Emancipating Andie

  He shrugged indifferently. “We wait. Someone will probably be down here any second now after that scream.” He smirked as he added, “Nice pipes, by the way.”

  Andie couldn’t help the frown that tugged at the corners of her mouth over his words. His lack of urgency bothered her. As did his flippant response. Not to mention the look he was giving her. It was a combination of amusement and condescension, that little smile still playing at his lips.

  He was dressed much more casually than anyone she’d seen so far upstairs: jeans and an open button-down over a fitted T-shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He was taller than she was, and while he didn’t look particularly bulky, she could see the definition of his chest through the thin fabric of his shirt. The cellar was too dim for her to pinpoint the color of his eyes, but she could tell they were light, and his hair, a sandy brown color, looked like it was in need of a cut; it flipped away from his forehead and the tops of his ears in little curls. As if he could read her mind, he ran his hand through it, tousling it in a way that made it look stylish instead of disheveled.

  Whatever this guy was willing to do, waiting was not an option for her; there was no way she was going to sit in the wine cellar with this stranger until Colin came to rescue her and she had to fumble through some feeble explanation as to why she was in the wine cellar in the first place. She turned and twisted the handle again. This time, she pulled back on the door so forcefully that a guttural grunt escaped her lips, and she heard him laugh behind her.

  Andie looked over her shoulder. “A little help would be nice,” she said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

  “When that door sticks, you can’t open it from the inside. Hence the doorstop that someone chose to ignore.”

  “Well excuse me for assuming a house like this would have functioning doors,” she snapped, irritated that he was mocking her. He didn’t even know her, for Christ’s sake.

  He grinned at her and Andie turned, balling up her fist and banging sharply on the door. The muted thudding rang through the space just as a dull ache shot up her arm, and she dropped her hand to her side, flexing her fingers.

  “No one’s gonna hear that, and you’re gonna hurt your hand,” he said, the amusement prevailing over the concern in his voice. “And for the record, I have no medical training. Although there’s plenty of wine, so I guess we could just get you drunk enough that you wouldn’t feel it.”

  Ignoring his taunts, she turned around and used the flat of her other hand, banging again. Andie knew he was right; it was fruitless. No one would hear her, and she probably would end up hurting her hand, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of conceding.

  “If you’re in such a rush to get back to the party, why don’t you just use your phone and call someone upstairs?”

  Yeah, she could just see how that conversation would go. “Hey Colin, it’s Andie. I locked myself in the wine cellar while I was snooping around your friend’s house. Can you come let me out?” Besides, her phone was in her purse. And she had checked her purse upstairs.

  Stupid, pretentious coat check.

  Andie turned around, folding her arms. “If I had my phone with me, do you think I’d be standing here abusing my hands on this door?”

  “Well I told you to stop, didn’t I?”

  She shot him a look and he laughed again. “Relax. Trust me, someone will want more wine eventually,” he said, walking toward the first shelf in the middle of the room. He sat on the floor with his back against it, his feet wide apart and flat on the floor in front of him. He rested his elbows on his knees as he looked up at her.

  “I’m Chase.”

  Realizing that she very well might be trapped with him for a while, she figured it was probably in her best interest to at least attempt civility, even though he seemed determined to get under her skin.

  “Andie,” she said before turning back toward the door and inspecting the doorknob, praying for some magic button that would set them free.

  “Andie, huh? Interesting,” he said, and then after a beat, “So, Andie, are you a friend of Justin’s? Or Stella’s?”

  She turned to look at him. The confusion must have been evident in her face, because he smiled slowly.

  “Justin and Stella? You know, the people who are hosting this party?”

  “Oh. No, I don’t…I’m here with Colin Tate,” she added by way of explanation, turning back toward the door and examining the hinge, trying to remember anything she could about the show MacGyver.

  “Colin’s here?”

  Andie spun quickly to face him, her eyebrows raised. “You know him?”

  “Of course I know him.”

  Yes, definitely in her best interest to attempt civility.

  “Oh.”

  A silence fell over them, and he smiled, running his hand through his hair again. “So, you and Colin? You guys are a thing?”

  With a resigned sigh she gave up, walking away from the door and over to one of the shelves against the wall, sitting cross-legged in front of it. “Not a thing. We’re dating.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Andie looked down with a shrug, feeling cautious since she had no idea how close he and Colin were. “It’s…new.”

  “Ah. Haven’t decided if you’re gonna bang him and bail yet?”

  She whipped her head up, an offended expression on her face, and he laughed, shifting his weight as he reached in his back pocket. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tapping them against his palm and then glancing up at her from under his lashes as he held the pack out to her.

  “No.”

  He chuckled, shaking his head as he held the pack to his mouth and removed a cigarette. “That’s rude, you know,” he said, the unlit cigarette wagging between his lips as he spoke.

  “What is?” she scoffed. “Declining a cigarette?”

  “No, that face you just made,” he said, pulling a lighter out of his pocket. “It’s like grimacing at someone’s food while they’re eating it.”

  “Well, if the food in question killed the person eating it, or anyone within breathing distance of it for that matter, then I’d say it’s perfectly acceptable to grimace.”

