Page 4 of The Business of Love Box Set 1: Books 1 - 4

RHYS

“ R hys, stop committing. It’s that simple.

If you don’t commit, then you don’t end up holding the bag of used condoms like an idiot when shit doesn’t pan out.

Plain and simple.” Chris wielded his steak knife mercilessly as he sliced through his juicy top sirloin.

I could smell the peppercorn sauce from where I sat across the table from him. “Get me?”

It was easy for my friend to say. He wasn’t the one who’d just had his heart ripped out and stomped on by his cheating ex-girlfriend. The back of my neck still started to sweat with anger when I thought about coming home two weeks ago to find my girl straddling her ex on my fucking kitchen floor.

I popped a piece of steak into my mouth. My tongue tingled with the flavor as salt and pepper and butter and fat teased my taste buds. “I’m not interested in the love ‘em and leave ‘em game anymore, Chris. I’ve done that shit for twelve years. I’m ready to find her .”

“And if her doesn’t exist? Then what?” Chris had no issue talking with his mouth full in the middle of the steakhouse. Seeing as how he was a professional football player for the Seattle Seahawks, he got away with this kind of shit all the time. Good manners were sometimes lost on him.

I let out a frustrated sigh. “Really? You’re going to throw that noise my way? That the woman of my dreams doesn’t exist? Well, you’re wrong.”

“Prove it to me.” He leaned back and smirked. “Where is she, brother?”

Chris wasn’t my brother, but we had grown up together, and we might as well have been. His family was better to me than my own and I’d spent many a Sunday night at their dinner table with Chris, his parents, and his little sister.

“She’s on the radio.” I shrugged and challenged him to come after me with his toxic view of love. It was nothing I hadn’t heard before. “She’s got a nighttime show.”

“You are not talking about Nashville Nights with Nessa.” He ran his hand down the front of his face. “You’re kidding, right? Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. She’s the one, dude.” I picked up my shot glass and threw it back. The whiskey was a lip-puckering disappointment. My line of work and my family history made it impossible to enjoy a good drink anymore.

“She’s in a relationship,” Chris said flatly, arching a thick dark eyebrow at me.

“Or so she says.” I put my glass down and smiled. “She’s lying, Chris. Every time I call, her voice gets dreamy. She likes me. Knows me. She wants me. I’m one-hundred-percent sure of it.”

“You’re one-hundred-percent delusional. She doesn’t know you.

” Chris scoffed and shook his head as he set his cutlery down.

The restaurant was loud with the hum of other conversations.

The music was lyric-less rock and the lights were dim.

“Tell me. Where is this woman from? What is her real name? Hell, what the fuck does she look like?” He picked up his silverware and went back to eating his steak like a starving man.

“I’m guessing she’s from England. She’s got a soft English accent, right? I can hear it in her voice sometimes.” I followed suit, eating my steak with vigor.

“You’re guessing because you don’t know. You’re going to find yourself catfished.” He snorted. “Her name? Her looks?”

“No clue.” I ignored his jabs. Nothing could change my interest in this woman. She and I had shared countless phone conversations, and her guidance had always been a reprieve from whatever holy Hell I was living through. “Who cares what her name is or what she looks like?”

“She’s probably a ninety-year-old Asian man with false teeth and a peg leg.”

“You should be writing books. You’re not W. Parker, are you?” I laughed as he choked on his next bite.

“No. I don’t know a thing about romance. Sex? Yeah, I know a shit ton about sex, but romance is out. That’s much more your style, though I remember a time when you didn’t want anything but a good old-fashioned fuck, too.”

“It wasn’t that long ago.” I leaned back and wished for a drunken haze. I’d always been the playboy, the hurt them before they can hurt me kind of guy, but something changed a few years back when Nessa came on the radio. She had a different view of the world.

And I fell in love.

“I think you should go back to that. It’s easy, man. I promise. Look at you.” He lifted his hands, palms up, as if I was something on display. “You look like hell.”

“I was going to propose to Trish, Chris. We’d been together for two years. It wasn’t like I found her at the bar a week ago. We were trying to build a life together.”

“She liked shitty music, man.”

“So?”

“And she only drank sugar-free ciders.”

“I don’t see the point you’re trying to make.”

Chris let out a tired sigh. “She wasn’t the one for you, man. Never was. Come on. You knew that too. You just wanted her to be so you didn’t have to start back at square one. All I’m saying is don’t start at all. Take a break from the love shit. Try swimming in some new pussy and see what happens.”

I tossed my napkin on the table. “I’m out. I’ll check you tomorrow at your parents’ thing.”

“You’re leaving me here?” He sounded incredulous. “With the bill?”

“Looks that way. Find some piece of meat you can chew on. Hmm?” I walked around him, clapped him hard on the back, and stalked out of the restaurant into the dark night.

I got the keys to my Porsche from the valet, paid him, and peeled away, leaving the bitterness of my conversation with Chris behind.

Chris had never held back when it came to sharing his opinions with me. And to be fair, sometimes he was right. Other times, not so much. But he loved me like a brother.

And like a brother, I was happy to love him back and leave his unhappy ass at the steakhouse with my last name plastered across the entranceway.

Without thinking about it, I reached up and hit redial on the dash of my car. The sound of ringing filled the space around me.

My muscles tightened just thinking about Nessa picking up. Back in the day, her staff screened her calls, but as of the last six months, they’d stopped that shit. I was grateful for it.

Some part of me knew it was wrong to want someone I didn’t know, but I couldn’t help it. I was drawn to her. Like a moth to a flame. Hell, most of the men and women in Nashville were. It was no secret that the city was head over heels for a woman that wore a mask.

