by Alina Jacobs
I started trying doors at random. Surely there was a bathroom somewhere?
The first door I tried seemed to be a bedroom. It too was dark. The next room looked like an office. The next was…
"Ah, a bathroom! Or part of one." It was one of those fancy kinds where the toilet, the shower, and the sinks were separated. It even had a little room with a bench.
The door to the shower opened, and I came face-to-face with Mace. Actually it was more like face to chest—a very bare, very muscular chest. My boss was cut. Like, very cut.
"Excuse me!" he said. He seemed like he was going to reach for the small towel that slung low on his hips and use it to cover his chest then realized that that probably would be worse.
"Hey, you can stand half naked in front of me anytime!" I joked. Mace blinked at me. A few droplets of water clung to his skin. I wanted to lick them. "I just was looking for a shower."
"Guest showers are on the other wing. I thought Remy told you."
"He just pointed in the general direction of the house," I replied. I was still standing directly in front of him. The polite thing to do would have been to move back, but I didn't. He smelled really good. I wondered what product he used. I needed it. I wanted to smear it in my pillow and drift off to sleep with it.
Mace cleared his throat. "I would give you a map, but I'm not sure that would help, seeing as how you got lost in my office with one."
"I can just shower here," I told him. He looked down at me. Really I wanted to steal his body gel or aftershave or whatever that scent was. I started grinning like an idiot when I walked past a guy who smelled really good. Mace smelled so amazing that I just wanted to bury my face in his chest.
"You'll have more privacy in the guest wing," he said firmly. "Let me change, and I'll show you where it is."
When he reemerged from his bedroom, he was in a T-shirt and gray sweatpants that were slung low on his hips.
"I'm digging the hot casual look," I told him. He rolled his lips between his teeth. I could tell he was trying not to laugh.
The bathroom he led me to was nice; it was even nicer than the other one. This bathroom had an actual fainting couch in the little seating room before I went into the bathroom.
"The architect we hired to renovate the house wanted to make it as historical as possible. She said having a proper dressing room before going into the bathroom would have been desired."
"I bet they didn't use it for dressing," I told him. "They probably enjoyed a little morning action then went to wash off. It's super convenient because there's no walk of shame to the bathroom."
Mace did laugh at that. It rolled low and deep around the luxurious room.
"You are really something," he said.
"You haven't seen anything yet!" I quipped. "Now, I'm sure you secretly want to watch me shower, but I warn you, I'm going to be in there a while, so you might want to grab a book. I have about a week's worth of tiny house living to wash off."
"Wait you haven't been bathing?" he asked, laughter still around the edges of his voice.
"Sponge baths, man," I told him, setting down my bag on the vanity counter. He didn't follow me through the doorway though I left it open. Was I hoping he would follow me in?
"Is that why you still smelled like smoke?" he called after me.
I turned to look at him. "That microwave was defective." His mouth quirked. "It totally wasn't my fault!" I said, and he laughed as he left the bathroom.
The shower was just as good as I thought it would be, even if there was no Mace in it.
I'd like a little Mace in me.
Wait, no, I wouldn't. Oh, who was I kidding? Of course I did! He was tall and good-looking. I wasn't trying to marry the guy or tie him down. I just wanted him in my candy jar, just once. Just a taste. I liked to sample things. Mace was like a perfectly handcrafted chocolate truffle, the kind festooned with little gold flakes. It was a totally indulgent, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—an experience to have once and remember fondly on your death bed.
Hair washed and wrapped up in a T-shirt, a trick I'd learned on a forum for people with unmanageably curly hair, I skipped out of the bathroom, turned right, and opened the door to another set of servants' stairs Mace had said would take me out to the backyard.
Except there wasn't a staircase there; it was another bedroom.
Let's try door number two. It was a small library.
"It's cozy, and I would say that I would come back here and read, but let's be honest—I'm never going to find it again."
After I ran around and tried every door, I finally found the stairwell.
Finally.
Except it didn't take me to the backyard. I found myself in a kitchen—the most glorious kitchen I'd ever seen.
"It's so beautiful," I half sobbed and sank down on the floor. There was a huge island, and I mean gigantic. The glossy bright-yellow stove had eight burners. The opposite wall contained a bank of four ovens nestled among cabinetry with white uppers and dark bottom cabinets. It was the kitchen of my dreams. There was even a cozy glass-enclosed nook that would be perfect to grow little pots of herbs. The floor was a white terrazzo, and the whole space gleamed.
The three blond men sitting at the island looked over at me.
"Josie?" Mace said.
"Don't mind me," I told him. "I'm just over here having a religious experience. This is a really nice kitchen. Also," I admitted, "I'm lost."
Mace grunted.
"Did I mention how freaking sexy your kitchen is? Like seriously," I said, unable to stop the word vomit.
"Your tiny house is through that door," he said, pointing.
"Right, well, have a good evening. Thanks for letting me squat on your property," I said with a wave. Mace and his brothers watched me head out the door. I thought I saw light and a bit of green up ahead. That must lead outside. But no, it was some sort of conservatory that contained a few lone plants.
