“And then the car blew up, and everyone died.”
Emma’s words catch me by surprise, pulling me from my thoughts of a week ago when I was still in Sutten Mountain. It’s been a week since I made a break for it the moment Pippa and I got back to her family’s ranch.
And a week of me wondering why I still can’t get the feisty brunette out of my mind.
“Who died?” I ask Emma, almost getting lost in my thoughts all over again.
She narrows her eyes at me from across my desk. She’d come to find Margo, her best friend, but Beck and Margo disappeared almost two hours ago and haven’t returned, even though we’re supposed to be discussing setting up her next show.
“It’s my job as your friend to tell you when you’re being rude,” Emma begins, flipping her blonde hair over her shoulder. “So, Camden,” she says sweetly, reminding me of the way my nanny used to speak to me before scolding me. “Stop being rude and listen to me. This is important.”
My finger brushes along my top lip. “When did we become friends?” I tease, knowing it’ll ruffle her feathers. I wasn’t necessarily looking for another friend when Margo first introduced us—I think wanting us to date, which is comical—but Emma strong-armed her way into my life. She’s the sister I never had. Sometimes I enjoy her company, and sometimes she knows how to push every single one of my buttons to drive me nuts.
She sits back in the office chair, putting one of her combat boots on my very expensive desk.
I nod my head toward her muddy shoe, inches away from a stack of very important documents. “Off,” I demand, giving her two seconds to remove it herself. She doesn’t, so I’m not gentle as I push it off the desk, trying not to laugh at the way her face pinches in faked theatrics.
“We’re besties, Camden. Everyone else is busy with their lives. Winnie is off doing I don’t know what because she barely answers our calls, and Margo is off in la-la land in newlywed bliss with Beck. They’ve left us no other option but to be chummy.”
“Chummy?”
“It’s part of my quarter-life crisis to try out new words. Chummy felt right.” She shrugs, picking up a notepad from my desk. There’s no such thing as privacy when it comes to Emma. She reads my notes about the quote for new lighting at the Sutten gallery as if she has any idea what she’s reading.
“Tell me about this quarter-life crisis,” I demand with a big sigh. I know her well enough to know that she won’t leave until we’ve talked about whatever she came here to discuss. Even if she’s having to talk about it with me instead of Margo.
She drops the notepad back onto my desk as if she doesn’t have a care in the world, narrowly missing the glass of water she insisted she needed the moment she came into my office. “That’s so nice of you to ask,” she tells me sarcastically. “Now, are you going to listen this time?”
“Sure,” I answer with a resigned sigh. “It’s not like I have anything else going on.”
Emma claps her hands together, straightening her back to prepare to say what I’m sure is a long story that’ll put me even more behind on my schedule for the day. “I don’t know what I want to do with my life,” she admits, chewing on her lip nervously.
“I thought you had a job?” Maybe she was fired, and that’s why she’s bothering me in the middle of a workday.
She lets out an annoyed sigh. “You really weren’t listening, were you?”
I stay silent because I think it’s pretty clear—I wasn’t listening to her at all. I was too busy thinking about how I can check off everything on my to-do list here so I can go back to Sutten. Why I feel the need to return so quickly is beyond me. I tell myself it’s because I’m still trying to get the gallery up and running smoothly, and it isn’t because I’m wanting to see the woman at the coffee shop next door who hates me.
“I quit,” Emma says with a shrug. I’m a reluctant friend of hers, but since she’s given me no option, I feel a tinge of concern for her. She looks sad and defeated, a line creasing across her forehead.
“You quit?”
“Yep. Margo is here. Winnie is…well, I don’t know where, but she isn’t in California, so I didn’t want to be there. I quit.”
“And you flew to New York? Where are you staying?”
“God, you suck at paying attention to anything. I’ve been living at Beck and Margo’s old penthouse for a week while I get my shit together.”
Damn. Maybe I need to catch up with Beck and Margo. I thought they’d sold the penthouse when they moved to their giant brownstone. I also had no idea that Emma had been back here. “Well, the great thing is that you’re in New York. There are so many jobs here.”
“What if I don’t know if I want to live in New York?”
I frown because sometimes I ask myself the same question. I always thought I loved the city, but now that I’m in my midthirties, I often wonder if I’d rather end up somewhere else.
“Where do you want to live? What do you want to do?”
Emma throws her hands into the air. “That’s the problem! I don’t know what I want to do, where I want to be. I’m just now realizing that I’ve spent the last few years following my best friends around because they’re my family—the ones I care about, at least,” she adds. I want to pry and ask what she means by that, but unlike her, I respect privacy, so I assume if she wanted to elaborate on her family life, she would.
“And now they both have their own lives, and I have no idea what the hell I want to do with mine.”
