Dark Time Page 14

  I would avoid Trent, somehow, and just walk right out of the place.

  Tim brought back my slips to sign, and I stood to leave. That was about the time Trent walked past me, and I bumped into him.

  “Oh, it’s you again. They’ll let anybody in here, I see.” Trent’s upper lip curled, and something just popped in my head.

  “Yeah, scum that disown their sister over nothing is pretty low.” It was out before I could stop it, but I didn’t back down.

  “What did you say?” His jaw went hard, and he squinted at me.

  “I said, letting in scum that disown their sister over nothing is pretty low. I don’t know how you could have done that to someone as delightful, beautiful, talented and beyond fucking loyal as Emily is. She’s the most kind, caring, compassionate person I’ve ever met, and you and your tired little family kicked her out because she’s dating me? That’s trifling, man.”

  “Let me tell you…” Trent started to say, but I held my hand up.

  “Believe it or not, Trent, I don’t give a fuck what you have to say. I’ve won, you lost. I have the resort I wanted, and I have the most amazing woman in my life. In fact, having her makes me the winner for life, because she’s brought something to me that you obviously never understood you had. You had an angel in your midst, and you threw her away. Like I said, trifling.”

  I could see Trent wanted to swing at me, and I stood there, jaw ready, but he just walked away. Good for him.

  Emily

  There were moments in your life where everything slowed, became surreal, and you just watched, like a spectator at a theater. As if what was happening was happening to someone else, not you. That was what I was experiencing now as I looked at the name on the envelope.

  A week after we’d moved into the new penthouse, I’d received a letter. From my brother Trent. The last one I got nearly tore me apart, and I wondered now what kind of fuckery he was trying to perpetrate. Dylan had told me about his run-in with Trent at lunch, but we hadn’t heard anything and assumed the matter was dropped. Now, I had a letter from him.

  I put it down and decided I wouldn’t focus on it for now. I had work to do and later, when Dylan was here, we’d open it together. Not just because I had decided there were to be no more secrets between us, but because I needed his support to open the damn thing. I took a deep breath, finished my coffee, and then rode the elevator down to meet with the designer. She was really fun to be around, and we were ahead of schedule because of the incredible work she and her team were doing.

  The resort hadn’t needed a ton of work to get up to standards, but painting the walls, putting in carpet, and then adding the furniture would take a while. Some of the rooms wouldn’t even have furniture for another month or two after we opened, because we had so many to fill. Of course, the suites and the penthouses required more work, and we were about to start on those today.

  As it turned out, right now, I just did whatever Dylan needed me to do, and today, that was helping Erica set up the penthouse closest to ours. “Hi, Erica, I’m here.”

  “Oh, good! I need to know what you think about these plates. Are they suitable? Dylan and I liked them when we chose them, but I’m not so sure now.”

  I inspected the plates, white with swirls of pastel blues, greens, and pinks running over them. They were festive and looked quite expensive. I liked them, though, more than anything, and that made up my mind. “I like them. They’ll be fine.”

  “Good. That’s settled then. Alright, let’s decide where the furniture goes, shall we?”

  I knew she and Dylan had drawn up plans for each penthouse, but as I’d learned already, plans were made to be broken in this business. Odd walls that stuck out in places prevented a couch from sitting back properly or curtains didn’t quite measure what they should. It was a game of adaptation, and I’d learned to play it well.

  Of course, my previous life had taught me that lesson too, but I refused to talk about that right now.

  I walked into the bedroom, which had charcoal gray carpet, and looked around. There were two windows in here, and the plan had been drawn up to face the bed toward them. “From what Dylan and I had learned already, the glare from the neon signs everywhere and the streetlights reached even up here. I thought it would be dark up here, but it isn't. I’d put the beds against the other wall, put in blackout curtains, and situate the room like that.”

  Meaning exactly the same way we’d done ours. Workers moved the bedframe and began to put the bed up. We walked out into the kitchen, and I found the stove top we’d ordered didn’t quite fit. There was a hair’s difference, and luckily, another worker came in and shaved down the problem spot with a chisel and utility knife. By the time the stove was installed, you couldn’t tell the countertop with a thin veneer of granite had been chipped away at all. “Good job.”

