She came to my rescue when I needed it most. Now, she needs a favor. A big favor. How can I say no?
Once, I thought I had it all—a wonderful life, with a great job with the perfect woman. Until everything broke.
A girl saved me the night my world shattered. Savannah. As sweet as honey. As hard to pin down as a sunset. As beautiful as… whatever you think is beautiful.
I can’t be with her though. She’s eleven years younger and we’re too different. She has wings. I have feet of clay. I’m also on the cusp of achieving the most important goal in my life. I don’t have time for anything else. For anyone else.
Except there’s a problem. Her mother has cancer. She wants her daughter to have all the things she never did—especially a loving partner. Savannah prefers being single, but when her mom gets the idea she has a girlfriend, Savannah doesn’t have the heart to explain it’s all just a misunderstanding. Who wouldn’t tell a little white lie to comfort a gravely ill parent?
Only now her mom has her heart set on meeting this nonexistent girlfriend. It would mean the world to her…
Savannah stepped in and rescued me on the worst night of my life. How can I refuse to return the favor? But I’m not risking my heart. No way. Not making that mistake.
Never again.
Chapter 1. Erin
“What is it with you tonight, Maggie?”
Magdalene, my fiancée of almost a year, hates it when I call her Maggie in public. “Maggie” just doesn’t suit the image she wants to project to society, but tonight I don’t give a shit. She blew in like a tornado a minute after I got here, shooting daggers and barking at anyone who crossed her path: the hostess, our server, and especially me. We’d decided on dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant, La Vita è Dolce in South Seattle, for a “date night,” which is turning out to be anything but. I’m used to Maggie’s moods—we’d been together for six and a half years before we got engaged—but this is something else.
She stabs a chunk of roasted Japanese eggplant in her Insalata Melanzane with barely controlled viciousness. “I don’t think this is a conversation you want to have here, Erin.”
I take a tighter grip on my temper. This is an old trick of Maggie’s: pretending to not want to talk when in fact she’s just waiting for the right moment to pounce. If I try to cajole the reason out of her, she’ll act all reluctant at first and then use it as an excuse to create a scene. Then I’m supposed to try to deescalate things, which is essentially a codeword for giving in.
I can’t tell what Maggie’s game is this evening, but I’m not playing it. I’m so sick of games, so sick of fighting. Things haven’t been that great between us for a while but over the last six months, they’ve taken a real nose dive and now it seems we’re fighting all the time. This evening was supposed to be about reconnecting; the anniversary of our engagement is only two weeks away. Of course, that’s not a milestone we should be celebrating, but every time we agreed on a date, Maggie changed it. It frustrated the hell out of me for months, but these days I’m glad we haven’t tied the knot yet.
I push back into the booth’s leather upholstery and fold my arms, my Tajarin al Cotello congealing in front of me. Maggie had instantly attacked me over all the butter and cheese in it. Did I really want to blimp up my thighs? I’d almost gone off on her then, but at that point I still wanted to keep the peace.
What a wasted effort. I open my mouth to challenge her last comment, but our server appears.
“Can I get either of you anything else?” She glances between us, clearly aware of the tension and being super polite. I’m embarrassed I don’t remember her name. She introduced herself when we sat down and I know she’s worked here awhile, but Maggie’s got me way too distracted to remember anything at this point.
I lift my glass. “Yes, I’ll have another—”
“No she won’t,” Maggie snaps. “She’s had more than enough.”
I gape and the girl gives me a startled look. Snapping my jaw shut, I shake my head, not wanting to put her in the middle of this. She nods slightly and leaves us alone, Maggie staring after her with death-ray eyes.
“What the hell, Maggie!” I bang the glass on the table harder than I meant to. “One Negroni is hardly my limit.” Maggie herself has already had three of those fluorescent yellow and orange fruity drinks she likes so much and is working on her fourth. Switching her gaze back to me and giving me a disdainful look, she waves one hand, the diamond on her ring finger catching the light.
