“You know, the last time someone offered me that chunk of change over a few drinks, it wasn’t followed by an offer that was on the up-and-up.” His voice was cool and removed, the way he was looking at me the same.
“What I’m about to ask isn’t illegal, I promise. It’s not even inside.” I shook my head. “It’s just . . . maybe a little deceitful.”
He huffed and gave a nod. “I’d expect nothing less.”
When I thought of a way to phrase what I was about to suggest, nothing sounded quite right. No matter how I worked the pieces of my proposition in my head, no arrangement made it seem less undignified. So I went with the most basic explanation.
“All I need from you is for you to pose as my plus one for the week. Nothing more. One week, ten grand. What do you think?” My words came out too fast, my voice too high. Because no matter what I tried to convince myself of, no matter how much radio silence had passed between us, Boone and I were not and would never be mere acquaintances. We had too much history to ever be “acquaintances.”
Boone was silent for a minute. One long minute I thought would never pass. When he did finally say something, I’d been two seconds away from leaving and spending the next seven years trying and failing to forget about Boone Cavanaugh again.
“Let me get this straight, because I thought I understood the English language, but I cannot get my head wrapped around what you just said.” Boone scooted his stool a half foot in my direction, the skin between his brows pinched in a deep line. “Are you asking me to show up at your family’s place with your family inside and pose as your date for the wedding?”
I shook my head. Hard. “As my plus one. That’s all.” My traitor voice gave me away though. Still too high and fast.
Boone didn’t miss it either. Something that resembled the stirrings of a smirk worked its way into his expression. “As your boyfriend.”
He wasn’t going to make this easy. Not that he had any reason to. “As my plus one.”
Boone’s smirk became as pronounced as it got. His head tipped just a bit, his eyes flashing, and his mouth turned up in a hint of a smile. “As your lover?”
My fingers curled into my palms. “As. My. Plus. One.”
An uneven chuckle vibrated in his chest as he studied me. He probably couldn’t figure out my business deal any more than I could. “Why? Why me?” He held out his arms and shrugged. “With all the history between us and the history of your family treating mine like we were trash . . . why choose me?”
I picked at the frayed ends of my cut-offs, considering his question as much as I was considering my answer. I had too many reasons to ask him, most of those reasons ones I didn’t want to legitimize by voicing . . . even to myself. When I’d left Charleston seven years ago, I’d told myself the Boone Cavanaugh chapter of my life was over. Yet here I was reopening it, or starting a brand-new chapter.
Boone continued to wait, his silence screaming at me.
He wanted to know why, so I gave him an answer, though it might have been the least honest one I had. “Limited options.” I scanned the few dozen customers, most of them older than my father and most looking like addiction had played some recent role in their lives. “Running short on time.” I tapped my wrist. “That’s why I choose you. Now if you’re done with the Q & A, what’s your answer?”
My pulse was pounding in my neck as I waited. I needed him to say yes. I needed him to agree to crawl into that cab with me and pose as my plus one for the next week because even though my family weren’t fans of the Cavanaughs, showing up single was a worse crime.
“Am I to understand that who you’d originally planned on bringing as your ‘plus one’ fell through?” Boone scooted his stool down another foot.
I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do more: scoot closer or farther away. “Stop talking like an asshole. If you have a question, ask me for Christ’s sake.”
“I didn’t think debutantes were supposed to take the lord’s name in vain . . .”
I was tempted to slug the smirk right off his face, but I didn’t. I needed him to agree. I needed to not show up solo and become the target of sabotage setups and sneaky double-dates the whole week.
“Fuck you, Boone Cavanaugh,” I fired off before I could bite my tongue.
A second of silence passed between us, then he laughed. “There’s the Clara Belle Abbott I’d been convinced had been adopted at birth. Damn, I missed her.”
I found myself laughing with him, because crying seemed like the less enticing option. Laugh or cry—the beat of Boone’s and my relationship. “So does that mean you’ll do it?”
Boone wiped his eyes, his laugh rolling to an end. It had been forever since I’d heard him laugh, but it sounded the same. Just like I remembered. “If you answer my questions to my satisfaction.”
“And there’s the Boone Cavanaugh who makes so many conditions no one can ever get close enough to him to get through.” I peaked a brow at him, letting him know he wasn’t the only one allowed to take shots.
“You were planning on bringing some rich California boy toy with you this week?”
“I was planning on bringing my boyfriend who, yes, lives in California, but was a transplant from Ohio, and who was very middle class, with me this week.” The three or four or five shots were making my mind muddy. I couldn’t tell if I was saying too much or too little, but Boone seemed satisfied with my answer.
“But that fell through?”
I nodded, my head stuffed full of cotton and tequila.
“You broke up with him.” It was a statement, not a hint of doubt in his voice.
“He broke up with me.”
Boone’s forehead creased. “How long ago?”
“Three days ago.”
Boone’s mouth parted some. “The guy broke up with you three days before he was planning to fly down here to support you and save you from the blood-suckers?”
“Boone—” I warned.
