Нора Робертс - The Last Boyfriend

“Avery—”

“No. Just no. You should’ve asked to see my business plan, my scheduling outline, my menu, my P&L from Vesta, and my projected budget on the new restaurant. You should’ve treated me with the same respect as you would any other businessperson, any other prospective tenant. I’m not a dreamer, Owen, and I never have been. I know what I can do, then I do it. If you don’t get that, then you don’t know me as well as both of us thought.”

He knew her well enough not to follow her out when she walked away. She wasn’t just mad—that he could get around. But he’d managed to hurt her as well as piss her off.

“Good job,” he muttered. To give himself some time to think, he gathered up the DVDs she’d done, stacked them in the cabinet under the wall-mounted flat screen, automatically alphabetizing them as he went.

He considered approach and timing, and gave a lot of weight to holiday spirit.

At five o’clock on Christmas Eve, Owen knocked on Avery’s door.

She’d dyed her hair—again—he noted, this time in a shade he thought of as Christmas Red. She wore skinny black pants that showed off the shape of her legs and a crisscrossing sweater as blue as her eyes. Her feet were bare, so he saw she’d married the Christmas Red hair with Christmas Green toenail polish.

Why was that sexy?

“Merry Christmas.”

“Not yet.”

“Okay. Merry Christmas Eve.” Working it, he added an easy smile. “Got a minute?”

“Not much more than. I’m going down to Clare’s for a while, then heading over to Dad’s. I’m staying there tonight so—”

“You can fix him Christmas breakfast, hang out before you both go to my mother’s for her Christmas thing.” He tapped his fingers to his temple. “Everybody’s holiday schedule, right here. Hope’s in Philadelphia, having the eve with her family, and heading back tomorrow afternoon. Ry’s swinging by Clare’s, then we’re both figuring on staying the night at Mom’s.”

“So you can get Christmas breakfast and dinner.”

“It’s a big draw.”

“If you’re going to Clare’s, why are you here? I’ll see you in a half hour.”

“I wanted a few minutes. Can I come in, or are you still pissed at me?”

“I’m not pissed at you. I got over it.” She stepped back to let him in.

“You started unpacking,” he commented. By his gauge she’d reduced the stacks of boxes and tubs by more than half.

“Continued unpacking,” she corrected. “I was pissed. I cook when I’m mad or upset. My father has a freezer loaded with lasagna, manicotti, various soups. So I had to stop and shift the energy to more unpacking. Nearly done.”

“Productive.”

“I hate to waste a good mad.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head, waved it off. “I have to finish getting dressed.” When she turned toward the bedroom, he followed.

He didn’t wince—no point making her mad again—but she’d obviously had some trouble deciding on the sweater and pants. Other choices, rejected, were scattered over the bed. He’d always admired the antique brass bed, the turned spindles, the old-fashioned charm of it. But it was tough to appreciate it buried under heaps of clothes, pillows, and her overnight bag.

She pulled open the top drawer of her dresser—where Owen figured most people stored underwear, but saw clearly the entire drawer of earrings.

“Jesus, Avery. How many ears do you have?”

“I don’t wear rings, a watch, bracelets—usually. They don’t do well with pizza dough and sauces. So I compensate.” After some study, she tried on silver hoops with smaller hoops dangling within the circle. “What do you think?”

“Ah . . . nice.”

“Hmm.” She took them off, changed them for dangles of blue stones and silver beads.

“I came by to—”

Her gaze whipped to his in the mirror. “I have something to say first.”

“Okay. You first.”

She moved to the bed, added a couple more things to the overnight bag, zipped it. “I may have overreacted a little the other day. A little. Because it was you, I think, and I expected you to believe in me.”

“Avery—”

“Not finished.” Moving quickly, she crossed to the bathroom, brought out a hanging bag. When she laid it on the bed, he saw through the clear front it was loaded with makeup and all those tools women used.

How did she have time to use that much makeup? When did she? He’d seen her face without all the stuff. It was a really good face.

“I should have expected you’d think of practicalities first. I guess I wanted you to think of what I wanted first. Still not finished,” she said when he opened his mouth.

She rolled the bag, tied it, set it in the overnight.