The diamond I put there.
“You’re driving.”
“I’m not driving, Maggie. I took a Lyft here.”
“Oh…” Maggie’s eyebrows arch as her voice drips scorn. “A nice chance to flirt with the cute Lyft girl? Up-Lyfting was it?”
Fists clenching, I lean over the table. “What the fuck, Maggie. He was a Indian man. And very nice.”
“Oh, well then.” She rolls her eyes. “You two had a nice time together?”
I can’t believe this. “God, are you drunk?”
“Come off it, Erin.” Her lips twist in an exaggerated sneer. “I know your little game. I saw you.”
“Saw what?” This is getting too damn weird.
Maggie also leans forward like she might actually lunge across the table. “I saw you and Meghan!”
“Meghan?” My jaw drops in genuine shock. I don’t know a Meghan—never have.
“Meghan! Mariah! Meredith! Whatever the fuck her name is!”
I blanch. She’s out of control. The whole restaurant can probably hear us. Thank God it’s not crowded. We’d be thrown out for sure. I can only shake my head. We probably will be anyway…
“You know who the fuck I’m talking about! That little carrot-topped teacup poodle you work with. Big blue eyes. Nice tits. Cute little ass.”
That clicks. “Morgan?”—although I’d call Morgan’s hair ginger. But Maggie’s just being shitty.
“That’s right. Morgan! I saw you two today! Making out by the bathrooms at the Fault Line!”
“What were you doing at the Fault Line?” The words are out of my mouth the instant before I recognize my horrible mistake. But I’m so baffled, I can’t think. The Fault Line is a local brewery where my team and I go for lunch every Wednesday. It’s our hump-day ritual to get us through the rest of the week. Maggie never shows up, despite me inviting her—she hates beer and looks down on the people who drink it—and now I’ve played right into her hands… Fuck!
“I came to see you. To surprise you. About our ‘date’ tonight.” She air-quotes date. “And I sure as fuck got a surprise. Didn’t I?”
I sag in the seat, shoulders rounding.
“Well?” Maggie taps a long french-tipped nail against the tabletop, satisfied she’s won.
“What you saw,” I enunciate carefully, “was me hugging Morgan because her father had a stroke this morning and is in ICU . She got the call shortly before we left for lunch, but didn’t want people to know. So when we got to the Fault Line, she pulled me back by the restrooms to tell me. I hugged her and told her not to come back to work and to take all the time she needed. That’s what you saw.”
“Oh how sweet.” The saccharine words are acid-laced. “So you consoled her with your hand down her pants? How very middle-manager of you.”
I sag further. How could she possibly think that’s what she saw? This is so much worse than I ever dreamed. “You’ve lost it, Maggie. You’re totally gone.”
“Oh, you think I’ve lost it?” Maggie stands up, bracing both hands on the table. “Y’know what I think, Erin? I think you and that little red-headed twat of yours can bump cunts from here to fucking hell. Because I am done. Fucking done. You lying bitch.”
She storms off, the angry swish of her Givenchy dress and the sharp raps of her five-inch Prada heels against the tile floor unnaturally loud as she weaves toward the exit. I don’t even watch her go. I just drop my head and grind the heels of my palms against my eyes.
“Uh… ma’am? Shall I take your plate? Or…”
I look up and our server is hovering there, mouth pinched in an apologetic expression. I should stop thinking of her as “our server”—there’s no our anymore and besides, it sounds like a rack of equipment in the basement. I hadn’t really looked at her because Maggie wouldn’t tolerate it and… holy shit. My breath hitches as my lungs forget how to work. She has high, model-worthy cheekbones and full lips in a perfectly symmetrical face that beauty sites say automatically makes you pretty; in her case, they got it right for once. Her sleek hair, pulled back in a low pony, is the color of dark amber. And her eyes… I’ve never seen eyes like hers. They’re surrounded by long thick lashes and are violet—actual violet verging on a deep amethyst—but now dark with concern.