  The workers grinned and moved on to putting in the sink. Erica and I went into the bathroom and hung up shower curtains, a few wall decorations, and the towel racks/warmers. We weren’t just pretty faces around here, that was for sure, and Erica was definitely one to get down in the mud and do what needed doing.

  It wasn’t a bad day, but I had that letter in the back of my mind, no matter how hard I tried to ignore it. I went out to lunch with Erica and still couldn’t stop thinking about it. I tried to distract myself with a decadent chocolate dessert, but even that didn’t help.

  What did he want now?

  I chewed at my nail as Erica drove us back to the resort, and I apologized for being so silent during lunch.

  “It’s no problem, Emily. I know there’s a lot going on in this place, and a lot to worry over. I don’t think you’re rude at all, so don’t apologize again. Let’s see what else we can get done to ease that worried mind of yours.”

  That was Erica. She found peace through work. I started to unpack dishes and loaded them into the newly installed dishwasher. I put in the soap tablets and started the load. We wanted everything clean and sanitized when our first customers came in.

  “Emily? Dylan’s called, he said your phone is off?” Erica came out of the guest room and handed me the phone.

  “Yes, I turned it off earlier and forgot to turn it back on. Thank you.”

  “Hi, Emily, what’s up, darling?” I heard his voice, and my heart melted and I smiled for the first time in an hour or more.

  “I’ll tell you later. What’s up?”

  “Nothing, I just wanted to check on you. How’s your head?” He must have been on his lunch then. I sat in a chair at the kitchen table. They were sturdy director’s chairs in off-white linen. Maybe not overly practical, but we figured most people in the penthouses wouldn’t be eating in often anyway. We’d gone for attractive over practical in this instance.

  “My head is fine, actually. Really good. The paint fumes are all gone, and I can’t smell anything else.” I wanted to ask him to come and see me, but we were both busy, and that stupid letter could wait until we were together later. For now, I’d let it go.

  “Good, I’m going to get a burger, and then I’ll be back in the office if you need me.”

  “Enjoy your lunch, darling. See you later.” I hung up the phone and took it back to Erica. “Thanks for that. I’m going to go over and check the other penthouse, see how the beds are in those and check the couches.”

  “Great. I’m just getting the curtains up in the guest bedroom. I’ll join you in a bit.”

  I walked into the penthouse and checked that everything was alright. The three penthouses were basically the same layout, but each one had its own quirks. I knew I didn’t have to do any of this, but I really wanted to avoid that letter. If I went back to the penthouse alone, I might open that letter.

  If it was more abuse from my brother, Dylan would find me in a flood of tears. If that happened, he was liable to hunt Trent down and beat him to a pulp. Not that Dylan was the violent kind, but I saw the way the mention of Trent and how my family had treated me made his demeanor change. He went fr
om happy, calm, and collected, to icy cold, distant, and hard all over.

  I didn’t want the whole thing to get worse. I’d cry if it was more of Trent’s shit, but if he was there, I wouldn’t feel so alone. He’d be there to reassure me and help me to throw the damn letter away.

  I couldn’t hope that it was good news, though, I supposed it could be. Trent, for whatever reason, had gone back to dick mode when it came to me and Dylan. I thought his wife had calmed him down, brought out a softer side to him, but I hadn’t seen that side in a while now. He had probably found a way to cut me out of the family money, though I doubted even Dad would go that far.

  Dad might not have been the most loving man to grow up with, but he’d loved me in his own way. I’d been his only girl, and for the longest time, the only child who stuck by him. The boys had gone off into the world to sow their oats and do the stupid things that I’d had to clean up. I’d been by my father’s side, and I’d helped him with that crazy scheme of his when he decided it was time to call the boys home.

  Which was part of the reason it had hurt so much when my father agreed to cut me out. I’d wondered if it was another scheme, if he was doing this to teach us all some lesson, but I hadn’t heard from him. After a while, I’d started to think even he had truly disowned me.

  I’d learned to block the pain out, and Dylan did his best to keep me happy. He went above and beyond quite often, and I couldn’t repay him for that. He was the only reason my family’s abandonment hadn’t crushed me. He would get me through whatever fresh hell Trent wanted to throw at me. I just knew he would.

