“Okay. I’ll look at it as soon as I get home,” I promise. “How’s Kate doing?”
“She’s fine, I guess. Busy with your social media and school,” Don explains. “You could call her sometime. Find out for yourself.”
“I will. I kind of want to do some of my own social anyway and give her a bit of a break,” I say as my lattes are placed on the counter by a perky blond barista who is smiling and blushing, so I know she knows who I am.
“Thank you, Casey,” I say, reading her name tag.
“You’re so welcome!” She shoves a coupon at me. “And sorry for the wait. Here’s a coupon for a free drink next time.”
I want to argue with her, because I didn’t wait longer than anyone else and I hate when people give me free stuff just for being me, but my father will hear and he always tells me not to argue when people want to give me things. So I just smile at her and tell her she’s a sweetheart and hightail it out of the place before she, or anyone else, can ask for an autograph.
Stephanie might be awake by now, and I don’t want her to think I ditched her.
“Avery, Kate is taking courses in social media marketing just so she can manage this side of your brand,” Don reminds me. “And you’re paying her to do it.”
“Yeah, but I want to be more involved,” I explain, and I mean it.
“You don’t have the time,” he tells me. “Have you talked to Lizzie lately?”
“What?” That’s a weird change of topic. “No. Why would I? It’s over.”
“Not permanently,” Don replies.
“Yes. Permanently.” I feel so many things and none of them are good. “Don, she’s not my girlfriend anymore.”
“But she might be your girlfriend again,” he says, like he knows more on the subject than I do. “She would be willing to talk to you and try again. Even after the way you treated her when she visited.”
“She didn’t visit, she stalked, and I’m not getting back together with her,” I tell him firmly, and pause at the bottom of the steps to my house before I add, “I’m seeing someone else.”
“WHAT?”
That’s exactly why I didn’t go inside. I knew he was going to yell and I didn’t want Stephanie to hear if she was awake. Don has a really deep, booming voice when he’s calm, let alone when he’s not.
“What the hell has gotten into you?” he barks. “Who is it? How long has this been going on? Avery, you barely ended things with Liz. Did this start before? Because if the media finds out, you’ll lose deals. Look what happened to Tiger Woods.”
I’m not even close to surprised that his first reaction is concern about how this will look. He honestly probably wouldn’t care if I had cheated on Lizzie; he just cares if people find out about it. “It started after Lizzie, I promise you. But it’s serious.”
He snorts. “If it started after Lizzie, it can’t be serious. It hasn’t been long enough to be serious, Avery. Jesus Christ, I don’t understand you. I honestly don’t.”
I can’t defend myself because that would mean admitting I felt something for Stephanie back in Seattle and admitting I let myself end up with Lizzie anyway. And that would make me an asshole, which I am and he probably thinks I am, but I don’t need it confirmed out loud.
“It’s an old friend, and it just evolved into something more,” I explain as I climb the stairs to my porch and juggle my bag of bagels and the two lattes and the phone pinched to my ear.
“Who?” He says it with such bite and with such demand that it really pisses me off.
“Keep trolling your puck bunny gossip sites, Don. Maybe you’ll find out,” I say, and hang up on my father and manager and the navigator of my universe. Ugh. Talk about a quick way to blow a perfect morning to shit.
I shove my phone in my pocket and push the key into the lock. Stephanie is coming down the stairs, her brown hair mussed and her blue eyes sleepy. She’s barefoot in nothing but an old Winterhawks T-shirt I gave her last night after sex. It barely covers the white lace boy shorts she calls underwear and I call boner bait. Her long, bare legs are tanned, and I debate having her as an appetizer before the bagels and coffee.
“Morning, scrumptious.” I smile up at her, putting the bag of bagels and my latte on the hall table as I toe out of my shoes.
She scratches her bed head and giggles, her voice groggy. “Scrumptious?”
She stops on the last step and I hand her a latte and then wrap my arms around her. We’re eye-to-eye now. I press my lips to the curve where her neck meets her jaw. “Because you’re delicious.”
I make a point to rub my unshaven jaw against her skin and she squirms. “I’m going to drop my coffee!”
“I’ll buy you another,” I promise, and do it again. She manages to wiggle out of my grip and gets around me, jumping off the last step and heading straight to the bag of bagels.
