After the Climb (River Rain #1) - Kristen Ashley Page 0,2
go nowhere without people doing everything from fawning to accosting me were long gone. Over the past seven years I’d lived in Phoenix, I’d even done my grocery shopping repeatedly without being recognized.
It was like a liberation.
Rodney was one of two the agency sent when I ordered a driver, but he was the one I had most often.
I didn’t know if it was just because I was nice or because he admitted his mother was a big fan, and I didn’t share it with him, but I went to visit her in her nursing home, though it was clear his mother had told him I’d popped around.
Whatever it was.
He took care of me.
Right now, he was taking care of me by handing over the biggish, and definitely heavy box to Duncan, but obviously not liking it.
“We’ll do this in my office,” Duncan decreed.
The man was then on the move.
I followed him.
Duncan didn’t hesitate to share even further that he wanted this done. He did this by walking very quickly.
And I didn’t want to admit (but I did), that I found this disappointing.
Mostly because, upon entering his home, I wanted to stop and take it in.
Instead, I sensed vastness…and lots and lots of wood as I scurried on my heels behind him.
It wasn’t lost on me that I could drive myself and I owned a considerable array of casualwear.
So I didn’t need Rodney.
And I didn’t need to wear these winter-white silk gabardine slacks with the long-neck, soft-taupe, slouchy, lightweight sweater with interesting ribbing and (one of my pairs of) Prada slingbacks.
But there I was, putting on a show for Duncan Holloway.
Apparently, old habits did die hard.
He entered a room and I trailed him in.
But he stopped, and holding the relatively heavy and unwieldy box one-armed, once I was fully inside, he threw the door to.
This made me uncomfortable.
There was no reason the door needed to be closed. It wasn’t like Rodney followed us like a guard dog.
I was left with no opportunity to question this.
Duncan was heading to his desk.
However, this offered the opportunity to at least look around his office.
I saw instantly it was heavily decorated in the motif of “I have a penis!” with not very subtle nuances of “I could survive Naked and Afraid for an entire season, no sweat. And I wouldn’t even need a match or a knife.”
I considered that perhaps I was being unkind in this assessment.
Bottom line, the office was very Bowie.
It was very much what I would have expected from the man who grew from the boy who took Corey and me on long hikes as often as he could, no matter how much Corey complained about mosquitos biting him or his feet hurting. The boy who could name the wildflowers or sense a deer even before the deer sensed us. The boy who forewent birthday parties in a deal with his folks so they’d take him and his two besties horseback riding instead.
But the gods’ honest truth was that it was also very much the office of the man who accused me of cheating on him, refused to listen to my denials, told me he had it on “good authority,” even though he would not share who that authority was no matter how much I begged.
Because, “Genny, you know.”
I did not know.
And oh, how I’d begged to know.
Groveled.
Completely humiliated myself in an effort to get him to just listen to me.
However, whoever it was, Duncan trusted them more than me. Because he walked out of our apartment, and thus my life, breaking more than my heart. He broke my soul, my innocence, and my stalwart dedication to my view of the world through love-hazed, sex-hazed, I’ve got this, whatever it is, whatever may come, because I’ve got this man glasses.
I never saw him again.
Until now.
When he left me, he didn’t just avoid me and change his number.
He moved to Utah and disappeared for a while, emerging as the CEO of an up-and-coming outdoor store where all the cool kids wanted to get their camping, climbing and kayaking gear.
It had taken me years to get over him.
Years.
It took less time to become a mega-star in Hollywood than it took to get over Bowie Holloway.
But it wasn’t like I didn’t have forewarning.
He’d scraped me off in high school too.
It had started his glorious senior year, when I was a sophomore, and he’d come clean after all our years of friendship that he was into me.