“Sorry, the creatures of the night,” he continued, not hiding his smile when my frown deepened. “I gotta tell you, you really know how to pick ‘em. First Ford McBride, the behind-your-back-fucking-your-little-sister loser, and then this prick who bailed on you a few days before you flew out to face your own personal Armageddon.”
I cracked my neck from side to side. Boone wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t heard or told myself a thousand times, but it felt different coming from him.
“Let’s not forget to toss you into that knowing-how-to-pick-‘em pile,” I muttered, more to myself than to him, but he didn’t miss it.
“You didn’t pick me, Clara. I picked you.” For the briefest moment, I caught a glimpse of the Boone I remembered. The one who’d occasionally open himself up and share his world with me.
I swallowed. I’d finished my last shot minutes ago, but I felt like hundred-proof alcohol was streaming down my throat. “Any more questions? I’ve, or we’ve, got to get going unless I want my dad calling the sheriff to come looking for me.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?” A smile pulled at the corner of Boone’s mouth.
“It wouldn’t be. But at least this time the sheriff wouldn’t have to lie to my daddy about how he found me, and who he found me with.”
“Or where he found us . . .” Boone’s gaze shifted away, staring at the wall opposite us like he was seeing something else.
“So?” I pressed.
He took another sip of his drink. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m seeing someone? Don’t you care if I’ve got someone in my life I’ll need to explain this little week-long arrangement too?”
“Of course, yes, I should have thought of that. Do you have . . . someone? Do you think she’d care if you did this?”
Boone finished his drink before rising from his stool. He’d always been tall, but it looked like he’d stretched another couple inches in the years since I’d seen him. And that was definitely the same shirt he’d had in high school. I remembered those buttons. The s
hiny marbled ones that snapped closed . . . or popped open.
“I’ve only ever had one someone special, Clara, and she turned me off to the whole idea of ever having another.” He wouldn’t look at me as he talked. “So no, there’s not someone special in my life to care what I do or who I do it with.”
He tipped his chin good-bye at Tom as he headed toward me. I scrambled off of the stool, trying not to sway in place when I stood. I wasn’t short—in fact, I was taller than average for a woman—but standing a foot across from Boone Cavanaugh, I felt very small. Almost like he could squish me between his thumb and index fingers.
“Ten thousand dollars? Seven days?” He shuffled a step closer, putting himself so close that if I kept swaying in place, I was going to sway right into his arms. That shouldn’t have seemed like such an appealing option.
I nodded because I couldn’t form any words I trusted to say out loud—because I’d just been hit by a familiar scent. One I’d tried to delete from my memory, and one I knew I never could. Boone smelled like my childhood. Like the best years of my life in Charleston. Salty from sweat, sweet from his mom’s and sister’s shampoo he used to use instead of buying something more manly, and sour with the reminder of the past. I wanted to bury my face in his shirt and breathe him in until I’d had my fill, but if this next week was ever going to work, I couldn’t let past feelings and history bleed into the picture.
I couldn’t wreck him again—and I couldn’t let him wreck me again.
Distance. Arm’s length. Collected, cool, and calm. That was my marching beat for the next week. Boone and I had started out as friends; we could do it again.
My vision was blurry from the shots, the background of the bar hazy and undefined. The only thing I could see clearly was him.
His hand lifted, moving toward my face. Just when I thought he was about to cup my cheek and kiss me, his fingers grasped a chunk of my hair swinging just above my shoulders. He studied it for a moment like he didn’t recognize it. After a minute more of that, he leaned in, dropping his mouth to just outside my ear. He was messing with me. I knew that. It wasn’t enough that I was paying him ten grand; he was going to cost me more by the end of this.
“You’ve got yourself a boyfriend. Temporarily,” he whispered, his voice raising bumps on my forearms.
Lifting my shoulders, I cleared my head and slowly shoved him back until he was an arm’s length away. “A plus one. Temporarily.”
What was I doing? What was I thinking? What had I gotten myself into?
Those were the questions playing on a reel through my mind from the time Boone and I had crawled into the taxi until now, when we were a mile away from Abbott Manor, my childhood home.
I shouldn’t have drunk so much. I should have shot out of my stool and left the moment I noticed Boone Cavanaugh a few stools down. I should have never opened my mouth. I shouldn’t have asked him a certain question I knew he couldn’t say no to. I shouldn’t have stepped into that decrepit train car in the first place. No, I shouldn’t have gotten on that damn plane this morning and flown down here.
I shouldn’t have . . . it was the theme of my day, most of my life, and most certainly the rest of the week.
“So what’s our story?”
I jumped when Boone nudged me. After I’d climbed into the cab and told the driver I was ready, not another word had been spoken. I guessed, like myself, Boone was second-guessing his decision.
“What story?” I replied.
“Our love story? The one we’re going to tell your family after they come out of their shock comas and want to know how you and I, living across the country from each other and ignoring each other like we were sworn enemies for close to a decade, wound up together again?” He nudged me again with his arm. “That story.”
