Second chance romance, p.32
Second Chance Romance, page 32
Any remaining semblance of civility shredded by his condescension and obstinate refusal to understand her position, Molly planted her feet on the tile floor and her fists on her hips, and she made absolutely freaking sure he heard her this time, with no confusion possible.
“You could offer me ten times the house’s value. A thousand times. It wouldn’t matter, because after everything you’ve said and done to me, I. Will. Never. Sell. It. To. You. I’d rather burn it to the damn ground than let you have it.” She bared her teeth at him, in what might technically be considered a smile. “And don’t bother looking shocked and disappointed that I’d refuse a tidy profit. We both know that between the two of us, you’re the one who cares about his money more than his heart.”
His face creased in a wince when she raised her voice, and he aimed a speaking glance at their surroundings. He’d always hated loud confrontations, especially in public. Considered them common. And sure enough—
“Pipe down, you two,” he hissed, leaning closer. “There’s no need to make this some kind of juvenile confrontation. Even though you’re . . .” He shook his head again, as if in helpless disbelief. “You’re refusing to sell me your home out of childish spite? Truly?”
“You’ve got some nerve, jackass, to come in here and pretend Molly’s the one at fault.” In direct contradiction to Rob’s order, Lise’s voice had risen in volume. “She only told me the bare minimum about her divorce, and you already sounded like a total dick. And now that I’ve met you, it’s clear that she didn’t give me even the faintest, most infinitesimal idea—”
For all that Lise was shouting, Molly could barely hear anything over the insistent buzz in her ears and the rapid thud of her heartbeat in her skull.
She’d married this man. Married him.
Let him shove cake in her face and stayed with him.
“If I’m being spiteful, I have damn good reason.” She stepped into his space. Thrust an accusing finger at his chest, stopping a bare inch away. “You used me, Rob. Wrung me dry, then left in the cruelest way possible, like the absolute asshole—”
“Calm down, both of you.” Rob reached for Molly’s arm, sighing when she jerked it out of reach. “Listen, Molly, why don’t you and I go someplace more private, where you can cool off, and then we can—”
“What the actual fuck is going on here?”
Oh, thank god. At the sound of Karl’s infuriated roar, Molly could literally feel her blood pressure drop back to non-dangerous levels.
When the three hallway combatants—along with dozens of onlookers—swiveled in Karl’s direction, he and his employees still remained inside the gym, but they were racing toward Molly and closing in fast.
He was red-faced with both anger and effort, his tux rumpled. Not the world’s most natural sprinter. Mutter-shouting breathless obscenities with each step.
Not once in her entire life had she been more relieved to see someone.
Whatever was wrong between the two of them, she didn’t doubt for a moment that he—like Lise—would have her back and protect her however he could. Down to the marrow of her bones, she knew he’d comfort her in the aftermath of whatever happened next. Hell, he’d turn himself inside freaking out if that was what it took to make her feel good in her own skin again.
And she knew that because she trusted him. Wholeheartedly. Without reservations.
Lise was right: He didn’t need to declare his love aloud. Not when everything he did figuratively shouted his absolute devotion. Molly had simply been too busy wallowing in past hurts to understand that before now.
Rob’s nose crinkled. “Who’s that, Mol?”
“That’s my new boyfriend, Karl. The one you heard on the phone.” Molly grinned, suddenly calm again. “He’s apparently very eager to meet you.”
Karl ran until the last possible moment, nearly hitting the hallway wall with all the momentum he’d achieved trying to reach them as quickly as possible.
“Baby . . .” He planted himself between her and Rob and gently clasped her shoulders, presenting the other man with his back. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” She sucked in a huge breath. Counted to five. Exhaled. Felt her blood pressure lower even further. “Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just . . . Rob showed up without warning, and . . .”
“Got it.” His blunt finger tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “You want to have it out with the asshole here, or would you like more privacy?”
Unlike Rob, he was asking what she preferred. Not telling her who she was. Not proposing something for his own benefit and pretending it was for her.