I ended the call. The show was over. My optimism that she might answer the phone had been woefully misplaced. Still, I thought of her as I drove. Her words from the call we shared before I met Chris for dinner rang in my ears.

Love is worth it. Love puts you through trials. Keep trying.

There was no way she wasn’t taken. A girl like her, full of wisdom and compassion, was definitely not on the market. Besides, how else would she be able to give such good advice about love?

My head spun at the idea of not having Nessa for myself, as well as the recent shit with my ex. I needed an out. Something to take my mind off things.

Liquor sounded like the right vice, but I knew something that would do the trick even faster.

A stop by my dad’s house to see Gigi. My father’s mother had always been the closest thing I had to a loving relative.

The rest of them were drunk, greedy, or straight-up assholes. Including my old man.

I took a sharp right turn and pulled into the long wraparound driveway that led to my father’s billion-dollar estate, an estate that could have been mine one day had I not turned down the inheritance his success offered me.

Chris had called me insane. So had Trish, my ex.

But that was her own greed talking. I didn’t need help from a father who’d never loved me.

I was a self-made success. My bank account was overflowing because of my work ethic, not because of the handouts from others.

“Why couldn’t things be different?” I asked the silence in my car as I sat in the driveway with the engine idling. With a sigh, I turned it off and looked up at the mansion.

The front door opened, and the shadow of my grandmother waddled out. Her silhouette was framed by the warm light pouring out the door at her back.

I smiled and got out of the car. “Do you make a habit of opening the front door for anybody who pulls into the drive?”

“I knew it was you, smart mouth.” She moved back, retreating into the light of the house, and waved for me to come in. “Your father is out of town, and your mother is drunk in a bar. Come on in. The house is ours.”

That was exactly what I’d been hoping for.

I checked my watch as I approached her. “I won’t stay too long. I know it’s well past your bedtime.”

She prodded my back as I walked by with frail knuckles. “I stay up later than you some nights, hotshot.”

“Want to arm wrestle it out?” I chuckled and walked to the kitchen. The scent of cookies filled my nose. My childhood was shitty, save for my grandmother. The smell of sugar took me back to the few times when I was happy.

All of those memories belonged with her. Rolling dough to make sugar cookies in December, dropping chocolate chips into banana bread loaves, sifting sugar over shortbread. Yes. She’d singlehandedly taught me what family meant.

“Yum.” I breathed in deeply and sat down at the bar in the kitchen. “You been baking all afternoon?”

“It’s what I do best.” She grabbed a plate and walked to the stove, laying three of her world-famous cookies on a plate. She got me a glass of milk and sat down in front of me.

I pulled the plate close. “Hey, stop eying my cookies. Get your own.”

We shared a laugh before her expression softened. “What’s going on, Rhys?”

She never did beat around the bush. I shrugged and shoved a cookie into my mouth. “Trish cheated on me with her ex. Seems Dad isn’t the only one that doesn’t think I’m worth the effort.”

“Oh, honey.” She reached across the table and touched my hand.

Her aging fingers caused my heart to drop.

She wasn’t in bad health, but it wouldn’t be long until I stood alone in the world.

The reality of that had me wanting to drink my share of the family’s whiskey reserves.

“That nasty girl wasn’t right for you, and you damn well know it. ”

Leave it to Gigi to set the world right and call my girlfriend a hoe-bag in nice church-goer terms. “She seemed all right. You liked her.”

“Nope. Not one bit.” She squeezed my hand and stole a cookie on her way back to her side of the table. “You didn’t love her anyway.”

“I did.”

“Liar. You wanted to love her, Rhys.” She ate her cookie in small bites like a little bird as she watched me with eyes that weren’t as bright as they once were. “You will find the right woman, baby. She’s going to sweep you off your feet and make you forget your name.”

Nessa.

“Right, well, it’d be nice if that would happen soon.” I finished off the cookies and milk and leaned back. “In other news, how’s Mom?”

“Terrible. She needs help, but you know your mother. She refuses to let anyone tell her what to do.”

“Dad used to be able to.” I stood up and stretched, feeling the weight of the day and the memory of all of its nefarious events pressing on me.

“ Used to being the key phrase. He doesn’t care anymore. His legacy is all that matters.”

I snorted. “What good is a legacy with no one to pass it along to? Oh, the irony of it all.”

“Maybe your heart will change one day.”

“Not a chance.” I took the now empty plate away from my grandmother and carried it to the sink, where I washed it with a dishrag and set it aside to dry. I turned back to her and braced myself against the counter. She offered me a thin-lipped smile of gratitude.

My dad had spent my entire life telling me I wasn’t good enough.

If that was his means of reverse psychology to make me better, it blew hard.

All he’d done was guarantee that he and I wouldn’t have much of a relationship once I was old enough to be out from under his roof.

How he’d come from the good heart of dear Gigi, I had no idea, and I’d given up wasting energy trying to figure it out.

“Dad made his bed,” I told her. “There’s nothing that could make me forgive him for the years of bullshit he put me through. He made it clear how he feels about me and how undeserving I am of his fortune.”

Gigi nodded. She pulled at the sleeves of her lilac sweater. Her hands shook. When she looked up at me, there was a desperation in the tightness of her lips and the creases in the corners of her eyes. “What if he told you he was dying of cancer?”

The world froze. My breath hitched in my throat as I searched my grandmother’s eyes for the truth, even though I already knew it. I wanted to tell her I could forgive her son for what he put me through. I wanted to tell her, for her own sake, that there was still some love between father and son.

But the words would not come.

It was only fair to be honest with her. “Not even then.”