The Crossroads Duet Read online

  We were both met with silence. I was still on the floor where I’d slid over on my knees, so I gently nudged the young girl, but she didn’t respond. Her friend dropped down next to me and violently shook the still body in front of us. As I watched, my gaze fell on the unusual tattoo on the unconscious girl’s arm, a crying eye that looked as if it were begging me to help.

  “Bess, honey, Bess, wake up!” she yelled to her friend before whispering, “Oh my God, she’s dead.”

  I moved my hand to the smelly but beautiful girl I had come to know as “Bess,” and felt her wrist for a pulse. When I felt a thready beat, I said to the woman whose name I didn’t know, “She’s alive.”

  We were causing a scene with the unconscious girl on my mat and her friend slumped to the floor next to her, the friend shaking and quivering, almost turning blue herself, yet Lexie kept right on teaching.

  What the hell is wrong with her? Why isn’t she handling this?

  And then I remembered. I was supposed to be the owner of the club we were in, so naturally, I’d be handling this situation. On my own. As Jake.

  Like I said, I was going to kill my brother.

  Lane

  Four years later

  Fuck, it was cold up in the mountains. The damp air hung all around me, its cold moistness winding its way through my suit jacket and seeping into my bones. Either I was a pussy or my blood had drastically thinned after only a few years of living in Florida. Growing up in this shit up north, I thought I’d be prepared—at least physically—for a quick business trip close to home in the fall weather.

  Mentally, I still despised what the weather represented, but this was going to be an in-and-out straightforward meeting with a medium-sized account.

  I can do it.

  After landing at Pittsburgh International Airport, I rented a car and went straight to the cemetery. Being the responsible grandson, I made a quick visit to my grandparents’ graves before hightailing it out of the city to my destination.

  No, I didn’t bother to see my brother. He was up to his usual shenanigans, sleeping with countless women, searching for something that didn’t exist, fucking up in his business over and over again, and hiding behind being the poor little boy who grew up without a mommy and daddy.

  Unlike me, he wore his mixed emotions proudly, flaunting his highs and lows, and his ambivalence to the meaning of life. I kept mine cloaked in a facade of success and purposefulness.

  As I pulled up to my hotel and stepped out of the car, the temperature felt like it dropped twenty degrees since leaving the city. Running my hand through my thick hair, I took in the palatial edifice looming over me, a crown jewel in the middle of cow country with enormous cathedral towers.

  They will make me a pretty penny.

  Pretending not to be affected by the cutting wind, I stood tall, motioning for the valet. Taking my keys, he asked, “Checking in or just here for dinner?”

  My hair blew in the breeze, and I was forced to push it back once again with my cold fingers.

  I wanted to reply to the stupid valet, No, I’m checking out and heading back to my big house in sunny Florida, complete with a revolving door of plastic women, but that would have been out of character for the revered Lane Wrigley—if you believed my reputation in this business.

  Keeping my cynical thoughts to myself, I simply said, “Checking in,” and headed to the front desk.

  At reception, I didn’t have to announce myself. They were waiting with bated breath for me, fully expecting the man who was reportedly changing the hotel industry with an advanced software tracking system for guests, supplies, payroll, and purchase orders. My software package was a “hotel manager’s best friend and a hospitality franchise’s knight in shining armor,” according to the latest review in the hospitality industry rags.

  I wondered why the valet hadn’t been put on alert, but realized he probably expected me to arrive in a limo rather than a rented SUV.

  Once I entered the business world, I kept my personal life to myself and rarely revealed anything about my past to my clients. I never saw a reason to drop clues as to where I grew up—either before or after my parents died. They were almost one and the same, both with their gray, downright depressing climate and nature. And both were in the past.

  I didn’t need anyone’s sympathy or pity. I’d moved on, learned to live with my regret and sins by omission, but not with the changing weather. It was and always would be a trigger for my depression and guilt, and just admitting that stole my man card from me.

