Must Like Spinach

by Con Riley

  “Oh. I… Maybe not a game then?” Anthony takes another step closer, and his gaze is darkly direct. “How about we just go out? We don’t have to talk business. Frankly—” He chuckles again. “—I’d prefer that we didn’t.”

  “You don’t want to talk about work?”

  “Nope.” He takes another half step, almost into the lea of Jon’s legs. “Or you could come over to my place for dinner.”

  It’s possible Jon’s misread the situation.

  He tilts his head back so he’s eye-to-eye with Anthony. He’s really very handsome. Hot, in a self-assured way that has Jon stumbling over his words. “I… uh… home-cooked meals are my new favorite.” He’s telling the truth, but Anthony’s soft snort of laughter suggests he thinks he’s kidding.

  “Yeah? Should I call my mom?” he asks. “Get her recipe for pot roast?”

  It’s an unfortunate choice of meal that inserts Peggy into Jon’s headspace. He shakes off the mental image of her cozy kitchen and constructs a final, one-word answer.

  “No.”

  “No?” Anthony takes an abrupt step back and holds up his hands. “I must have misread, I’m sorry.”

  “You didn’t.” It’s ironic, he knows, that the first decent opportunity he gets to hookup is complicated by a job he’s starting to seriously question. He shrugs and then shakes his head. “You really didn’t misread. Any other time and I’d….”

  “You’d what?” Now it’s clear that Anthony’s teasing. His smile is a wicked curl bracketed by deep dimples. “Talk to me about your spreadsheets?” He bites his lip. “Drill down through my data?” He reaches out and straightens Jon’s tie, knuckles lingering against his breastbone until heat bleeds through the thin fabric of his shirt. “I guess I’ll never get to find out.” He lowers his hand and his gaze. His lashes are dark, but they’re nowhere near as long as Tyler’s.

  Where the fuck did that thought come from?

  A sudden inhalation is enough to clear Jon’s head. He stands and injects some humor. “Are you seriously trying to skew my data, Mr. Nelson?”

  Luckily Anthony’s attention to nuance is knife-sharp—no wonder he manages people so well. He takes an easy step away like backing off is a mutual decision, but he says, “How about you table my offer? Take me up on it if you change your mind later?”

  “Sure.” The urge to do something impulsive and career ending, like Hiroto warned, ebbs now that there’s distance between them. Reality rushes in to replace it. “I really appreciate the offer, but….” God, he can’t believe he’s turning this down. “You get why I can’t, don’t you?”

  Anthony already has his hands raised again and backs off even further. “No harm, no foul?”

  “Absolutely.” Jon reaches for something else to say—any kind of explanation that his decision is businesslike, not personal.

  Anthony beats him to it. “Hey, don’t sweat it,” he says as he opens the door. “You know what they say. If you never shoot….”

  “You never score,” Jon finishes, but the door’s already closed between them.

  Chapter 9

  A SCREAM jerks Jon from a deep sleep the next day like someone nearby is being murdered. He’s bolt upright in a second, only slumping against his pillows again once the origin of the sound registers. That piercing squeal is only the garage door downstairs protesting.

  He rolls over and huffs.

  Why would anyone need to be down there this early?

  He snags his phone from the nightstand for confirmation. His eyes barely open. Yeah, it’s early all right—before six in the morning—messing with his plan to sleep in before taking the hike he’s promised himself all week. He pulls a pillow over his face, but even the faint scent of Peggy’s detergent doesn’t send him back to sleep, nor do the intermittent thumps of someone shifting something heavy below his bed.

  Why pick right this minute to reorganize the garage?

  It’s unlikely to be Peggy—she’s hardly strong enough to move anything substantial. And the only other things heavy enough to drag around down there are the packing crates full of his mother’s possessions. They arrived earlier in the week, and after prying off the first lid, he’d closed it again quickly, deciding it was a chore he’d deal with later. Those crates are neatly stacked off to the side, in no one’s way at all. So that only leaves Tyler, who surely knows how easily sound travels through the floorboards.

  The noise downstairs suddenly abates. It’s peaceful for another minute or two until the screech of metal dragging across concrete sets his teeth on edge. Even muffled by his bedroom floor, it’s worse than nails on a chalkboard.

