“My dad told me he relates to Tywin Lannister. He’s like, ‘No, it’s hard being the head of the family!’ ”
–Overheard at Comic-Con
The next morning, everything is perfectly normal. Except I can’t quite look Beast in the eye, I barely slept, and the guilt hanging around my neck is heavier than the Eye of Agamotto.
We cook foil-wrapped eggs and sausage in the firepit, spend a couple of early morning hours on the beach—sans games—and then before lunch, everyone helps take down the campsite for the trek back to Blue Falls.
We could only stay the one night because nearly everyone has obligations back in town. Except me and Beast. We don’t have to work until tomorrow night.
Beast. My heart stutters as I shove my sleeping bag into an impossibly smaller bag.
How could I have ruined everything so terribly? What was I thinking? I stomp my feet into the dirt, hauling some of my bags out to where the guys are repacking Fitz’s truck.
He’s inexperienced. Naïve. I’m like the older, more experienced woman taking advantage of—
My brain short-circuits as Beast lifts the camp box and the cooler stacked together in one mighty heft, the muscles in his shoulders bunching under his shirt.
Okay. Maybe he can’t really be taken advantage of, but still. I shouldn’t have instigated a sexual situation with him. Or continued it. Or brought it to its inevitable conclusion. Not when I’m leaving. Not when it isn’t fair to either of us. Now we can’t be friends, despite our awkward agreement last night. It isn’t possible. And it’s my fault.
Last night.
Memories of his hands on my breasts, teasing my nipples with his wide thumbs, send an avalanche of heat rushing through me.
“Are you okay?” Reese frowns. “You look flushed.”
“I’m fine.” I toss my camp gear down and race back to my tent before my traitorous face gives everything away.
I attempt to take down the tent on my own, tugging at the stakes someone has pummeled into the ground with supreme, immovable force. I take out all my aggression in my attempts to pull the items from the earth, but it’s useless. I’m weak and pathetic.
And then Beast is next to me, reaching down, pulling the offensive item out with little more than a tug.
I take a few deep breaths and watch him yank out the remaining stakes like he’s done this a thousand times.
I focus my gaze in the direction of the campsite, but I can’t see the others from here, although occasional bits of conversation and laughter reach me through the trees.
And then Beast is in front of me.
He gives me the sign for okay, his pointer and thumb creating a circle while the remaining fingers are lifted up, a question in his eyes.
“I’m okay,” I say, my voice whisper-soft.
And then without warning, his arms are around me and I’m surrounded by the most overwhelming and somehow tender embrace I’ve ever received. It lasts a second, maybe two, and then he pulls back, his hands still on my shoulders.
Our eyes lock and he smiles.
It’s a forced smile. Doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Nothing like the beauty he revealed last night on the beach, but . . . it’s something. And because of that, I know it will all be okay.
Not the same, not even close to what my heart and body demand. But it will be okay.
“Granny, we’re home!” Grace calls out as we thump into the house, unloading our bags in the entry.
It’s quiet and empty. Just the ticking of the old cuckoo clock in the corner.
“Maybe she’s out in the barn.” My eyes alight on something bright and red hanging on the banister.
Grace’s footsteps tap away toward the kitchen and I head to the stairs, reaching for the item just as I realize what it is.
It’s a bra. It’s lacy and red. And it’s not mine. It can’t be Grace’s. Only Granny has the rack for it. Grace’s plodding footsteps stop and then increase in volume. She’s coming this way. I snatch the red piece of lingerie, hiding it behind my back as I face her.
“What was that?” she asks.
“What? Nothing.”
One hip juts out and her hand rests on it. “Why are you hiding a bra?”
“I’m not hiding anything.”
“You suck at lying. Fine.” She ducks around me and grabs it before I can blink. “Holy crap, who’s is that?”
“Uh. Mine.”
She snorts. “Your boobs are not that big. Is that Granny’s? Why is it down here?”
I snatch it back. “It’s none of our business.”
“I can’t believe Granny has a boyfriend. So that’s where she’s been disappearing to almost every night.” Her eyes gleam as they meet mine. “We should spy on her.”
“No spying.”
I run up the stairs.
Grace stomps up behind me. “Oh, come on. I bet it’s old Mr. Thompson. She says she doesn’t like bald men but she’s always telling him what to do. I think she likes bossing him around.” She gasps and the sound is so loud I stop on the middle of the stairs and turn to check on her.
“What?” I ask.
She’s halted on the step, eyes wide, hand on her chest. “Maybe she bosses him around in the bedroom,” she whispers, lifting her brows with mock horror. I roll my eyes and keep going up the stairs while she bursts into laughter behind me. “You should see your face.”
I toss the offending garment through Granny’s door and it lands on the floor somewhere with a whisper of fabric.
