An Unexpected Love Story (Love Story Book Two) Read online

  “What’s going on?”

  I looked behind Justine and groaned. Her best friend, Nikky, was standing there, looking for all the world like she hoped she’d be able to witness a fight tonight. She was such a drama queen.

  “This skank is hitting on Joel,” Justine said, pointing a long, manicured finger in my face. “I saw her!”

  Nikky’s face lit up. “Really?”

  “Of course not,” Paul said. “Just get out of here, okay? We don’t want any trouble.”

  “You think you can just have whatever you want, don’t you Murray?” Justine’s face was twisted up, making her look even worse than she usually did. “You’ve always been that way. What is it about being a slut that makes you think you’re entitled to every guy in town?”

  “Okay, I’ve had about enough of your crap—” I started, goaded now beyond control. But Paul took my arm, pulling me behind him a little bit.

  “She’s not worth it,” he said to me, his voice soft. “You have too much to do this weekend without getting in a bar fight.” He turned back to Nikky. “Nik, can you just get her out of here, please?”

  It worked like a charm. Nikky had always had a crush on Paul, and when he smiled at her, like he was doing now, she was liable to do just about anything he asked.

  “Sure,” she said, giving him her best flirty smile in return. I rolled my eyes behind Paul’s back. But Nikky started tugging on Justine’s arm, pulling her away from the table. “Come on, Justine,” she murmured. “Let’s just go.”

  “This isn’t over,” Justine hissed, pointing at me again. “I am so going to kick your ass, Murray.”

  “Oh dear,” I said, my voice flat. “I am so worried. How on earth will I get by, what with all the worry?”

  “Shut up,” she said, shaking free of Nikky’s arm to take a step closer. “You think you’re so smart ’cause you went to some bull shit school. But I know what you really are. Everyone in town does. You’re no better than a stupid whore. And you’re going to end up alone and ugly, just like a whore.”

  “Okay,” I said, brightly, doing my best to affect her normal, ditzy voice. “See you later then, sweetie. Call me!”

  “Bitch,” she muttered once more, before turning to follow Nikky out of the bar.

  I took a deep breath, the rush of adrenaline slowly dissipating, leaving me feeling suddenly exhausted. I looked around and realized most of the bar was staring at me. Great. If there was one thing I needed right now, it was more attention.

  “Sit down,” Paul said, all but pushing me into my seat. “I’ll get you another drink.”

  I sat down, feeling tired. Tired and sad, though I wasn’t sure why. Justine meant nothing to me, and her words should mean even less. So why did I feel like I could put my head down on the table and burst into tears?

  Suddenly, Joel grasped my arm. “Brooke, I think I need to go home,” he said, his voice low. “I’m pretty sure I just passed out. I had the strangest dream that Justine was here.”

  I sighed, patting him on the shoulder. “It was more like a nightmare, buddy.”

  Paul returned with my drink, and I raised an eyebrow. I had assumed he was going to get me another beer, but he instead offered me a shot glass of something amber. He gave me a sheepish look. “I figured you could do with something stronger.”

  I downed the glass of whiskey in one go, the burn making me feel marginally better. “Thanks.”

  Next to me, Joel put his head down on the table. He was snoring almost immediately. Paul sat on my other side and started rubbing my back with one hand. The kindness made me feel even worse, somehow.

  “You handled that well.”

  “Yeah, right. I was ready to get into an all-out brawl.”

  “But you didn’t,” he pointed out. “You managed to hold your temper. That’s a good thing.”

  I sighed and reached over for his glass, figuring my need was greater than his.

  “Seriously, Brooke,” he said, his voice low and near my ear. I closed my eyes, letting the sound of it wash over me. The idea of his being close to me right now was more comforting than I would have imagined. “You know that all that crap she said was BS, right? You are none of those things.”

  I guess, in the end, that’s what it all came down to. I’d been called those names so many times over the years, by so many people. From the girls who were jealous to the boys I rejected, it had been a pretty constant refrain from about junior high on.

