Finding Tessa Read online

  “Hi, Jace,” I say. “Come here often?”

  He laughs. “My office is a couple of blocks away, so yeah, I’ve been here once or twice.” He winks at me and doesn’t mention my makeup sliding off my face, so I secretly hope it isn’t.

  I want to look pretty.

  “Can I get you a drink? Or do you just want to sit and eat?” He looks at his watch, which he wears on his right arm, so I assume he’s left-handed. “I made reservations, but we’re a bit early. If you’re hungry I can see if they’ll seat us now.”

  He fumbles over his words and it’s adorable. “Let’s grab a drink first,” I say.

  “What’s your poison?”

  Assholes. But usually red wine. “I’ll have a Chardonnay.” I decide to make the change everywhere.

  “Coming right up.”

  He squeezes into the empty space beside me. Gets the bartender’s attention, Donald, who shakes Jace’s hand before taking the order.

  Jace certainly knows a lot of bartenders. Thoughts of Damon creep and crawl on me like a spider and I feel like that eight-legged fucker is about to bite and the room starts to spin and I’m about to scream and then—

  “Donald, this is my friend Tessa. She’s new in town. An interior designer. Does Michael need any help with the renovations? I’ve seen her stuff. She’s amazing. I’m helping her get started with a business loan, and you should have Michael snatch her up before her prices double.” Jace winks at me again. “She’d like your best chilled Chardonnay. I’ll take the pilsner on tap.”

  “Sure thing, Jace,” Donald says, then looks at me. “Do you have a card I can pass along?”

  I’m completely taken off guard, but I act confident. I’ve done a lot of acting my feelings in my day. “They’re on order. I’ve only been here a week.” I go for broke. “I have a website if you’d like me to write it down?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll let Michael know.”

  Donald hands me a pen from behind his ear and a small pad he takes orders on. I write down my brand-new website, so thankful I at least had to chutzpah to start that today, and hand it back to him. He pockets the piece of paper and runs for our drinks.

  “Thanks, Jace. You really didn’t have to do that,” I say, even though I’m so, so grateful. Because I’ve pretended to be in this position before, I know only three states require a title act to practice if you want to call yourself an interior designer, and New Jersey isn’t one of them. Fake it till you make it.

  He waves his hand in the air around him in nonchalance. “No big deal. I’m glad to help. Even if I had to tell a little white lie. I’m just trying to help a new friend.”

  “That was quite a risk. How do you know I don’t paint walls orange and install brown and beige carpets and hang framed Confederate flags on the walls?”

  “Oh. Well, do you?”

  “Not the orange walls.” I stare at him seriously, but his expression is so horrified that I give up too easily and laugh. “Wow, I can get you to believe anything, huh?”

  “Feisty!” he yells, then puts his hand on my shoulder, but quickly removes it. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get in your space.” He tries to take a step back in the crowded bar, bumps into someone and apologizes, then turns back to me. “You look better. But how do you feel?”

  “I’m okay.” I’m about to say par for the course but I don’t. This man’s parents did a fantastic job raising him, and suddenly I’m curious. “Where did you come from, Jace Montgomery?”

  He shrugs. “Jersey boy my whole life. Grew up not too far from here. Moved to Hoboken for a while with an ex—” He pauses. “But now I’m back here. And clearly looking for a new place to live,” he says with a chuckle. “You’ll have to help me decorate when the time comes.”

  “Gladly.”

  I smile up at him, completely taken with his face. He’s good-looking for sure, but that’s not it. He’s not Hollywood-hot, and most people probably wouldn’t give him a second glance if they passed him on the street. But I’m lost—when I look at him, I see the man who saved me. I need to know everything about him.

  And I’m about to ask. But of course . . .

  “Jace, is that you?”

  A woman walks up behind him, and she legitimately puts her hands on his waist and turns him around to face her.

  “Oh. Hey,” he says awkwardly. That’s it.

  “I didn’t know you were coming here today!”

  This woman is overly excited. Women know when they’re being ignored on purpose, and that’s exactly what she was doing to me. And then, knight in shining armor to the rescue, yet again.

