Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Alpha Males (43 page)

“Yes, yes, of course.”
 
He could hear her rummaging around on
the other end of the line.
 
“What’s
your father up to these days?
 
Something amazing, no doubt.
 
He was always running around at Yale, advising people not to take jobs
in the financial sector.
 
He said no
one was really passionate about stocks.”
 
She chuckled at the memory.

“He opened this restaurant,” Chace said, being
deliberately vague.
 
His pulse
pounded in his ears.

“Wonderful!” she said.
 
“Will he be there when I come in?”

“No.”

“Oh.”
 
She sounded defeated for a moment, but then she rallied.
 
“Well, maybe you could make sure he’s
there for next month?
 
If it works
out, I mean, with us setting up our monthly luncheon there.”

“Ma’am,” Chace said.
 
“My father died last fall.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Martha exclaimed.
 
She sounded sincere, which made it
worse.
 
Her voice softened.
 
“Was it the cancer?”

“No,” Chace said.
 
“No, it wasn’t.”
 
He said it firmly, in the kind of tone
that didn’t invite any more questions, a tone he’d practiced almost daily after
his father had first passed away.

“Oh.”
 
Martha cleared her throat and there was an awkward pause that she was
obviously waiting for Chace to fill. But he stayed quiet. “Well, I’m ready for
that email address now.”

Chace recited it, said his goodbyes, and then
hung up the phone.

He glanced at the clock.
 
10:15.
 
They had less than three hours to
prepare a meal for fifty women.
 
Fifty women who were, no doubt, used to getting what they wanted, and would
come with all kind of special requests.
 
Dolores still wasn’t there yet.

“Brace yourself, Chuck,” Chace said as he
picked up the phone to dial Dolores and figure out where the hell she was.
 
“Things are about to get crazy.”

***

Lindsay had taken a break from writing and was
making a list for the hardware store.
 
Her kitchen sink was leaking a little, nothing major, and according to
the internet, it was an easy fix. But not without tools.

Wrench, she wrote.
 
How much did a wrench cost?
 
If she was going to be spending a lot of
money on supplies, it might be cheaper to just call a plumber.
 
Of course, tools were an investment…

He cell phone rang.

Her mother.

“How’s it going?” her mother asked when Lindsay
picked up.
 
“How’s the new house?”

Sylvia Benson had been intentionally kept out
of the moving process, mostly because Lindsay knew her mother would just make
everything more stressful.
 
Everything was a big production with Sylvia.
 
She wouldn’t have let Lindsay and Jamie
put their trash into Chace’s garbage bin, for example.
 
She would have forced them to take it
down to the dump, and then once there, she would have made them fill out all
kinds of forms for a dump pass or whatever it was you needed, then brought them
home and made them sign up for a regular garbage pick up on top of it.

In addition to her tendency to make a big deal
out of things, Sylvia could also be critical. Lindsay didn’t want to hear about
how there were no switch plates on the light switches, and how the whole house
needed to be painted, or oh, by the way, was Lindsay really considering keeping
that ugly tan carpet in the living room?
 
No, it was better to keep her mom out of things until she could show her
the finished product.

“Everything’s going great,” Lindsay said
cheerfully.
 
“Just getting all
settled in.”

“Have you met the new neighbor?”

“Yup,” Lindsay said, keeping her voice cheerful.
 
“And he’s super nice.
 
He’s building me a new fence.”

“That’s nice,” her mother said.
 
“So, listen, I thought I’d take a ride
down to the Cape today, maybe pick up some of that candy your aunt loves.
 
It’s her birthday on Friday, you know.”

Lindsay sighed.
 
“Mom, I told you, I don’t want you to
see the house until it’s all –”

“Did I say anything about coming to see the
house?”
 
Her mother sounded wounded.

“No, but –”

“I just want to spend time with my daughter, is
that too much to ask?”

“No,” Lindsay said, even though it kind of
was.
 
Lindsay had work to do,
writing that needed to be accomplished before she could just take off and do
whatever she wanted.
 
People were
always thinking she could drop everything at a moment’s notice, could just put
everything aside whenever the mood struck her.
 
They never took her job seriously, and
her mother was no exception.

“Good,” her mother said.
 
“So it’s all settled.
 
We’ll have lunch.
 
Shall I come pick you up?”

“Sure,” Lindsay said, sighing.
 
“Can you give me a couple hours?”

***

Her mother was right on time, pulling her black
Range Rover into the driveway at twelve-thirty on the dot.
 
Sylvia Benson was a small woman, and the
fact that she had a Range Rover was completely ridiculous.
 
But she’d bought it after Lindsay’s
father died, saying she needed something to show for the years she’d spent with
him.

Walter Benson had been a horrible man, one who
loved to drink and screamed when he didn’t get his way.
 
Sylvia stayed because she couldn’t
afford to divorce him. Lindsay suspected her mother had a deep-seeded guilt
about subjecting Lindsay and Jamie to Walter’s wrath for all those years.
 
The girls were thirty and twenty-eight
now, neither of them married, neither of them in long-term relationships.
 
Sylvia thought it was because they had
daddy issues.