Boone was large enough to take up a good half of the backseat, but he’d always taken up the space of a man twice that size, as evidenced from the way his legs were spread so far; his knee kept bumping the outside of my leg even when I was pressed up against my door. When we hit a rut in the road and his knee thumped my leg with enough force that I felt it travel up my thigh and down my calf, I pressed tighter into the door.
“Oh, our story . . . I guess I haven’t really thought that part out yet.” We’d need a story, and I knew that story couldn’t be formulated tonight. Not with my brain marinating in a tequila bath.
“Really? You’ve got nothing?”
“I’ve got nothing tonight. I’ll have it all ironed out come morning though, I promise.”
Boone grunted and stared out his window. “You really didn’t think this whole thing out very well, did you?”
“It was more a spur-of-the-moment type of decision.”
“Nice to know I’m your Plan B. Nothing’s changed . . .” Boone rolled down the window a few cranks even though the air conditioning was blasting through the taxi. He tilted his head toward the open window, letting the hot, sticky air break across his face. It looked like he could breathe again.
“Just let me do the talking tonight.” I rifled through my purse for a stick of gum or a breath mint or something that would disguise the tequila on my breath. “In fact, since it’s so late, most of the family will probably be asleep, so why don’t you just sneak up to my old room with the luggage? I’ll say a quick hi to everyone who’s awake, and we can deal with the big reveal at breakfast. After a good night’s sleep.”
Boone’s head reclined into the headrest, his knees moving closer together so I wasn’t getting thumped every few seconds. “Something else that hasn’t changed. Sneaking me upstairs while you distract your family. Check. Think I can manage that. Might be a little rusty, but I’ve got plenty of experience. Should come right back to me.”
“Boone—”
“It’s okay, Clara. I don’t care about that shit anymore. What I care about is the ten grand.”
When it was clear not a mint or stick of gum was to be found in the confines of my purse, I tossed it onto the cab floor in a frustrated fit. It wasn’t the purse I was upset with—it was the purse’s owner. The decisions she’d made and the consequences that had come as a result. “If we’re going to do this, successfully, we’re going to need to leave the past where it belongs.”
“Squirming on our faces?”
I groaned. “Behind us. We can’t be hashing out what happened and who’s to blame and taking jabs at each other every two seconds, or we might as well ditch this whole deal now because it won’t work. We need to focus on pretending to like, tolerate, and respect each other. We need to pretend there isn’t history between us and that all we care about is our future together.” The pep talk was just as intended for myself as it was for him. “Do you think you can do that?”
“Do you think you can?” he fired back, cranking down the window another notch.
“Yes,” I lied . . . I answered.
“Then so can I. No problem,” he lied . . . he replied.
From the front seat, the driver gave me a funny look. I shrugged in reply. I could only imagine how perverse this conversation sounded to an outsider, and even if I had the time, I wasn’t sure I could explain it.
By then though, we were pulling up to the house. The gate at the end of the driveway was operated by keypad access, but before I could tell the driver the code to enter, the gate swung open. Which meant someone was watching the security screen and had opened the gate from the house. Which meant they were waiting for us.
My heart sped up, adrenaline, or was that panic?, dripping into my bloodstream. Why was my body’s reaction to coming home the same as if I were being chased by a pack of wolves in waist-deep snow? Why was my instinct to go into survival mode when I passed through that gate? Why was my fight-or-flight response triggered whenever I passed into the borders of the estate that had been in my family for five generations?
Those were questions I’d been asking myself for years. Questions that had remained unanswered for years.
My hands wrung in my lap, my
legs bounced out of control, and my teeth chewed out the excess adrenaline on my lower lip.
Out of nowhere, Boone’s hand appeared in my lap, weaving between mine until he had one in his grasp. His large hand swallowed mine, giving it a gentle squeeze. “It will be okay, Clara. They can’t ruin your life twice.”
Something inside me stilled. Boone’s hand was still rough and dotted with callouses. It was still warm and solid though, anchoring me before I drifted away.
“That won’t stop them from trying,” I whispered as I could just start to make out the large plantation house in the distance.
Boone’s jaw tightened. “Well, I won’t let them ruin my life twice.”
“It won’t stop them from trying.”
As we continued to wind up the driveway, the driver gave a low whistle. “This your home, miss?”
“No, this isn’t my home,” I answered. “This is my family’s home. Not mine.”
“This is some place,” the driver continued. “Your family must be real well off.”
I closed my eyes when the house came into full view. Too much, too fast. Boone beside me, that house in front of me, all of the family waiting to lash out in their passive-aggressive way. Why had I come?
“If only by their bank accounts’ standards,” I said as I retrieved my purse from the floorboard and got back to digging through it madly, desperate for a mint and a means of distraction.
“Here.” Boone’s other hand reached across our laps. In it was a white round mint.
I froze for two moments, that chalky alabaster mint bringing on another enclave of memories. These ones though, they were good. All of them.
“Thank you.” I took the mint and popped it into my mouth. It wasn’t mint-flavored; it was cinnamon, spicy and hot just like I remembered. With one little mint, I was whisked back to the past: to a first kiss, to the first real kiss, to the first time I’d ever . . .