Page 5 of Bride on the Dotted Line (Blackstone Center #1)

Sienna

There’s a cat perched on the edge of my fence. It’s the first thing I see when I pull into my driveway, its green eyes glaring like a child dreading their parent’s return.

Only this is not my child. It’s orange-coated vermin, and I want nothing to do with it.

“Go home,” I tell it as I slam my trunk closed, arms heavy with grocery bags.

It’s Saturday afternoon, sunny and chilly in that late-February way, and I’m shivering in my sweatpants.

I should love Saturdays. They’re the only day of the week that I don’t have to worry about work meetings, the state of my office, or my clients.

Not being at work makes me itchy, though. And when I had coffee with friends this morning, all they wanted to talk about was you-know-who.

“Are his eyes really that gorgeous?”

“Did he really punch that bouncer at the Monarch Lounge?”

“What does he smell like?”

The last question was the one I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I know precisely what Nick smells like. In fact, I can’t seem to get him out of my nose. No matter where I go, I’m smelling rosemary and trees … Still, I took one look at the excitement in my friends’ faces, and I couldn’t tell them.

Who knows why. Something in me wants to keep that detail a secret.

On my fence, the cat stands and stretches, never taking its gaze off me. I glower at it.

“Isn’t Mrs. Martin wondering where you are?”

Mrs. Martin is my landlady. She lives upstairs, and I have no doubt she’s been talking shit about me to her cat. That’s why it’s always around, lurking. It hops down off the fence as I take the three steps down to my basement suite, purring and getting underfoot.

“Shoo,” I tell it as it rubs against my legs. “Before your mother hears you.”

“Oh, is that Sienna?”

My heart sinks. “Thanks a lot.” I set my bags of groceries on the ground and do a slow spin, clutching my keys in my right hand. “Mrs. Martin?”

Footsteps clunk down the porch steps above me. I make a face at the cat, which does the cat version of flipping me off: it curls up on the ground and goes to sleep.

“Sienna.” Mrs. Martin appears next to my car, hands on her hips. She has graying hair, hot pink glasses, and a sour attitude. I like her a lot. “Rent’s due. It’s not exactly a pay whenever you want kind of thing.”

“I know,” I tell her. “I’m sorry. Work has been busy these last few days. I’ll slip it under your door tomorrow afternoon, I promise.”

She purses her lips, clocking my sneakers and oversized sweater. Behind her, the sidewalk is dusted with the last snow of the season, blades of brown grass showing through. “You getting enough sleep?”

“Yes, Mrs. Martin.”

“And eating enough?”

I’ve had a granola bar, the last of a bag of mini marshmallows, and three slices of deli meat straight from the package today. Not exactly Café de Mario, but I’m surviving. I nod.

“Come on, Henry.” Mrs. Martin bends at the waist and scoops up her cat, which is named Henry, apparently.

He settles into her chest and continues napping.

“You know, Sienna, when I told your parents you could live here, I promised I wouldn’t let you work yourself into the ground. After what happened?—”

My phone buzzes in my pocket, playing the first few chords of Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls.

Thank God.

“Sorry, Mrs. Martin!” I say, sticking my key into the lock and picking up my grocery bags. Iris continues to play as I rush inside my suite. “Got to take this. Let’s talk more next time.”

Safe with the door closed, I deposit my groceries on the kitchen counter and flick on the light.

My place is tiny and cluttered, but clean.

There’s a mountain of gossip magazines covering my desk in the living room, evidence of my week of Nick Harwood research.

My laptop is open on the couch, showing a paused video of Nick walking up a downtown street.

The uploader titled the video: Nick Harwood Thinks He’s Better Than Everyone! Snob Caught on Camera .

I dust my hands, finally pulling out my ringing phone. The screen lights up with my mom’s face, a smiling picture I took on our trip to meet her family in Ostuni four years ago. Her name flashes at the bottom. Marcella Hayes.

I cast my eyes to the ceiling.

Out of the frying pan, I guess.

“Hi, Mom,” I say, and her present-day face appears on the screen, replacing the Italy picture. She looks much older now, her eyes a nest of wrinkles and stress lines, but she’s still beautiful. Always still beautiful.

“Hi, baby,” she responds. “How are you doing?”

Her voice is rich and toned like fine wine.

She sang opera before she met my father, who was making enough money by the time they got married that she could focus on raising me.

Thirty years later, our circumstances have changed, but her sound still has an innately soothing quality—part of the reason she’s been able to calm my dad down when things get bad.

“I’m fine,” I tell her, standing my phone against my toaster so she can watch me put away groceries. “How are things over there?”

For the next few minutes, Mom tells me all about Shirley at the supply store who never comes to church, then goes on a tangent about Uncle Aldo—how he embarrassed her at her Tuesday lunch group in front of her friends.