I stare at Emma for a few seconds because I’m realizing she and I might be more similar than I thought. Maybe the universe has a funny way of bringing a friend into your life right when you need them. She still gets on every bit of my nerves like a little sister, but I do understand where she’s coming from. The older I get, the more I don’t want to run galleries and instead would rather avoid people and get lost in long days with my hands covered in clay.
“Maybe give yourself some time to figure it out,” I offer, knowing I might need to take my own advice. I prefer to just avoid the fact that I don’t know if I love it here the way I used to. My life used to be fun and exciting. Now it seems mundane and simple—something I’m beginning to not enjoy.
“I guess.” Emma shrugs. “I do love New York,” she offers, her eyes catching on my desktop screen. It’s a photo of the exterior of the gallery in Sutten. I’ve hired someone local to help with the curb appeal on the outside. It’s something I was told to do, not understanding why there needs to be potted plants on the outside of an art gallery. That type of shit isn’t necessary in Manhattan, but apparently, it makes it seem more approachable in Sutten.
“Anyway.” She plasters on a smile, even though I can still see the conflict all over her face. “Tell me about Sutten. I would’ve bet all my money that Sutten Mountain would’ve been the last place you ever opened a gallery.”
“Do you have any money?”
She grabs a pen from the jar on my desk and throws it at me. “Jerk!” she yells. “You don’t have to remind me.”
I smirk. “Stop hating on my business choices, then.”
“It’s just you seemed to hate it when we were there for Beck and Margo’s wedding.”
“Maybe I still do.”
“Do you?”
“How could I hate something that’s making me a lot of money?”
“Fair point.”
The gallery has exceeded my expectations, and it’s only going to get better. Tommy has recommended other talented artists in Sutten, and give it a month or two and I’ll have a whole section for local talent at the gallery. It was a great idea for Pippa to show me that I didn’t have to look far to find people with exceptional talent—not that I’d ever tell that to her. So many tourists are eating it up to buy art from locals. The gallery hasn’t even been open a few weeks, and we’ve already made double what I was expecting, which is a relief.
It felt good to have dinner with my parents and tell them how well it was doing. Especially to my dad. It felt even better when he told me he didn’t believe me and to show him the numbers. I did because I feel this stupid need to impress him even when he doesn’t deserve it. Even after I gave him the numbers, he told me it wouldn’t last. The appeal of the high-end small-town gallery would fade, and I’d be left losing money off my newest endeavor.
I’m ready to prove him wrong, which means I need to go back to Sutten. I need to find more talent. I’m even playing with the idea for the next event to be one fully focused on talent from in and around Sutten.
“Are you going back soon?” Emma’s question interrupts me from my thoughts.
I shouldn’t. I should avoid Sutten at all costs so I can avoid the temptation that is Pippa, but I know I won’t. I’ve already planned to return under the guise of going back for work. “Yeah. I go back tomorrow.”
Her eyebrows rise in surprise. “That’s quick.”
“Lots of things to get done there.” It’s kind of the truth. Just add in the fact I need to clear the air with Pippa so maybe my mind will stop thinking of her late at night when my fingers are wrapped around my cock.
“I need to visit sometime. I’m bored. What else do I have to do?”
Emma had the time of her life at Beck and Margo’s wedding. Except when she drunkenly cried during the reception that she didn’t find a cowboy to “break her back”—her words, not mine. “Not sure if escaping to a small town will solve all your problems, but you can give it a shot.”
“Escaping somewhere will. I just have to figure out where that is.”
I shrug because it makes no difference to me if she comes to Sutten or not—as long as she doesn’t have any unexpected drop-ins like today.
“Just ask Beck and Margo to stay at their place. There’s no way in hell you’re staying with me.”
She laughs. “I wouldn’t want to anyway. I don’t want to hear anything through the walls when the infamous, dark, and broody Camden Hunter brings some innocent small-town girl home.”
I grunt because I’d love to say I’ve brought a woman home recently, but I haven’t. I’ve tried, but I’m not interested. A certain small-town, opposite of innocent with the way her warm mouth closed around my fingers, always arguing woman has gotten under my skin and made it to where no one else interests me.
Standing up and rounding my desk, I give Emma a squeeze on her shoulder because I don’t know what else to do. She has a tiny frown like something is still bothering her, but I don’t know how to comfort her. “I leave for Sutten tomorrow. Text me if you decide to come, and we’ll have coffee or something. Just find somewhere else to stay.”
“I was hoping we’d have sleepovers and gossip about boys with face masks on,” she throws out sarcastically.
“Don’t expect anything more than coffee, Emma!” I yell as I walk out of my office.
If she does show up in Sutten, it would give me an excuse to go to a certain coffee shop and interact with a certain cafe owner…
