Page 20 of Bed and Breakup (Dial Delights #15)
I gasp and hug him again. “I can’t believe it! But also, of course I can. I can’t wait to visit.”
New information is crashing together in my brain.
I’m thrilled for Jesse and obviously want to support him.
But Robin has a job? Explains why she hasn’t been around the inn for the past couple days, even though she promised up and down that she’d do her fair share of the reno.
Also, she’s working for Jesse? I’m surprised her ego can handle working for a chef she trained.
Also also, is Robin checking me out right now?
I reach up to smooth my hair, purposely displaying my bare midriff along one side, and watch Robin’s eyes follow.
She takes a heavy gulp, then walks away to the bar. The crop top strikes again.
Noticing the kerfuffle, Key comes over to join us.
We chat with Jesse for a while as Robin’s groupies follow after her.
Then Caro shows up, and I feel another rush of unexpected joy.
Caro was our first employee, a charmer at the front desk and a workhorse behind the scenes.
They tell me that they’re now the head concierge at a historic hotel much larger than our little inn, and while that job also includes lots of “other duties as assigned,” they miss our little queer refuge.
Caro’s easygoing attitude and beaming smile always had a way of lowering my stress levels, and it seems to still work based on how easy it is to forget for a moment that Robin’s in the same room.
Until she wanders over to chat with Caro too.
After Key finishes telling the group about buying her old storefront, Caro turns to Robin. “So how were your first two days on the job?” they ask.
“Fantastic,” Robin says. “Jesse’s a great boss. He’s teaching me so much about vegan pastries and sauces. It’s only fair. Lord knows he spent years patiently listening to me blab on about sourdough techniques and the perfect egg-poaching temperature.”
“One eighty,” Jesse says right on cue. “I’ll never forget it, even if I don’t cook eggs anymore. And it’s an honor to have you in the kitchen. I wouldn’t be half the chef I am without you.”
As much as I love Jesse, I barely stifle an eye roll. All this fawning over Robin makes me want to hurl. Like the observant wingwoman she is, Key notices and grabs my wrist. “Want to dance?” she asks.
I nod, grateful for the escape. We promise to catch up more with Jesse and Caro later and wend through the increasingly crowded bar to the bustling dance floor in the back half of the room. With a couple cocktails down, moving my body to the pop beats feels good.
As one song shifts into another, Key nudges me toward attractive strangers bouncing to the rhythm around us.
I try to play along, shuffling closer to the cuties who seem to be dancing alone, but I keep getting distracted by catching glimpses of Robin across the room.
She, Caro, and Jesse grabbed a tall table by the front door, and she’s still got a cluster of fans at her side, batting their eyelashes every time she smiles at them.
God, is she signing someone’s boob? She makes avocado toast! She’s not a superhero!
Then I notice Robin looking back at me, and I can’t help but use my midriff against her.
I put my hands in the air and wind my hips back and forth, feeling the warm air hit my ribs and the weight of Robin’s gaze on my skin.
This is all very unlike me, but I’m enjoying being someone else for the night, someone more daring and unencumbered.
When I spin around and spot Robin again, her mouth is hanging open like a cartoon character’s.
Our eyes meet long enough for her to be certain I caught her watching.
She looks embarrassed at first, her lips quickly pressing back together, but then I see her expression shift to smug when she realizes that I wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t also been seeking her out across the room.
In a heady, intense moment, I read all of this on her face as clearly as she’s probably reading mine.
I feel someone dancing against my back, and when I break the moment with Robin and shift to face them, I’m relieved to see they’re cute.
Or at least cute enough. I roll my body against theirs and lean in encouragingly as they run their hands over the bare skin at my waist. Robin’s eyes are glued to my every move.
I know because, whenever I’m not glancing at my dance partner, my eyes are glued to her too.
My body is pressed against someone else, so why does it feel like I’m dancing with Robin?