I tear my gaze away only to have it track down the rest of her. I can’t help it. She’s my height or an inch taller. The boxy uniform can’t entirely hide the deep curve of her hips or the swell of her breasts against the starched fabric of her white button-down shirt. No wonder Maggie hated her on sight. She’s just—just…Wow.
“Sure.” I look down, cheeks heated from my flagrant eye-rove, and shift to get out of her way. What’s wrong with me? I should not be checking her out like this right after Maggie accused me of cheating.
“Is there… anything I can get you?”
Her voice… It’s so warm, so gentle and comforting, covering you like a soft, cozy blanket on a chill night.
“Ah… Um…” Shit. I’ve been rendered nonverbal here. I hope she thinks it’s Maggie’s fault.
“Another drink, maybe?”
“Sure…” It comes out a long exhale. “Whatever you recommend.”
Her perfectly shaped cheek lifts in a crooked smile. “Something stronger than a Negroni?”
“Yeah… Definitely.”
“Jules makes this mean cocktail. It’s her signature.” She gestures at the tall butch bartender polishing glasses behind the counter. “Do you like cognac?”
I’ve never been a cognac drinker, but hey, first time for everything? “Sure. Sounds great.”
That smile spreads all across her face—it’s just dazzling. “You got it!”
A minute later, she slides a cocktail in front of me and herself into the other side of the booth. Leaning her elbows on the table and cupping her cheeks in both hands, she smiles across at me. Those incredible eyes sparkle.
“This one’s on the house. To see if you like it. She calls it Summer in Côte d’Azur.”
“Thanks…” Shit! Name… What’s her name?
“Savannah.” She supplies it without a hint of judgment, letting me off the hook graciously.
“Thanks, Savannah.” What a pretty name. So much like her…
Reining in my meandering thoughts, I lift the drink and take a cautious sip. It has more burn than I’m used to, with hints of citrus and orange blossom, and some aromatic liqueur I can’t place. It’s… nice.
“Good?”
I nod and sip with more confidence. “Good. Really great, in fact.”
She brightens even more. “Awesome!” Her eyes flick to the bar. “I gotta go. Flag me down if you need anything.”
I nod and she’s gone. I make a point not to stare after her. She is wow, but she also looks barely old enough to work here and I’ve already been too forward, checking her out so blatantly. Nursing the cocktail, I play this evening over and over in my mind. It’s all so weird. Maggie can be difficult—Oh, who am I kidding? She is difficult and always has been—but not like this. The worst part is that I don’t even know if she actually believes I was cheating, or if she’s just fucking with me.
What would be waiting for me when I got back to the apartment we shared? Would she have the knives out or would she break down sobbing and swear she didn’t mean any of it, blaming her work stress, my long hours, or the fact she’s turning forty-seven soon? These days, she spends thirty minutes in the bathroom every morning, obsessing over crow’s-feet or a single strand of gray. She’d started dying her hair this past year, and now her roots are a constant worry. I try to reassure her because she genuinely doesn’t look a day older than me, but it only seems to make things worse.
How had we gotten to this place?
♦ ♦ ♦
When I met Maggie, I was a shy 28-year-old geek girl struggling to make it in a man-child industry. Being queer only made it harder. I’d always been a bit of an ugly duckling and Maggie swept me off my feet. She was gorgeous, together, sophisticated, and she got me through the hardest year of my life.
I first met her right after we lost my dad to colon cancer. My mom was too overwhelmed to handle things, and anyway, resources were hard to find in the tiny Colorado town where I grew up, so a coworker referred me to the law firm where Maggie worked to get basic answers to a few routine legal questions. I wanted to sell our family home and have my mom move in with me—I couldn’t quit my job to go live with her and leaving her alone in a town, that for all its quaintness didn’t amount to a flyspeck deep in the Rocky mountains, was not an option. Mom resisted at first, but then bowed to the realities of the situation.
