Bad influence, p.1
Bad Influence, page 1
Also by Stefanie London
Bad Bachelors
Bad Bachelor
Bad Reputation
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2019 by Stefanie London
Cover and internal design © 2019 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Dawn Adams/Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover image © gstockstudio/Getty Images
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from Bad Bachelor
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Back Cover
Prologue
Three years ago…
Joseph would forgive her for changing her mind; he had to. They were family. Sure, they might not be married yet, but she’d seen the ring. The elaborate hunk of a stone, a cushion-cut masterpiece surrounded by a spray of smaller diamonds, nestled in navy velvet, and tucked away in the depths of his sock drawer. It meant something. A future. A symbol of their bond.
Wasn’t forgiveness what family was all about?
Or was it compromise?
Annie Maxwell leaned against the wall outside their bedroom, her heart in her mouth, as she surveyed the boxes stacked all over the apartment. Her neat handwriting in black Sharpie labeled them for the move: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom. She had a bad feeling about this conversation.
Maybe you’re worrying for nothing.
He loved her, and she loved him. That was all that mattered…right?
Annie’s hand fluttered over the fancy brass doorknob. They’d picked it together at an antique shop in an effort to give their apartment some character. After half an hour of arguing over brass and wrought iron options, Joseph had given in and let Annie have her choice so long as he got to choose the curtains.
See, compromise.
This was different. They weren’t talking about aesthetics or design choices. They were talking about the difference between family and careers. Her family, his career. Supporting one meant giving up the other. How were they supposed to find compromise in that?
She needed to put her mother first, because there was no way she could move halfway around the world for Joseph’s new job when the diagnosis was the big C. And especially not when her mother, Connie, had called her in tears, begging her to stay.
Funny how one little cluster of cells could wreak so much havoc.
Last week, when her parents had announced Connie’s diagnosis, her mother had seemed fine. They’d known about the cancer for a while but had been waiting for the right moment to tell the kids. Waiting until they had a plan and could reassure them that everything would be okay. The doctor claimed catching the tumor in her mother’s right breast at this early stage boded well. He predicted recovery. Ninety-three percent survival rate. That sounded good…didn’t it?
But then he’d thrown around words like mastectomy and chemo and hormone therapy.
And when the phone rang half an hour ago, her mother was a mess. Annie hadn’t heard her cry like that in a long time.
Please don’t go, Annie. I need you here. I can’t do this without you.
How could she leave the woman who’d raised her—who’d sacrificed for her—when she needed her most?
Living overseas would mean being too far away to help with appointments or household chores or hugs. Joseph had promised she could fly back every month if she wanted. But her mother needed her here. Now.
Singapore would have to wait.
Never mind that they’d been planning this move for months. Never mind that Joseph had been offered his dream job on a silver platter. Never mind that their apartment was in boxes because the movers were due to arrive tomorrow. That they were due to leave tomorrow.
The bank had offered Joseph a golden opportunity—a signing bonus, money to cover relocation, a salary with more zeroes than she could comprehend. They’d put him in charge of a whole technology department and had him reporting to the chief information officer. At his age, it was nothing short of incredible. She’d never seen Joseph so excited.
If only her mother didn’t have that lump.
Shaking her hands, Annie let out a long breath. Perhaps all this worrying would be for nothing. He would understand her decision…wouldn’t he?
“Joe?” Annie forced down her nerves and walked into the bedroom. “Can we talk?”
He looked up, his eyes the blue of a frozen lake—cold. Impenetrable. A suitcase lay open in the middle of their bed, a stack of shirts folded neatly inside. His ties were rolled and nestled against the edge of the suitcase—silvers, grays, and navy with the occasional pop of red. Plus the vibrant sky-blue one she’d bought him because it matched the color of his eyes. It was his favorite.
Hers too. He was utterly delectable in that tie.
She waited for a smile, a response…something. But Joseph’s face was unreadable, his mouth set in a taut line. Fear churned in her gut. He’d resigned almost a month ago. As had she. They’d spent the last week packing everything they owned, wrapping each item with care as they talked about their future. As they planned their dream life.
And now she was going to take a lit match to it all.
“We need to talk,” she said, more assertive this time. Her fingers curled over the wooden bed frame for support. “About Singapore.”