Time for a subject change.
“I’m showering first!” I holler and beeline to the bathroom, but Grace is closer and hustles inside, shutting the door on my face before I can stop her.
“You suck!” I yell.
Her response is loud laughter. “I’ll be fast.”
“Yeah right.” I head downstairs. I’ll find Granny while I’m waiting three years for the shower.
She’s out back in the shade of the awning, relaxing in a rocking chair, feet up on the patio table, smoking something that definitely isn’t a cigarette.
I clear my throat and her feet whip down, hand shoving the joint down under her chair in a delayed attempt to hide it.
“Granny,” I say, ready to give her the same lecture the doctor gave her at her last appointment.
“Oh, hey Fred girl.” She’s all innocent smiles. “Glad you made it back. Earlier I was feeling a little,” she coughs, “afflicted, you know, stressed out. And it’s not good to make my blood pressure rise, doctor’s orders. So we should make sure we don’t talk about anything . . . troubling.”
“Uh-huh.” This is her way of avoiding the topic. So I move on to the next. “I found your bra on the banister.”
“Hmmm.” She’s still stubbing out her joint under the chair and pretending like I can’t see it.
“I put it in your room.”
“That’s mighty kind of you, Fred girl. Are you hungry? I’m smoking a brisket.”
“That’s not all your smoking,” I mutter.
She gives me the stink eye and then leans back in the rocking chair. “Where’s little Miss Grace?”
“In the shower.”
She doesn’t say anything else about the random bra left lying around and I can’t ask her, now can I?
She asks about camping and I sit on the porch with her, relaying the basics. Then we discuss dinner and what needs to be done around the farm.
Behind me, inside the house, the phone rings. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it ring. I didn’t even know people still had landlines until I came here. It sits up on the wall, attached to a base. It even has a cord, like some 1990s sitcom.
“Oh, that’s right,” Granny says. “Someone from New York called for you. That’s likely them now.”
I stand. It’s still ringing. “Who is it?”
“Someone for an interview. They tried your cell first. Told them you would be out of range until today.”
“Was it an accounting firm?” But that interview isn’t until next week.
“No, it was something else.” She squints. “Some comic store or something.”
Not a comic store, Comix, the restaurant chain.
Mumbling a curse, I race inside to grab the phone, which is miraculously still ringing. “Hello?”
“Hi, is this Fredericka Klein?”
“This is she.” I twist the receiver away from my mouth, keeping the top part on my ear so I don’t pant down the line.
“This is Amber Hoover from the Comix group. How are you doing?”
“I’m great.” I am not great. This is terrible. A nightmare come to life.
“I’m so glad I was able to reach you. Do you have a few minutes to talk with us today?”
Amber sounds way too happy and upbeat. Doesn’t she realize I’m dying inside? She keeps talking and I try to listen, but my heart is hammering and nerves are turning my stomach to mush. They want to interview me. Right now.
“This is just a preliminary,” she says, her voice barely intelligible through the thundering of my pulse. “No pressure, just wanted to get a feel for the type of ideas you can bring to the table.”
“Right, of course, no problem.” I push out the words around a thick tongue. Of course I have to agree, I can hardly say no.
“So this is just a quick exercise to see what you’ve got and how well you can come up with ideas under pressure. For this example, let’s say you have to pick one central theme for multiple venues and convince our marketing team to develop the concept. What would you use and how would you sell it?”
My mind is blank. This is impossible. This is like asking me to . . . cut down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring.
A light bulb illuminates over my head.
“Blessed are the cheesemakers.”
A confused laugh in my ear. “What?”
My heart sinks. Either I’m too nerdy even for Comix, or Comix are a bunch of posers hiring the nerd-illiterate Ambers of the world.
Ten minutes later, I hang up and barely remember the entirety of the interview. What did they ask? What did I say? Was it coherent? Who knows?
All I can recall is that Grace came into the kitchen at one point, made faces at me, and then emulated whatever I was saying in a high-pitched, shrieky voice.
What have I done?
“How did it go?” Grace asks when I swing open the door to her room. She’s sitting where she usually is, at her desk, tapping away at the computer.
“Terrible.” I flop backward onto her bed.
“Yeah. It sounded pretty bad.”
I grab some of her pillows and press them on top of my face, groaning into the fabric.
“Those pillows bothering you?” Grace asks without turning around.
“They’re not suffocating me fast enough.”
She snorts. “At least mine don’t have faces on them. Yours are weird.”
She’s referring to the Supernatural pillowcase Scarlett got me for Christmas. I yank one of the pillows off my face. She’s still got her back to me, but she’s turned her head to the side. At least my mortal demise made her move that much. “You’re too young to truly understand the allure of sleeping with Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki under one’s cheek. But I will teach you, young padawan.”
