by Elle Casey
“Thanks, Rebel. This is really above and beyond, you know. You didn’t have to do any of this.” I wonder if his girlfriend will be jealous that he’s being so nice to me, but I don’t want to talk about her and bring her presence into this place. I really dislike her and I don’t even know her or have a reason to feel this way. I’ve only seen her once, but watching her drape herself over Rebel was just plain awful. It’s stupid and I don’t want Rebel to know how irrational and ridiculous I can be.
Oops. Too late. I sigh at my amateur shower-burglary moves. Back to cat-pee couch status.
“Couldn’t let you stay in that place,” he says, either ignoring or oblivious to my frustration as he takes a chair from the breakfast area. He brings it around the counter and into the middle of the kitchen. “It wasn’t safe.”
I can’t argue with him about the safety of the Golden Legacy. “You’re not responsible for me, though.”
He looks over his shoulder after standing on a chair to reach the ceiling. “Offering you a place to stay isn’t taking responsibility for you. It’s just doing the right thing.”
I feel silly now for suggesting he was doing that. “I just don’t want you to think I’m some kind of helpless chick or something.”
A ghost of a smile moves across his mouth before he turns away and focuses on the light.
“What was that look for?” I ask.
“Helpless. That’s not how I’d describe you.”
That makes me really happy for some reason. Probably happier than it should. It feels like a huge compliment coming from him. “How would you describe me, then?”
I don’t realize how flirtatious that sounds until he turns around and gives me a look that gets my face burning.
“Don’t answer that,” I rush to say. My pulse is fluttering in my wrist and neck, out of control. I try to tell myself that I’m worried about that blonde girl; she could probably take me since she’s like a foot taller than I am. But when I can’t stop staring at his muscles, I know it’s all just a stupid game I’m playing with myself. Oh, shit, I’m getting myself into trouble here. Look away!
He does me the favor of ignoring me and saying nothing, and that’s when I realize this whole silent treatment thing he has going on is actually kind of cool. I can open my mouth and shove my foot in there and he’ll never say anything to make me feel bad about it. I just have to stew in my own embarrassment, but at least it’s not something we have to agonize over out loud together. I force myself to look around the apartment instead of at him.
“So, this is your brother’s place, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is he now?”
“Away.” Rebel finishes screwing in the bulb he started with and moves on to another one.
“Mick told me he’s in jail.”
Rebel hisses out a lungful of air. “Mick talks too much.”
“I think he talks just the right amount, actually. You know … some people might take your lack of talking as rudeness.”
He ignores me. Again.
“But I don’t. Not now anyway. I used to, but I’m kind of getting used to it.”
I fill up the silence with more blather, because being around him when he smells and looks so good makes me very uncomfortable and the lack of sound makes it even worse. “Yeah, you’re more the strong, silent type. Still waters run deep kind of thing. I’ll bet you have all kinds of stuff going on in your head that you just don’t share.”
I can’t be sure, but it’s possible I see his shoulders move in response to that last comment. It makes me think that I need to pay more attention to his body language. Maybe he’s yelling shit at me all the time; I just haven’t been noticing his native language.
I decide to experiment. “I heard your brother’s nickname is Trouble.”
Shoulders back. Head up. He’s pissed. Boom. I’m getting this! I can speak his language or at least understand it.
“But you don’t agree with that,” I translate. “He’s not trouble.”
“Yes, he is. You stay away from him.”
“He is? How so? Is he dangerous?”
Rebel steps down. “Not in the way you’re thinking.” He picks up the chair and moves it back out to the tiny breakfast nook.
“In what way, then? Maybe it’s exactly how I’m thinking.” I’m following him out and expecting him to take the next bulb he has in his hand and go left into the family room.
Instead, he does a one-eighty and I nearly bump into him. The closeness has me instantly nervous, but it’s his expression that gets me smoldering in my stupid body suit.
“I’m not kidding,” he says in a low tone. “Stay away from him. He eats little girls like you for breakfast.” Rebel’s eyes flick over my body, making my face go red before he leaves me standing there all by myself.
I scramble to get that impression of me out of his head. “I’ll have you know that I’m not a little girl. I’m a college graduate … almost. And I’ve been to a lot of places and seen a lot of things.” Yeah. That’ll change his mind. God, I hate that I’m such an idiot sometimes. He’s probably comparing me to the blonde right now and seeing the obvious differences. Ugh.
“Is that so?”
“Yeah.” I cross my arms, but immediately stop when it causes the giant jumpsuit to bunch up like lumpy pillows all over my chest. I leave my hands to swing by my sides. It’s not very intimidating or convincing, but this is what happens when you don’t have a washing machine handy.
“You haven’t been to the places he has, so let him be.”
“Let him be … as if I’d go after him? Please. I’m not that kind of girl.”
Rebel sighs as he tests the lamp he put the bulb in. He turns it on and then off again. Then he walks over to me and stops just inches away. “In all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never met a girl who didn’t become that kind of girl when he walked in the door. Just don’t …”
I wait for the rest of his sentence to come, but that’s it. He stares at the ceiling and then starts to walk off.