  “I’m no saint,” I said to Paul. “You said it yourself this afternoon, you know?”

  “Who wants to be a saint? There’s plenty of middle ground, Brooke. You know that. You’re allowed to have fun in your life without being judged.”

  I knew he was right, knew I was crazy for letting someone like Justine have any effect over my own self-image. And most of the time, I actually believed what he was telling me; there was nothing wrong with me, I had done nothing wrong.

  But on the other hand, when you hear something enough, there’s a part of you that just can’t help but start believing it.

  And that is why I did the one thing guaranteed to make me feel better that night, and much, much worse in the morning. I leaned over to Paul—the friend who was always so nice to me, who was always there when I needed him—and kissed him.

  Chapter Four

  I came to work the next day quite sure my brain was trying to escape from my skull, so heavy was the pounding of my hangover headache. I had left Paul’s apartment before the sun had risen, and I was terrified of seeing him at work. But he breezed in at his normal start time, totally casual and unconcerned. His reaction should have made me feel better about things, but I found my brain uncooperative, completely unwilling to focus on any one task. I tried unsuccessfully to work on my payroll for most of the morning before finally giving up and deciding to call Emily.

  She answered on the first ring. “I did something stupid last night,” I said, the moment she answered the phone

  “Hello to you, too,” Emily said, yawning loudly. “Was it something stupid, or someone stupid?” I laughed into my cell phone and settled back into my desk chair.

  “You know me so well,” I said, looking around my quiet office. The inn was practically deserted this morning, with the exception of the restaurant staff. The perfect time for a heart to heart with my best friend.

  “So who was it this time?” she asked, and I felt my stomach dip. I knew she was just joking, but the implication of her words brought up too many issues from last night.

  “You’re going to yell at me,” I said.

  “When have I ever yelled at you?” she asked. “Brooke, you can tell me. The only way I’d give you a hard time is if it’s Paul Harting again,” she continued, laughing. When I didn’t say anything, she groaned. “Oh, Brooke. You told me you weren’t going to hook up with him anymore, after things got so weird the last time.”

  I closed my eyes. She was right. The last time I’d spent the night with Paul, he had decided that we should get married. “You keep coming back to me in the end, Brooke,” he had said. “Let’s just make it official.” At that point I had promised him, and Emily, that it was the last time I’d be making that mistake.

  “So what happened?” Emily asked after a moment’s silence.

  “There was this whole thing at the bar,” I said, shuddering a bit at the memory of it. Stupid Justine.

  “See, I keep telling you that you need to stop frequenting Hardy’s,” she said. “Nothing but trouble ever comes from that place. You know this, Brooke.”

  “Where the hell else am I supposed to hang out?” I asked. “You know that my options aren’t entirely endless up here.”

  “You could move down this way,” she said eagerly. “There’s lots of fun stuff to do.” Emily was forever trying to get me move down to southeast Michigan. After college, she had moved to a suburb of Detroit and seemed blissfully happy about it. It wasn’t exactly the big city, but it was certainly a lot more like civilization.
r />   “You know I can’t do that,” I sighed.

  “Can’t or won’t?” she asked, in that voice she reserved for calling me on my bullshit.

  “Anyway,” I said, wanting to change the subject. “I got into a little fight with Justine last night. Words were said.”

  “Did you deck her? God, I hope you decked her.”

  “No,” I said. “Paul put a stop to it.”

  “And to thank him you went home with him?”

  “Not exactly.”

  When I didn’t offer more information, Emily changed tack. “You know I was only joking when I said I’d be mad at you if it was Paul, right? I would never get mad at you for something like that. And I totally want to talk to you about it, no judgment.”

  I smiled in spite of my pounding headache. Emily was such a great friend. I hated that we lived so far apart. “I know,” I said. “I’m just in my normal morning-after, embarrassed glow.”