“I don’t . . .” She mouthed the words more than spoke them, keeping her voice too quiet for anyone else to hear. “I don’t want to spend even an extra minute of time with that man or go anywhere with him, especially not to an enclosed space. I don’t want to be reminded of him anywhere else in Harlot’s Bay. And I don’t want to be alone with him.”
“Molly, what in heaven’s name—” Rob began, somewhere behind Karl.
“Lise and I would never leave you alone with him, unless you specifically told us to go.” Glancing over his shoulder, still ignoring Rob, Karl surveyed the visible portion of the gym. “Could head back to the refreshments table. Use it as a physical barrier between you two while you talk. Have Lise, Charlotte, and Johnathan keep people away. It’d be public, but with some privacy. What do you think?”
She inclined her head. “That works for me. Thank you.”
“No need for thanks. Don’t want you alone with that bastard either.” His jaw ticked. “Fair warning: Can’t promise to stay out of things if I hear him dicking you around. You want me to try to keep quiet, though, I will.”
“Molly.” Rob poked his head around Karl’s broad shoulder. “Can’t we simply—”
“As long as you don’t talk over me, Karl, I honestly don’t care. Just make sure to keep your contributions to the discussion verbal only.” She held up her midnight-blue clutch. “I didn’t bring bail money tonight.”
He looked genuinely disappointed that she hadn’t okayed violence against her ex-husband. “Goddamn shame.”
The deepest, angriest recesses of her id kind of agreed. But as their new group of six made its way to the back of the gym, she certainly didn’t tell Karl that.
She didn’t need him to physically fight for her. Just love her.
Good thing he clearly already did.
29
Five minutes later, Molly’s ex-husband had finally accepted the obvious: She wasn’t going to sell him the house, no matter what. At which point, Rob began a bitter litany of accusations, because apparently no one had ever flat-out refused the man before when he really, really wanted something.
She was the reason their marriage had failed, he informed her.
She was hard and unforgiving.
She was irrational.
She was selfish.
With each charge laid against her, she simply blinked at him, unimpressed by his lack of creativity. Honestly, she still recalled his I-want-a-divorce monologue just fine. If she’d wanted an encore, she could’ve simply consulted her own memories.
This delightful encounter wasn’t going to last much longer. She’d decided five minutes was more than enough time for him to purge the vitriol from his system once and for all. After that, she’d put an end to their unexpected rendezvous—and tell him any further contact would either happen through their lawyers or end in a restraining order.
Her hands were steady. Her cheeks had cooled. She’d even transcribed a few key chunks of his soliloquy in her phone’s note-taking app, then discreetly posted brief updates to her social media accounts while he was still droning on and on about how terrible a wife she’d been, because when Rob got in the lecture zone, her participation was entirely unnecessary.
She was back in control.
His words stung. Of course they stung. But they didn’t wound her like they had before Karl showed up. They didn’t threaten her composure or make her doubt herself in the way Rob obviously intended.
The man glued to her side was having a harder time maintaining his equanimity, however. And after Rob’s ridiculously hypocritical accusation of selfishness, Karl gave up even the unconvincing pretense of putting food away. Propping his white-knuckled fists on the catering table, wearing an expression generally reserved for bloodthirsty serial killers finally taking their knife-wielding revenge upon their lifelong enemy, he leaned in dangerously close to her ex-husband and unleashed his tongue.
“If Molly’s hard sometimes?” A furious, rumbling sound rattled in his chest. “It’s because she’s had to be. Because motherfuckers like you would’ve taken advantage otherwise. Part of her damn well knew she couldn’t trust you with anything soft.”
She took a sip from her water bottle. Smiled at him.
“If she’s unforgiving, it’s because you don’t deserve her goddamn forgiveness.” When his fists thumped against the table, it shuddered. “And it’s not irrational or selfish to say no to you. It’s her house, you shit stain of a man. She can do whatever she fucking wants with it.”