  He chuckled again as he held the lighter to the end of his cigarette, taking a long pull until the flame caught and the tip glowed orange. He put the lighter back in his pocket as he lithely pulled the cigarette from his lips with his thumb and forefinger, locking eyes with her as he blew the smoke out the side of his mouth, sending it away from her. “Just don’t breathe over there and I’m pretty sure you’ll survive.”

  Attempting civility was getting more and more difficult by the second.

  Andie began neurotically tapping her foot against the cemented floor. This guy was playing on her last nerve. Colin was probably back by now. He’d be looking for her. How would she ever explain this without looking like a complete idiot?

  “Is that your natural hair color?” Chase asked suddenly, and her eyes flashed to his as an incredulous laugh fell from her lips.

  “You’re gonna lecture me about being rude and then follow it up with that?”

  He shrugged, taking another drag of his cigarette. “It’s just an unusual combo. The blonde hair with the brown eyes,” he clarified, exhaling the smoke away from her again.

  He wasn’t the first person to say that to her, but he was definitely the first to preface it by questioning its authenticity. Andie looked up to see him watching her, waiting for an answer.

  She shifted her weight on the hard floor. “My dad’s German and my mom’s Greek.”

  “Good to know,” he said, “but that doesn’t answer my question.”

  Andie rolled her eyes with an exasperated sigh. “Yes, it’s my natural color, okay? My mom has black hair and brown eyes, and my dad is the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nordic poster boy. Put them together and you get me,” she said, gesturing toward herself. “Anything else you want to know?”

  He laughed, and it annoyed her
more than it should have that she couldn’t deter him. “Since you’re offering,” he said, “what are you doing down here?”

  “Huh?”

  He smiled. “I said, what are you doing down here? Why’d you come down to the wine cellar by yourself? The bar’s upstairs.”

  “I was just…” She trailed off, looking back at the door, willing it to open with her mind.

  “Just snooping around?”

  “What? No!” she said as she looked back at him, horrified. He was smirking at her, the cigarette dangling between his lips.

  “Why are you down here?” she challenged.

  He removed the cigarette from his mouth and held it up by way of explanation.

  “You came down here to smoke? Shouldn’t you go outside for that? I’m sure the owners of the house wouldn’t appreciate what you’re doing.”

  “Me and the owner of this house—whose name is Mitch, by the way—used to sneak down here all the time for a smoke when I was in high school, since he was hiding it from his wife at the time. So yeah, I think he’d be fine with me grabbing a quick smoke down here. But I’m sure he’d appreciate your concern for his house.”

  Andie grit her teeth together, looking away from him. She hated feeling stupid, and it seemed like, for whatever reason, it was his goal to make her feel that way. She couldn’t understand how this guy was a friend of Colin’s. Granted, she hadn’t known Colin long at all, but it just didn’t seem to fit.

  “How do you know Colin?” she asked, trying to sound conversational instead of accusatory.

  “We went to high school together. Played soccer together. We ran in the same circles.” He shrugged, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth. “You?”

  “Me? Me what?”

  “How do you know Colin?”

  “Oh. I met him at a friend’s barbecue,” she said.

  “And won him over with your easygoing charm?”

  Andie glared at him as she stood, pacing in front of the shelf. She needed to get back upstairs. Now.

  “God, how long has it been?” she asked, running both hands through her hair.

  “Relax,” he said through a laugh. “Here.” He shifted, reaching in his back pocket again.

  “I said I didn’t want a cigarette.”

  “I’m not giving you a cigarette, sweetheart.”

  Andie whirled on him. Sweetheart? Before she could even react, he tossed something at her, and she brought her hands up quickly, fumbling with it for a second before she looked down and realized what it was.

  A cell phone.

  She should have been happy, but instead, she was furious. “You’ve had this the whole time?” she asked, completely appalled. “Why the hell didn’t you give it to me before?”

  He shrugged, flicking the ashes off his cigarette before he lifted his eyes to hers. “You were entertaining me.”

  She felt heat curling in her belly as her fist clenched around the phone, and just as she opened her mouth, two muffled bangs sounded outside the door before it flew open, nearly slamming into the wall with the force. A couple stood in the doorway, and the woman immediately looked contrite, holding her hand up.

  “Oh my God, we’re so sorry…we didn’t mean to interrupt…”

  “Not at all.” Andie cut her off before she turned to throw the phone back to Chase, using a bit more force than was necessary. He caught it easily in one hand, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth as he looked back up at her.

  “Nice to meet you, Andie,” he called as she turned to walk out the door.

  “You too,” she forced out as she passed the couple, giving them an amiable smile. As she turned the corner, Andie added under her breath, “Asshole.”