"They need to up their plant game," I said, walking around. I turned around to go back the way I came in. There was more than one door in the conservatory, and I picked one at random.
Mace and his brothers stared at me when I opened it.
"This house is ridiculous!"
24
Mace
Josie got lost again the next morning.
"This house is not intuitive at all," she said as I guided her to the bathroom.
I wondered if she would not-so-subtly invite me to join her. I was ninety percent sure that that was what she was doing last night. A part of me wanted to throw caution to the wind and take her up on her offer, but then, she liked to tease. What if she didn't mean it? Would she have been upset if I actually watched her take a shower? I wondered what she looked like standing under the water, her back arched into the spray.
"Did you hear me?" I felt her grab my bicep. Her hand was warm through my long-sleeved workout shirt. "I asked if you wanted me to find a daycare option for Henry, or a nanny?"
I shook my head. "Can you look after him? There are some… complications with his situation."
I had to be in the office early, so I left Josie to find her own way. There was a meeting scheduled with Tara and the biomedical engineers and Owen Frost, Jack's brother. He was a wiz at computing and had made billions from cryptocurrency though that was just something he had done for fun.
His day job was being the CEO of a data-analytics and cryptology company. Owen's company was a key partner in my gene therapy product. The whole procedure hinged on quickly, economically, and accurately decoding the genome of a cancer cell and the host patient's own cells then parsing it against other data. Both of our companies' values would skyrocket if this procedure was successfully mainstreamed—or would crash and burn if it wasn't.
"Thanks for making the trip," I said, greeting Owen.
"We cannot afford to have anything go wrong with this gene therapy rollout," he said, shaking my hand. He had the same platinum-white hair and ice-blue eyes as his younger brother, Jac
k.
Henry was weaving between my legs.
"You coming to the meeting, little man?" Owen asked Henry.
"I like dinosaurs," my little brother said.
I made a helpless gesture. "He's clearly CEO material."
"I'll say! Kicked out of daycare, disrupting meetings—if I didn't know any better, I'd say your company cloned Archer," Owen said with a laugh.
Tara was already in the meeting room with the marketing consultant team. Parker, my brother and chief biomedical researcher, was there too. No one looked that happy except for Tara.
"I want—"
"Hush, Henry," I hissed at him. "Josie will be here for you soon."
Tara pursed her lips but then smiled widely when she saw I was watching.
"We needed to have this meeting," Parker began, "because we cannot have the marketing team making promises about the product and treatment that are unrealistic. I've told Adrian about this."
Adrian shrank down in his seat.
"You have Adrian running this project?" Owen turned to me, glaring.
"He's just my eyes and ears," I assured Owen. "I'm completely in charge."
"He's not," Parker muttered. I kicked my brother under the table.
"Do you all understand the product?" Owen asked, leaning forward over the table. He was a big man and cut an imposing figure.
"Of course we do," Tara assured him. Parker snorted derisively. "I told them I could handle it without wasting your time," Tara said to me.
I stopped her. "It's not a waste of my time. This product could make our company billions of dollars or completely ruin our reputation if it goes south. It is critical that this therapy launch correctly."
Tara nodded.
"People need to understand that we don't have a cure, per say," Parker insisted. "It's a personalized treatment plan based off the genome of your specific type of cancer. It has a very narrow focus."
"But it has the potential to help a lot of people," I interjected.
"Also keep in mind that you're going to be presenting to medical- and science-minded people," Owen added. "You need to have some information about the algorithms."
Tara looked annoyed. "I've been doing marketing for a while now. I think I can handle this."
The door slid open, and Josie crept in. I nodded to her, and she reached for Henry. He wrapped himself around the table leg. Josie shimmied under the table to try and pull him out.
Parker looked to me. I could feel Josie crawling around under my legs.
"Sorry," I said. "I'm listening. Henry is just being a pill."
He nodded. "There's a whole education process about what this type of therapy is and what it isn't. I don't think this marketing presentation has enough nuance."
Josie had managed to unwrap Henry from the leg of the conference table. I knew this because he had started to crawl up my legs.
"Just give me one second," I said as Tara began flipping through the slide deck.
Henry was clambering on me, and I felt one of Josie's hands grab for him. She missed, and her palm landed on my inner thigh. I looked down into Josie's red face that was dangerously close to my crotch.
I froze. Josie grabbed for Henry, but he scampered up to wrap his arms around my neck. I scooted my chair back.
"Ow!" Josie yelled. Everyone watched us.
"My earring is stuck," she said in a muffled voice.
"Stuck where?" Tara's voice was icy.
Henry climbed off me and waited patiently by the door as if he hadn't just caused all this commotion.
"She's stuck on his button," Parker said, looking over at me then down. "It's exactly the button you're thinking of."
Tara hurried over. "Honestly, Josie," she hissed and reached for my crotch.
"It's fine!" I declared, pushing Tara away. "We'll just go to the bathroom."
I bit my lip as Josie fumbled around my crotch, trying to undo her earring. Parker's lips were pressed together, and Owen was struggling not to laugh.
"Willow, help!" Josie called. I tried to ignore how hot her breath was as her friend came over.