  I managed to get through the rest of the day without breaking down in tears or running to the penthouse to tear the letter open. Part of me felt like I owed it to Dylan to open that letter with him there, and so, as much as I wanted to get it over with, fear and that decision made me put it off. I was a mess by the time I went back to the penthouse to start dinner.

  I burned the spaghetti sauce I’d made, and the frozen bread dough hadn’t thawed out on the counter. When the pasta burst into flames in a pot of water, I threw it in the sink, turned the stove off, and burst into tears. I was like that when Dylan came home and walked into the kitchen. I hurried and wiped at my face with a paper towel as he came in.

  “Emily, what’s wrong, honey?” He knelt in front of me as soon as he saw my face. A quick look at the cooking area explained some of it. “Oh no, what went wrong?”

  “It’s my fault, I’m too distracted. I’ve never cooked on an electric stove before, and it’s not the same as gas stoves. I just, I don’t even know how the pasta caught on fire, it was in a pot of water, for fuck’s sake. I’m just, I don’t know, I’m useless today!” I let my head drop down on my folded arms and couldn’t help it. I started to sob again.

  “It’s no problem, Emily, we’ll have something delivered. Don’t worry about the food. Come into the living room with me. Come on, forget this stuff.”

  I wanted to sit at the table and put off going into the living room. The letter from Trent was in there on the coffee table, and I didn’t want to go near it. I even dug my heels in as we walked into the room. The sun had started to go down, and the room was dim with only a lightbulb on. Dylan glanced at the paper on the table but didn’t really look at it.

  “Your phone has been off all day, and now you’re here in tears. Tell me what’s wrong and who I have to kill.” He sat in the corner of the couch and pulled me down with him.

  I stretched out on the couch and leaned my head on his chest. “I’ve just, I got something in the mail today.”

  “Alright? Who from?” I could see his jaw going tight already, and his eyes had narrowed.

  I put my hand on his jaw and tried to work that knot loose that had appeared at the side of his face. It wasn’t that hard to figure out, not with how I reacted the last time Trent sent me a letter.

  “My brother.” I closed my eyes when I heard an angry sound rumble up through his chest.

  “Which bother, Emily? You have a few.” He wasn’t being nasty to me, just clarifying.

  “Trent.”

  “That fucking bastard.” He scrubbed at his jaw, took a deep breath, then looked down at me. His hand came up to cup my face now, and his thumb stroked at my cheek to comfort me. “What did it say? Why didn’t you tell me? Oh, Emily, why did you carry this around with you all day? I could have helped you.”

  “I didn’t. Not really. I haven’t opened it yet. You’ve been busy, and I had things to do too. I saw it after you left and thought I’d wait until tonight to open it. When we were here together, and I wouldn’t have to be such a mess. Didn’t work really, though, did it?”

  “No, it doesn’t look like it.” He leaned his head back on the couch before he spoke again. “Do you want to open it, Emily?”

  “Not until I calm down a little. I got so worked up about dinner…” I let my words trail off.

  I hadn’t been worked up about dinner, though, just frustrated. The real reason I’d been crying was because Trent had once again intruded on my life. I didn’t understand why he hadn’t just left me alone. He’d organized it so that I was no longer a member of the family, I was anathema to them all, and now he’d sent me a letter.

  “I just want you to hold me for a couple of minutes. Then we can open the hateful thing. Because you know it’s going to be hateful. It’s from Trent. What else could it be?”

  Dylan slid down beside me, and I pulled him close and let his warmth wrap around me, I found peace in his arms, and my mind quieted down. I didn’t feel so stressed now, and life wasn’t so overwhelming. All it took was being in Dylan’s arms.

  Finally, I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer, and I took a deep breath.

  “Okay, let’s open it. Let’s find out how he wants to wreck my life now.”

  Dylan continued to hold me, and I didn’t fight him, but I knew that letter was there on that table, and that soon, I’d have to open it. For now, I’d live in the tranquility that only Dylan could give me. For a few minutes longer.

  What more does he want?

  Just as Emily thinks she is finally settling into her new life, she is about to discover there are more secrets and surprises waiting for her right around the corner…

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  Summer Cooper

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