Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (52 page)

She had nothing to distract her – she
couldn’t even write because of her stupid wrist.
 
Finally, she decided to drive into town
and do some grocery shopping.
 
If she
didn’t get out of the house, she was going to go crazy.
 
She pushed her cart through the aisles
-- being careful of her wrist -- and filled the carriage with anything that
looked remotely good, which for once, was hardly anything.

When she was done, she drove around town for a
while, trying to muster up interest in the shops and businesses that lined Main
Street.
 
As she drove, she tried to
conjure up some anger toward Chace for telling her what he’d told her this
morning, and then turning his back on her and shutting her out.
 
But she couldn’t.
 
It was too upsetting, seeing him
standing there in her yard, telling her that his father was dead.

Her thoughts swirling, she continued to drive
until she came up to a little bar.
 
There was a decrepit wooden sign hanging outside, with THE GRISTMILL
carved into it in big capital letters.
 
Lindsay pulled in and decided to have a drink.
 
She wondered briefly if she should be
worried about the fact that she’d had a glass of wine last night and was now
apparently going for another one.
 

When she got inside, the place was empty.
 
The bartender was wiping down the bar,
his back to her.
 

“Hey,” he said, flashing an easy smile.
 
He set a coaster down in front of
her.
 
“What can I get you?”

She ordered a glass of red wine and sipped it
slowly.

The bartender puttered around behind the bar,
wiping glasses and filling bowls with peanuts.

“You new around here?” he asked after a few
minutes.
 

“How’d you know?”

He shrugged.
 
“I know pretty much everyone who comes
in here.”

“It’s that small of a town?”

He nodded.
 
“Plus, I’ve lived here my whole life.
 
I’ve gotten used to seeing the same
people.”

“Wow,” she said.
 
“Doesn’t that get boring?”

“Nah, I kind of like it.
 
No surprises, you know?”

“Makes sense.”
 
She liked this guy.
 
He had a nice smile, and he seemed
content for her to sit here, nursing her wine.
 
She got the impression he didn’t care if
she talked or not.
 
He was happy to
make conversation, but if he got the idea she wanted to be by herself, he would
back off.

“So where’d you move into?”
 
He launched himself up onto the shelf on
the other side of the bar, sitting so that he was facing her across the open
space.

“The little house on Granby Road?
 
The one that’s in the middle of
nowhere?”

“Oh, really?” he asked, sounding excited.
 
“My best friend Chace lives there, in
the bigger house.”

The warm feeling she’d started to get suddenly
evaporated.
 
Was Chace Davenport
everywhere?
 
How was she going to
escape him?
 
She stared down into
her wine, then took a slow sip, wondering what to say.

The man must have sensed her uncomfortableness,
because he said, “Oh, shit.
 
What
has he done to you? Did he.. did he
sleep
with
you already?
 
Shit, I’m sorry.
 
Chace, he’s… he’s fucked up because of
this… thing that happened.
 
He’d
kind of…”
 
He put a hand up to his
head and twirled a finger around by his ear, making the universal sign for
crazy.
 
“Don’t worry, he does it to
everyone.”

That was the last straw.
 
Lindsay burst into tears.

“Oh, man,” the bartender said, shaking his
head. “I’m going to kill him.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Lindsay said.
 
She picked a napkin up off the bar and
wiped her tears.
 
“It’s not your
fault, it’s just…I’m kind of a mess right now.”

“I’m sorry for bringing him up.
 
I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s not your fault.”
 
She took another sip of her wine.
 
“You couldn’t have known.”

“Yeah, well, I should have.”
 
He sighed.
 
“Listen, if it makes you feel any
better, Chace isn’t a bad person.
 
He’s just been going through a really rough time.
 
He lost his dad last year, and there was
a girl…a girl he really cared about who broke his heart.”

“Who was she?” Lindsay asked, having a hard
time believing that anyone could break Chace Davenport’s heart.

“He met her on the internet,” the bartender
said, and shrugged.
 

Great.
 
She knew he’d been lying when he said she was the first one.

“It was right before the accident.
 
He’d left her in Boston and come down to
the Cape for his dad’s anniversary party.
 
Chace was driving his dad, his stepmother, and his stepsister home when
it happened.”

Lindsay couldn’t breathe.

“What was her name?” she whispered.

“His stepmother?
 
Jane, I think.”

“No.”
 
She shook her head. “The girl that broke his heart.”

“Lindsay.
 
He was upset that she never called him to see why she hadn’t heard from
him.
 
He… he was in no shape to call
her, but I think he wanted to know that she cared.”
 

She swallowed hard and took another big gulp of
wine.

“You okay?” the bartender asked.
 
“You look a little pale.”

“I’m Lindsay,” she said.

“You’re
 
Lindsay?”

“Yes.”

“And you moved into the house next door to
Chace?”

She nodded.

“Jesus!
 
No wonder you two are both all fucked up.”
 