"Willow, Mace, Mace, Willow," Josie introduced us. I needed her to stop moving her mouth against my junk.
"We've met," Willow said. "You passed out drunk in his car, and I couldn't get you out."
"I did that?"
Willow deftly unclipped Josie's earring, and she was free.
"Whew!" she said, sitting up and immediately banging her head on the underside of the conference table. "Ow!"
"Why don't you go put some ice on that?" Tara said. She and Josie exchanged some sort of look.
Josie blinked up at me. "Do you need some ice?"
Parker barked out a laugh.
"No, thank you," I said firmly. Tara looked scandalized.
The rest of the meeting didn't go much better. Aside from the brief amusement Parker had from my predicament with Josie, for the rest of the meeting, he was mad about everything. Owen didn't seem all that pleased either.
"Please keep me informed on everything. I've allocated a lot of money and resources to this project," he said when the meeting was finally over that afternoon.
"It doesn't make any sense," Parker complained. "You see that, right, Owen? Also the graphics and everything are just plain ugly. You need to fire that marketing team."
"Tara recommended them," I said. "And they've done other really nice campaigns. Now that the team has more information about the gene therapy procedure, the next draft will be better. We'll regroup in a few days."
When I returned to my office, I looked through the notes and the presentation. Was it really that bad? I didn't have the best eye for marketing.
Josie came in from her office and looked over my shoulder. I could feel the puffs of breath on my neck. I remembered how hot her breath had felt against my crotch.
Do not go down that road…
"It sounded like there were some structural problems with this marketing campaign," she said diplomatically.
"They have some time. Hopefully this meeting helped Tara's team get on track," I said, rubbing the bridge of my nose.
"I could look at it if you want," she offered.
"Don't worry about it," I said. "I know you have a lot to deal with since I dumped Henry on you plus your other work."
"Of course," she said, straightening up. She seemed colder and more professional somehow. Gone was the funny girl who got lost in my house.
Did I say something? Was she upset by the incident this morning? We could not afford a sexual harassment lawsuit.
I cleared my throat. "I just want to apologize for this morning—"
"Don't worry about it," she said. "I'm disaster-prone." She smiled, but it wasn't quite as warm as usual. Maybe I was imagining things?
Henry also wasn't as well-behaved as he was yesterday.
"I don't think he likes being cooped up inside," Josie said when I complained to her about it. "Yesterday we did a lot of walking at the hydroelectric plant, and there were things for him to see. In addition, we had a nice long lunch. He had your attention for several hours when you weren't on your phone or staring at a computer screen."
I glared at her. "Look, I know this isn't ideal, but I don't need you to throw my shortcomings in my face."
"You asked," she retorted. "You can't complain about the weather when you're the one making it rain vegan nut bread. I know you think I'm the dumb girl who just hands out coffee, but even I can read a basic psychology book and see what's going on here."
"I never called you dumb," I snapped at her.
"Never mind," she said, picking up her computer and her coat. "I have some work to finish. I'm going to an empty conference room."
"What is wrong with her, Henry?" I murmured to my brother after Josie left. He didn't acknowledge me. He was running around from the back window to me to the piece of plywood covering the broken window on which he would scrawl with the large black sharpie he was carrying.
"Why isn't this fixed?"
I asked aloud after Henry made a particularly squeaky black line across the plywood.
"I don't know. Why don't you ask someone whose job it is?" Garrett said, pulling the door open. Henry ran to him. Garrett plucked the sharpie out of his hand before Henry could scribble all over his pants. "I'm leaving," he announced. "Archer wants me to look at some property. We're going to grab food before. Coming?"
"I have that land-use meeting. Hunter wants me to go, but I have to take Henry home first. I'll walk down with you," I told him, closing my laptop. It took a moment to wrangle Henry, and Garrett looked on impatiently.
"We really need a new plan for his day," I remarked. I wondered if Hunter or Garrett had done anything about Payslee, Henry's mother, yet. I didn't want her to snatch Henry. But having Henry stuck in my office all day wasn't a great solution either.
When I walked out to my car, Henry trotting beside me, I heard loud clanks and a woman cursing. When we approached the next parking bay, Josie was bent over her rusted-out truck, the hood propped open.
"What on earth?"
She stood up when she heard me and blew a tendril of her hair out of her face.
"It won't start!" she exclaimed.
"Mace can fix it," Henry said.
"No, I can't."
"I thought you were an engineer," Josie said, hands on her hips.
"I'm a chemical engineer. Liam's the car guy. He and Jack used to build engines from scratch in college. Speaking of which—Jack is calling me over video chat," I said, pulling out my phone.
"Can we talk about the land-use meeting tonight?" Jack Frost asked when I answered. "I heard it didn't go that well with Meghan last time. We should have a strategy. If we're going to put this factory out in Harrogate, this process can't drag out for years."
"I agree. I'm going to bring Hunter in on this call," Liam said. I ran a hand through my hair in agitation. They sounded like they were settling in for a long conversation.
"I have to take Henry home. I can't get another ticket for driving while on the phone. Hold on," I told them. I looked at Garrett.