He has not so much as given her a glance. “I know you get off on bossing me around and stuff, but just drop it right now, okay? I’m not in the mood.”
This, a role reversal and a tossing of her own words back in her face, stuns her so much she gets to her feet without another word. She can’t find any. A breath hisses out of her, but she presses her lips closed to cut it off.
“Just because I submit to you doesn’t mean you get to tell me what to do all the time or how to live my life,” Reese says. “You don’t always know what’s best for me.”
Corinne blinks back tears. “I didn’t realize you felt that way.”
“Well. I do.”
“I’m sorry.” It’s all she can manage to get out, but the words taste wrong. Everything about this is wrong.
Everything between them has gone wrong, and she can’t do anything about it.
“Will you be home later?” she asks, chin lifted, words gritting out of her, because she refuses to let him see her cry.
“I’m staying here tonight.”
“And tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” Reese says with a shrug. She’s never seen him be so cold; she didn’t know he was capable of it, though she shouldn’t be so surprised.
“When do you think you’ll know?” She hates herself for asking, for pressuring, but she can’t help it.
“Shit, Corinne. I have no idea, okay? I have stuff to do here.”
She nods, once, sharply. “Fine.”
Downstairs, she puts the takeout in the fridge. The sound of him in the doorway turns her in relief. He’ll apologize, they’ll talk about things…it’s going to be okay.
“Come with me,” Reese says.
Corinne crosses her arms. They’ve talked about this already. He wants to move out of Lancaster, where she’s still going to school. Where she has a job and a place to live. Where she will be working in a few months when she finishes her classes and starts with Stein and Sons, who were good enough to hire her before she got her degree.
“Where will we go?”
“Anywhere we want. Just out of this cow-shit-smelling town.”
“And what are you going to do,” Corinne says, a chill in her voice colder than the temperature outside. “Tap dance on the streets for cash? What?”
“I can get work.”
“You haven’t so far,” she says and knows she’s being cruel.
Reese could take the few steps across the frigid kitchen to take her in his arms, but he doesn’t. “If I could just get out of here—”
“What’s so bad about here?”
“Everything!” Reese’s shout echoes in the kitchen. “Everything here is shit.”
She shakes her head. “Not everything. I’m here. We’re here together.”
“I want more than this, Corinne.”
More than this. More than her. More than them.
She has nothing left to say.
He doesn’t stop her from leaving. He doesn’t call for two days. When finally she breaks down and calls him, leaving a message on the answering machine, she tells him to come to see her at the diner. It will be her last day there, she tells him. She’s going to take the next few weeks before the new job starts to get everything else in order. She’s going to be there for him, is the unspoken promise, though what she says aloud is that if he doesn’t want this to work, if he doesn’t show, then they’re over. If he doesn’t come to meet her at the diner, he should never bother to call her, ever again.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Corinne’s office door was closed.
Reese didn’t knock, but instead went to his own office and closed his. There wasn’t much for him to do here. The staff that had been in place to handle the production had been doing a great job, and the new staff he’d hired to be in charge of distribution to the new markets would be coming on before the end of the month. The two new specialists who’d take over the creation, testing, and implementation of brand-new specialty products were also due to come onboard in the next couple weeks. At this point, Stein and Sons was going to succeed or fail, and him being on-site in Lancaster was not going to make much of a difference. Not to the business, anyway. Reese thought it would make every difference in his relationship.
At the soft rap on his door, he looked up. “Come in.”
He thought it might be Sandy, but Corinne came through looking as smoothly confident as she always did. She had a stack of papers in her hands. She set them on the desk.
“Résumés for the office manager position. I thought you’d like to see them. I’ve gone ahead and had Sandy schedule the top prospects for next week, but if you want to be around for them, or if you have other suggestions…” She waited, expectant.
“No, I’m sure you’ve done a great job. You’ll be working with them, anyway. Not me.”
Her expression was neutral, but that didn’t fool him. “Right. Well, anyway, those are your copies. Feel free to shred them or whatever you’d like. I’m going to the break room. Can I get you anything?”
“You don’t have to bring my coffee, Corinne.”
She let a small smile slip through. “I know I don’t have to.”
“Corinne, will you sit?”
She did. Her hands folded in her lap. She met his gaze straight on, but somehow managed to make him feel as though she were looking past and through him, not at him.
Reese frowned. “We should talk.”
“About?”
Damn it. “About Sunday.”
“Oh, Sunday, you mean two days ago, Sunday? Two days ago since I heard from you, that Sunday?”
“Stop it,” Reese said sharply.
She sighed. “This is not the place for this.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. “But I’m not going to let this go. So get your things, I’m taking you out for lunch.”
“It’s ten thirty.”
“I don’t care, we need to talk about this, and I’m not going to wait.” He stood.
She stood too. “Fine.”
* * * * *
They didn’t talk about what had happened in his apartment or in the office on the way over to the diner. Corinne had sung along with the radio though, the windows down and the wind whipping her hair into a glorious disarray. She was so beautiful it made everything inside him hurt.