  Maybe he should’ve taken Anthony up on his offer.

  He could be waking up in a much quieter location if he had. Home-cooked meal as part of the deal or not, at least he could’ve gotten off and slept in without this early wake-up. His mind wanders for a moment, thoughts tangling behind still-heavy eyelids. Anthony was sharp as a tack at work; would sleep soften him at all? Maybe he’d wake up snuggly instead of driven.

  Jon tugs off the T-shirt he sleeps in and pulls the sheet up over his head. He touches the spot on his chest where Anthony’s knuckles had lingered, tips of his fingers sliding slowly down to his belly where he pauses, hand resting below his navel, imagining Anthony’s hand there instead.

  He flings the sheet back abruptly.

  There’s no point thinking about sex with the man.

  It can’t happen while hooking up could be construed as favoritism. It doesn’t matter if he’s almost certain Anthony doesn’t have that as a game plan. Someone else could sure spin it that way if they wanted. And if that news got back to New York?

  His morning wood wilts at the thought.

  It wouldn’t only be his reputation that suffered.

  He might’ve been busy in other departments this week, but he’s caught sight of Anthony’s team in the meeting room several times already, studying the aerial maps of the city during their lunch breaks. The drive to be top dog can be desperate and unappealing on some people, but on Anthony it’s clearly energizing. His team wants to please him, and that says a whole lot. Just about every other department had good things to say about him too. Each comment Jon collected this week adds to a profile of someone set to scale heights way beyond a mid-sized business. Long term, Stan Hallquist will be lucky to keep him. Short term though, Anthony’s career could get cut off at the knees too, if someone used them hooking up as a weapon.

  A huge crash fractures his thoughts.

  The floor barely muffles the sound of things smashing downstairs, but it’s a frightened yelp that gets him moving.

  Jon rolls out of bed so fast his shoulder shoves the nightstand to one side. He slams out of his apartment bare-chested and barefoot, taking several steps at a time despite the shudder of the stairs. He’s shouting before he’s even gotten the garage doors fully open.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Ty—?”

  His yell echoes, but Tyler’s nowhere in sight.

  It’s Peggy who barely balances midway up a leaning ladder, moments away from falling. Shattered glass surrounds her. It’s everywhere, gleaming and dangerously sharp-edged. Even her clothes sparkle like she’s lit up for Christmas. The fact that Peggy’s barefoot, like him, only registers when he almost treads on a shard. “Jesus,” he curses as he sidesteps it by scant inches. “Don’t move!” He casts his gaze around wildly as Peggy clings tight.

  The ladder tilts even further.

  Jon reaches for the nearest crate and throws open its lid. It’s full of useless papers. “Fuck!”

  “Gesundheit, Jonathan.”

  He ignores the way she excuses his cursing with a shaky edge of hysteria in her voice. Instead he hauls out a quilt from the next crate that must’ve been his mom’s last work-in-progress. It’s a sea of blue and white fabric pieces sewn together by hand that ripples when he casts it like a net between them. “Hold tight, Peggy. I’m coming.”

  He doesn’t hear if Peggy an
swers this time, too busy crunching his way over glass toward her. The quilt doesn’t quite stretch the whole distance, but he’s too focused on her face to notice. It’s milk-white, while twin spots of bright-pink blush are stark on her cheeks, and her red hair glitters. Tiny sprinkles of glass shake free when she grabs his shoulders and clings, and when he scoops her up like a bride, she weighs next to nothing. Retracing his steps isn’t easy with her in his arms, but he does his best, testing with bare, tentative toes, before taking each step, hoping to make contact with fabric than any more fragments of glass.

  He misjudges a few times, but ignoring the sharp sting to his instep is easy when Peggy’s grip on his shoulders tightens. It only loosens when he finally sets her down safely on the potting table.

  Her silence is very telling, as is the way her eyes swim.

  Shock.