“There’s nothing to say.” He turned away and riffled through his closet, the slim gold hangers clinking in the quiet as he pulled out a short, black coat. “You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you?”
Her heart pounded, rapid and uneven. Like a horse trying to gallop through thick mud. “What do you mean?”
He laid the coat on the bed and folded it in that fastidious way of his until the garment had been manipulated into a perfect square. “I overheard your conversation with your mother. You told her you had no intention of moving to Singapore.”
“You make it sound like I’d planned to back out all along.”
“The result is the same, isn’t it?”
Heaviness settled in the pit of Annie’s stomach. Her mother knew they were ready to move. Knew what it meant to their dreams of having great careers and seeing the world together. It was what they’d both been working toward since they’d gone from being friends to lovers that starry, late-summer night in her first year of college.
“She was crying, Joseph. I didn’t know how to make it stop.” Her fingers intertwined and she squeezed until the joints ached.
“It’s not true then? We’re still making this decision together?”
She detected the barest hint of hope in his voice, though his face revealed nothing. Like always. She’d vowed early on in their relationship never to play poker with Joseph after he’d cleaned her dry one night and left all the money beneath her pillow. He didn’t need the money. Winning was his drug.
“It’s not that I have no intention of moving, but now…I can’t. I can’t leave her.” Lip trembling, Annie drew a deep breath. “But it’s still our decision.”
“That’s a lie, because you’ve already made the decision and now you’re here to tell me what we’re doing instead of discussing it with me first.” He flipped the lid of the suitcase. “I was always going to be left out of the loop, wasn’t I?”
“You’re not left out of the loop.” She cringed. Because he was right—she had made the decision without him. A decision that affected them both, that denied them both.
“And here I was thinking there were only going to be two people in this relationship. Turns out I’m the third wheel.”
“No, you’re not.” She pressed her fingers to her temples and rubbed in slow circles, the throbbing escalating from a dull thump to a roaring pound. “I love you.”
“Then why didn’t you talk to me?” The pain on his face sliced through her chest. “We’re supposed to be leaving tomorrow. I’ve already quit my job. What are you expecting me to do, walk back in there and say, ‘Oops, sorry about that’?”
“They’d give it back to you.” She sucked in a breath, knowing she was on thin ice. “They wanted you to stay, right? They offered you more money.”
“Jake pulled me aside on my last day and told me he was glad I didn’t accept the counteroffer. Because this job is…” He threw his hands in the air. “It was going to change everything for us. We were going to start a new life together, be independent. It would be our money, and we wouldn’t have to rely on my father anymore. We could travel. See the whole world. You wouldn’t have to work a job you hate. We could do anything.”
Anything, except be close to her mother when she needed her most. “Things have changed.”
“I get that, I really do. You know I care about your parents. I want your mom to get better.” For a minute he was soft again, his eyes warm and caring. He didn’t often allow himself to be like that. Vulnerable. But she’d seen that face before, through eyelids cracked open so slightly that he’d thought she was still sleeping. “And I offered to fly you back as much as you needed. I’ll fly you back every goddamn weekend.”
“It’s not the same. If she calls me, I can’t be by her side right away if I’m on the other side of the world.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me that? Why did you leave me for last like you always do?”
“I don’t—”
“No? What about that time you got promoted, and I only found out when your sister texted me to organize a surprise dinner?” His voice was so quiet. Oh, so quiet. Because Joseph never yelled. He didn’t need to.
“I told you I was sorry.” She swallowed against the panic clawing up her throat, mingling with the anger that he’d held on to such a petty thing for so long.
“Yeah, you also promised me it wouldn’t happen again.”
“You’re being selfish, Joe.”
“I’m being selfish?” He looked at her and shook his head. “You’re the one who changed your mind on both our behalves without even talking to me first. You always pick them.”
His acid tone made her blood boil. “This isn’t about taking sides.”
“No? Because I want us to make decisions together, and that means you need to put me first for a change.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not.” He drew the zipper around the outside of the suitcase, sealing the lid shut with an eerie calm. “At some point, I needed to see the writing on the wall.”
“You really want to choose your career over her?” Annie’s voice wavered, shaken by the ugly emotions warring inside her. “Over me?”