He wanted this to work. He didn’t know if he could make it. He’d spent his life rebuilding businesses that were failing; sometimes, that meant breaking them apart to get at the only parts that could be saved and letting all the rest go. Sometimes, it had meant totally getting rid of everything.
Relationships were not businesses, Reese thought as he watched the woman he loved spoon sugar into her coffee.
Corinne tucked a bite of toast into her mouth and sat back in the diner booth with a sigh. “God. I can’t stuff a single more bite into my gullet, I will explode. At the very least, I’ll bust the seams of this skirt.”
“I’ll finish yours.” He was already pulling her plate toward him. He’d eaten next to nothing since she’d walked out the door of his apartment on Sunday. He was voracious now.
Watching him, Corinne let her foot nudge him again beneath the table. He chewed. Swallowed. His foot nudged hers back.
Reese wiped his mouth with a napkin and leaned forward to take both her hands in his. She didn’t curl her fingers into his grip at first, but softened after a second or so. He smiled, but she didn’t smile back.
“This might not be the place,” she began and tried to tug her hands from his, but Reese kept his grip tight enough to dissuade her.
“It’s where I met you for the first time,” he said quietly. “And it’s where you told me to meet you for the last time, but I didn’t show. I think this is exactly the place to have this talk.”
Corinne shook her head. “No. I don’t want to cry here in public.”
“I don’t want you to cry at all,” Reese said.
She studied him. Again, her grip in his eased before she turned
her hands to fully link their fingers. Reese let his thumbs stroke over the backs of her hands, but said nothing. After a moment or so, Corinne withdrew her fingers from his grasp. This time, he let her.
“It’s been a long time,” she said finally. “Maybe we ought to let it go. We had our little thing, but it doesn’t mean—”
“Little thing? Let it go?” he interrupted. “Shit, no, Corinne. That’s not what I want.”
She had been the first and last woman Reese had ever gone to his knees for, but he was not the same man he’d been when they had last been together. She was not the same woman. He ran a hand through his hair, winced at how stiff it felt.
“Why did you come back here?” she demanded with a wave of her hand. “Surely there were other companies you could’ve bought. Other women you could’ve fucked. You didn’t have to…you didn’t…”
Her voice caught, and she straightened. Her eyes glistened, but she’d managed to keep the tears from falling. She shook herself, then spoke in a low tone to keep anyone around them from overhearing.
“I love the way you submit to me. Do you understand that?”
Reese swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“I like to believe…I need to believe, Reese, that you love it too.”
“I do, Corinne.”
“My question to you is, does it go beyond the bedroom?”
Reese coughed, taken aback. “I’m not sure I know what you’re getting at.”
“Do you want to submit to me only in the bedroom?”
Stupidly, he tried to make a joke. “Any room is fine with me.”
She didn’t laugh. “You do as I tell you to do when your cock is hard, but that’s all. Right?”
“That’s not really fair.”
“But it’s true.” She didn’t sound angry. She sounded…resigned. “If I ordered you to sell your apartment in Philadelphia, to move here, would you do it?”
“I… Shit, Corinne. I don’t know. No,” Reese said. “Is that what you want? To order me?”
“That’s the whole point. I don’t want to order you. I want you to choose a life with me. The way you didn’t, the first time around.” She turned her coffee mug around and around in her hands, but didn’t drink.
Reese pinched the bridge of his nose. “You want me to move here.”
“I want you to be happy,” she said quietly.
“It’s not that far, you know. We could—”
“When I hurt you,” Corinne interrupted calmly, “it’s always knowing that it’s my job to make sure it’s not too much. I have the responsibility of making sure we don’t go too far. That you’re going to be okay. When I command you, when you obey, it’s always my job to make sure I don’t ask of you what you cannot do. Do you remember?”
He did. “You might ask me to do what I think I can’t do, or what I think I don’t want to, but you won’t ask me to do what I absolutely can’t do. I remember.”
She looked sad. “It doesn’t only apply in the bedroom. We don’t need a notarized contract. I don’t ever need to put you in a collar, or on a leash. But in this relationship, whether you are naked and on your knees for me or not, it will still always be my job to make sure I don’t ask of you what you cannot do.”
“What makes you think I can’t do this?” Reese asked.
Her answer was a long, calm stare he couldn’t interpret. “I need to get back to the office.”
She was quiet in the car ride. No singing. No windows cracked to let in the breeze. When they got there, she left him behind and went into her office, closing the door firmly enough to let him know he would not be welcome to come inside.
An hour later, her resignation letter arrived via email.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Corinne had, of course, given the minimum two weeks’ notice. Four would’ve been better, but there was no way she could’ve lasted in the office with Reese. She hadn’t needed to worry. He didn’t come in to the office at all.
There’d been no going away party, no cake, no engraved watch to commemorate her service to Stein and Sons. As far as she knew, none of the previous owners even knew that she’d quit. The last she’d heard, the group of them had been planning to go on a family cruise, spending the money Reese had paid them. None of the new staff had even started. She’d promoted Sandy from secretary to office manager before she left, and the two of them had gone out for a celebratory lunch, but it had been strained and a little awkward.