  The lanky blonde with a big smile at the front desk yanked me out of my reverie when she greeted me by name. “Good evening, Mr. Wrigley. Welcome to the WildFlower,” she said as she pulled her shoulders back, practically shoving her oversized tits in my face.

  All I gave her back was a curt, “Thanks,” while maintaining my distance.

  “We have the Sunflower Suite all ready for you, sir.” She’d continued to smile, but it dimmed somewhat as she processed that I wasn’t in the mood for small talk.

  “Sounds good. Can I still order dinner at this time of night?” I inquired politely like the gentleman I’d been raised to be.

  “You sure can.” More pearly white teeth were displayed, along with a small flip of her hair added for good measure. Just in case I wasn’t getting the message.

  So not going there.

  I took the key card from her hand and once again said, “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure. Is there anything else I can get you?” she asked, leaning forward slightly to give me a better view of her tits.

  Oh, dear God.

  “No, thanks. Good evening.”

  I refused any help with my bags and headed to the Sunflower Suite for what was sure to be anything but a bright and sunny evening. Not only did memories of my childhood plague me, but every time I came back north, I thought about her. The brunette, gorgeous from a distance, but toxic to herself and the world around her. The girl I could have, should have stayed and helped, but deserted in a fog of fear. After all, who was she to me? Nobody.

  Bess—that was her name.

  Somehow I continued to feel enormous guilt related to that day, which was practically ancient history by now. I should have forgotten all about it, but it haunted me.

  She was nothing. Yet she’d become somewhat epic in my mind over the last few years.

  Had she been the one chance for me to redeem myself? Was that why she’d literally fallen at my feet? Rather than taking the chance to explore why she picked me, I’d run—sprinting away from anyone who even remotely reeked of needing someone else.

  It was one of my biggest regrets—messing with Jake’s sleeping arrangements rather than helping Bess—which only served to underscore how totally fucked up my priorities were. It was yet another example of bad judgment calls on my part that added to the well-hidden list buried deep in the recesses of my mind.

  I didn’t know what I would have done had I followed my instincts, but the girl clearly needed help. Unfortunately I was more preoccupied with my silly sibling rivalry, and sick of being Mr. Nice Guy to my brother. It was high-fucking-time Jake learned a lesson, that his behavior had consequences. Lord knows, he’d gotten away with murder over the years.

  Although I’d spent months—years—obsessing over leaving a young girl who was crying out for help, the last thing I wanted in my life was a needy chick. I already had a long list of those types in my life, namely Jake, Jake, and Jake. Thanks to my brother, neediness was a major red flag for me.

  At least I had waited for the ambulance to arrive before bolting. And as I’d hoped, Jake didn’t get to screw Lexie that night after she caught on to his little ruse. In fact, she’d come to fuck me, and while I didn’t think I would have enjoyed it, I did in some sick, twisted way. I’d come hard as she pulled on my hair, yelling my name and screaming in delight.

  On paper, I might have been the good brother, but that didn’t mean I was a saint. I knew my way around the curves and slopes o
f a woman’s body the way a NASCAR driver knows their way around a track. It was the only trait we had in common. Jake and I both liked women, and we knew how to pleasure them.

  But after a few days of Lexie lingering beyond her welcome, I grew bored with her dumb smile and barren brain. The offer to merge my company with one based in Florida came at the right time. I accepted it immediately, and never looked back on my days in Pittsburgh.

  Except for thoughts of her. Bess.

  Arriving at the Sunflower Suite, I slammed the hotel door shut behind me with my foot, kicked off my shoes in the corner, then stalked toward the bed, hoping this little Northeast jaunt came and went quickly.

  Bess

  I turned to run my hand along his forehead, making my way to rub his ear, searching for tranquility in the warmth of his dark brown eyes. “Oh, Brooks, baby, we gotta get up,” I told my bed partner, but he looked apprehensive. Burrowed deep in my covers, I didn’t want to get out of bed either. A chill had come over the mountains.