It was genuinely startling, the extent to which seeing—and hearing, obviously; everyone in Harlot’s Bay could probably transcribe his profanity-laden screed at this point, word for word—Karl’s anger eased hers. Like he’d lifted its weight directly from her heart and heaved it onto his own broad shoulders, carrying it like he had so many other burdens during the course of his overworked life.
And he was only gaining momentum as he spoke. Maybe a bit too much momentum. Again: If Karl utterly lost his cool, she didn’t know whether the Harlot’s Bay jail took credit cards, and she didn’t want to find out.
“—go fuck yourself, you prick,” he was ranting. “I’ll tear down every brick of that house with my bare hands and sledgehammer the foundation into motherfucking atoms before I let you get your cruel—”
A single light tug on his jacket’s sleeve, and he cut himself off and looked over at her.
“You have extremely strong hands, but I doubt they’re strong enough to tear apart mortared bricks.” She covered one of those hands with hers. Squeezed consolingly. “Even if they were, you should wear gloves to protect them. Also, a quick note: While I have, on occasion, been referred to as a brick house—”
“She’s mighty-mighty,” Lise murmured from a few feet away.
“—my actual house is not, in fact, brick.” She raised her free forefinger. “And finally, I’m relatively certain a sledgehammer can’t supply the force necessary to break elements down to their constituent atoms.”
His lips twitched, if only faintly. “Nitpicker.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“Molly.” In the put-upon tone of a reasonable person ill-used by circumstance—oh, yes, her ex-husband had been an excellent narrator before his decision to attend medical school—Rob addressed her directly. “Why are you letting this man speak for you?”
“Because I’ve said what I needed to say, over and over again,” she answered plainly. “You didn’t listen, and there’s no point wasting more of my time or energy. Right now, I’m simply letting you run out of steam. And for your information, I’ve already transcribed the most problematic things you told me tonight. Just in case I need to file a restraining order.”
While her ex-husband spluttered and postured and informed her she was overreacting—hysterical, even—Karl leaned over to plant a hard kiss on her head.
“Be right back.” He began edging around the table. “Getting us both some eel cake before it’s all gone.”
Apparently he considered the matter settled. And to be fair, the threat of legal intervention had seemingly taken most of the wind out of Rob’s sails.
Most, but not all.
“We both know you’re not cut out for relationships, Molly.” Rob watched Karl walk over to the nearby cake display, then turned back to Molly. “He might play the big man and beat his chest in front of your ex, but he’ll never love you.”
Over at the cake table, Karl’s shoulders bunched into hard knots of muscle, and he rumbled ominously. The word motherfucker was clearly audible, although he probably thought he was speaking under his breath.
She had to smile. “Oh, he definitely loves me. No doubt about that.”
Karl jerked and swung around to face her, a plate with an enormous, uncomfortably lifelike slab of eel cake clutched tight in one large hand. His eyes were wide, his lips parted in shock at her announcement.
“That . . .” Rob snorted. “That apparently comes as surprise to him, Molly.”
She lifted a shoulder, unconcerned. “He hasn’t told me yet.”
Rob’s smirk spread. “I’m sure he hasn’t. Let’s find out for certain.” He turned his attention to Karl. “Do you love her? Be honest, man.”
Clearly, her ex-husband considered this a gotcha moment of the highest order. The perfect opportunity to soothe his own injured pride by watching hers get savaged.
It wasn’t going to work out the way he imagined. No matter what Karl did or didn’t say.
“Karl’s always honest,” Molly felt obligated to point out. “But he doesn’t have to share anything he doesn’t want to. If you’d rather not respond to this jackass, Karl, feel free to ignore him.”
Karl was nearly hyperventilating. But he stepped closer anyway, plate shaking in his hand, and stopped right next to her ex-husband.
“Dearborn.” His throat bobbed with his audible gulp. “You really want me to tell you for the first time in front of this asshole?”