“I’m okay,” she told Caitlyn over glasses of wine and a platter of cheese and crackers. “Really. He gave me a huge raise when he came on, remember? I have money put away. I have three interviews lined up. I’ll get another job. You don’t have to worry.”
Her sister frowned. “I’m hardly worried about you getting a job. Okay, maybe a little, because if we’re both out of work, that could be bad. But that’s not really what I’m worried about, and you know it.”
“I feel very much at peace.” Corinne ate a piece of cheese, then spread another with some spicy mustard and ate that, too. “You can’t make someone love you, or choose you, and I didn’t want to even try to force him.”
“You didn’t even want to think about a long-distance relationship? Philadelphia isn’t that far away.” Caitlyn also ate a piece of cheese.
“It’s far enough. Sure, could we have tried it out? I guess so. Doing every other weekend. Talking on the phone during the week. Seeing each other whenever we could. Anything that’s worthwhile takes work. Being together would’ve taken extra work. Not impossible. But once again, here it is, days later and not a word from him. How long should I wait?”
“You can’t give up,” Caitlyn said.
Corinne shrugged. “Sure I can.”
“You don’t want to give up. You love him.”
“And?” Corinne shook her head. “So what?”
“If you just told him,” her sister began, but cut off at the sight of Corinne’s expression.
“He knows. He’s always known. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter.”
Caitlyn was silent for a moment. “You can’t mean that.”
“He broke my heart once. Should I let him break it again? Let him go break someone else’s heart. I don’t have anything left.” Corinne’s phone buzzed with an alert she wasn’t expecting, and frowning, she swiped the screen to see a message from her credit union app. “What the… Oh. No.”
Caitlyn craned her neck to see. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Someone made a deposit into my account.” She showed her sister the screen. The amount was enough to make Caitlyn choke on the cube of cheese she’d been eating. Corinne gave her sister a grim smile. “Yeah. Right?”
“From him?”
“Who else could it be from?” She shook her head, already thumbing in his number. “I have to tell him I’m not taking it.”
“Are you crazy? With that kind of money you don’t need to work for a long time! If you don’t want it, give it to me!”
Corinne gave her sister a look. “Forget it. He thinks this is all about money? Fuck that.”
“Don’t do anything crazy,” Caitlyn said. “From what you said, five hundred smackers is like something he sneezes into a tissue and throws away.”
“Oh, that’s so gross.” Corinne grimaced. Reese wasn’t picking up. She didn’t leave a voicemail.
She didn’t have to, though, because a minute later, her phone buzzed again, this time with a text.
At the diner.
Meet me?
Then, a few seconds later, before she had time to answer…
Please.
Chapter Forty
Tony had brought along his tablet instead of a pile of folders. Reese preferred the paperwork so he could flip through it, take notes. Papers were physical and tactile. They felt more permanent.
He scrolled through the various pages. There wasn’t much to note. At this point, the businesses in his portfolio, including Stein and Sons, were all running smoothly without needing any input from hi
m—that was the point of it all, really. Hire good people to take over, and he could sit back and reap the benefits without having to be the guy overseeing every little detail.
“Coffee?” That rockabilly pinup waitress was back with eyes only for Tony.
Tony grinned and held out his cup. Reese rolled his eyes at the obvious simpering between the two of them, but waited until she’d gone before he tapped the tablet screen. “So, are you two a thing, or what?”
“We are not a thing. We are now, officially, partners.” Tony gestured at the diner. “I’m buying this place.”
Reese’s jaw dropped. “What the hell? Are you quitting?”
“Do I have to? I mean, especially now?” Tony frowned.
“No. Of course not. I mean, if you can own and run a diner and work for me, more power to you.” Reese blinked, still surprised.
“Gretchen’s going to run it. I’m the money man. She has the practical experience.”
“Sounds like you’re going to make a good team,” Reese said.
Tony shrugged, looking kind of irritated instead of happy. “That’s what I think, but that girl is hard, man. She is hard like…like concrete.”
“To work with?”
“To be with,” Tony said with a scowl.
Reese’s brow furrowed, confused. “So…you are or are not a thing? I mean a dating thing.”
“I have no idea what we are. I’m a damned booty call.” Tony crumpled up a paper napkin and writhed a little in the diner booth, letting his head fall back with a groan. “She makes me crazy. This deal is taking forever to go through. I’m in a hell of my own making, man, and the worst part is, I could get out of it, and I don’t.”
Reese laughed. Tony gave him the finger. Reese laughed harder, though he softened his hilarity out of respect for Tony’s clearly despairing situation.
“Can we get back to me?” Reese asked. “You know, business at hand?”
Tony waved a languid hand. “Yeah, yeah. Everything’s under control. I handled all of it, just like you wanted. Some final paperwork needs to come through, but all the i’s are crossed and t’s are dotted.”
“Good. Thank you. Now, get lost.”