CHAPTER TWELVE
My bedroom door handle started rattling just after five, waking me from my afternoon slumber. Three hours I’d been holed up in my room. A lesser mortal might have cried themselves to sleep, but I’d had a nap with a slight amount of tear duct drama attached to its beginning.
Whatever.
I was over letting Jimmy Ferris turn me inside out. It was time to start acting like a grown woman and put the nonsense behind me.
“Lena.” More rattling.
I raised my weary head off the pillow, rubbing at my sore eyes.
Some thumping. “Open the door.”
“Have you come to apologize?” I asked.
“What the fuck do I have to apologize for?”
Slowly, I sat up. “Oh, I don’t know. Try being a hypocrite, yelling at me, and embarrassing me in front of other people for starters.”
A moment of silence. “Don’t be ridiculous, open the door.”
“No.”
“Open. The. Door.”
“We can discuss this tomorrow, Jimmy. Good night.” So I’d go to bed with no dinner. For once, my belly didn’t mind and my heart was too torn up to care.
At which point, Jimmy went off. “It’s my fucking house and you work for me. It is not okay for you to be carrying on with him during business hours. Where the fuck is the respect? You’re on my time then and you damn well know it. It’s absolute bullshit. You’re both completely out of line. I pay you, you’re my assistant, and he’s got the fucking gall to try something with you behind my back in my house. He has no business touching you ever. I don’t want to see that shit happening again, he’s to stay away from you. The * didn’t even stand up for you, Lena. Did you notice that? I don’t know what the hell you’re thinking of having anything to do with the little dickhead.”
I gaped at the door. Clearly, the man had lost his ever-loving mind. He wasn’t making a single lick of sense, but he kept on keeping on. Apparently the fact that he’d set me up with Dean in the first place had been completely forgotten. Amazing. I had to tune out for the sake of my sanity. I crossed my legs and leaned back against the headboard, waiting him out.
*
Eventually, the silence was deafening on both sides of the door. I strained to hear something, anything.
Then the crashing began.
Boom!
The first bone-jarring noise made my whole body jump. Second time around wasn’t much better. My bedroom door smashed open and Jimmy strode on, seeming twice as tall as normal, putting most mountains to shame. Righteous indignation blazed in his eyes, red tinged his skin. Maybe I should have been afraid, but I was too busy being pissed.
“Did you just kick my door down?” I shrieked the obvious. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“My door, yeah.” He marched on over to the bed, seeming ten foot tall. Then suddenly he stopped. “Have you been crying?”
”Nope. I’m all good. Thanks for asking. My door on the other hand, not so much!” I’m sure my most likely red-eyed, blotchy-skinned appearance told a different tale. But screw him. Such was the beauty of the ugly cry, its legacy lasted for hours no matter some beauty sleep. I probably looked like road-kill, slammed down by the semi-trailer that was rock ’n’ roll legend Jimmy Ferris.
He sat on the edge of my bed. His broad shoulders seemed to have fallen by half a foot at least. “You have, you’ve been fucking crying. I don’t believe you.”
Give me strength, like it was some crime against him and I should be the one to apologize. “My eyes were allowed to do what they want, Jimmy. Nothing in the employment contract about that.”
Meanwhile, the poor door was damaged beyond repair, he had actually kicked it in. Insane. How the hell this day had taken such a turn for the overly dramatic, crazy-town worse, I had no idea.
“Lena.” His voice was a soft command. “Look at me.”
I exhaled “What? What do you want me to say, Jimmy?”
He turned away, pinning his lips shut.
What a mess. I grabbed a pillow and hugged it to my chest.
There seemed no obvious telltale signs of his screwing around with Liv Anders, no bites on his neck or what have you. Not that it would be screwing around on me, it just felt like it. A faint headache from all the tears lingered behind my sore eyes. We’d started the day out laughing and teasing each other. How sad to have ended it this way.
Jimmy crawled onto the bed, sitting beside me with his back against the headboard. The heating clicked on, just about the only noise in the entire house.
We sat side by side, saying nothing.
I studied him out of the corner of my eye, hands fidgeted in his lap, picking stray bits of lint off his black jeans, smoothing them down. Once he was done with his preening, he crossed his arms over his chest. But his fingers kept stretching out, then curling, over and over again.
“You hurt me,” I said, because one of us needed to be brave and fess up.
His chin jerked upward.
“Don’t do the chin thing, say something.” I waited a moment. My patience was not rewarded. “Why’d you kick my door down?”
He turned toward me, eyes tortured.
“Jimmy?”
“I couldn’t stand it, you locking me out.” The words sounded dragged out of him, kicking and screaming. “You should have answered me. You shouldn’t have … you shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why not?”
His eyes narrowed. “What the fuck do you mean why not?”
“Why should I open my door to you if you’re yelling at me? If you’ve been acted like a complete bastard and hurt my feelings? Stop for just one minute, put yourself in my place and tell me, why should I let you in?”
He made some snarly noise.
“And don’t give me any of the I’m-your-boss, it’s-my-house, I-pay-you shit,” I said. “Yes, it’s all true. No, it doesn’t actually matter in this circumstance, we’re beyond that.”
“But—”
“No.”
His nostrils flared and emotion shone bright in his eyes. “You shouldn’t have locked me out.”
I just looked at him.
“I needed to …” A hand gestured aimlessly in front of him while he searched for words. “I needed to be able to talk to you, face to face, all right?”
For him, that was all. There was nothing else to it.