“Hi, Mom,” Lindsay said as she climbed into the
car.
 
She’d been waiting on the
porch, running to the driveway before her mother could have a chance to get out
and ask if she could come inside “just for one minute to use the bathroom.”

“Hello,” her mother said, her eyes lingering on
the jeans and sweater Lindsay was wearing.

“Mom,” Lindsay said firmly.
 
“It’s just lunch.
 
Jeans and a sweater are fine.”

“I know, I know,” her mother said,
sighing.
 
She put the car in reverse
and began to back out of the driveway.
 
“Back in my day, we used to get dressed up for lunch.
 
Especially the single ladies.”

Oh, Jesus Christ.
 

“Now,” Sylvia said,
 
“I thought we could finally try The
Trib.
 
Remember?
 
It’s that cute little restaurant we
always used to pass on our way down here.”

“Sounds good.”
 
Lindsay could care less where they went
to lunch.
 
Her mind was back at her
computer, calculating the amount of words she was going to have to write
tonight to catch up on her word count.
 
Writing at night was the worst.
 
Your brain wasn’t as sharp, and you had to miss all the good TV
shows.
 
Not that she had cable
service yet.
 
But still.

Ten minutes later, they pulled into the parking
lot of The Trib.

Lindsay’s mother leaned forward and peered
through the windshield.
 
“Is it
open?
 
It doesn’t look like anyone’s
here.”

“It says it is,” Lindsay said, opening the door
and stepping out of the car.
 
The
last thing she wanted was to get into some kind of back and forth with about
where they should eat.
 
That could
take hours.
 
“It’s probably just one
of those places that’s dead during the off-season.”

“Oh, great,” her mother said. “A tourist
trap.
 
I hope they have good
salmon.”

They walked into the restaurant.
 
Warm air and delicious smells enveloped
them.
 
But the air and the smells
were in direct contrast to the visual.
 
The walls were in need of a good coat of paint, only half the tables
were set, and the specials board hadn’t been updated in two weeks.

There was a hostess stand, but no one was
manning it.

“Hello!” her mother called.
 
“Is anyone here?
 
Are you open?”

“Mom!” Lindsay said, mortified.
 
“Keep it down! I’m sure someone’s going
to come out.
 
Give it a second.”

“Usually they have a bell or something, so you
can ring it if --- ah! Here they come!
 
Young man, are you open?”

The kitchen door had swung open, and a man had
emerged from the kitchen.
 
It took
Lindsay a second to realize it was Chace.

He’d changed since she saw him this morning,
into a pair of khakis and a soft-looking green sweater.
 
He was wiping his hands on a dishtowel,
and when he saw Lindsay, he stopped.

“Oh,” he said.
 
“Sorry, I didn’t know anyone was out here.”

“So you’re not open?” her mother asked
accusingly.
 
“Because the sign
outside says you are.
 
So which is
it?”

Lindsay said a silent prayer of thanks that her
mother had never met Chace, had never even heard his name.
 
She would have been off on some embarrassing
tangent, asking him what had happened between him and her daughter, why’d
they’d broken up when Lindsay was such a nice girl.

“Oh, no, we’re open.”
 
He reached behind the hostess stand and
rummaged around until he pulled out two menus.
 
“Is a booth in the back okay?
 
We’re expecting a big party, and I’m
assuming they’ll want to take the tables up front.”

“Sounds good to me,” Lindsay said, before her
mother could protest or, worse, Chace could say something embarrassing.

He led them to the booth in the back.
 
What was he doing working here,
anyway?
 
Chace was a hedge fund
manager in Boston, or at least he had been.
 
She knew his father owned a restaurant
on the Cape -- was this it?
 
And if
so, had Chace moved here to help his father take care of it?

“I’ll give you some time with the menus,” Chace
said, then hurried back toward the kitchen.

“What a hottie,” her mother said once he was
gone.
 
She licked her finger and
held it up, making a sizzle sound with her mouth.

Lindsay stared at her.

“Get it?” Sylvia asked.
 
“Because he’s
sizzling
hot?”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“Bet you wish you hadn’t worn that bulky
sweater, now, huh?”

Lindsay sighed and opened the menu.
 
Just get through lunch, she told
herself.
 
Just get through it and
then you can get the hell out of here.

***

Chace’s heart was pounding as he walked back
into the kitchen. Why the hell had Lindsay shown up at The Trib?
 
Did she know he worked here?
 
The thought filled him with equal parts
excitement and fear. If he wasn’t careful, he’d pull her right back into his
world, and she didn’t deserve that.
 
He wasn’t fit for any woman right now, especially not one like Lindsay.

“Yo,” Chuck said, hanging up the phone.
 
“Dolores isn’t coming in.”

“What?” Chace asked.
 
“What the hell do you mean she’s not coming
in?”

Chuck shrugged.
 
“She said she’s not feeling well.”

It was bullshit, and Chace knew it.
 
Dolores just didn’t feel like working,
was intentionally trying to screw with him just because she could.
 
Even after all this time, she still
blamed him for what had happened to his father.

Chace heard the sound of womens’ voices filling
the dining room.
 
Shit.
 
The Ladies For the Preservation of the
Cape were here.