Or that’s what I thought. A month after she moved in with me, she passed away from a sudden heart attack. Is it possible to die of a broken heart? Or was it the stress of moving? Or of taking care of Dad during the months after his diagnosis? I’d visited when I could, stayed as long as I could. But I wasn’t there for her—for either of them—not like I should’ve been. My parents had always been my rock. My sanctuary. Nothing fazed them. When I came out, they were nothing but happy for me. They supported me through school and my career choice and moving here, over a thousand miles away. Seeing cancer destroy the strong stalwart man I practically worshiped in a few short months just crushed me. He was only 59—my mom was a year younger. How could I’ve been so selfish? I’d forced my mom into moving because of a job. How could I live with that guilt? It got its claws deep into me and wouldn’t let go. I was drowning.
Mom’s death sent me back to Maggie’s office to get help with the probate. She noticed me and the state I was in and took me under her wing. She wanted to protect me and spoil me, and I attached myself like a baby koala. Who wouldn’t? She was eleven years older than me but age is just a number, right?
Maggie wasn’t just any legal secretary. She was the legal secretary for one of the most powerful lawyers in town. When Samson Ackles of Ackles, Caruthers, and Brown spoke, people quaked. Maggie reveled in controlling access to the mighty Sam Ackles. It also got her a nice salary with bonuses to buy the clothes she loved, and invites to some of the city’s swankiest functions. After all she’d done for me, I was enthralled and went along, hanging on her arm, wide-eyed and giddy. Sometimes it felt like a fairytale.
Yep, I was too naïve for my age.
Being with Maggie did get me back on my feet though. I’ll always be grateful for that. And she got me out of my shell. She was much more experienced than I was; more worldly, in bed and out. She taught me a lot. I learned to stick up for myself. I learned I didn’t have to bend over all the time to please everyone. She taught me to demand what I was worth. It worked like a charm at my job—in our relationship, not so much.
I thought we were fine—her frequent dramatics aside—but that’s when the green monster raised its ugly head. A thousand ugly heads. Maggie suddenly got jealous of my coworkers, my college friends, even the woman who did my hair. If I smiled and chatted with the checkout girl at the market, I got an earful. She had a fit over a workout buddy I met at our gym—she was 67 and straight!
I loved Maggie. How could I not? I was sure it was all my fault and struggled to learn what I was doing wrong. I cut off friends from college, I stopped hanging out with the people at work or at our gym. I even changed my stylist. Maggie still prowled, still glared when I got more attention than she liked, still monitored who I met as my friends fell away. I proposed, thinking that would prove she was my one and only. But instead of sparking our relationship, it did the opposite. Whatever she needed, I couldn’t seem to give it to her.
So I blamed my work. Kaitlin Clark, my best friend since the 3rd Grade—we called her Casey after her initials—had recruited me for her company, Tedros Analytics, a startup that promised to revolutionize AI with a new breed of deep-level machine-learning algorithms that cut power requirements dramatically. T&A (see, it’s a joke—Haha!) is a small firm, and while the pay was less than I was making at the big tech company I worked for and the hours were even longer, it offered stock options and also a chance for real advancement. When T&A went public, I stood to make millions, if things went well.
I was stultified at my old job. No, I was trapped. As a project manager, I had to herd teams of socially maladapted 20-somethings who looked on me as a lower form of life with boobs because I didn’t actually code. Being older than most all of them, I had to put up with MIFL jokes and snide comments that I had a nice ass for a cougar. Like I became a cougar at 30! HR was no help. Management believed “boys will be boys” which really meant being gadget-addled little shits. I was never going to get ahead there. That company didn’t have a glass ceiling, it had one made of reinforced concrete.
Casey told me T&A was better—despite the sexual-harassment-y nickname—mostly because it was much smaller, but the management had also gone out of their way to hire women. Casey is queer too and it had never been an issue. Manuel Tedros, the founder, majority owner and CEO, had a reputation for being abrasive and eccentric, but he was also considered a genius and was willing to go against the industry’s ingrained culture. I was sold.
