The Chemistry of Love(18)

The box on my bed was still there, and I decided I should do at least one productive thing. Like trying out Catalina’s face mask. My skin probably needed some rejuvenating.

I pulled out the mask, took off my glasses, and applied it. Hadn’t Catalina said something about the natural ingredients? Blueberry? I couldn’t smell it.

My stomach growled, and I wondered how it was possible to be both nauseous and hungry at the same time. I went over and opened my closet. I reached up on the shelf to grab the container of my secret stash of junk food. My grandma would lecture me about unhealthy eating and my grandpa would sneak some if they knew about it. I took a bag of Sun Chips and settled on my bed.

I heard the birds get riled up and my grandpa soothing them downstairs. He was home? I was very unaware of their daily schedules because I was usually at work. He was probably grabbing some lunch and might be administering some medicine. I wondered if he’d come upstairs. A minute or two passed, and he didn’t.

My cell phone was in my purse and I got it, plugging it into the charger next to my bed. There were a couple of texts from Catalina asking how things were going from last night. I owed her a phone call.

She picked up right away. “You’re not with Craig right now, are you?”

“What? No. I’m eating Sun Chips and trying out your face mask. By the way, I’m not really picking up blueberry as one of the ingredients.” Not by smell and not by sensation.

“Good note,” she said. “I’ll look at that later. So how did last night go?”

“Craig’s engaged.” There was no way of saying it other than to just come out with it. Thinking about the fact that Craig was engaged to another woman sent a lance of pain through me. It was like someone had yanked a tooth out of my mouth. It hurt and hurt, my jaw ached, and I kept probing the spot with my tongue like something should be there but wasn’t. Since I wasn’t keen on dwelling on that pain, I tried to change the subject. “I cried about it in a bathroom when I found out and, more importantly, I met Loch Ness GQ.”

“You did?” she said with a gasp, thankfully ignoring my information about Craig. I wasn’t really ready to discuss it yet. “What’s the elusive Nessie like?”

“His name is Marco and he was . . .” What was the right word? He was kind, funny, and helpful. “Nice. He let me vent and listened. Oh! And get this! He’s Craig’s brother.”

“What?” she shrieked, and it was so loud that I actually heard the birds downstairs call out. “They’re related? Not possible. The CEO is actually competent.”

I rolled my eyes. “Craig is competent. He’s good at his job or else he wouldn’t be in that position.”

“There’s a little something I like to call nepotism,” she said. “You should look into that.”

What was she implying? That Marco had given Craig a job?

“I can’t believe they’re brothers,” she continued on. “This has got switched at birth written all over it.”

“Same dad, different moms.” There was a knock at my door. “What?” I yelled, not wanting to get up.

The door opened, and a human-shaped blur I didn’t recognize walked into my room.

It was not my grandpa.

I had a moment of sheer panic while I reached over to my nightstand, fumbling with the contents in an attempt to retrieve my glasses. Catalina’s voice was in the background. “What’s going on?”

My fingers found the frames, and when I slammed my glasses onto my face, I saw that it was Marco Kimball.

He was so tall. My drunken memory had apparently blotted out that information. That didn’t seem like something I’d forget about; being a very tall person myself, I tended to notice it in other people. He was so, so tall. And broad. It was like he took up the entire room by just standing there.

For a second, I didn’t know what was going on. My brain couldn’t comprehend this reality. “What are you doing here?” I asked.

He looked sheepish. “Your grandpa let me in and said I could come up here.”

A heads-up would have been nice. My grandpa probably thought he was helping me, sending a strange man upstairs while I was in my jammies, sporting a face mask and covered in Sun Chips crumbs.

Catalina said, “Anna, you are freaking me out. What’s happening? Did Wolfgang Duck throw up a bunch of caterpillars again?”

“Marco’s here,” I said faintly. “I have to go.”

She made an unintelligible, high-pitched noise. “Holy duck! You better call me back right away,” she said. “I want every ducking detail and for you to explain why the CEO of Minx Cosmetics is standing in your bedroom! Anna, do you hear me? I’m being serious! Or you could just leave your phone on so that I can listen to what’s going on. Don’t hang up. Just set the phone down and—”

“’Kay, bye,” I said and then hung up the phone with her still giving me commands. I shoved my cell into my pocket. Marco stood near the door, as if he were afraid of what he was seeing and might bolt at any second.

Not that I could blame him. Everything around him was probably fairly terrifying. It was easy to forget what your house looked like to an outsider. I was accustomed to the mess and the smell and how old everything was. Then some obnoxiously attractive, rich, seemingly nice dude came over and suddenly I had to be embarrassed by the fact that I was poor and a slob. It made me uncomfortable, but strangely enough, I didn’t feel like Marco was judging me. Just taking everything in.