  “When have you ever been embarrassed about a guy?” she asked, snorting a little. “You are the same woman who told me that I should forget about true love and view men as a good time, nothing more?”

  I winced. “That does sound like something I would say.”

  “So what happened with Paul?”

  “I guess I was just feeling kinda crappy about myself after the run-in with Justine,” I said, eager to get it all out there as quickly as I could to lessen my embarrassment. I had never been one to obsess over the root causes of my sexual behavior. “And Paul was there, being real nice, and I guess I just got carried away.”

  Emily was quiet for a moment. “What did Justine say to you?” she asked eventually, her voice low and measured. She was pissed, I could tell.

  “Oh, you know, the usual. I’m skanky and slutty and everything else she could think of.” I laughed bitterly. “And, of course, my way of proving her wrong was to sleep with the next guy who would have me. Well done, huh? That’ll show her.”

  “Brooke, stop it,” Emily said, her voice firm. “She is wrong, and we both know it. She’s jealous and evil and trashy, nothing else to it. You cannot let her get in your head.”

  “I know,” I sighed. “I do know that. I just get tired of hearing it sometimes.”

  “Have you talked to Paul yet?” she asked.

  “Yeah, he already came in for his first shift. He thanked me for a nice night and promised not to make a huge fuss over it, like last time.” On the other end of the phone, Emily whistled. “I know, what a nice guy, huh?”

  “Actually, I was more thinking of how smart he was, changing his game like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, come on, Brooke. We both know he’s been in love with you for years. Chasing you around last time didn’t work for him, so now he’s going to pretend like it’s no big deal, hoping that you’ll realize what a big deal it really is.”

  I groaned. “I so hope that is just nonsense put in your head by Ashley and Ryan, and not a real possibility.” Ashley and Ryan were Emily’s friends from college. They were really into romance and all that gooey love stuff. They had spent months last year trying to turn tomboy Emily into a romantic.

  “I don’t know,” Emily said. “I still think I’m right. He totally loves you.”

  “God. I really do need to stop hooking up with that boy.”

  Emily laughed. “This is what I keep telling you.”

  We were both quiet for a minute. “It’s not as fun as it once was,” I finally said, my voice soft. I was embarrassed to make such a confession to her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean hooking up with guys. I used to think it was so fun, so exciting to not be tied down, to just be able to spend time with whoever I wanted. But lately…I don’t know. It feels kind of lame.”

  “Maybe you’re ready to be a little more settled,” Emily said carefully. “Maybe deep down inside you want an actual boyfriend.”

  “Where’s the punch line?”

  “I’m serious, Brooke. Maybe you’ve just played the field long enough.”

  “Emily, let’s not get carried away here, okay?”

  “Say what you want,” she said firmly. “I think you want a boyfriend.”

  “Fine,” I said, unable to keep the grumble out of my voice. “Maybe sometimes I do think that it would be nice to have a guy around. But I’m not gonna like, plan some kind of research project to find him.”

  “Very funny,” she said. During Ashley and Ryan’s romance crusade, they had convinced Emily that she needed to get serious about finding a guy. They had turned it into a whole project. It’s not hard to guess how well that turned out. “All I’m saying,” she persisted, “is that you might want to open yourself up to the idea.”

  “Okay, okay,” I agreed. “Consider me now officially open to the idea. Speaking of boyfriends, how is vitamin man doing?”

  That launched Emily into a ten-minute long recollection of her boyfriend Elliot, who ran a health and wellness shop next to her physical therapy office, and all the wonderful things they had done together since the last time I had talked to her. When she talked this way, I usually rolled my eyes and made silent gagging motions, but lately I had been finding less and less to snark at. Maybe Emily was right about the boyfriend thing after all.

  After we chatted for a few minutes about Chris, another friend from school who had moved downstate and was now dating Ashley, we said our goodbyes and hung up. I returned my attention to my payroll. It was hard to concentrate with my head pounding so much. Why had I thought whiskey shots were a good idea?