These days, I’m less sold. The promised revolution hasn’t happened yet and the hours are brutal. Tedros—Manny when he’s not around—proved to be every bit as abrasive as his rep said, and as to his commitment to advancing women in tech… let’s say I’m not as convinced as I had been. But we are making progress, there are the stock options and the IPO is the light at the end of the tunnel. Despite running a little behind, we should get there in about six months. I could do another six months.
Yes, the hours and the stress were hurting our relationship, but I’d told myself the payoff would be worth it. I could even quit, if that’s what it took, and we’d get better.
Except now this had happened…
Chapter 2. Savannah
I’m steaming. Seriously, I’m so pissed you could boil an egg in my butt. All waitressing has its ups and downs. In family dining, you get impatient parents who can’t control their kids and blame you when the little terrors throw their meal on your shoes. Bars are full of drunks, obviously, and if two minutes go by without a skeezy dude hitting on you, you want to mark the day on your calendar. In fine dining, you get entitled douche-canoes treating you like “the help” and whinging about whether you put too much or too little lemon in their water, along with hipster dickheads “correcting” your pronunciation of something on the menu.
Okay, so everyone puts up with shit in their job and I know I’m actually really lucky. Before I got hired here, I thought I was sick of waitressing and tried being a receptionist in a big-time law office. It didn’t even take a week before my boss showed his true colors by hitting on me. He creeped on his other female employees too and some of his clients made me want to shower after meeting them for just a few minutes. As soon as I got my first paycheck to cover the new wardrobe they made me buy, I was out of there like a bat outta hell. (Okay, I think bats are super cute—their little noses are adorable!—so I don’t mean that like some people do.)
La Vita è Dolce is an awesome place to work, though; the pay’s good, the tips are great and the people are great too—more like family than coworkers. I need to take a few deep breaths and chill. But after what I just saw, it’s not going to be easy.
Jules looks over to where I’m leaning my elbows on the bar, head down. Her mouth pulls to one side in a trademark smirk. “Do I need to tell the kitchen to hide the cutlery?”
“Haha,” I snark back. “Totally funny.” I take a reflexive glance around; the nearest occupied table is halfway across the restaurant and no way will they hear us over the soft jazz playing in the background. “Did you see what that cow did?” We both know I mean another c-word, but I’m not so far gone as to say it at work.
Jules puts the drink she’s just finished mixing on a tray and huffs a quiet laugh. “Saw, heard and witnessed. That’s trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with B and that stands for bitch.”
I know Jules is saying weird shit just to make me laugh and calm down. It’s a bartender thing, but it works. She probably figures I’m too young to catch the Music Man reference though.
I sigh and push myself upright. “I just can’t believe it. Who does that to people?”
“You really want me to answer that?” Jules pours coke in a tall glass, adds a splash of Mount Gay Black Barrel and slides it in front of me. “No drinking on the job, but here. Take a minute.” Jules knows my drinking days are behind me and I don’t actually like rum and coke much anyway, which is why she’s teasing me with top-shelf stuff where anyone else would just use Bacardi or maybe Captain Morgan. Of course, she loves the name too.
I sip, curling my lip a bit, and sneak a glance over my shoulder at the woman sitting at the table where it all went down. She looks… I don’t know. Like a bomb went off next to her and it hasn’t fully registered yet. Like she’s waiting to see how bad it’s going to be once it does, and struggling to keep it together till then.
I saw the ring on the other woman’s finger, too—it could’ve cost several months of my rent. As pissed off as I’m feeling, I’m also feeling sick around my heart. This was big and no one deserves to be treated like that. Especially not this woman. The way she looked at me when our eyes first met…
“I know that look.” Jules regards me with a slight squint I know too well. “You’re not Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa and Florence Nightingale rolled into one, Savannah.”
