Emancipating Andie (3 page)

She shifted her weight on the hard floor. “My dad’s German and my mom’s Greek.”

“Good to know,” he said, “but that doesn’t answer my question.”

Andie rolled her eyes with an exasperated sigh. “Yes, it’s my natural color, okay? My mom has black hair and brown eyes, and my dad is the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Nordic poster boy. Put them together and you get me,” she said, gesturing toward herself. “Anything else you want to know?”

He laughed, and it annoyed her more than it should have that she couldn’t deter him. “Since you’re offering,” he said, “what are you doing down here?”

“Huh?”

He smiled. “I said, what are you doing down here? Why’d you come down to the wine cellar by yourself? The bar’s upstairs.”

“I was just…” She trailed off, looking back at the door, willing it to open with her mind.

“Just snooping around?”

“What? No!” she said as she looked back at him, horrified. He was smirking at her, the cigarette dangling between his lips.

“Why are
you
down here?” she challenged.

He removed the cigarette from his mouth and held it up by way of explanation.

“You came down here to smoke? Shouldn’t you go outside for that? I’m sure the owners of the house wouldn’t appreciate what you’re doing.”

“Me and the owner of this house—whose name is Mitch, by the way—used to sneak down here all the time for a smoke when I was in high school, since he was hiding it from his wife at the time. So yeah, I think he’d be fine with me grabbing a quick smoke down here. But I’m sure he’d appreciate your concern for his house.”

Andie grit her teeth together, looking away from him. She hated feeling stupid, and it seemed like, for whatever reason, it was his goal to make her feel that way. She couldn’t understand how this guy was a friend of Colin’s. Granted, she hadn’t known Colin long at all, but it just didn’t seem to fit.

“How do you know Colin?” she asked, trying to sound conversational instead of accusatory.

“We went to high school together. Played soccer together. We ran in the same circles.” He shrugged, blowing smoke out the side of his mouth. “You?”

“Me? Me what?”

“How do
you
know Colin?”

“Oh. I met him at a friend’s barbecue,” she said.

“And won him over with your easygoing charm?”

Andie glared at him as she stood, pacing in front of the shelf. She needed to get back upstairs. Now.

“God, how long has it been?” she asked, running both hands through her hair.

“Relax,” he said through a laugh. “Here.” He shifted, reaching in his back pocket again.

“I said I didn’t want a cigarette.”

“I’m not giving you a cigarette, sweetheart.”

Andie whirled on him.
Sweetheart?
Before she could even react, he tossed something at her, and she brought her hands up quickly, fumbling with it for a second before she looked down and realized what it was.

A cell phone.

She should have been happy, but instead, she was furious. “You’ve had this the whole time?” she asked, completely appalled. “Why the hell didn’t you give it to me before?”

He shrugged, flicking the ashes off his cigarette before he lifted his eyes to hers. “You were entertaining me.”

She felt heat curling in her belly as her fist clenched around the phone, and just as she opened her mouth, two muffled bangs sounded outside the door before it flew open, nearly slamming into the wall with the force. A couple stood in the doorway, and the woman immediately looked contrite, holding her hand up.

“Oh my God, we’re so sorry…we didn’t mean to interrupt…”

“Not at all.” Andie cut her off before she turned to throw the phone back to Chase, using a bit more force than was necessary. He caught it easily in one hand, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth as he looked back up at her.

“Nice to meet you, Andie,” he called as she turned to walk out the door.

“You too,” she forced out as she passed the couple, giving them an amiable smile. As she turned the corner, Andie added under her breath, “Asshole.”

.

Present Day

C
HAPTER
O
NE

T
he sound of her phone ringing danced around the edges of her concentration as her fingers moved feverishly over the keyboard, the tiny rapid clicking providing a gentle soundtrack for her thoughts. She was, as they say, in the zone; words were spilling like an avalanche down the page in front of her. Opportunities like this were rare; it seemed that whenever she was moved to write, it would be somewhere inconvenient, like in the back room of the restaurant or in line at the grocery store. And as much as she would try to keep the fire ablaze until she could get to her computer, or at the very least, a pen and paper, most of the time the inspiration would extinguish long before then. And then there were the times that she
did
have a stretch of time laid out before her, uninterrupted, where she could sit down with her thoughts, plan her words, craft them and build them, but those were usually the days she sat staring at the computer screen, at a blinking cursor that seemed to taunt her with every flash.

But not today.

Today the gods smiled down upon Andie Weber, and she was lucky enough to have her muse
and
some time alone.

If only the stupid phone would stop ringing.

“Damn it,” she mumbled as the phone rang for the third time, and she reached behind her, slapping around for it, her eyes glued to the screen as she reread the sentence she’d just written.

“Yeah?” she said absently, holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder as she brought her hands back to the keyboard.

“Hey babe, where were you?” Colin asked.

“Sorry, I was in the middle of something,” she said, finishing up a thought.

“You on the computer?” he asked, obviously hearing the manic clicking of the keys.

“Huh?” Her fingers slowed as she started to focus on the conversation. “Oh. Yeah.”

“What are you doing that’s got you so absorbed?”

“Oh, just…invoices and payroll stuff.”

“You know, I used to think owning a restaurant was glamorous before I met you.”

Andie laughed. “Ah, but you forget, I don’t own it. My dad does.”

“Yeah, but we both know you’re the one who runs that place.”

She sighed, pulling the last of her attention away from the computer, and he chuckled softly.

“I won’t keep you then. I just wanted to talk to you about something.”

“What’s going on?” she asked, leaning over to the coffee table and grabbing her cup of tea.