I fold my empty grocery bags and throw them into my closet, wandering into the living room with a peanut butter sandwich.

“And when I tried to tell him to apologize, he just groaned something at me and walked off. The nerve of that man.”

“Shocking!” I say, sifting through my pile of magazines one-handed. “I’ll make sure to give him the cold shoulder next time I’m in town.”

“Oh, that would be lovely. Hopefully, that will be soon, Sienna. We haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Let’s see how next month goes.”

“How’s the city?”

There’s a part of that sentence she always leaves unsaid: since we had to leave. “It’s fine.” I take a bite of my sandwich and flop on the couch. “Starting to feel like spring.”

Mom nods. Her eyes are downcast, and I know we’re getting to the part of our call where we’ll either have to talk about Dad or hang up. It’s been like this since his business failed, and I still don’t know how to navigate it. I’m squirmy, the peanut butter in my mouth too dry.

“Your father says hello,” Mom says. “He’s resting in the garden.”

“How’s—um—how’s he doing?”

The side of her mouth does a little, unhappy twitch.

She carries her phone into another room, ensuring she’s out of Dad’s earshot.

“Better, but … he’s lonely. The time away from the city seems to be helping, so that’s good.

I just don’t know how he’s ever going to feel better if he doesn’t leave the house. ”

“Mental health is complicated, Mom. I’ll try calling him more often.”

“Sure, but he misses his old friends. If they would just come and …”

“No.” A flare of anger shoots through me, hot lightning out of a dark sky. “His friends are assholes.”

“Sienna.”

“It’s true, Mom. They did nothing to help him when he needed it.”

She stares at me. There’s so much more to say, and we both know it … but there wouldn’t be any point.

“Okay, baby,” Mom says finally. It might be the glare from her phone screen, but it looks like her eyes are sparkling with tears. “His legal debts?—”

“We won’t have to worry about those for much longer.” One bright spot in the storm. I examine my feet while I tell her about the Harwood deal. “If Nick agrees, my portion of Harwood Restaurant Group’s check should cover the debts from Dad’s lawsuit.”

Of course, even that seven-figure payout won’t touch the debts from Dad’s personal guarantees, but Mom and I leave that unsaid, too.

Every time I think about the damage Dad’s business partners did to our lives, I feel like I’m suffocating.

Like I can’t breathe, and I need to punch through something—a wall, a window, someone’s face—to get a pull of clean, fresh air.

“That’s great, Sienna,” my mom says quietly. “I’m happy to hear it. I can’t watch your father lose hope.”

“You won’t.” I say it like an oath. “You won’t.”

We hang up a few minutes later, after she promises to send a recipe for a stir fry she found online. If she thinks I’m a good enough cook to manage a stir fry, she’s never seen me make a peanut butter sandwich.

I lick my fingers, staring at the water stains on my ceiling. My nonna used to say that love is a great, unbreakable chain, passed through generations. If she were still here, I’d ask her if pain is like a great chain too, passed forward, inherited, wrapped tight around a family and squeezing.

A notification sounds from my laptop. I squint at the screen.

It’s the Google alert I set for Nick Harwood .

I deliberate, then let my curiosity get the best of me. Sitting cross-legged, I pull the computer onto my lap and click on the news article.

Harwood Restaurant Heir Spotted Blind Drunk at Brunch in City

The article is from today. There’s a photo of Nick through a restaurant window, tipping the last of a mimosa into his mouth.

He doesn’t look blind drunk. Two people, a man and a woman, sit with him.

I think I recognize them from the culinary magazines I bought during my research. They’re local restauranteurs.

I scan down the paragraphs. I’ve read hundreds of articles like this by now, but my insides still churn. It’s uncanny how similar these articles are to the hit pieces published about my dad around the time we lost everything.

Unstable Businessman Frank Hayes Drunk at Dinner with Partners

The paparazzi had taken a picture of him using a long-focus lens through a tiny window.

All because one of his partners posted online that Frank Hayes was losing it, that he was the reason their company was failing.

It was a lie, of course, but by the time the lawsuit settled, no one cared, and his company was bankrupt.

In Nick’s photo, he looks happy. Enjoying brunch with friends, like anyone else would do on a Saturday.

His jeans and black t-shirt are clean, presentable.

His stubble is gone—he shaved this morning.

The only parts of him that scream bad boy are his tattoos.

A floral sleeve on his right arm, and something that looks like a chef’s knife on his left.

There’s a tug in my stomach. I wonder how dark Nick’s sky is, how hot his lightning.

I wonder if his is the same as mine.

I’m impulsive again. Before I know what I’m doing—before I can stop to think about how unprofessional it might be—I’m picking up my phone.