  He shifts his body back to my direction. “Rosita, this is my friend Tessa. She’s new to town.” Jace looks at me with that smile again. “Rosita and I work together at the bank.”

  “Nice to meet you Rosita,” I say. Kill them with kindness.

  I get a close-lipped, tense smile in return. “Yeah. Hi.” Her lips don’t do all the talking, as most is done with her eyes. The up-and-down scan of my outfit, and I know she’s stifling the laughter about my being in a T-shirt and jeans while she’s in some va-va-voom designer wrap dress with huge emerald earrings that don’t match, but look classy against her medium-toned skin. Her long, brown-to-blond ombré Real Housewife curls overshadow my razor-chopped bob with the box dye, the bangs. She turns to Jace, reverting from Queen Bee back to damsel in distress. “Can I talk to you for a second? Privately?” Her shiny lips are pursed between a pout and a gimme-a-kiss stance.

  Okay. Terrific. My knight is having a workplace affair. I should’ve known he was too good to be true. I should’ve known that all men—

  “Actually, Rosita, can it wait? I just got here and left Tessa waiting long enough. We’re about to sit down for dinner and I don’t want to be rude to my date.”

  She’s not used to being blown off—I can tell by the way her face twists—and she’s especially pissed by being blown off by Jace.

  “Your date? What about Joanna?” She looks at me, smug. “He already has a girlfriend.”

  Wow, what an evil bitch this one is! I thought girls were supposed to stick together. She doesn’t say it as a warning to me for chicks-before-dicks camaraderie; she says it to make me feel bad about myself.

  “Joanna and I broke up, Rosita. Tessa knows about her. Now, if you don’t mind?” Jace says, his hand on my shoulder.

  She’s not happy. In fact, she looks like he just slapped her across the face. I have tons of practice with that expression. “Mmm hmm. Well then. I’ll leave you to it.” She turns on her leather high heels and walks off, without saying goodbye.

  Turns her down nicely? Check. Lets her know we’re having dinner together? Check. Lets her know I’m his date? Double check. I wasn’t sure in the beginning, but now I am, and I like it. Another tally added to my virtual jail cell wall.

  “Sorry about that,” Jace says. “She can be . . . difficult. We’re both assistant managers now but one of us will be promoted to manager in the next few weeks.”

  “Ah,” I say, because I don’t want to seem nosy getting involved with him and a coworker in the first ten minutes. “I don’t think she liked me.”

  “She only likes people who can get her ahead in life. Don’t worry about her.”

  When the drinks arrive, we clink glasses and, like a gentleman, he asks me about myself again. The usual. Where I’m from, why I moved, how I got started in interior design, what’s the biggest project I’ve ever had, where do I get my inspiration, was I artistic as a child. The list goes on and on. I’m as cut and dry as can be. South of here. Change of scenery. Designing my ex’s firm. Life around me. Yes.

  Yes, I tell him I was artistic as a child, because I can tell he’s into me and I don’t want to spoil it for him right now with the truth. The truth being I barely even got to play with crayons as a young child because my mother spent her money on beer and pot in the beginning, then gin and crack as I got older. I didn’t play with many of the neighborhood kids because I’d b
e in the same outfit for days and they shunned me, even in the trashy neighborhood I was from. I had Kenny and my half siblings, and we were all in the same boat, albeit together, until my mother really fucked up and we all got separated. Then I got to spend my teenage years being passed around like a sex doll and a social experiment to see how little food I could be given from the monthly check without actually starving to death.

  Not exactly marriage material, you know?

  “Yes, I used to draw all the time. Then I started writing stories to go with my drawings. Then, I started painting and I liked the way I could complement different hues with one another. I first fell in love with color in a new way after I saw The Wizard of Oz. Seeing the film transform from black and white to color was magical. It’s still my favorite movie.”

  That explanation on color was repeated verbatim. Drew had allowed me to go to a one-day conference that was in town, about design careers. Obviously, I wasn’t doing enough to make myself worthy of him, so he tried to make me better. I see now that he was trying to control me. Anyway, the keynote speaker said something along those lines about the color, and I committed it to memory years ago. It’s the same thing I tell everyone.