My auto-pilot engages and grabs his arm. I look down in horror at my own hand resting on his warm, bare skin, and I swallow with difficulty. There is so much muscle under my fingers right now. Just the idea of it has me sweating my ass off. I’m going to need another shower when he’s gone.
He looks down at our connected bodies and then looks up to meet my gaze.
I pray that he can’t tell what I’m thinking right now. “Uh … what were you going to say? Finish it. Your sentence.”
He doesn’t pull away like I expect him to, but he does tell me what I want to know. “I was going to say, just don’t fall for it.”
A definite sense of regret follows as his arms slides out from under my hand and he walks back to the kitchen. For a second there I thought he’d stay, and then … I don’t know. The and then part is the dangerous piece of this whole equation, something I should be running from and discouraging, not hoping will happen.
Apparently being burgled has awakened some kind of thrill-seeking adrenaline junkie inside me. I wish she’d go away and stop messing with my head like this, forcing me to think things about my boss I have no business thinking.
“Fall for what?” I finally ask in an effort to get my mind on less dangerous things.
“His game.” Rebel opens the fridge and looks inside before closing the door again. Next he checks the freezer. I have no idea what he’s looking for, but whatever it is, it must not be there because he closes it without taking anything out.
I walk over to join him.
“You hungry?” he asks.
“No.” The room goes silent, and the suggestion of food apparently wakes the monster that lives in my stomach. It growls like a very desperate lion.
He looks down at my abdomen. “You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m sure. Not hungry at all.” The tummy lion roars once more.
“Come with me,” he says, leaving for the front door.
“That’s alright. I
’m fine. I’m just going to hit the hay. Big day at work tomorrow. I’m going to start computerizing all those client files into a contact manager.”
Rebel doesn’t respond. He leaves the apartment but keeps the door open on his way out.
I stand there looking at the door, beyond frustrated. My stomach feels like it’s eating itself from the inside out, and it’s growling like there’s a whole fucking pride of lions in there now.
The idea of a meal shared with this guy who’s slowly been turning me into a brainless twit is both appealing and appalling. I should just shut the door and go to bed with my hungry stomach. I should just write him a thank you note right now and be gone before he gets up in the morning. I should just go up to my old house in Silicon Valley and demand that my former step-mother let me live there until I get my shit figured out. She owes me at least that much.
But I don’t do any of that. Instead, I shuffle out of my temporary lodgings and down the short hall to the next door over - the one that’s open wide, that I know leads into Rebel’s apartment. I want to say that my feet don’t want to go in there, but if they were any more eager, I’d be running. Stupid traitor body. I really don’t enjoy being this out of control of my own emotions and motor neurons.
I laugh when I finally turn the corner and see the gourmet meal he’s turned out for me.
“Sugar Pops?” I say, sliding onto a stool and picking up a big spoon he’s put on the counter.
“Dinner of champions,” he says, digging into a giant bowl of his own sugary goodness.
For some reason the cereal calms me down. If he had put out a real meal, I think I would have been too nervous to eat it; but this stuff? No problem. As I crunch away, my eyes scan the space. His apartment decor is like his speech: sparse. I probably shouldn’t have expected anything else from a guy who rations words like every syllable costs him money.
His couch is brown leather and his television big, but not huge like I assumed it would be. What surprises me about the place is the pictures. I had expected blank walls, but he has photographs everywhere and paintings too. None of them have the blonde in them that I can see, and for some reason that makes me very happy. I get up from my seat and carry my bowl with me, making a tour of the room as I examine each of them.
“Who’s this?” I ask, pointing to a picture of an older woman standing behind three boys.
“That’s our mom and us.”
I frown, a memory coming back to confuse me. “I thought you said you weren’t really brothers. I can’t remember exactly what you said, but I thought …” I look back at the picture. Maybe I was wrong. They sure look enough alike and they’re young. Really young.
“Mick and Colin are brothers by blood. I’m a brother through the system.”
“System?” I turn around to see his expression, but he’s in the kitchen with the light off, so his face is a dark shadow.
“Foster system. That’s our foster mom.”
I nod. Taking a closer look, I can see that they’re all probably less than ten years old. That makes them brothers for at least fifteen years. I get the impression they’re way tighter than I was with my own family. It makes me jealous in a way, and longing for something I know I will never have.
“And who are all these people?” I ask, pointing to other frames.
“Family of Emily, our mom. Friends. That’s Colin.” He points with his spoon to the last frame on the right.
I pick it up. Without even knowing the guy or his nickname, I can see why I’ve been warned away. He’s got trouble written all over him, but I’m pretty sure I could easily resist his charms if I ever saw him in person. He’s got nothing on his big brother.
I put the frame back down and move on to a painting. It’s dark and turbulent. At first I think it’s just a bunch of paint blobs, but as I move away I realize it’s something else. I back up to get a different perspective and then see that it’s got way more going on than I noticed the first time.
“What do you see?” asks Rebel.
I nearly jump out of my skin when I realize how close he is. I look at him over my shoulder for a moment, but my gaze is drawn back to the painting and I can’t take my eyes off it. “I see a building. It’s got bad people in it.”