He shook his head, then held up the
bottle of wine, asking if she wanted another.
 
She shook her head no.
 
Half a glass had been enough.
 
Any more and she wouldn’t be able to drive.

“I didn’t call him because I thought he didn’t
want to see me anymore,” she said.
 
“I thought he… I mean, I didn’t know that…”

“No, it makes sense.
 
You thought he was just a jerk guy
blowing you off.
 
You didn’t call
because of your pride.”
 
He thought
about it.
 
“I wouldn’t have called
either.”

Lindsay’s heart ached, thinking about Chace,
what he must have been going through.
 
She thought about how he must have felt, his father gone, his
stepmother, his stepsister…pretty much his whole family.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered.

“Hey, you couldn’t have,” the bartender said.
“There was no way you could have.”

She swallowed and nodded, then took a sip of
the water he’d set in front of her.

The bartender sighed, pulling his baseball hat
off and running his fingers through his hair. “Lindsay, Chace blames himself
for what happened to his family,” he said finally.
 
“And it’s going to be really hard for
him to get over that.”
 
He paused,
then took a deep breath and looked her right in the eye.
 
“But I’ll tell you something I know for
sure.
 
Chace is a really good
person.
 
And if you’re even thinking
about trying to make things right with him, I can tell you without a shadow of
a doubt that he’s worth taking a chance on.”

***

When she walked out of the bar, Lindsay felt
completely numb.
 
She didn’t know
what to do, wasn’t sure if what the bartender had told her even changed
anything.
 
What was she supposed to
do?
 
Tell Chace she was sorry for
never calling him?
 
She could only
imagine that was the least of his worries after what he’d been through.

Still.
 

Tears blurred her eyes, not only for what she’d
lost with him, but for the whole situation.

But by the time she was pulling onto her
street, she’d decided it didn’t make any difference.
 
Chace Davenport was none of her
business.
 
He was a man she’d met on
the internet, a man she hadn’t seen in twelve months.
 
And this morning, he’d made it perfectly
clear that he wanted nothing to do with her.

She was sorry that he had gone through
something so horrible, but she couldn’t be the one to save him.
 
She needed to move on with her life,
work on getting her new house in order, work on letting enough time pass so
that she wouldn’t get upset every time she saw him outside or looked at his
house.

As she got closer to home, the afternoon
sunlight was glinting off the pavement, and suddenly, something came lurching
out of the brush on the right side of the road.

Lindsay gasped and slammed on the brakes.
  
Her heart pounded as she peered
out the windshield at the furry thing that was lurching out onto the street.

It was Maximilian.
 
His head was low, his gait unsteady as
he loped along.
 
She opened the door
and called his name, wondering what he was doing out here, so far from home.
 
Was he lost?

He perked his head up and looked at her.
 
And that’s when she saw his face.
 
A deep gash ran from the top of his
forehead to his ear.
 
Smaller
scratches were all over his face, and he was limping.

“Oh, Max,” she said, rushing out of the car as
he loped toward her.
 
“What
happened?”

He gave a little whine and licked her
hand.
 
She didn’t think about what
to do.
 
She just picked him up, put
him in the car, and drove him to the veterinary hospital she’d seen while she
was in town.

***

Chace was trying to have a meeting the
employees of his restaurant.
 
He was
in a bad mood after what had happened this morning with Lindsay, and his mood
was just getting worse.
 

“I don’t understand why I need to give you
twenty-four hours notice if I have an emergency,” Dolores was saying.
 
“My back was out.
 
Your father never asked for twenty-four
hours notice.”

“That’s because you never called in when my
father was here,” Chace said calmly.
 
“Otherwise, I’m sure he would have required twenty-four hours notice.”

“Twenty-four hours notice is fine with me,”
Marcela said.
 
“But could we, like,
make this meetings for later in the day from now on?
 
Because I need to sleep in if I’m going
to be able to stay up late working.”

“Stay up late working?” Chace repeated in
disbelief.
 
“We shut down at
nine.
 
That’s not that late.”

“Yeah, but sometimes you make me stay until
nine-thirty so I can fill up the salt and pepper.”
 
She wrinkled her nose like this wasn’t
in her job description.

Chace’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he
pulled it out, looked at the caller ID.
 
It was a number he didn’t recognize, and so he almost didn’t pick
up.
 

“Yeah?” he barked into the phone, mostly
because if he didn’t get a break from talking to his staff, he was going to
fire the lot of them.

“Chace Davenport?” a man’s voice asked.

“Yeah, this is Chace.”

“This is Dr. Felder at the animal hospital,” he
said.
 
“We have Maximilian here, and
he looks like he’s been in some kind of fight.”

“What do you mean?” Chace asked.
 
The blood drained from his face.
 
He was dimly aware of Marcela and
Dolores fighting about whose job was harder.
 
He took a step away from them.

“Your dog’s been hurt, Mr. Davenport.
 
You should get to the hospital.”

***