  But we had to start our day, so with a quick kiss to his furry brow, I nudged my ninety-pound black Labrador, Brooks Bailey, out of bed and through the door to do his business while I ran to do the same in my small powder room. It wasn’t long before I heard a paw scratch on the front door, and let the only man I had kept intimate company with in the last few years walk through the door. Of course, he was looking for breakfast.

  The coffeemaker sputtered over the sound of my dog crunching his chow as I lifted the tiny blind above my sink and surveyed the day outside. A thick layer of fog had come over the mountains, enveloping my porch and limiting my already darkened view of the tiny brook that ran along the bottom of the hillside. Fall was officially here.

  I poured myself a big mug of java and headed to my bedroom to get ready for my day, taking solace in the quiet I once despised. Nowadays, the calm serenity of rural living was the salve on my ever-present wounds, coffee the only drug in my house.

  Not really a house or home, but a refuge from my past, I lived in a small two-bedroom cabin overlooking a rambling brook in rural Pennsylvania. It was a gift from my dad when I got out of rehab and decided to stay in the quiet rolling hills and lush forestry of Ligonier, close to the treatment facility. It was a crutch I didn’t use, but its presence nearby was comforting nonetheless.

  I also didn’t want to go home to Pittsburgh and face whatever reputation I left behind. My past could stay right where it was. In the past.

  As for my dad, he didn’t really owe me anything. I’d come to understand he did the best he could and we’d forgiven each other as I tackled the steps of recovery. But I took the house he offered me.

  I owned all of my actions and indiscretions, and had learned not to place blame on others. But the man felt guilty enough over his shortcomings as a single dad—a little too late—and giving me the house provided him some peace of mind.

  Turning on the shower, I let the water heat up. Steam filled the bathroom and funneled its way around me, allowing me to undress without catching a cold. After spending too long under the spraying water, I dressed in my usual worn-in and frayed skinny jeans, layered long-sleeved T-shirts to cover my mistake of a tat on my bicep, and Nike Air Force Ones. I’d traded in my go-go party boots and crop tops for a more practical wardrobe the day I left treatment.

  These shoes reminded me of when I was happy, playing kickball in the alley with the boys around the neighborhood before I was old enough to feel the effects of not having a mom. In other words, before I fucked up everything. Before I substituted the lack of a mother’s affection with cheap beer and robotic teenage sex in the backseat of a car or in the twin bed of my youth.

  But that was all back then, when I was constantly seeking to feel anything other than pain and discontent. Now I just felt nothing. I survived on little to no emotion, a baseline of honest work, the company of my dog, and the relaxing sounds of nature.

  After applying a light layer of lip gloss in the hallway mirror, I let Brooks pee once more, throwing the ball down the hill a few times so he blew off some steam before I left him for the day.

  And then I was out the door.

  “Hey, May,” I called out to the head of housekeeping as I walked in through the back employee entrance to the WildFlower Resort and Spa.

  “Hiya, Bess! How was the driving out there in the fog? Been here all night, but I’m gonna leave soon,” she responded.

  “Oh, fine. You know, I’m a tough city girl. No fog is going to bring me down,” I yelled back, more for my benefit than May’s peace of mind.

  As I shoved my stuff in my assigned locker, I had started to change into my uniform when a thought occurred to me. Actually, the tiniest thing could crack me in half. With my usual fatalistic attitude, I knew it was only a matter of time before my carefully constructed world would come falling down.

  Although I used the staff locker room, I wasn’t a housekeeper at the WildFlower like the others who used it. One of my small circle of friends, May allowed me to use the locker room. The woman double my age was reliving her youth and had high hopes I would find myself a gentleman—her words, not mine. You’re certainly not going to do that in your waitress uniform, she’d said, so she encouraged me not to travel to and from work in that crappy outfit.

  “What you got on there, girl? More of those ugly basketball shoes and ripped jeans?” May called after me.