  He blames it for the way his own voice shakes. “Way to wake a guy up.” He shields her eyes with a hand while picking fragments of what look like Christmas ornaments free from her curls. A thin shard of frosted green glass decorated with a snowflake snags before pulling free. It tinkles when he drops it into an empty pot awaiting compost. Reindeer prance across the next piece he finds. “What’s with busting out the holiday decorations?” he tries to joke, but it comes out flat. “Did you forget that summer’s barely started?”

  Still she doesn’t answer.

  He’s brusque after removing a lethal-looking sliver. “There’s no way tree ornaments should explode like this. Don’t they usually bounce if you drop them? How far did they fall exactly?” He looks over his shoulder. The large totes he noticed earlier fill the floor-to-ceiling shelves, apart from one spot high up that’s empty. The tote that must’ve fit there now lies on its side at the foot of the ladder. It spills strands of tinsel that almost cover a pair of the high-heeled mules she favors. Jon bites back a curse—she truly could’ve killed herself if she’d worn them to climb the ladder. No way would she have kept her balance.

  Peggy sniffs as he inspects the palms of her hands, carefully unfolding her stiff fingers, one after another. Her voice is so quiet he barely hears her. “They’re German,” she whispers. “The tree ornaments, I mean. Hand-blown glass that my mother’s family brought with them when they came here. I—” She stutters. “I was trying to reach something else, but once the ladder started moving….” Her shrug is tiny, and she sounds bereft. “I don’t know what happened. I must have grabbed ahold, I guess. I closed my eyes and ducked when some smashed on the shelf right next to my face. It all happened so fast.”

  Jon leans over her hands again and swallows before he can speak.

  Anything could’ve happened if he hadn’t been upstairs to hear her. What if he’d stayed out last night?

  There’s no telling why that thought makes it easier to kneel rather than stand. It’s stupid that the thought of her falling with no one knowing almost makes him buckle—she’s his landlord, not his family. He checks over her narrow bare feet rather than dwell on why she’s the one who almost fell but he’s the one left shaking. “How the hell did you come out of this without a scratch?” Her skin is so thin that any of the shards could’ve sliced real deep. “How about—?” He clears his throat and starts over. “How about the next time you get a wild hair to search for something, you come upstairs and get me?” He swallows again, and his voice gets firmer. “I don’t care how early it is. You come get me, you hear?”

  Her nod is tiny, but the movement dislodges a tear. It glistens as it falls, clear as day when the garage door suddenly opens, flooding the space with more light.

  “What the—?” Tyler stands in the opening with the sun behind him. He’s wearing sleepwear and sounds groggy, like he just woke.

  Jon has to look away fast.

  Did Tyler really sleep through this?

  He’s so furious he can’t trust himself to speak.

  Peggy’s reaction differs. She holds out her hands until Tyler crunches across the garage to hold them. “I wanted to get down the fairy lights. They’d look so pretty in the garden all year! I woke up wondering why I was waiting for Thanksgiving before putting them up. I nearly had them.” She wriggles as if to get down from the potting table, until Jon firmly stops her.

  “Hey. No shoes, remember?”

  He doesn’t expect Tyler to drop to a knee beside him or for him to take one of Peggy’s feet into his hands. There’s nothing fake about his careful scrutiny or his concerned tone as he gives her the once over. In fact, now that Jon’s paying attention, what he’d assumed were pajamas are actually baby blue scrubs.

  Jon swallows down surprise as Tyler checks her for abrasions. His thoroughness is surprising, as are his probing questions.

  “Did you hit your head?”

  She frowns before answering. “I had a fright, that’s all.”

  It’s uncanny seeing him look over his shoulder the exact same way Jon had only minutes earlier. “What about that tote? Did it fall on you? Are you sure it didn’t hit you?”

  “No. I… I mean, yes. It didn’t hit me, Tyler. Just the ornaments that were in it.” Her breaths are shaky now, and her voice wavers. “Did they really all break?”