“Do you remember my friend Chase? You met him a while back. The night of Justin’s engagement party.”

“Um, yeah, I think so,” Andie said, rolling her eyes. Of course she remembered him. Colin had introduced her to Chase when they ran into him at the bar upstairs a little later in the evening that night. He had shaken her hand and said how nice it was to meet her, as if it were actually their first time meeting, as if they hadn’t been at each other’s throats in the wine cellar only an hour earlier. But there was
some
consistency with him at least; the overt sarcasm and the offhanded attitude from the wine cellar were still intact.

Andie had never admitted to Colin what she thought of Chase. At the time, their relationship was so new, and she didn’t want to turn him off by bad-mouthing one of his friends. And then, as she and Colin grew closer, Chase became a distant memory. According to Colin, even though Chase kept an apartment in New York, he moved around a lot, having some flighty, fly-by-night job as a freelance photographer. So even though his name came up now and again in conversation, she hadn’t yet had the pleasure of becoming reacquainted with him.

“Well, he’s back in New York again,” Colin said. “He wasn’t gonna be able to make it to Justin’s wedding—some kind of conflict with his job, I guess. But turns out, he can go now.”

“Great,” Andie said casually, her eyes scanning the document in front of her.

“But of course, since it’s this weekend, he would get raked over the coals trying to get a plane ticket to Tampa now. So I was thinking…” He trailed off.

Andie froze. “You were thinking…?” she goaded, although she was pretty sure she already knew exactly what he was going to say.

“That since you’re driving down, he could get a ride with you.”

She didn’t say anything.

After a few seconds of silence, Colin spoke again. “You know I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of you driving—”

“I don’t fly, Colin,” she said, cutting him off.

“Yes, I know that, but I don’t like that you’re driving alone. And if I didn’t have so many groomsman obligations down there this week, you know I’d drive down with you. But now Chase can go with you, so it works out for everyone.”

“I don’t need anyone to drive with me. I don’t
want
anyone to.”

It was his turn to be silent, and Andie chewed the inside of her lip, realizing she sounded like a petulant child. To Colin, her reaction probably seemed completely irrational and bratty; he had no idea that she didn’t like Chase. In his mind, he was just asking her to do a favor for a friend, a favor he thought would help
her
out in the process. And while she could explain to him how she felt about Chase, as the words played out in her mind, they seemed so petty and immature now.

What could she say?
He was sarcastic with me? He made fun of me for locking myself in the wine cellar? He asked me if I was a real blonde?

There was no good reason for her to say no. She was cornered, and she knew it.

“Sorry,” Andie said sheepishly. “You’re right. It’s probably better for me to have someone with me.” She nearly choked on the lie. “We can drive down together if he wants.”

“Great!” Colin said, the smile back in his voice. “This makes me feel so much better, Andie. You guys will have fun. Plus, he’ll throw in for gas, and now you’ll have some company.”

“Great,” she said with feigned enthusiasm, immediately changing the subject so he wouldn’t hear the displeasure in her voice. “What time is your flight tomorrow morning?”

“Ten.”

“Alright, so we should probably leave here around seven. Are you on your way over?”

“I have to finish up a few things, get everything in order for when I’m gone this week. Give me about an hour.”

“Okay. I’ll have dinner ready.”

“I love when you get all June Cleaver.”

Andie laughed, forgetting for the moment how irritated she was.

“Alright, get back to your invoices. I’ll see you in a bit. Love you.”

“Love you too,” she said.

She felt her irritation give way to guilt as she ended the call, staring at her computer screen, at the “invoices” she was working on. Colin had no idea she was writing a novel. She hadn’t told him. It just seemed like such a fanciful thing to do, to devote hours of her time to something that, as of right now, was nothing more than a glorified hobby. She could be doing so many other worthwhile and productive things with her free time. And while there were moments she felt guilty over being deceitful about it with her boyfriend of a year and a half, she always rationalized by focusing on the fact that she hadn’t told
anyone
, so it wasn’t like she was specifically excluding Colin.

Andie sat back against the couch and rubbed her eyes roughly with the heels of her hands. “Damn it,” she said as she pushed the computer off her lap, grabbing the mug from the coffee table as she stood.

She went into the kitchen and made herself another cup of tea before returning to her spot on the couch, taking a slow slip as she tried to get back into the frame of mind she was in only moments before. But even as she pulled the laptop back onto her thighs, Andie knew it was pointless. The moment was gone.

With an annoyed huff, she pushed the laptop off her legs again and pulled her knees into her chest, wrapping one arm around them and bringing the mug back to her lips. Two entire days, locked in a small space with him again. She could barely survive ten minutes last time.

Andie dropped her head back and closed her eyes. Maybe she was overreacting. Honestly, if she felt stupid explaining why she didn’t like Chase to Colin, then there was a good chance her reasons for not liking him actually
were
stupid. Plus, it was possible that she had caught him on a bad day that night in the cellar. Lord knows she wasn’t at her best at that particular moment either. Maybe he’d be different. Maybe
she’d
be different. Maybe they would have a decent time.

Or maybe she’d be stuck in the confines of a car with an obnoxious, caustic, antagonistic moron for two entire days.

She exhaled heavily as she powered down the laptop before bringing it back to her bedroom. She had been looking forward to two whole days alone. While solitude made some people uncomfortable, like Tracey, who would turn on every television she owned to simulate a house full of people when she was by herself, Andie relished her alone time. Whether that was the result of being an only child, or growing up in a house where it was customary for everyone to be off in separate corners of the house doing their own thing for hours at a time, she didn’t know. What she
did
know was that her two days of pleasant seclusion had just slipped right through her fingers.