Jonah, the casting director called me. I had left him a rather scathing voicemail to let him know that they had handled the whole thing very badly. He called back to apologize and let me know that they had been in discussion about taking you on for the number two role, Kelly's sister. It's a fairly big part, Jane. What do you say? Are you interested?"

  Of course the news sent sparks of excitement through me, but I quickly tamped them down. "I don't know, Russ. I don't think I can go through that kind of disappointment a second time. They'll just change their mind again. They are such a fickle bunch of asses."

  "Jonah says the part is yours if you want it, but I need to tell them by Friday."

  "That only gives me two days to decide."

  "Yep. Oh, and I forgot to mention, I had a little phone call from the big guy, your hunky neighbor. He called the day you left town. He was very upset. He said the women you heard leave his apartment were coworkers. You might have read that whole thing wrong because you were so distraught about losing the part."