A Ring for Rosie. Maggie Wells
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Chapter 3
If it weren’t for a client presentation he had to prep for, James would have ditched going into the office altogether. As director of sales, he often spent days out “in the trade,” schmoozing existing customers, developing leads into customers, and prospecting for new leads as if they were made out of gold. Which they were, in a way. When one is a partner in a small business, one does everything possible to keep the cash flow fluid. But he couldn’t duck the office every day.
Not today of all days.
He hadn’t wanted to say yes to Megan staying with him. He sure as shit hadn’t expected her to respond to his snark about the hot water by dropping her damn towel. Talk about your proverbial rocks and hard places. Then again, he’d been wedged in a crevice from the moment she’d knocked on his door.
A brisk rap on the office door brought his head up. Before he could say, “Come in,” Rosie breezed into his office, dropped a stack of neatly labeled files in his tray, then sashayed back out again without a word.
He groaned long and loud the second the door snicked shut behind her. Spinning his chair away from the computer on his desk, he closed his eyes and tried to do some of the deep breathing people liked to claim made them calm. Frankly, gulping air like a guppy only made him feel full and stupid and ache to explode.
Rosie.
It was a kiss. One little kiss. An accidental kiss. Surely they could get past the awkwardness. Eventually.
But he hadn’t gotten past the kiss yet. How the hell could he expect Rosie to? The woman wore her heart on her sleeve. Always had, always would. Her openness was one of the things he admired most about her. When Rosie loved, she loved with everything she was. His partners had warned him off on his first day, and he’d been more than willing to agree. His personal life had been jammed with complications. The last thing he wanted was to mess things up at the day job.
Another sharp knock jolted him from his thoughts. When the door didn’t swing open right away, he knew Mike had to be standing on the other side. Swallowing the lump of dread tangled in his throat, he croaked, “Come in.”
The door swung inward, and sure enough, his best friend and ersatz brother-in-law stood framed in the doorway.
“Did you check the numbers on the Telcore account?” he asked without preamble.
James nodded. “Yeah, I’ll re-run them with a 24–7 monitoring service added in.”
“Good.”
Mike reached for the door handle, but James couldn’t let him go without trying to explain. Again. “Hey, listen—”
He got the palm. “No. I don’t want to talk about Megan.”
“Come on, man,” James argued, rising from his chair. “What the hell was I supposed to do? You wouldn’t let her stay, she told me she couldn’t stay with your folks anymore. The boys were…” He sighed and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “They want her there.”
Mike snorted. “They don’t know any better.”
“Of course they don’t,” James snapped. “They’re four.”
Mike held up both hands in surrender. “I get you. But I can’t talk about this right now.”
Sinking back in his seat, James blew out a frustrated whoosh of air. He understood. Mike was torn. And angry. Lord knows, James was well acquainted with both feelings. But Mike was also Megan’s brother. Mike and Megan had once been close, however, Megan’s inability to commit to her children had driven a wedge between the siblings. James felt keenly responsible for the rift.
Most days James wished he’d never gone there. But he had. He’d blurred the line between friendship and family, and he had no one to blame but himself. If he hadn’t, he never would have had Jamie and Jeff. And if he’d never had his kids, who would he be? Certainly not the man he was today.
“Be careful, man.”
James ran his hand over his face, then across his mouth as he met Mike’s gaze and nodded mutely.
Mike grasped the doorknob. “Did you know Rosie stormed into Getta Piece and chowed down on a bunch of dicks?”
“Shit,” James said.
“She told Georgie you kissed her.”
“Fuck.” James had been reduced to words with no more than four letters.
Mike didn’t turn around. “She didn’t say anything about fucking, but I will remind you if you do anything to make Rosie even think about leaving us, Colm and I will be stuffing your dick into your mouth. Got me?”
“Got you.”
James pushed off with one foot and let his chair swivel away from the door as Mike left his office. Closing his eyes, he did his best not to allow the words “Rosie,” “kiss,” “fuck,” or “dick” to form a common thread in his brain. He failed. Thinking about anything other than Rosie had become increasingly difficult in the past few weeks.
But, as his friend Colm would say, it was what it was. Deal.
And deal, he would. Grabbing the files Rosie had dumped on his desk and his laptop, he tucked them under his arm and stood. He thought about leaving the messenger bag filled with half-eaten snacks and broken toys where it lay, but he’d picked up enough single-parent knowledge to be sure he’d need to excavate something from its depths if he dared to leave the bag behind. Looping the strap over his shoulder, he tucked the files against his ribcage and made a beeline for the door.
Rosie didn’t look up as he stepped out. A sure sign she was pissed. He ducked his head and hurried past. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember the last time Rosie failed to greet him with her usual over-friendly enthusiasm. He didn’t like her newfound coolness.
“I’m out in the field the rest of the day.” He pressed his shoulder to the exterior.
She didn’t call out one of her usual phrases of encouragement. No, “Go get ’em” or “Reel in a big one. Mama wants new shoes.”
She responded with only the steady clickety-clack of her fingernails on the keyboard and a brusque, “Noted.”
He rushed from the office, the soles of his shoes slipping on the crumbling asphalt of the parking lot. With one single word, Rosie had made one thing excruciatingly clear: He was screwed. And not in the way a guy liked to be screwed.
* * * *
Rosie exhaled the moment the door closed behind him. She’d prayed he’d stay away from the office today. Thank goodness her mother didn’t know she was wasting prayers on self-preservation. Maria Herrera was prone to what she and her sisters liked to call catechismic fits. The last thing Rosie needed were extra lectures on the sanctity of prayer. Most everything her mother had ever taught her had sunk in—to a certain extent. Sure, she’d given her virginity up to Marco Rodriguez on prom night, but lots of the girls she knew ditched theirs not long after their quinceañera. She’d held out almost three more years.
And in the decade since, there’d only been two other lovers. Sadly, she’d only dated one man in the years since she first laid eyes on James. Paul Ferro was handsome, successful, and clearly smitten with her. She’d tried hard to love him; wanted to with every fiber of her being. Endured endless reminders from her mother and sisters about how she wasn’t getting any younger. And they were right. Paul was practically perfect. But Practically Perfect Paul wasn’t James. When jokes about rings and mortgages became attempts at serious discussion, she’d had to end the relationship.
Her family had been livid. For his part, Paul was more resigned. He’d even gone as far as making a crack about her being married to her work, but they both knew she didn’t stay on at Trident because she was dedicated to the databases she’d painstakingly built.
And though she would be suitably appalled by the heresy, Maria