I snort, even as the jab hits a nerve. “I’m not any of those people, Jules. I’m not burning at the stake for anyone, either.”
“Since when?” She winks. “‘Protect the rabbits!’”
“Oh! Cheap shot! Totally a cheap shot!” Because I’m not kidding—it totally is. And she knows it.
She laughs. “Like we’re ever gonna let you live that down.”
“Fine.” I take another sip of the rum and coke and pull my lip into an exaggerated frown. “Who doesn’t love bunnies?”
“Right.” Her grin spreads across her face. “So much they smuggle a dozen of them into their dinky-ass apartment and hide them there for six months?”
“It was hardly ever more than ten,” I grumble. “And I found homes for most of them in three months. It was just those last couple that took a while.”
“Uh huh. And how much did they cost you in shoes you had to replace after they ate them?”
I refuse to dignify that with an answer, even though more than one pricey pair I needed for my other job bit the dust. She has too much fun teasing me about the bunnies, anyway. When the area’s only rabbit rescue went buns up (Haha! See, I can joke about it too!) what was I supposed to do? Let them be abandoned? But I made the mistake of telling Jules and she told everyone else and now no one will let me forget it.
I shove the rum and coke across the bar. “Yeah, well, see if the Easter Bunny is ever nice to you again.”
“I tremble.” She puts two more drinks on the tray. “Here’s table 13.” Table 13 is our last full table for the night; three out-of-town businessmen who’ve been drinking up their company’s money and a broody guy I’m guessing is the designated driver. I hope this is it for them. They’ve been cool so far, but they gotta be reaching their limit and it would be great if we could close them out before they hit it. Aside from them, we have only two couples left. And her.
I pull the tray closer, watching her over my shoulder. “Do you think she’s a chocolate girl?”
“Is there any other kind?” I hear the chuckle in Jules’ voice.
“I just… want to do something for her.” It comes out a sigh. It wasn’t supposed to. “She’s had such a shitty night.”
“You already got her a free drink.”
“Doesn’t count. She might’ve hated it.”
“Savannah.” Jules puts both hands on the bar to let me know she’s serious.
I stop her with an upraised hand. “What’s wrong with being nice to people?”
“What’s wrong is people can get the wrong idea.” Now it’s her turn to sigh. “The world just isn’t quite ready for you, babe. You don’t want her to think you’re hitting on her.”
“Christ, Jules!” I catch myself from recoiling a step. “I’m not gonna hit on her! I’m not a monster!”
Her face scrunches into a frown. “I didn’t mean you would. You’re an absolute sweetheart, Savannah. But to people who don’t know you, it can be a little… When you talk to her, just… go easy and be aware, okay?”
“That’s all I’m doing.” I’m not sure I have any right to be feeling tweaked by her warning, but I am. The last thing I’d ever do is take advantage of somebody who’s probably in a really vulnerable state right now.
“Good,” Jules relents. “What do you want to bring her?”
“Oh, so now bringing her something is okay?” I know I sound petty, but I’m not quite ready to let her comments go. I guess I’m just not my best self yet.
“You’d do it anyway.” She’s back to smirking again. “It’s not like she’s your type or anything.”
“What’s that gotta do with it?” Crap. Being defensive is a total tell. Of course, she’s my type. And Jules would know because, while we don’t have a lot in common besides our queerness—almost nothing really, since she’s a forty-something stone butch and I’m at the opposite side of the spectrum—we do have the same type: sweet-looking, short-haired brunettes; femme but with a smidge of a boyish vibe, and light eyes. In other words, precisely like her.
But that does not matter here. I just want her to feel like someone cares—we aren’t all alienated jerkwads.
“Not a thing. Now go make our customers feel special.” She taps the tray for emphasis. “And what’ll it be for your girl?”
Shooting her an eyeroll, I lift the tray to my shoulder and start toward table 13. “Chocolate torte.”
She gives me a thumbs up. “I’ll put it in.
Thanks for reading! It really does mean the world to me!