  As we sit for dinner, I defer to asking him about himself, afraid my real persona will shine through. He sounds like he was written from a nineties sitcom. An athlete. A scholarship. A fraternity guy. A traveler.

  “Played baseball and ran track in high school,” he says. “Even ran the New York Marathon once.”

  “Wow. That must’ve taken dedication.”

  “I got a partial athletic scholarship to Rutgers for track. After I graduated with honors, I moved back in with my parents afterward for a little while. Traveled. Ran around with my buddies. Got a job at a different bank, then moved to Hoboken with a girl and got a job at bank in New York. That’s the year I ran the marathon.”

  Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask. “What happened with the girl?”

  “She got a job in Chicago and took off.” He shrugs. “What’s your ex story? We’ve all got one.”

  “I—” I take a sip of Chardonnay. I’m not a fan, but I take another sip anyway. “He was an asshole. I don’t really want to talk about it, if that’s okay.”

  He places his hand on top of mine and caresses it, comforting me.

  I offer to pay for half when the check comes, but he waves me off like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard, and I’m grateful. There’s enough money left for dinner, and then some, but I have to watch my spending until I get a job.

  When I look at my watch, it’s almost eleven. Where did the time go?

  “Have you been to the shore yet?” he asks.

  “The beach?”

  He laughs. “Here, they call it the shore. Only place in the country.”

  How quaint. “No. I know it’s not too far from here, but I’ve been . . . indoors,” I say, motioning toward my face, which I hope is still hidden under my makeup.

  He winces, sympathetic, and holds my hand across the table. “I’m sorry, Tessa.”

  I fall for him right then and there. Maybe I did earlier, but something about him makes me want to love him, and I want him to love me. I want it so bad I can taste it.

  But who would want this to love? Maybe he’s another Asshole, another hound dog sniffing out my insecurities, wanting to take advantage and use me like everyone else. He knows I wouldn’t go to the cops about Damon; he knows he can get away with beating me.

  His pinky lightly strokes the top of my hand. “It’s not too late to go to the police. About Damon. I’ll drive you right now.”

  He’s not a hound dog. He’s a fluffy puppy. A loyal Golden. An emotional support animal. He should be wearing a sash.

  “Thanks. I’m okay.”

  We stand up and he gestures his hands as if he wants me to walk in front of him, placing his hand on the small of my back the way I see the lead in the romantic comedies I’ve watched do. He says goodbye to Donald. The bartender looks at me and raises a thumb and forefinger to his ear, likely indicating I’ll be hearing from Michael regarding design possibilities. I’m so grateful to Jace and I want to kiss him. But I can’t.

  “Do you want to go for a ride?” he asks. “The beach is only fifteen minutes away. Have you ever seen an East Coast sunrise on the ocean?”

  “No, I haven’t. Sunrise is quite a ways away,” I say.

  “We can take a nap in the car and wait. I’ll set an alarm.”

  I don’t know why, but I agree.

  We get in the car and he says he’s taking the long way there. He points out places of interest. If you go that way, that’s where Bruce Springsteen grew up. Five minutes later, I spent a lot of my twenties in the beach bars over in that town. Five minutes after that, Over there is where I played hockey when I was ten, but I was too clumsy on skates to be the next Gretzky. I’m instantly jealous of his upbringing. I can’t even fathom what it would’ve been like having two loving parents supporting anything I wanted to do.

  It’s still dark, the sky black as tar, and Jace eases the car into a parking spot facing the ocean. The thump of the waves onto the shore pound so hard in my ears that I feel myself moving. The moon is hung high in the sky, almost behind us, shining a bright white glittering line on the water in front of us.

  It’s quiet otherwise.

  When his arm jostles, I think he’s going to make a move, but he just turns the radio station to Howard Stern.

  “We can listen to this until we fall asleep,” he says.

  And I do. I must be asleep, because I’m having happy dreams. I can’t even describe them; I just know that I feel safe. What could be minutes or hours or days later, as I’m gently shaken awake, I’m smiling. I don’t even forget where I am as my eyes open and the sun peeks over the horizon. I know I’m with Jace Montgomery, and I’m comforted.