“Whatever.” Her attention goes back to the computer, lines of indecipherable code scrolling across the screen. Probably something nefarious that she shouldn’t be doing.
I glance around the room. It was Scarlett’s, once upon a time, but Grace has made it her own. It’s not what one might expect from a fourteen-year-old girl. No posters on the walls, only a few pictures of her with Beast and Jude. There’s one of all of us from this past Christmas. The desk is a mess of computer parts, a motherboard, CPU, an extra processing case. More stuff I couldn’t identify if someone paid me.
“So what did you hear? I think I blacked out most of the conversation.”
She turns her head again and scrunches her nose. “You said something about the Spanish Inquisition?”
I groan and cover my face again.
“What were you talking about?”
“They wanted an on-the-spot pitch, and I think I was trying to sell them on a chain of Monty Python–themed restaurants.”
“Who?”
I groan and cover my face again. “Come on, Grace, it’s a British comedy troupe. Their movies are on Netflix!”
“Yeah, sounds great. I also heard you rambling about elderberries.”
I wave a hand in the air. “That’s still Monty Python.”
“Interesting.” But her tone is flat and bored.
I sit up, the pillows tumbling onto the bed around me. “I’m awful at interviewing in person, but on the phone it’s worse. I thought I was being somewhat funny, but you can’t read the room over the phone. Maybe they were smiling, maybe they were making throat slashing motions, I will never know.”
There’s no way they are going to hire you. Delores Umbridge is back. You have little experience and an entirely useless degree.
I mentally flip Delores off and wallow on Grace’s bed some more, listening to her clicking away.
Something nearby beeps and Grace shuffles around. Her chair squeaks. “Beast isn’t coming over until after dinner. He’s doing something for Jude right now, but he’s staying the night because I wanted him to come with me to my appointment in the morning.”
This explains why Beast stays the night and is never here when I wake up in the late mornings or early afternoons after a shift. He wakes up early to go with Grace to her appointments. It’s so sweet but . . . isn’t he exhausted? He’s continually doing things for her and Jude, putting all their wants ahead of his own—even sleep takes a back seat.
I shake my head.
Let it go. None of my business.
“Oh. Great.” I sit up. I better go . . . do something with myself. I’m probably a mess.
My tone must betray me because she cocks her head at me. “Is something going on with you guys?”
“What? No. What do you mean?” I smooth down my hair. My voice is high and squeaky. I am terrible at prevarication.
She swivels in the chair to face me.
Uh-oh. Not good.
“This morning when we were packing up camp, I saw Beast hug you. But it was like a weird hug.”
“Um, he was trying to make me feel better. About my job search. I got some other rejections. Before the other one, just now.” I wince in an effort to seem upset. She’s going to see right through this.
Her head tilts. “Oh. Yeah. I guess he would understand.” She swivels back around and resumes her tapping.
My ears perk at this possible new information on the enigma that is Beast. “He would?”
She shrugs, still typing. “Yeah. He applied to a culinary place in Dallas last year. Got rejected.”
This is news. Annabel and Reese don’t know he actually applied somewhere. But it makes me wonder, would he be open to moving? Would Grace be okay with him leaving?
“He didn’t try again?”
The tapping stops. “I . . . I guess not.”
“Don’t you think he should reapply?”
“The culinary science degree at BFU is good.” She shrugs. “Besides, we like it here. It’s home, and we’ve never had that.”
Grace uses a lot of “we” speak, as if she and Beast are a unit instead of two separate people. Did she convince him not to apply anywhere else?
We’re silent for a little while, Grace doing something illegal, me trying to figure out a way to get her to drop more information.
“Beast cooked for you a lot when you were growing up?” I ask.
“Yeah. Our uncle—” The typing stops for a two-second beat. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Sorry.”
She shrugs. “We didn’t always know when we would get our next meal. Went to bed hungry more nights than not. But that’s all in the past.” She shakes it off and continues typing. “Anyway. I’m glad you and Beast are okay.”
“Right.” I nod. “We’re fine.”
“Just don’t get involved with him. You aren’t staying.”
My stomach plummets somewhere down to the vicinity of my toes.
She doesn’t turn around and there’s not even a hiccup in her fingers on the keyboard as she issues the command.
I pretend my heart isn’t stuttering to a halt. She’s not wrong. “Nothing’s happening.” I swallow hard. Time for a new topic. “If you ever want to talk to someone about whatever, you know I’m here.”
She scoffs. “Granny already makes me see a therapist. I don’t need more coddling.”
Aaand the teenager is back. “Thanks for letting me wallow. I’m going to help Granny with dinner.”
She nods but says nothing, her eyes fixed on her computer, her fingers moving at the speed of light while I leave the room.