  “You know it, May,” I shouted back from the locker area, glancing back at her. Even in the ugly WildFlower housekeeping uniform, May looked beautiful. She was curvy in all the right places, her black hair cut in a short bob around her round face, and she was always smiling.

  “Hope you didn’t come through the main hotel looking like that. You’re never gonna catch Mr. Right wearing that!”

  It was the same daily banter we’d been having for years.

  “Well, that’s good because I’m not searching for him,” I said as I walked out of the locker room and made my way into the staff corridor.

  For the last three years, I’d worked in the resort’s fine dining restaurant, serving breakfast and lunch six days a week. The job kept my hands and feet and fingers and toes busy, and especially my mind.

  I did finish my marketing degree via correspondence after rehab, but sitting behind a desk scared the living shit out of me. Too much idle time. So I got a job slinging dishes, and I liked it just fine. I made good tips and paid my bills.

  Mostly, my coworkers had come to expect little more from me than small talk over coffee, a walk with our dogs, or grabbing a movie together. No late-night drinks or parties, never a suggested jaunt to an after-hours club, and definitely not a chance in hell for yoga with a DJ and a strobing black light.

  Not that there was any of that in small-town Ligonier, another reason why I stayed on in Podunk, USA, after a sixty-day stint of drying out, getting clean, and learning basic survival techniques.

  Garbed in my navy slacks and tight striped vest over a pressed white blouse, with my hair pulled into a ponytail and a few loose strands falling around my face, I tucked a pencil behind my ear and went over the specials on the blackboard in the kitchen. My stomach rumbled, so I grabbed a scone and a cup of coffee to enjoy while I chatted with Ernesto, the resort’s pastry chef, as I waited for the breakfast rush to start.

  We might be in the middle of nowhere, but the WildFlower served as a major stomping ground for luxury conferences, executives visiting the booming factories nearby, and women looking for a mountain retreat or, as we laughingly called it, “glamping.”

  Swallowing my last bite as the big hand hit twelve and the little hand six, I was out the kitchen doors. I took in the few people already lined up, waiting to be seated for breakfast. Shelby, the hostess, was struggling as usual to make it happen, so I decided to wade in.

  I went over and started directing suits and a few spa ladies where to sit. At the end of the line was a tall guy with a full head of mussed jet-black hair. He was wearing a gray pinstripe suit and brown win
gtips, and had his head buried in a newspaper, his wild hair such a contradiction to the rest of his expensively clad, well-heeled body.

  “Excuse me? Do you want a table,” I asked.

  He flipped the paper down, peering over the top of it, and his crystal-blue eyes sharpened. A series of expressions flitted over his face, first hurt or sadness, then morphing into what looked suspiciously like lust. In the end the man continued to stand there, saying nothing and looking bewildered.

  Weird.

  Unnerved, I stared back at him for much too long, but his gaze mesmerized me, capturing my body, mind, and soul in a way I wasn’t familiar with. It left me wanting to stare forever.

  What the eff, Bess? Stare forever? Just seat the damn guy.

  “Are you ready to sit for breakfast,” I asked, using my professional tone as a shield. I wasn’t on the menu, and definitely wasn’t one of the specials.

  He cleared his throat and said, “Yes. Table for one.” Then he added, “Please.”

  “Right this way.”

  In the end, I didn’t seat him in my section. I had no desire to deal with his stuffy weirdness.

  Bess

  Geez, that guy was a little bit creepy, but mostly intriguing, if I were completely honest with myself. He sat in his corner booth, never taking his gaze off his morning paper, folding and creasing it with precision.

  I served my tables but couldn’t resist keeping an eye on him; there was something about the way he wasn’t looking at the scenery like most people did. Not once did he turn his head toward the scenic windows to take in the large trees that were turning vibrant shades of orange, and the bunnies scampering across the wet grass.

  He barely glanced at the menu before I heard him curtly asking Joe, the other waiter on duty, for coffee and eggs with toast. And then after devouring everything on his plate, washing it down with a second cup of coffee, he slipped out of the restaurant without even lifting his eyes to the room.