“I can’t waste this opportunity, because a chance like this won’t come around again. It’s everything we wanted. We talked about the life we were going to create. Remember?”
Hot tears pricked at the backs of her eyes, causing her to blink rapidly. “I won’t leave her.”
“I never said you had to leave her. I wanted to find the middle ground. A compromise.”
There was that word again.
“I can’t compromise when it comes to my family,” she said.
Emotion flickered across his face for an instant.
That was all she ever got with him…an instant. Emotion had no place in Joseph’s life, because he’d packed years of it down until he’d become unable to demonstrate it at all. It wasn’t his fault his parents demanded perfection. That they expected everyone and everything to meet their exacting standards.
He didn’t know how to be loved.
She’d been ready to accept that…in the hope that one day he’d change. That maybe she could be the positive influence to help him deal with his issues.
And she had seen some improvement. Her family had started to teach him what it meant to be part of a team instead of always playing by himself. But this argument told her the changes weren’t enough—he would never understand what it meant to sacrifice something for another person. Because the truth was, she wanted to go to Singapore with him. She wanted the life they’d planned together. The future they’d been working toward.
More than anything, she wanted him. Forever and always.
But she had to put her mother’s needs first.
Pain tore through her chest, her breathing shallow. Could this really be it?
“We could make it work. Singapore is not that far away.” He rested his hands on the suitcase and leaned forward, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “I’ll pay for as many plane tickets as you need.”
Annie shook her head. “I’m not going anywhere until she’s better. I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
An ugly mélange of emotion swirled within her: anger, sadness, frustration. She would not be bullied into leaving. “Both.”
He pulled the suitcase off the bed and set it down beside him. “Then it looks like we have a few calls to make.”
Chapter 1
“Dear Bad Bachelors, before your app came along, I truly believed I was going to die alone.”
—SincerelySingle
Annie Maxwell had never been held at pastry-point before. Thankfully, she’d never been held at gunpoint either, but there was something about the way her stepfather thrust the freshly piped cannoli in her direction that made her want to avoid any sudden movements. She stood in the middle of his café, still empty since it hadn’t yet opened.
“I’m about to go for a run.” She gestured to her hot-pink Nikes and leggings. “I don’t need a pastry. Besides, I’m catching up with the girls.”
Well, girl. Singular. Of her two best friends, only one was currently speaking to her. But girls slipped out like it always did, because they were supposed to be a group.
Not this tense, fractured mess.
Sal Russo’s dark eyes narrowed as he appraised his stepdaughter with pursed lips. “You should eat breakfast.”
“I hate to break it to you, but that isn’t breakfast.” She gestured to the pastry. “It’s a dessert. At the very best, you might be able to call it a snack. But it’s most certainly not breakfast.”
Still, Sal had to give the people of Bensonhurst what they wanted…and that included flaky, sugar-laden non-breakfast foods.
Sal huffed and placed the tray of cannoli down. A sprinkling of white icing sugar dusted the edge of his dark mustache, telling Annie that he’d already tucked into the goods that morning. No matter how she cajoled and pleaded, he couldn’t—or rather wouldn’t—curb his sweet tooth.
“Italians have eaten this way for generations.”
“Exactly. Why do you think Nonno has trouble with his blood sugar now? Too many cannoli.” She shook her head. Worrying about her grandfather’s health was almost as pointless as worrying about her stepfather’s. If she had her way, they’d live forever. “Not to mention all that damn salami he eats. And the prosciutto…and the creamy gnocchi.”
“Now you want to take our pasta away from us?” Sal feigned mock outrage.
“God forbid.”
“I’m just trying to say that you…” He shook his head. “You don’t have to be perfect all the time. You put too much pressure on yourself.”
He looked like he was about to say something else, but no words came out. At one point, he would have joked that he’d never be able to marry her off if she was so uptight—purposefully goading her into a lecture about a woman’s right to choose marriage or whatever lifestyle she pleased—which was exactly what Sal believed too. He wanted his daughters to be strong and independent, despite his teasing. But no one joked about the m-word around her anymore. Hell, it was only ever uttered when absolutely necessary, and even then, it was accompanied by furtive glances and sympathetic eyes.