“Then after I’d cooked enough so that the town of Boonsboro will eat well should there be an unexpected famine, and unpacked stuff I’m not even sure why I have to begin with, I realized that while I’d be really upset if your family said no because they didn’t think I could handle it, I really don’t want you to say yes just because it’s me, and there’s a family-friendship history.”

She turned now. “I want to be respected, but I won’t be pandered to. Maybe that’s a hard line for you, Owen, but it’s my line. I’m not moving it.”

“It’s fair, and I’ll probably slip off the line sometimes. So will you.”

“Yeah, you’re right, but we need to try to stay on it.” She went to the closet, got out a pair of boots. Tall black boots, he noted, with high, skinny heels.

He’d never seen her wear them. Or really anything quite like them. She sat on the bench at the foot of her bed. His mouth went dry as she pulled them on, zipped them up.

“Um. So. I wanted to say . . .” He trailed off as she rose. “Wow.”

“It’s the boots, right?” Considering, she looked down at them. “Hope talked me into them.”

“I love Hope,” he said as she pulled open the door of the closet, checked herself out in the full-length mirror on the back. “I’ve never seen you wear anything like that.”

“It’s Christmas Eve. I’m not working.”

“You’re working for me.”

She laughed, sent him a sparkling look. “Your reaction is noted and appreciated. I rarely get a chance to wear heels. Hope’s helping me fill in the wide, wide gaps in my shoe wardrobe. We’d better get going. Since you’re here you can help me haul down the presents so I don’t have to keep going up and down the steps in these boots.”

“Sure, but I still need that minute.”

“Oh, right, sorry. I thought it was about the thing, and we dealt with the thing.”

“Not the whole thing.” He took a brightly wrapped box out of his coat pocket. “We have this tradition in my family about getting one present on Christmas Eve.”

“I remember.”

“So, here’s yours.”

“Is this a I-better-make-up-with-her-or-she-won’t-sleep-with-me-next-week present?”

“No, I saved that one for tomorrow.”

She laughed again, made him grin with the quick, cheerful peal of it. “Can’t wait to see that one.”

She took the box, shook. Got nothing. “You padded it.”

“You’re a shaker. Everybody knows.”

“I like to guess first, it adds to the suspense. Could be earrings,” she speculated. “As you were so appalled by my earring drawer, let me say, if so, trust me, you can never have too many.” She ripped away, tossing the ribbon and paper on her dresser.

She opened the box, pulled off the cotton batting he’d used to pad it. And saw two keys.

“For the building across the street,” he told her. “Both sides.”

She lifted her gaze to his face, said nothing.

“I looked over your business plan after you sent it to Mom. That, and your menu, the rest. It’s solid. It’s good. You’re good.”

He let out a breath when she sat on the bench again, just stared at the keys in the box.

“Full disclosure. Ryder gave you the thumbs-up from the jump. The Little Red Machine. You know he calls you that sometimes.”

She nodded, didn’t speak.

“Beckett came down on your side after he’d gone through the buildings again. Part of that, if you ask me, is because now he wants to design it, wants his hands in it. But the other part is because he believes in you. And Mom? You’re planning to do exactly what she wants in that space, more than she thought she could get. She doesn’t have any doubts.

“As for me—”

“If you’d said no, it would be no.”

His brows drew together, his hands dug into his pockets. “Wait a minute. Wait. We don’t work that way.”

“Owen.” Head down, she turned the keys over and over in the box. “They listen to you. Maybe it doesn’t feel like it or seem like it to you all the time. But on something like this? On business? They know you’re the go-to, and they respect that. The same as you all respect Beckett on design, and Ryder on the builds, on the hiring and firing of crew. You have no idea how much I’ve admired and envied your family over the years.”

He couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“You didn’t say no.”

“It wasn’t a matter of not believing in you, Avery, not ever. You were right that I should’ve asked to see your projections and plans. But I wasn’t thinking of you that way. I wasn’t looking at you that way. I’m not used to thinking and looking at you, at this, at us, the way I am now. And we haven’t really started.”

Still staring down at the keys, she said nothing.

“You work so hard.”

“I need to.” She pressed her lips tight together for a moment. “I’m not going to talk about that, the whole psyche thing, the issue thing, not now. Okay?”

“Okay. Oh, man.” When she lifted her eyes to his, they were brimming—gorgeous, heartbreaking, shimmering blue. “Do you have to?”