  “Excuse me.”

  I looked up at the sound of the voice to see a man standing just beyond the doorway to my office, his face mostly hidden in the shadows of the hallway. Figuring it was the bakery delivery I’d been waiting for, I turned my attention back to my ledger.

  “Someone should be in the kitchen,” I said, my mind already halfway on my numbers. “You can unload in there.”

  “I’m sorry?” the man asked, sounding confused.

  “The kitchen,” I said, looking up again. “Right past the dining room. You can’t miss it.”

  “No, I mean…I think there’s some mistake. I was at the front desk but no one was there.”

  I finally looked up, squinting at the stranger. “You’re not here for the bread delivery?”

  “No,” he said stepping into the room so I could see his face. I let out a little gasp. He was without question, the most drop-dead gorgeous man I had ever seen. “I’m not here for the delivery,” he continued. “I’m looking for a room.”

  Chapter Five

  For a minute I felt like there was a disconnect between my brain and my tongue. I just couldn’t seem to form words. The man now standing in my office was jaw-droppingly good looking. Tall and dark, he was obviously built under his clothes—which looked totally out of place in my little inn. He was wearing a clearly expensive suit and had that groomed look you didn’t often see on guys around here. The effect was very nice.

  I finally snapped out of my little trance when I realized the man was looking at me with a slightly alarmed expression. I wondered what my face looked like, to make his look so concerned. I had probably gone slack-jawed and glazed-eyed on him.

  “Sorry,” I said, standing up so quickly my chair fell over behind me. Real smooth. “We’re pretty slow mid-week, so the desk isn’t always manned.”

  “That’s no problem,” he said, giving me a polite smile that sent my stomach plummeting to the region of my knees. “Do you have a room available?”

  “Of course,” I said, reminding myself to breathe. He was only a guy; there was no reason for my face to be turning so red. Even if he was exceptionally beautiful. “Let me just take you back out to the lobby.”

  Instead of walking in front of me, the gorgeous man paused and allowed me to go first, following behind me at a respectful distance. His seemingly automatic and natural act of chivalry made the butterflies in my stomach flutter all the more—whi
ch, luckily, had the effect of snapping me out of my ridiculousness. I was not the kind of girl that got fluttery over something like that. Chivalry usually had the effect of making me roll my eyes in disgust.

  I was, however, the kind of girl that had a business to run. And an unexpected guest midweek in the slow season was akin to a stroke of good luck—not something to mess around with.

  “We’re really quite slow today,” I said as I reached the front desk. I hit the power button on the computer and willed the ancient beast to load up quickly.

  “I was actually hoping to stay through the weekend,” he said, giving me that same polite smile. Holy crap, he was good looking. “Do you have a room for three nights?”

  I briefly entertained the mad idea of asking him to stay in mine, but managed to control myself long enough to say, “That won’t be a problem at all. But I should probably warn you…we’re hosting a video game convention this weekend.”

  He raised an eyebrow at me, his smile widening by a degree. “That sounds interesting.”

  I heard myself giggle before I could stop it. “It probably will be. Anyhow, we have plenty of room, but the convention will be occupying many of the public spaces throughout the inn.”

  “Will they, by chance, be wearing costumes?” he asked, his smile becoming a shade more mischievous.

  “I believe some of them will, yes,” I said. “I am told there is to be a role-playing component.”

  “Excellent,” the man said. “I’m sold. I’ll take a room for three nights.”

  By now the computer had loaded, and I was able to pull up my booking screen. The convention members would be taking up two-thirds of my twenty rooms. “I have a king-sized bed available,” I said, clicking through my options. “Either that or the suite.”

  “I’ll take the suite.” I noticed that the man didn’t ask for the price, confirming my suspicions that he was wealthy. I wondered where he was from.

  “Excellent,” I said. “I’ll just need a credit card and your driver’s license.”