I See...Love (A Different Road Book 1) (14 page)

There’s a bright, cherry red Ferrari parked in the driveway and I eye it with caution. I bleep the locks open and slip inside the beast of a machine. Good thing my daddy taught me how to drive a stick.

I back out of the driveway and put it into gear, but miss it. Touchy little bastard. I drive down the street and head toward home. I suddenly feel like I’m doing the driving version of the walk of shame. Now I have to go home and walk into my own house wearing last night’s clothes, with sex hair, and face Nina.

As I get to the end of his street, I start to get really mad. Instead of heading home, I head downtown. I pull his expensive monstrosity up to the curb and park right outside his building. I march inside the building and check the directory for his office, and then I march my ass to the elevator with my head held high, sex hair and all. On the ride up, I imagine what his receptionist will look like. I know how these things go. There’s going to be the typical blonde, bimbo receptionist sitting behind a glass desk, and stereotypically she’ll be filing her nails.

The door opens and sitting behind a dark, glossy, wooden desk is a stunning dark haired brunette, and I kid you not, she’s filing her nails. Well, I got the desk wrong and the color of her hair, but I so called the nail filing thing!

I continue right past her and scan the names elegantly stenciled on the heavy, wooden doors. I find the one labeled River Mason at the end of the hall. Underneath his name, it says ‘CEO’, and I suddenly lose my nerve.

The bimbo receptionist comes down the hall hot on my heels. I feel River’s heavy keys in my hand, and I find my nerve again. I open the door just before the receptionist comes up behind me.

“What charity should I send this to?” Josh asks River, as I open the office door.

“You can’t just come in here,” bimbo receptionist says. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Mason, she just barged in,” she continues.

River is sitting in a chair behind a very expensive looking wooden desk. What is it with all the wood doors and desks? Josh is standing at his side, and the second I barge in the door, he bends down and whispers in River’s ear. God, I’m so tired of people whispering around me.

“It’s all right, Autumn, she can come in,” River says, and stands.

He buttons the button on his suit jacket, widens his step and takes one hand in the other, then rests them in the center of his body. Don’t think for one second I didn’t see his instant erection behind those hands either.

Shit, he looks hot. If that’s not the perfect GQ pose, I don’t know what is.

No! This is not why you came here.

“These are yours,” I say, and walk up to his desk.

I slam the keys on his desk, pivot on my heel, and walk out of his office with my sex haired head held high.

I march back to the elevator and stab at the button. I can feel the brunette bimbo behind her wooden desk, staring daggers at the back of my head. The door opens and I get in. I push the button for the first floor and cross my arms over my chest.

It seems like the elevator is stopping on every floor, allowing everyone in the building into the car. As more and more people enter, I’m shoved further and further toward the back. Finally, the elevator comes to a stop on the first floor and the doors open. The people file out and I take three giant steps to get off, but standing in front of me are both Josh and River. Shit, how’d they get down here so fast?

“Going somewhere?” River asks.

“Yeah, home to change so I can get to work,” I reply, and start walking toward the entrance of the building.

He growls in the back of his throat and follows behind me.

“Grab her,” River tells Josh.

I swing around and stop dead in my tracks. Josh grabs onto River’s arm, stopping him before he rams into me.

“Grab my arm, Josh, and I will lay you out flat on the ground where you stand,” I tell him, looking straight into his eyes.

“Ha!” River blurts out in mock shock.

“Care to test it out?” I say, cocking my head, leaning closer to Josh.

“Give us a minute, Josh,” River tells him.

Josh nods his head at me, and then walks back to the center of the room giving us space.

“You’re challenging me again,” he says, in a gravelly voice.

“I am most certainly not challenging you again. If anything, I was challenging Josh,” I tell him.

That earned another low growl in the back of his throat. I really wish he’d stop doing that. It’s kind of sexy and I may be all badass on the outside, but after last night, I feel myself going all mushy on the inside.

“Why are you angry?” he asks.

“Why am I angry?” I repeat.

“Yes, why are you angry? Do you know you have a habit of repeating what was just said to you?” he asks.

Damn it! Yes, I do know I’ve been doing that. I only do it when I’m around him, though.

“Alright, where should I begin?” I say, loudly.

“I asked you last night what you expected from me. You said nothing, and that’s just what you got, nothing,” he butts in.

That felt like a stab to the heart. I made it a conscious effort not to open my mouth at his comment. That comment totally deserved an open mouth expression too.

“You know…” I start.

“You know, what?” he encourages.

“What was I expecting?” I mimic his own words back to him.

“Yes, that is what I asked you.”

“What was I expecting?” I say again, pointing to myself. “What were you expecting?” I say, jabbing my finger into his chest. “You were the one who whipped out a condom from your goddamned pocket!” I finish.

“Isn’t that why you came?” he asks, breaking my heart. “And don’t just repeat what I said. Say something constructive for God’s sake.”

I think about it for a second. He was concerned about me when he fixed the tabloid mess. He did attempt to make it up to me, he failed, but he did try. He was concerned when I was upset, Nina told me so. When I barged into his office, he was in the middle of making a charitable contribution. I know from the papers that he personally and professionally makes many charitable contributions. It’s like on the outside, he has to be this asshole, and he wants people to think he’s an asshole on the inside too. I see straight through that bullshit. I look up at his face and he’s all business, but his eyes, they tell me a different story. I put my hand over his heart, making him flinch, and this time it’s him opening his mouth as he takes in a breath.

“You have a really good heart, River. You just need to learn how to use it,” I say, then remove my hand.

I turn back around and walk out the door. This time he doesn’t try to stop me. If that wasn’t constructive enough for him, then nothing else will be.