  Present Day

  CHAPTER ONE

  The sound of her phone ringing danced around the edges of her concentration as her fingers moved feverishly over the keyboard, the tiny rapid clicking providing a gentle soundtrack for her thoughts. She was, as they say, in the zone; words were spilling like an avalanche down the page in front of her. Opportunities like this were rare; it seemed that whenever she was moved to write, it would be somewhere inconvenient, like in the back room of the restaurant or in line at the grocery store. And as much as she would try to keep the fire ablaze until she could get to her computer, or at the very least, a pen and paper, most of the time the inspiration would extinguish long before then. And then there were the times that she did have a stretch of time laid out before her, uninterrupted, where she could sit down with her thoughts, plan her words, craft them and build them, but those were usually the days she sat staring at the computer screen, at a blinking cursor that seemed to taunt her with every flash.

  But not today.

  Today the gods smiled down upon Andie Weber, and she was lucky enough to have her muse and some time alone.

  If only the stupid phone would stop ringing.

  “Damn it,” she mumbled as the phone rang for the third time, and she reached behind her, slapping around for it, her eyes glued to the screen as she reread the sentence she’d just written.

  “Yeah?” she said absently, holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder as she brought her hands back to the keyboard.

  “Hey babe, where were you?” Colin asked.

  “Sorry, I was in the middle of something,” she said, finishing up a thought.

  “You on the computer?” he asked, obviously hearing the manic clicking of the keys.

  “Huh?” Her fingers slowed as she started to focus on the conversation. “Oh. Yeah.”

  “What are you doing that’s got you so absorbed?”

  “Oh, just…invoices and payroll stuff.”

  “You know, I used to think owning a restaurant was glamorous before I met you.”

  Andie laughed. “Ah, but you forget, I don’t own it. My dad does.”

  “Yeah, but we both know you’re the one who runs that place.”

  She sighed, pulling the last of her attention away from the computer, and he chuckled softly.

  “I won’t keep you then. I just wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “What’s going on?” she asked, leaning over to the coffee table and grabbing her cup of tea.

  “Do you remember my friend Chase? You met him a while back. The night of Justin’s engagement party.”

  “Um, yeah, I think so,” Andie said, rolling her eyes. Of course she remembered him. Colin had introduced her to Chase when they ran into him at the bar upstairs a little later in the evening that night. He had shaken her hand and said how nice it was to meet her, as if it were actually their first time meeting, as if they hadn’t been at each other’s throats in the wine cellar only an hour earlier. But there was some consistency with him at least; the overt sarcasm and the offhanded attitude from the wine cellar were still intact.

  Andie had never admitted to Colin what she thought of Chase. At the time, their relationship was so new, and she didn’t want to turn him off by bad-mouthing one of his friends. And then, as she and Colin grew closer, Chase became a distant memory. According to Colin, even though Chase kept an apartment in New York, he moved around a lot, having some flighty, fly-by-night job as a freelance photographer. So even though his name came up now and again in conversation, she hadn’t yet had the pleasure of becoming reacquainted with him.

  “Well, he’s back in New York again,” Colin said. “He wasn’t gonna be able to make it to Justin’s wedding—some kind of conflict with his job, I guess. But turns out, he can go now.”

  “Great,” Andie said casually, her eyes scanning the document in front of her.

  “But of course, since it’s this weekend, he would get raked over the coals trying to get a plane ticket to Tampa now. So I was thinking…” He trailed off.

  Andie froze. “You were thinking…?” she goaded, although she was pretty sure she already knew exactly what he was going to say.

  “That since you’re driving down, he could get a ride with you.”

  She didn’t say a
nything.

  After a few seconds of silence, Colin spoke again. “You know I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of you driving—”

  “I don’t fly, Colin,” she said, cutting him off.

  “Yes, I know that, but I don’t like that you’re driving alone. And if I didn’t have so many groomsman obligations down there this week, you know I’d drive down with you. But now Chase can go with you, so it works out for everyone.”

  “I don’t need anyone to drive with me. I don’t want anyone to.”

  It was his turn to be silent, and Andie chewed the inside of her lip, realizing she sounded like a petulant child. To Colin, her reaction probably seemed completely irrational and bratty; he had no idea that she didn’t like Chase. In his mind, he was just asking her to do a favor for a friend, a favor he thought would help her out in the process. And while she could explain to him how she felt about Chase, as the words played out in her mind, they seemed so petty and immature now.

  What could she say? He was sarcastic with me? He made fun of me for locking myself in the wine cellar? He asked me if I was a real blonde?

  There was no good reason for her to say no. She was cornered, and she knew it.

  “Sorry,” Andie said sheepishly. “You’re right. It’s probably better for me to have someone with me.” She nearly choked on the lie. “We can drive down together if he wants.”

  “Great!” Colin said, the smile back in his voice. “This makes me feel so much better, Andie. You guys will have fun. Plus, he’ll throw in for gas, and now you’ll have some company.”

  “Great,” she said with feigned enthusiasm, immediately changing the subject so he wouldn’t hear the displeasure in her voice. “What time is your flight tomorrow morning?”

  “Ten.”

  “Alright, so we should probably leave here around seven. Are you on your way over?”

  “I have to finish up a few things, get everything in order for when I’m gone this week. Give me about an hour.”

  “Okay. I’ll have dinner ready.”

  “I love when you get all June Cleaver.”

  Andie laughed, forgetting for the moment how irritated she was.