Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

ROSIE

I came here for a peanut hookup.

If there’s one thing people should know about me, it’s that I’m a woman who knows how to find and make deals.

My roommate, Joy, is a woman in her seventh or eighth decade—I respect her too much to ask—who’s spending her retirement in the tea freelancing business. I didn’t realize there was a tea freelancing business before I met her, but she pivoted from making tea blends for a local teahouse to throwing tea-related parties and making special, personalized blends for people. I’m here today because we were requested to throw a circus-themed tea on Saturday, and the hosts have decided that in order for it to feel legitimate, they need a shit ton of peanuts.

Obviously, we could get them from the grocery store, but if we get a deal on the nuts, then we get to keep the extra money, so you can bet your ass I’m getting a deal on the nuts.

I heard from a friend who works in the restaurant business that this bar is the place to go to get nuts for cheap, so here I am.

And here he is.

It took me a second to recognize Anthony. The last time I saw him, he was slumped on his carpet after the first tea Joy ever catered. Due to a misunderstanding, she’d dosed the tea with a special type of mushrooms she grows in her apartment. The end result was that almost everyone present—mainly, Anthony, his mother and then-fiancée—had gotten very high, and honesty had been flung about like a weapon. A weapon wielded at Anthony, because it turned out his fiancée had been cheating on him with his friend and had also stolen three expensive necklaces from his mother. And we’d stood on the sidelines, gaping, when she left the house for good.

Oof… It hurt to watch.

But, on a personal level, that afternoon had been a kind of revelation. Because it turns out plenty of people do want that kind of tea. And, by ‘it turns out,’ I mean that I have helped Joy discreetly get word out about her special brews to the kind of people who might like that sort of tea party.

Discreet really is the name of the game, because I can’t afford to run into any trouble. But I have a second-sense for cops or authority figures, so I’m not worried we’ll get entrapped by a cop with a chip on their shoulder.

Business is booming. So much so that I’ve had to step back from working at my brother’s girlfriend’s bakery so I can spend more time helping Joy. Claire doesn’t mind that I bailed on her—or if she does, she hasn’t said so. My brother had probably already warned her that I’m not the kind of woman who’s about to get married to a job. Much to his regret, I might add. He would prefer to have a tracking device on all of the people he loves. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if he snuck one into my footwear.

Joy and I have Anthony to thank for the business boom, in a way. Maybe that’s why I’ve thought of him so much over the past couple of months. That and the fact that I watched that cold-hearted woman walk out on him. I keep remembering the look in his eyes—as if he were being torn in two and didn’t know which way was upward.

Or maybe it’s because I went up to him after the door closed behind the woman he was supposed to marry, and when I touched his shoulder, he looked up at me and said, “Angel.”

No one’s ever accused me of being one of those before. But I’ve felt broken before, the way he did. Felt it more than once, to be honest, because even though I’m lucky when it comes to finding deals, I am not lucky in love. Never have been.

Anthony has grown a beard since I last saw him. It’s a good look for him, and he is, objectively, attractive—tall and broad-shouldered, with slate-gray eyes and thick chestnut-brown hair. Tonight, he has on jeans and a black sweater that make him look like he’s cos-playing as a beat poet. He fills it out more than a man who spends all day sitting at a desk, ordering other people around, has any right to.

He’s staring at me intensely, as if he’s still on that mini-mushroom trip Joy sent him on. My throat tightens, probably a reflex from remembering that afternoon.

“Rosie, right?” he asks, his eyes soaking me in.

“Rosie James,” I agree, the name coming out fluidly after all these years.

He glances around, taking in the mostly empty bar, with its graveyard of peanut shells, a couple of disinterested drunk dudes staring into their drinks or their phones, the bartender openly watching a gameshow on the TV anchored to the wall. Then his eyes make their way back to me and stick. “Are you here with friends or something?”

A laugh bursts out of me, because I doubt I could get anyone to meet me here for a hang. “No, I’m here for a peanut hookup.”

The confusion in Anthony’s eyes makes me laugh again, because I’m guessing he’s envisioning me fucking a guy on a pile of peanuts. I sit down across from him without being invited. “I’ve been helping Joy with her tea catering,” I say. “You remember Joy. She’s the one who dosed you all with her magic mushroom tea.”

His lips twitch at the corners. “Not the kind of thing a man forgets.”

“No, I guess not. Sorry about that. She should definitely have asked you first. She’s learned her lesson, though, and it turns out that there are a lot of people who actually want her special tea.”

“Huh,” he says, lifting his eyebrows.

“Why are you here?” I ask before I can help myself. “This doesn’t seem like your kind of hangout if you don’t mind me saying so.”

He leans back in his side of the booth. “What if I do mind you saying so?”

Another laugh escapes me. “Then you’re probably out of luck. I’m not very good at keeping things to myself.”

That’s both true and untrue. I can keep secrets, if I need to. I can clutch them close and hold on until my dying breath. But it’s like my mouth takes offense to all this gatekeeping and wants to hold nothing else back to make up for it.