  “Hey. I didn’t want you to miss it. It happens fast,” Jace says.

  He lowers the volume on the radio as the burning ball of fire turns from a dot to a semicircle to a full circle, the ocean melting around it. The waves no longer roar, but tickle onto the sand, bloop bloop. And in mere minutes, fast like he said, the sun goes up, up, up.

  My first live sunrise.

  I turn toward Jace, and my eyes let him know I’ll accept a kiss. One that I so desperately want, even more than I want to see Drew suffer.

  “Did you like that?” Jace asks.

  The sides of my lips curl upward. “Yes,” I say breathily. Kiss me!

  “Good.” He smiles at me, then turns on the engine. “Let’s get you back home so you can get some real sleep. I have to be at work in a couple hours.”

  Right. It’s Friday.

  We leave the Stern repeats on as he drives back to the hotel, where we both reside. He parks, opens the door for me. He again guides me inside, and after we exit the elevator, he walks me to my door.

  “I had a really nice time,” he says.

  “Me too.” My breath must stink from sleeping. I don’t care if his does.

  When he gets closer, he hugs me and kisses me—on the cheek.

  “I’d like to do this again sometime, if you would,” he says.

  I pounce. “I do. Are you free tonight?”

  He nods. “I’ll text you.”

  We lightly wave, and I slide the keycard into the door handle, and it lights up green. I collapse on the bed behind the closed door.

  In. Fucking. Love.

  When I wash my makeup off, I peer at my face in the mirror. Even the bruises can’t hide the happiness. The entire night was better than any damn movie I’ve ever been jealous of seeing.

  Now, if only I could find out the deal with this Rosita girl.

  20

  JACE

  Rosita.

  Jace fast-walked from Gwen’s back to his house with fiery determination. He slammed the door behind him, and Candy barked.

  “Sorry, girl,” he said as she met him in the foyer. He leaned down and pet her hea
d, cupping her neck in his left hand, and then kissed her. “Daddy didn’t mean to slam the door.”

  She cocked her head like she knew what he meant. Then she looked past him at the door again, likely wondering why Tessa didn’t follow him in. Tessa had never spent a night away from Candy, much less days at a time. She had to be confused.

  Jace sighed. Candy wasn’t the only one.

  He went right to his phone charging on the counter and looked in his contacts for Rosita. He was about to press her name and dial her up, but on second thought, put the phone down. He couldn’t go into this hotheaded. His heart was racing, and he needed to prepare what to say.

  What the hell was he supposed to say?

  Why did Rosita threaten his wife over a promotion? Was it because Rosita had a thing for him? She had made a move on him when he was with Joanna, knowing full well he was taken. And yes, Jace succumbed to her advances once. For a couple of minutes, anyway. One hundred percent his fault. When he stopped it from going too far, that pissed her off even more. She said something about how they could be a power couple, since one of them was due to be promoted anyway.

  One, Jace didn’t want to get involved with a coworker, and two, he had a girlfriend. Yes, their relationship had been on the rocks for a while and yes, she lived far away, but potentially banging Rosita in her townhouse when he stopped over after work to give her some papers she conveniently “forgot” when she ran out early didn’t solve anything.

  So he made an excuse about how it wasn’t right, he was still with Joanna, and he left. Rosita called him two minutes after he walked out the door and left a raging voice mail, which he should have saved. He hadn’t thought he’d need “proof,” showing Rosita’s obsession and clearing him of murder, and he also hadn’t wanted Joanna accidentally stumbling upon it. He wanted to break up with her officially, but he hadn’t done it yet. He didn’t want to be “that guy.”

  As fate would have it, if you could call that heinous act “fate,” he came home to Damon trying to rape Tessa a few days later.

  That night, he had been out with a couple of college buddies. Joanna knew he was out but texted him saying she was waiting at his apartment, which he’d never invited her to. He texted her to go home. She left a note on the counter before leaving, saying she missed him, and she knew something was wrong and she wanted to talk. When he immediately fell for Tessa, that massive love-at-first-sight stuff you only hear about, he stopped dealing with Joanna altogether. He saved Tessa, and the spark was immediate. He couldn’t help it. She was his person. His life had changed on a dime.