It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen or heard from Joss. She didn’t show the next morning at my house on her scheduled day to cook. I had planned on firing her. Instead, I paid her and she didn’t even come. The following week, I had a business trip and wasn’t home. She still didn’t show on her scheduled day. I still paid her. When she placed her hand on my heart it felt as physical as a knife piercing straight through it. And those words she said to me. I can’t get them out of my head.

I’m sitting at my desk at the office slumped in my chair. ‘You have a really good heart, River. You just need to learn how to use it,’ echoes in my head. The way she said my name, it rolled off her tongue and straight into my soul. The funny thing is, she’s wrong, I don’t have a heart. It was ripped straight from my chest and it was left on that freeway along with the broken glass and crumpled metal the day of the accident.

I sent Josh out to pick up lunch, I need to be alone. Usually that’s Autumn’s job, but I needed to be alone to think clearly. A knock on my door distracts me from my thinking.

“Come in,” I say, authoritatively.

The door opens and I immediately know that it’s Stephen. He drags his right heel on the ground with each step he takes. He takes a seat in one of the chairs and sighs. Fuck, I don’t have the patience for him right now.

“What is it?” I demand.

“It’s Kate,” he says, unsure of himself.

My attention immediately peaks. I sit up in my chair and place both hands open palm down on the top of the desk.

“What about Kate?” I question.

“She’s getting out of rehab in two weeks and I need to know what you want to do,” he says.

For just once, I’d like Stephen to make a goddamned decision by himself. This is the longest Kate has been in rehab. Since the accident, she’s been suicidal, or at least said she’s suicidal. She’s gone from one posh rehab to the next rehab for years. To me they’re more like a vacation getaway than rehab. She’s been floundering through life since the accident with no drive or purpose. But six months ago, she downed an entire bottle of painkillers and stepped over the line of saying she wanted to commit suicide, to actually attempting to commit suicide. This time I knew it was time to get serious with her. No more celebrity vacation rehab joints. She was going in for real this time. She’s been gone for six months. I cannot and will not lose another family member. I just can’t.

When I admitted her this last time, I sold her apartment. It’s actually my apartment since I pay all of Kate’s bills. Kate has never held down a job for more than a year. She doesn’t know it yet, and she’ll be pissed when she finds out she doesn’t have a place to go back to. Just for shits and giggles, I want to hear from Stephen what he thinks we should do.

“What do you think we should do?” I ask, knowing full well he can’t make a decision to save his own life.

“I’m not sure. What do you think is best? I think we should do whatever you think we should do,” he replies.

If you ask me, Stephen is just as fucked up as Kate and I are. Stephen might as well have been in that car with us. I see that accident as a crossroad in all of our lives with three forks, and we each took a different road.

I was in that accident and was left blind. I had the road picked for me by lawyers and trainers. I was shaped and formed to take over for my father. I’m left without my sight, but I wish with all that I have for someone to take away the things that I still see in my head. I’d sell my soul to the devil in a heartbeat if asked.

Kate picked the opposite road and can’t stand the silence. She’s lost without noise or music plugged into her ears to drown out the voices in her head. She’d rather leave this earth by her own hand, than hear what the demons locked in the confines of her skull tell her.

Stephen, while not in the car, must be left with so much guilt. The last words he said to our mother was that she was a bitch. He was determined to stay home and be a man, even though he was still a boy. Now he can’t make a decision for shit. I don’t understand the guilt that he must feel for not being there with us. Stephen couldn’t bring himself to even talk to me until a year after the accident. It’s not even survivor’s guilt, it’s so much worse than that. Kate and I survived. Stephen wasn’t even there. How do you live with yourself when you were supposed to be somewhere where two people died, and two people were injured and left with the nightmares of the sights and sounds of that car wreck? He feels guilty for not being killed or injured like the rest of his family. How fucked up is that?

We’re the fucking Japanese proverb of the three wise monkeys. I’m see no evil. Kate is hear no evil. And Stephen is speak no evil. We’re such a fucked up bunch.

“Tell Autumn on your way out, to clear my calendar the day of her release. I’ll pick her up myself and move her into my home. She can live with me until I’m sure she’s over this bullshit,” I tell him.

It’s not my first choice to have her live with me. But this way, I can keep an eye on her myself. Josh lives in the entire upstairs of my house and there’s only the one bedroom downstairs. I’ll have to move her into the pool house.

“You want Kate to live with you?” Stephen asks to clarify.

“I didn’t stutter. If you want to come with me to pick her up, you can,” I offer.

“No, I’ll just see her at your house when she gets settled in,” he says like the coward pussy he is.

The door opens again and I hear bags rustle. Josh starts to walk in, but he stops when he sees Stephen is in my office.

“I’m sorry. I’ll come back when your meeting is over,” he says.

“Stephen was just leaving,” I tell him.

“I was? Uh, yeah, I have work to do,” he says, then stands and leaves my office with his tail tucked between his legs.

Right, he has work to do. Stephen pretends to have an important job at the company, but that’s only because I make it seem like he has an important job at the company. All the employees think we have equal roles. If only they knew what kind of man Stephen is. He doesn’t do one thing that’s worthwhile. Stephen is a puppet and I’m his puppet master.

Josh comes in and I hear him set the bags on the desk. I smelled it the second he walked into my office. He went to Plate, one of my favorite lunch spots. They, like Joss, are into healthy, organic cooking. I can smell the Mediterranean Ahi tuna wrap and my mouth waters for it. I honestly don’t know why Josh is so good to me. I treat him like shit, but he’s one hundred percent loyal to me. Josh takes my food out of the bag and sets it in front of me.