“I was meeting Jake,” he says.

Jake and Lainey are my close, personal friends. They run The Love Fixers together, along with Nicole and Damien, a husband-and-wife private investigator team, and I help them out whenever I feel like having a laugh or getting a little rush of sweet adrenaline. I’ve delivered penis balloon bouquets, cookies inscribed with cutting messages, and on one very memorable occasion, I pretended to be someone’s secret lover.

I happen to know that my friends are helping Anthony. Something to do with finding him a substitute wife since his ex-fiancée dropped him like a hot potato. From my limited understanding of the situation, he has to marry someone on New Year’s Eve, or soon thereafter, to claim his trust fund.

“How’d it go?” I ask, grabbing one of the peanuts from the bowl on the table and cracking it open. Might as well get a feel for the merchandise if I’m going to be negotiating with the bartender. I pop the peanut and drop the shell, all while Anthony stares at me like I’m some mythical creature come to life.

The peanut’s not bad.

It’s pretty obvious I’m imposing on Anthony, but for some reason, I can’t get myself to up and leave. My brothers would probably say it’s because I’m stubborn. And I am stubborn, but it’s not just that. It’s the look I saw on his face the day of the mushroom tea. It’s the emptiness I see behind his eyes now.

This man needs help, and even though I know next to nothing about him other than that he dislikes being drugged and has an obscenely rich mother and a very large trust fund, I want to help him. If I told my brother Seamus that, he’d sigh and say, How positively Rosie of you , because I’m known for my interfering ways. What can I say? I like helping people fill their cups. This man’s cup is empty, and maybe it has been for some time.

Sighing, he stares off into the distance, like the answer to life might be written in the snow clouds hanging in the sky outside of the very dirty windows. “It’s not going well.”

“Really, what happened?” I ask, not expecting him to tell me but still not ready to give up the ghost and leave.

He shoots me another disbelieving look, and when I don’t apologize or flinch, he shrugs. “She sucked on my ring finger within five minutes of meeting me.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Rookie mistake. She should have waited ten.”

He laughs then, a real laugh that lights him up from within, and I can’t look away—it’s like he’s gifted himself with a new face, one that has dimples beneath that very fine beard.

I clear my throat. “Was she hot?”

He shrugs, and it’s my turn to laugh. “Why do I think you’re about to say, ‘Not handsome enough to tempt me?’”

He gives his head a micro-shake. “I’m not Mr. Darcy. He wouldn’t have any trouble finding a wife.”

I give him a dubious look, taking in the whole of him—those unexpected dimples, the short beard and thick, full hair. The gray eyes. There’s still emptiness behind them, but I’m pretty sure it’s not because he’s a secret serial killer. It’s the look of a man who’s not living his truth.

I’d like to know more about him—to find out what his truth actually is. Then again, I’d always like to know more. It’s what gets me into seven out of ten of my scrapes.

“I know all about Pride and Prejudice . I have a younger sister,” he explains, as if I’d questioned his knowledge of Austen.

“Good for you. You know, you wouldn’t have any trouble finding a wife either. Finger lady would’ve married you in a heartbeat, I’ll bet.”

His lips lift again. “Ah, but I wouldn’t have married her.”

“Not even a fake marriage?”

“My fingers might not have survived it.”

My lips arc upward as I glance down at his hands, resting on the tabletop. They are nice hands, strong but elegant, like he should be in one of those ads for watches or Fitbits. “You don’t think she’d be able to keep her hands off you? And this is a problem?”

He shrugs. “I’m not ready for anything like that yet.”

“Poor you, so attractive the ladies just can’t keep away.” I glance back up at him. “You know, if you’re looking to keep things chaste, you should do away with the beard. Beards make women think about oral sex.”

He’d just cracked open a peanut, and it falls through his fingers as he stares at me.

I laugh reflexively. “Sorry. I can’t help myself. My brother Seamus says I should be muzzled. I think my other brother, Declan, agrees with him, but he’s too much of a gentle giant to say so.”

Anthony lifts one of those strong, elegant hands to touch his beard, and I feel an unexpected shiver course through me. He’s not my usual type, but I can see why he’d be someone’s type. “Why?”

“The oral sex thing or the muzzle?”

“The former.”

“Oh, because it feels really good against a woman’s inner thighs.” I shrug. “My guess is that you’d be getting less of a feral vibe if you shaved the beard and went back to those fusty suits.”

I’ve surprised him again. To be honest, I could see this becoming an enjoyable game—making this man who thought he’d seen everything gape at me. “Fusty?” he says with as much offense as if he’d spun the thread himself. “They’re nice suits. My mo—”

He cuts himself off, but not quickly enough to elude me. “Were you just about to say your mother picked them out?”