Rebel says nothing for a while, and I just stare and stare at the painting. The more I look at it, the sadder it makes me feel. “God, why do you have that thing hanging in here?” I want to cry for some stupid reason. I look down in my bowl, deciding that this much sugar this late at night is a very bad idea for me. “Fucking Sugar Pops.”
“What?”
I turn and back up a few steps to put some distance between us. I know he doesn’t mean to be, but he’s freaking me out just being three feet away. He’s worse than the painting with the way he affects my equilibrium.
“I said, fucking Sugar Pops. They make me insane in the membrane.”
“You don’t like the painting.” He says it like a statement.
“I love the painting. But yeah, I hate it too.”
“That’s exactly how I feel about it. Colin painted it.”
We stand there, staring at each other. My mind has a whirlwind blowing around inside it. There’s a connection between us that’s impossible to deny. At least, on my end there is. He hardly says anything to me and yet I feel like we’ve had all these important conversations. I have a strong feeling that he doesn’t bring random people into his apartment or tell them about his pictures and discuss paintings with them.
I feel like I’m special and yet I’m not. I’m just this chick who forced herself into his life and made him feel guilty about leaving her alone and unemployed. I want to believe that if the blonde were important to him, I’d see hints of her in his home somewhere because I can’t even begin to compete with the girl who stood beside him at that club who was so pretty it was almost painful to look at.
My stomach goes instantly sick over how lame that sounds in my own head. Ugh. I need to go before I completely ruin everything.
I stride over to the kitchen, taking the long way around the back of the couch so I don’t get too close to him. “Thanks for dinner. I’m really exhausted.” I pause to let out a really loud, really fake yawn. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Putting the bowl down on the counter, I abandon the idea of putting my dishes in his dishwasher. Escape is my only goal right now. Escape from the nonsense I know that’s about to come flying out of my mouth.
It’s completely ironic that I’m actually running away from myself as I leave his apartment to be alone with myself. It makes zero sense, but it is what it is.
I lock the door once I’m inside Colin’s apartment and lean against the wood, the handle jabbing into my arm. Rebel doesn’t follow me and he doesn’t say a word, but I guess I’m not surprised. What was the guy supposed to say, anyway? Why leave so soon? Want to hang out and watch TV or have some hot, kinky sex? I seriously dig cat-pee couches, don’t you?
See? See? This is the shit that was probably going to come out of my mouth. Ever since I met Rebel, the pathway from my libido to my brain to my mouth has gone from a mile in length to about an inch. I wipe my brow as I realize how close I came to completely blowing everything. Rebel represents my job and now my living space too. I cannot piss him off or make him want to get rid of me.
As I stand there in the dark living room, I vow not to let my attraction to my boss get in the way of this job. Without any income from Rebel Wheels I will be homeless, and as much as I pretend I’d be okay with that, I know I wouldn’t be.
Now, more than any other time in my life, I value and need a warm and safe place to live; and now, also for the first time in my life, whether I have that or not is completely and utterly up to me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I CAN ONLY SLEEP ABOUT four hours before I’m awake again. With a pile of all my dirty clothes, I head out to the laundromat that rejected me for not being fluent in three languages. An hour later, all of my laundry is washed, dr
ied, and folded and I still have time to stop and grab some food at the mini-mart before heading back to Colin’s place.
When Mick walks into the office at seven in the morning, I’m already thirty minutes into my bookkeeping with a box of donuts on the counter for everyone to share.
“Well, look at you. Early bird gettin’ the worm.” Mick grabs a donut, examines it for I don’t know what, and then shoves half of it into his mouth. Powdered sugar coats his lips.
“That sounds really wrong, you know that, right?” I say, going back to my work. A laptop I found in a back cabinet is now being loaded with details from client files. I’ve almost finished with the A-names.
“You’re right,” he says after swallowing. “Strike it from the record. You want coffee?” he asks, pouring himself some.
“Nope. Already had three cups.” And that caffeine is thrumming through my veins as we speak. I am wonder woman and super man all rolled into one badass computer genius superhero.
Mick goes into the car bay and Rebel comes in the front door. He stops at the coffee pot and pours himself a cup while I type away and pretend to be very, very busy.
I can’t bring myself to look at him because I hate the idea of him seeing me as a desperate little girl. That comment he made last night about his brother eating girls like me for breakfast created a vision in my head that grates on my pride, where Rebel views me as a child and not an adult. It’s probably for the better, I know this … but I really don’t like Rebel seeing me that way. I’m a grown woman, dammit. I don’t just fall for any old guy. I’m not easy. I’m not some wienie who goes gah-gah over a pretty face and a troubled past.
When Rebel leaves the room without a donut and without saying a word, my heart sinks into a puddle of goo in my chest. I am so full of shit. He didn’t even say anything and yet here I am, devastated. Whatever I imagined about mutual feelings between us disappears in a puff of disappointed smoke. I hate being in one of those one-sided crushes. They hurt. Oh, shit. I’m admitting it now. I have a crush on my boss. And here I was thinking I couldn’t be any lamer.