“How big a check?” Dee asked from her usual perch on the couch. Like the true best friend she was, Delilah had shown up a few hours ago with more lattes and, even more importantly, a fresh supply of doughnuts.
They’d spent the afternoon on the couch with Rose alternately feeling sorry for herself and wanting to go kick Lucas. Now, evening was crouched outside the windows and the rain was beginning again. It was as if the weather matched her mood lately. Southern California was getting the rainiest winter in twenty years, and Rose felt right at home in the gloom.
“How much is the check?” Delilah asked again.
“Does it matter?” Rose turned to look at her friend. “For three days, I’ve been moping around here, missing that big ape, torturing myself and what does he do? He mails me a check for…” She glanced down and her eyes bugged out. “Ten thousand dollars!”
“Seriously?” Delilah bolted off the couch and snatched the check from Rose’s numb fingers.
Even though she and Delilah had both been born into wealthy families, they had each been on their own for the last few years. Rose by choice; Delilah because her father had lost everything to the IRS. So ten thousand dollars seemed like a vast amount of money to both of them.
Which to Rose’s mind only made this more insulting.
While her friend cooed over all the zeroes on the check, Rose’s brain went into overdrive. Since the night she had practically thrown Lucas out of her house, she’d been miserable. Every minute, she’d ached for him—despite knowing that he’d been using her all along to get back at her brother.
What kind of sense did that make? Shouldn’t love be more like a faucet? Turn it on when it was right and shut it off when it wasn’t? She hadn’t slept, had cried so much her eyes were no doubt permanently red and puffy and this is the thanks she got?
The universe had to kick her while she was down?
Was he really that cold? Had she romanticized every feeling she had about him? Rose swallowed hard and tried to look away from the offending piece of paper, but her gaze refused to shift. It was all there, her mind whispered. All the proof she needed that he had never cared. That every word, every touch between them had been a lie.
And what had the last few days been like for him? Was he out partying? Moving on to some bimbo who wouldn’t care what he thought or said or did? Had he even given her a moment’s thought aside from the time it had taken for him to write that stupid, insulting check?
“Ten thousand dollars,” Delilah said. “‘For services rendered.’ Uh-oh.”
“What? Services?” Rose grabbed the check so she could scowl down at Lucas’s scrawled signature. That’s when she saw the memo line. Delilah was right. For services rendered.
Her jaw dropped and her eyes widened even further than they had before. “Services?”
“Rose,” Delilah said cautiously, “you know he meant the cooking lessons.”
“Do I?” she snapped in a voice so high it cracked as fury rushed through every inch of her body like an out-of-control wildfire. She was practically vibrating she was so angry. And insulted again. And hurt. And humiliated.
“That no-good, lying…” She ran out of invectives when Delilah interrupted her.
“You know he’s not paying you for sex.”
“We don’t know that,” Rose told her, still so angry she could hardly draw a breath. “This was probably part of his ‘plan.’ The big goodbye speech after using me to get back at Dave, followed by a nice check—not too big, not too small. Payoff has to be handled carefully, after all….”
“Oh, boy,” Delilah muttered warily.
Rose hardly heard her. Her blood was rushing in her ears and her heartbeat was pounding as if she’d just completed a marathon. “Who does he think he is, anyway?”
“Rose…”
Her fingers curled into the check, and it was only through a supreme act of control she didn’t tear it into bits. Lucas King had given her a metaphorical slap for the last time. It was her turn now and she had a few things she wanted to say to him. In person.
She glared down at his signature again. “Think you can pay me off without even facing me over it? Well, I don’t want your damn money.”
“Let’s not be hasty,” Delilah urged.
“No,” Rose said with a sharp nod. “You’re right. I do want his money. But only what he owed me for those cooking lessons.”
“He did say he was going to pay you three times your usual rate.”
“That still wouldn’t be ten thousand dollars, Dee,” she said, tapping the edge of the check against her fingertips. “No, he did this on purpose. He sent a check that isn’t so large I’d have to kill him, but still big enough for me to understand this was the big goodbye.”
“There are worse ways to break up,” Dee muttered.
“Hah! What? They were out of trinkets at the jewelry store?”
Delilah sighed. “You’re going to go see him, aren’t you?”
“You’re damn right I am,” Rose said, with a glint in her eye and a lift of her chin. Lucas King may have started all this with his ridiculous plan, but she was going to finish it. He wanted a big goodbye? Fine. She’d give him one. And when she was finished, he’d be sorry he had ever heard of Rose Clancy.
“Okay, as the best friend,” Dee said cautiously, “I feel it’s my duty to remind you that you actually love this guy, Rose. Remember the misery? The doughnuts? You’re angry right now, but you still love him in spite of everything.”
“I know,” Rose said, pulling in one deep breath after another. “And because I love that big creep, there is just no way I’m letting him get away with this.”
“Uh-huh,” Dee said, “and then what?”
“Then,” Rose told her firmly, “I will come home and do deep meditations or something until I’m out of love with him.”
“Yeah, that’ll work.”
“Supportive. That’s your job, remember?”
“Right, right.” Delilah held up both hands. “I’m supporto girl. Need a getaway driver? Here I am. But Rose, there’s still the question of whether or not you’re pregnant to consider, too.”
“I know.” She nodded again, glanced at her flat belly and wondered for the thousandth time in the last few days if there was a baby already growing inside her. And if there was, that baby deserved better than a mother who was crazy and a father who didn’t have the sense to know what was good for him.