In that second, my chest felt like someone hit it with a sledgehammer. I’d never been so jealous in my life and unable to do a thing about it. All I could do was stand there pretending like I hadn’t heard her just imply she’d slept with her bodyguard.
Daryl’s hand clamped down on my forearm and he whispered, “Relax. She didn’t mean anything by it. Remember, they’re pretending to be together. I’ve got an idea on Cordovex to check out, so get to trimming the hedges or whatever and I’ll check in with you tonight back at your place.”
I barely heard him over the sound of my heartbeat pounding in my ears.
By the time I got back to the apartment that night, I’d nearly gone out of my mind with jealousy. From where I was standing as I raked and hoed to prepare the space Nina wanted to use for her vegetable garden, I was able to watch the inside of the lower level of the house. Varo looked quite at home as he swam in my pool in the middle of the day, joined by Nina at one point who didn’t swim but sat and watched for a few minutes as he did.
Sat and watched as his ridiculously muscular body swam back and forth in front of her while she kept her eyes fixed on him.
I spent a half hour filling in the hole I accidentally dug with the spade as I watched the two of them together. He was lucky I was committed to this plan of Daryl’s because if I wasn’t, I would have used that spade for another far more satisfying purpose that would have required me to dig a much deeper hole.
While one of the bodyguards I hired to protect Nina was busy taking his job far too literally, the other seemed intently interested in me. West watched me pantomime gardening for nearly an hour before he approached me, tapping me on the shoulder none too lightly after I ignored his efforts to say hello three times. When I said nothing in return even after acknowledging his presence, he left frustrated and spent the next hour spying on me, his enormous frame obvious from his hiding spots behind trees and bushes.
Maybe I wasn’t fooling anyone. He didn’t even make an effort to be sly as he watched me muddle through cleaning out twigs and weeds from the garden area. By the time I finished, I’d decided that once I was back West was gone. If he was this clumsy watching me, I couldn’t imagine how bad he was at protecting Nina. Of course, that meant I had to be thankful for Varo’s presence around her, which was the last thing I wanted to admit.
I needed a drink.
Sitting down in front of the TV Daryl had been nice enough to include in my new place, I tried to get lost in some sitcom and scotch with little success. There I was, sitting in some hole in the wall apartment while Nina and Varo were enjoying my house, probably my liquor, and…
I couldn’t bring myself to think about them enjoying my bed, but somewhere in the back of my mind a tiny, insidious voice whispered again and again, “They’re together.” I’d never been good at handling jealousy, and my paranoia about Nina sleeping with Varo quickly mushroomed in my brain, leaving me with the choice of blowing Daryl’s plan by storming over to the house to reunite with the woman I loved and in the process putting her in danger or getting stone drunk.
The half-inch of scotch left in the bottle sitting on the coffee table in front of me made my choice next to impossible. If I was going to get through that night, a trip to the liquor store was in order. All the better. I was already feeling trapped in my new place and looked forward to the half mile or so walk to get more of the only thing that was going to help me forget, at least for a few hours.
I set out on my quest for alcohol and met few people on my way, all of them shying away from me by refusing to make eye contact and one even crossing the street to get away from me. For a moment, I couldn’t figure out why until I remembered I didn’t look like Tristan Stone with my scruffy hair and overgrown beard. Never before in my life had I experienced people avoiding me because of my appearance. The tiny village of Millbrook, New York must have been used to a better class of person. I used to be that class, but as the gardener Ethan, I definitely stuck out like a sore thumb among Manhattanites visiting their country homes. It was eye-opening, to say the least.
The greasy-haired liquor store clerk gave me a similar reception when I walked into his store, watching me intently as I passed him on my way to the scotch aisle. I stood staring at the various bottles, my mind preoccupied with how differently I was treated looking like I did now. A little longer hair and a bad beard and suddenly I was persona non grata.
I felt a tug on my sleeve and turned to see Nina standing there staring up at me. Immediately, I realized I wasn’t wearing my sunglasses. My hair hung in my eyes, so I squinted at her, hoping to hide my eye color.