Chapter Twenty-Five
“Dammit.” Rafe hit disconnect when his call went to Chelsea’s voicemail, and tossed his phone onto the kitchen island. It skidded across the granite and clattered onto the terrazzo floor. “Dammit,” he said again, at the same time Arden came through the sliding glass door leading from the deck.
“And good morning to you, too.” She picked up his phone and handed it to him.
“Thanks. When did you get back?” Realizing he sounded surly, he added, “And how was…wherever the hell you were?”
“I got back about an hour ago, and San Francisco was lovely. Going out on a limb here, but am I interrupting some kind of temper tantrum?”
“No.” He didn’t intend to explain to his little sister that his carefully laid plans had somehow backfired and he’d woken up alone this morning, instead of next to Chelsea. They were not eagerly scheduling his next trip to Maui over eggs and coffee.
“Does it have anything to do with the woman who caught my cab?”
“You saw her? Did she say anything?”
“I didn’t see her. My driver got the call and said something along the lines of this being his lucky day, because he had a woman to pick up next door. I almost fell out of the car. You never bring women here. The deal liaison?”
“I need coffee.”
She wandered over to his machine and did the honors. “You must feel pretty strongly about her, to invite her to your house.”
He opened his mouth to tell her to mind her own business, but what popped out instead was, “I love her.” His heart took a minute to resume beating after that confession, but the words—and the truth behind them—rang in his ears. He didn’t just want more from Chelsea. He wanted all.
“Oh my God!” She spun and treated him to a huge smile, but then her expression sobered. “So what happened? Why’d she leave?”
“It’s complicated, Arden. I had a strategy—”
“Strategy.” She rolled her eyes. “You are definitely your father’s son.”
He dropped into one of the tall stools around the island, and scrubbed his hand over his face. “We both walked into this with certain rules in place, and now I want to break every single one. Hell, I want to shatter them, but breaking and shattering seemed like bad tactics. I thought we should ease into it.”
A sharp stare, disconcertingly similar to his own, skewered him. “Define ‘ease into it’?” She made air quotes around the words.
“I don’t know. Just…” He trailed off, unsure how to phrase things. This was his little sister, after all. But she saved him the trouble.
“Holy crap, Rafe. What the hell did you propose?”
He winced and looked down at the counter. The flecks and grains in the granite formed an infinite variety of patterns. A question mark. A man walking off a cliff. The word “ass.” “I said I’d come to Maui once a quarter—give or take.”
“What?”
“Look, I know how it sounds now, in the light of day, okay?” He stood and stalked over to the fridge, then paced back to where he’d started. “At the time, I thought, ‘Just get the fuck out from under the hard stop imposed by the close of the deal. Get her to agree to keep us going, and then…whatever it took. Ratchet the frequency up until something had to give.’”
“Amazing.” She shook her head and looked at him as if he were a lost cause. “Hard to believe she didn’t jump at your proposition.”
“Shut up.” He stared out the window at the waves.
“You know, all that breaking and shattering you wanted to avoid goes by another name.”
He exhaled slowly, and braced his forearms on the island. He’d fucked up. He’d fallen short. And he knew it. Putting the right label on the mess wouldn’t improve a damn thing. “Do the semantics matter?”
“They do.” She crossed the room and propped herself on the other side of the island, opposite him, leaning in until their foreheads touched. “It’s called laying your heart on the line. It’s where you drop the games and strategies, and tell the other person how you feel.”
“In the language of negotiation, that’s called the all-or-nothing approach. It’s generally considered a risky move.”
She smiled up at him. “Good thing you like to take risks.”
Chelsea pulled her rental car into an open parking space near the address Laurie had given her. She raised her sunglasses to her forehead, and riffled through the file folder on her passenger seat until she found the small white envelope tucked between the freshly signed contracts for the sale of Tradewinds. Her hands shook as she opened the envelope, and her breath caught at the sight of all the zeroes on her bonus check. Fifty thousand dollars. Despite all the upheaval of the last twenty-four hours, she smiled. Sure, she’d failed miserably at guarding her heart, and her fresh start was an epic fail, but she’d accomplished one important goal.