  “I don’t know, sweetheart.” There’s the same soft tone Jon overheard the first time they met. No wonder Peggy trusts him. It sharpens when he adds, “Maybe Jonathan can take a look while I get you back to the house.” Tyler scoops her up in his arms, but he stops dead when Jon stands up and winces. “What’s up with your foot? Wait, where are your shoes?” He looks again, frowning like he just noticed Jon’s virtually naked aside from the black boxer briefs he slept in. “Stay put. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “I’m fine—”

  “I said, stay put.” Tyler catches his eye for the first time. It’s impossible to ignore him when he adds a quiet request. “Please, Jonathan. Let me get her settled, then I’ll come right back to take a look at your foot. Don’t put any weight on it, okay?” He tilts his head at the potting table. “Hop up there for me, won’t you?”

  Jon does and is rewarded by the kind of smile Tyler only usually shares with Peggy. There’s nothing devious about the way his expression shifts. It’s a straightforward slide from serious to grateful that he’s still thinking about when Tyler returns. Asking where the hell he was when Peggy needed him seems redundant in light of the clothing he wears. Those scrubs and the shadows under his eyes suggest a night shift at a job Jon hadn’t considered. Besides, any questions he might have turn to dust in his mouth when Tyler drops to his knees between his spread legs.

  “Okay.” He sets down a first-aid kit and takes Jon’s foot in his hand. “Let me take a quick look.”

  “It’s nothing,” Jon hopes. “Isn’t it?”

  Tyler only hums noncommittally. He slowly rubs a thumb from Jon’s heel to his toes, and the tip of his tongue peeks from between his lips as he fumbles in the kit and takes out a small spray bottle.

  “What’s that?” Jon pulls his foot back, but Tyler’s grip is vicelike.

  “It’s water, you big baby.” His breath is warm on the skin of Jon’s arch, prompting a reflexive shiver. “Hmm. Only a scratch.” Tyler tilts his head and peers closer. “You up to date on your shots?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I can’t see or feel any glass, which I guess is a miracle given….” He shakes his head and again echoes Jon’s thoughts exactly. “She could’ve broken her neck. Or cut herself real badly.” He applies antibiotic cream followed by a Band-Aid as he talks, his actions capable and practiced. His next breath is a deep huff. “What the hell was she thinking?”

  Jon does pull his foot free this time. “You heard what she said.” The early start catches up with him. Instead of feeling pissed off, now he’s simply wiped out.

  “Yeah, but why now when I was on my way home and could’ve helped her?” Tyler picks up a corner of the quilt and shakes it. Shards tinkle as they fall free, along with a couple of hexagons of fabric. “This, on the other hand, was
good thinking.” He looks closer and fingers a couple of rips. “Maybe repairing this would encourage Peggy to sit still for longer than a minute. Where’d it come from…?” He looks toward the packing crates. “Ah. That your stuff?”

  “My mom’s.”

  Tyler looks again at the quilt he holds, perhaps noticing for the first time that it’s unfinished or that Jon’s run out of words, for once. There’s no way to explain to a virtual stranger that seeing it in his hands only reminds him that he’ll never see it again in hers. When Tyler simply says, “Thanks,” Jon only manages to grit out, “It was nothing.”

  Jon picks a path to the doorway before asking, “She’ll… she’ll be okay, won’t she?”

  Tyler’s hesitation is the most honest version of himself Jon’s yet seen. His expression is open, worry clearly warring with reluctance when he admits, “She’s still a little confused. It’s probably shock.” He adds, “You mind telling me your version of what happened?”

  “What did Peggy tell you?”

  “What did she tell me?” Tyler looks steadily his way. “She thought she was all alone until you came to save her. Then you appeared out of nowhere to walk barefoot over broken glass to save her. She says you carried her to safety like some kind of superhero.” His eventual smile comes with some teasing that Jon takes at face value for once. “Might want to work on your disguise, Superman.” Tyler’s gaze drops to Jon’s bare chest, only rising very slowly.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Tyler agrees as he stares. “Because half of it is missing.”

  Chapter 10

  TYLER PROMISES to help Jon clean the garage after he checks on Peggy again. He’s gone for quite a while, long after Jon returns from finding some clothes. Only a few weeks ago, that delay would’ve confirmed his bone-idle opinion. How many other chores has Tyler left half done that Jon’s already noticed? Why should clearing out the garage be any different? But the way he took care of Peggy, especially after a night shift at a job Jon hadn’t known existed, means that lazy label doesn’t fit quite so neatly right now.