His smile crests, almost as if those dimples found an excuse to pop and now they’re so dizzied with their success they want it to happen again. “No,” he lies. “It was just a word that sounded like mother, but I can’t think of it right now.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

He sobers. “Sometimes. I can keep a secret when I need to.”

I can relate to that a little too much, so I don’t push.

Instead, I say, “Anyway. Your mother might have respectable taste in suits, but they’re not really suit daddy suits. You’ve got a sexier vibe going on now—like some kind of beat poet gone wrong. But I have to say, I could also see you rocking a collared shirt, no tie. Maybe a few buttons undone. Are you sure you don’t want some action? It might help you get over—” I wave my hand.

“My ex-fiancée leaving me two months before the wedding so she could be with my friend?” he says dryly. “Or the fact that she was only marrying me for money, and she still left?”

“Both of those things,” I say, feeling a surge of sympathy for him. “Maybe take advantage of the hot beard and have some fun.” His eyes hold mine for a beat, and something molten passes between us. So I hastily add, “That’s not an invitation, to be clear. I’m not looking for that kind of thing either.”

“A fake spouse or sex?” he asks, his voice a pitch lower.

“Either. I left behind a…situation when I hightailed it from New York City.” Maybe I shouldn’t tell him something so personal, but I want him to know that I understand. I’m not some well-wisher sitting on the sidelines eating snacks while I watch him struggle. I’ve been in those trenches of heartbreak. I painted murals on the walls.

He cocks his head. “What kind of situation?”

“Don’t tell my brother.”

“Which one?”

“The one who lives in the house next to Lainey and Jake and is marrying Lainey’s best friend, Claire. Well, she doesn’t know it yet, but I do. I found the ring in his sock drawer.”

He laughs. “So I know before she does?”

“Surprise! Please don’t track her down and tell her.”

“Claire’s my mother’s old assistant,” he says, nodding, and I’m amused to remember it’s true. Claire worked with her before opening the bakery. The assistant job had then defaulted to Lainey, who’d left it soon after Nina walked out on Anthony.

“Yeah, that’s right. Don’t tell Claire’s boyfriend. He’d get all bent out of shape about it. My brother is a big dude, and he may have a gentle giant thing going on usually, but he’s way overprotective. My parents died when I was eighteen, which only made it worse.”

“Oh, shit,” he says. “I’m sorry about your parents.”

“Me too.” His words tug on an old ache, but I smile. “But they were pretty great, and I’m glad I got to have them. Plenty of people don’t like their parents. But I loved them, and I love my lug of a brother. Which is why I don’t want him to get into any trouble out of some notion of protecting me.”

“What exactly did this guy do to you?” Anthony asks, his voice strained and a little rough-edged, as if he actually cares about the answer.

“Like I said, no one in my family knows. But it turned out he was married. Had two kids, too.” There’s a sinking sensation in my stomach, with a shot glass chaser of pure shame. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know—part of me feels like I should’ve known. That if I’d been less carried away by all of it, I would have. I clear my throat. “Anyway, he was using me for some excitement, and I figured it was a good time to get out of town. Which is exactly what I did. After anonymously informing his wife, of course. She had a right to know. But, yeah, leaving was the only acceptable course of action. It didn’t hurt that my brother Declan needed me. But name a crappy relationship malfunction, and I’ve been through it, I guarantee you.”

I don’t add that I’ve voluntarily benched myself from dating. The last date I went on was my final date with Roman, which ended when his wedding ring fell out of his pocket and landed on the dirty bar floor. He scurried to grab it so quickly the table fell over—along with all the beer and food on it.

Anthony swears under his breath, his gaze sympathetic, almost warm, then says, “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to feel used. That’s the worst part of all of this. Getting to know someone, letting them in, and then realizing they were only in it for what they could get out of you. And it’s not the first time.”

“Has it always been about money?”

“Usually,” he says, swallowing. My gaze follows his Adam’s apple as it bobs in his throat. It’s nothing personal. I’ve always found men’s throats seductive, is all, and Anthony Rosings Smith has a nice one.

“Why don’t you try dating only rich women?” I ask.

His smile verges on a smirk this time. “Have you met rich women?”

Yes, and most of them are catty, shallow, and exacting. But for all I know, he’s the exact same way. His mother is certainly exacting. I’d know. In addition to catering the mushroom tea, I worked with the staff at Anthony’s ill-fated engagement party. I’ve been all up, in, and around this man’s failed relationship.

Sighing, he adds, “You know, my mother got married three times before she decided to give up. If it weren’t for my trust fund, I’d give up too.”

I whistle. “Three times, huh? No one can say she didn’t give it the old college try. What happened to the dudes?”

He gives me a wry smile, then glances at the bar. The bartender is still watching the gameshow, slack-jawed as if he’s been scarfing weed brownies in the back. From his glaze-eyed look, I’m not far off the truth. When Anthony glances back at me, his gaze more alive than it was when I got here ten minutes ago, he asks, “Would you like a drink?”

“Hell, yes. Or possibly half a dozen.”