She huffed out an amused breath. “I might as well have one good memory associated with him. But again, it’s up to you.”
Karl closed his eyes for a moment, mouth working as he gathered the courage to bare his heart. And despite what she’d just said, her ex-husband might as well have disappeared from the face of the Earth, along with everyone else in the gym.
All she could see was the man she loved, struggling with his fears, and she had no desire to make anything in his life harder than it already was. Even this.
“It’s okay. Really.” She reached across the table to him. “You don’t have to—”
“Love you like oxygen, Molly,” he told her plainly, then met her stare directly. “Like fucking daylight. Good-sized part of me? Loved you for over twenty-two goddamn years now. Even when I thought I’d never fucking see you again.”
Raw honesty vibrated through each choked word, and his eyes were bright as the sun, shining with tears and gut-deep emotion. With naked vulnerability, left unguarded and exposed.
“Oh,” she murmured through numb lips. “I . . .”
Somehow, even though she’d known, hearing the words . . . it overwhelmed her. Left her wet-eyed and thick-throated and dazed.
Gathering herself, she shook off the haze of shocked joy. “Oh, god, Karl, I l—”
“Been thinking about logistics.” He barreled right over her attempt at returning his declaration, his face taut with determination. “We do a few renos, your recording studio can fit in my house.”
The way he looked at her—intense, searching, like she was the answer to every question he’d posed over an entire lifetime—stole her breath again.
“But if you’d rather stay in California, fine. Pack up my shit and join you there,” he added, to her shock. “Wouldn’t be able to sell the bakery and move until I got Charlotte and Bez trained up right, but—”
“You don’t need to uproot yourself or leave your business, Karl. I’m willing to sell my house”—she cast a derisive glance at her ex, who appeared frozen in utter bewilderment—“to almost anyone but him.”
The offer, though—the way Karl hadn’t assumed she would be the one to move; his willingness to abandon his lifelong hometown and the business he’d served for decades, if that was what she needed—meant the absolute world to her.
His lips curved slightly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She smiled back at him. “Although . . . your taking on an apprentice or two would be great, Karl. If I’m going to move across the country to be with you, I want to actually spend some time together. Without you working ridiculous hours or giving up sleep to make that happen. And when was your last vacation?”
He considered the question. “Technically?”
“Technical correctness is the most satisfying correctness of all.”
Somewhere off to the side, her ex-husband groaned and muttered something derogatory. In response, a woman who sounded very much like sweet, gentle Charlotte told him to shut the hell up and stop ruining the moment.
Karl snorted. “Then my last vacation? Not long ago. When I had the flu.”
“And Sylvia thought you’d died.” As if on cue, the journalist’s flash left Molly blinking away more spots. “I think we can do better than that.”
His small smile got bigger and bigger, until his joy was as brilliant and blinding as Sylvia’s flash. “Sure as hell can.”
Rob ostentatiously cleared his throat, and they reluctantly looked over at him. “If and when you come to your senses, Molly, I’ll accept your apology, and we can talk about—”
Karl groaned so loudly, her ex-husband jumped.
“Quit dicking around, fuckface,” he told Rob, “and just go.”
“Please do.” Sylvia held up her camera. “You’re blocking my view, young man.”
“Make like Walt Whitman’s grass,” Lise said, “and leave.”
“Do what the lit nerd says, asshat!” a random spectator—was that Ned?—called out.
After a final long-suffering sigh, Rob did in fact turn to go. Only to get tangled with Karl’s foot somehow. Her ex-husband staggered, half falling to the floor. And as Karl reached out to assist—
After a collective gasp, utter silence blanketed the gym.
Then Rob raised his cake-covered face, and a dollop of eel slime dripped from his nose. At which point Molly had to look away before she totally lost her shit, like the rest of the crowd.
“Oh, no.” Karl wiped his hands on a napkin, sounding unutterably bored. “Such a fucking shame. My apologies, dude.”