“It’s so fucking hot in here,” the stranger says, their lips right up against my ear. Robin’s watching, so I lean into them even more. “There’s a bar at my hotel across the street. Want to come with me? I’ll buy you a drink.”
Their offer has the unspoken potential of a no-strings one-night stand, exactly what I came here for. I could get laid, get the sexual tension out of my system. But all I want to do is stay here on the dance floor and watch Robin’s face turn different shades of red.
“No, thanks. I want to dance.”
By the end of the song, the stranger disappears into the crush of people. Keyana’s dancing with someone almost as gorgeous as she is. Feeling a little too warm, I leave her to it and wander outside for some fresh air.
The patio is classically Eureka Springs, a wooden deck with a low fence on two sides stretching to a wall of natural limestone looming partially overhead, beautiful and terrifying.
Clint replaced the old fairy lights with sturdier round bulbs, and the outdoor couches and tables are new.
But I hardly have a moment to take it all in, to let the memories of past nights here wash over me, before the door opens again.
“Molly,” Robin says, walking purposefully toward me. “What are you doing?”
“Breathing.” I turn to face her. “What are you doing? Don’t you have a VIP meet and greet going on?”
“I mean, what were you doing in there? Grinding on some stranger? It’s not like you. Have you had too much to drink?”
Getting Robin riled up was my goal, but I’m irked by her calling me out. “What gives you the right to tell me what is and isn’t ‘like me’ anymore?” I shoot back.
Robin’s jaw tightens. “Am I not allowed to care about your well-being?”
“You certainly didn’t care about it when you walked out seven years ago.”
“This again?” Robin starts to turn back to the door, then changes her mind and walks toward me with her fighting face on.
“We both made choices. Why are you acting like it’s all on me?
You could stand to take some responsibility.
Or at least be chill while we’re both here and leave the past in the past.”
I feel an angry wolf howl inside of me, and I let it out.
“Don’t you dare lecture me about responsibility.
You left without even considering what a mess you were leaving behind.
Do you have any idea how hard it was to run the Hummingbird alone, when you’d already had one foot out the door for months?
When you were too famous to even be bothered to make a fucking checklist for someone else to do your job? ”
“You left too!” Robin says, matching my anger beat for beat. “Don’t act like you’re so brave for sticking around when you ran off, what, two months later?”
On another day I’d feel guilty about that, but there’s no space for past regrets in this argument.
“I left when everything was taken care of!” I spit back.
“Caro and Jesse didn’t want the responsibility of running the place, and after watching us tear each other to shreds over the inn, who can blame them?
I hired the management company and brought them up to speed so our staff was in capable hands.
They contacted me when they had to make decisions about the property.
You were off gallivanting around Portland and rubbing elbows with celebrities.
And if you were too cool for this quaint little town then, you don’t belong here now. So do what you do best and leave.”
Robin laughs mirthlessly. “By the looks of it, people are more excited to see me back here than you. So maybe you’re the one who should leave.”
I’m not sure if it’s the alcohol or my all-consuming rage, but the sequence of events blurs together—screaming at each other, gesticulating wildly, poking my finger accusingly right in Robin’s face—and the next thing I know we’re inches apart.
Robin’s gaze slides from my eyes to my lips, and now my fingers are mussing up her slicked-back hair and her hands are under my shirt and my back is pressed against the brick exterior wall of the bar and she’s biting my lower lip and instead of cooling off I’m a hundred and eighty degrees, the perfect temperature for poaching an egg, and everything makes sense and nothing makes sense.
It takes the sound of the patio door opening to bring me back to earth.
A woman, the one whose chest Robin signed, is ogling us like she might take a picture and post it to a fan page.
I shove Robin away from me and tug my shirt into place.
How did I get here? What did we just do?
And why do I feel like I’m about to catch on fire?
Sliding away along the brick wall, I say, “Nope. Absolutely not. This is not happening, now or ever.” Then I hop the low wooden fence and run.