“So, Nicole?” I prompted.
“Right,” he said, putting the cup down. “Let’s start from the beginning,” he said, and I groaned inwardly.
Will loved to make lengthy stories out of things he could have said in under two minutes. At least we weren’t at the office and I didn’t have a million files to get through. As long as my ass was sitting in his swanky twelve-seat dining room in his huge beach house, I had to suck up the story.
“When she told me she was getting married I was shocked,” he said. You and me both, I wanted to say, but couldn’t. “Not because I didn’t think she wanted to get married. I think between her and her mother her wedding had been planned since she was six. They love that stuff.” Definitely a surprise to me. “An aunt of hers gave her a Bride Barbie when she was small and two days later Nicole wanted a Barbie Dream House to go with it. Anyway, I was shocked because she’d known the guy for two seconds before she agreed to marriage.”
I nodded, lifting the cup of coffee to my mouth and taking a sip.
“I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen, and now she’s getting a divorce and I can’t help but feel responsible,” he sighed. “My little girl deserves better.”
“I agree,” I said.
“She deserves somebody who gives her more than she gives,” he added. I nodded in agreement again, not that I knew shit about what that meant. “She passed up jobs for Gabriel just so she could travel to where he was on set. Can you believe he turned her away one day when she showed up?”
I felt my mouth drop. Will nodded, eyebrows raised. “She flew to Canada to see him and he never made an effort to see her. His manager told her to leave.”
“What an asshole,” I said, feeling my blood start to boil. How could anybody do that to her? To his own wife?
“Complete asshole. And now he’s trying to get her to—” Will stopped talking when the doorbell rang loudly, his eyes widened. “We’ll talk about this later.”
I wanted to press the matter, but then I heard Meire say hi to somebody and footsteps coming up behind me and saw the grin on Will’s face. Before I saw her, I smelled her, the sweet floral scent I knew covered her entirely. When I looked over and she smiled at me, I felt the air squeeze out of me. She was wearing a long orange dress that fit her loosely, her dark hair was down and wet from a recent shower, her blue eyes vibrant as she looked at me. I smiled back and my eyes made their way down her body and zoned in on the overnight bag in her hand.
Oh no.
Oh shit.
Were we both staying here tonight?
“Hi, Victor,” Nicole said, her voice soft, her cheeks pink as she dropped her gaze from mine.
I frowned. A shy Nicole was a first for me. Maybe it was because we were in front of her dad and stepmom. Maybe it was because she was remembering what happened between us the other night. I needed to keep reminding her not to do that. I needed to keep distancing myself in that way. She was too tempting. I had to keep thinking: forbidden fruit equals death. It would have helped if I would have actually paid attention during Bible study when I was a kid.
“Nicole,” I said in greeting.
“Join us. We were just talking about you,” Will said.
“I’ll take your bag upstairs. I was going to put towels in there anyway,” Meire said, taking the bag in Nicole’s hand and excusing herself again.
“What were you talking about?” Nicole asked, taking a seat next to me.
Why next to me? It could’ve been because that was her regular seat, and as creatures of habit we were forced to always pick the same seat at the dinner table. It could’ve been because there was a setting on the table. It could’ve been because it was closest to the pancakes. It could’ve been many things, but the only one I wanted it to be was that she wanted to be near me. Beside me. And the thought that it mattered to me, because I wanted her to be as affected by me as I was by her, was fucked up. I’d ended things the first time and this time I couldn’t afford to entertain the things circulating my thoughts half the time when she was around. I just couldn’t. She was off limits. But then she was next to me, and her scent made me want to lean in closer, and I just didn’t care. She infiltrated my thoughts in that moment, and I just didn’t care. In that moment, if her father wasn’t sitting across from us, I would have said something I wasn’t supposed to.
“I was about to tell Victor about the contract you want me to draft.”
I blinked, the pull of her presence replaced by curiosity. “What kind of contract?”