by Tina Michele
Bree stared out the window and recalled how the woman had stared at her with an intense gaze from across the room—and how her heart had pounded in her chest. Bree’s head had swirled as she prayed for something intelligent to say when she opened her mouth. Their eyes were locked in those moments, and Bree could see a heated passion that burned within them. It made her insides twist with excitement. She had felt a brief pang of disappointment when the guard drew her attention away from the approaching woman. Of course that was until the woman unleashed her barbarity. Bree was caught in an unfamiliar place between searing attraction and blind hatred. The idea of being attracted to such a jackass made her even angrier at the situation. How could she be so aroused by such a person? She detested herself and her inability to control her own hormones.
As Bree and Jim drove home, her thoughts jumped back and forth between the feelings of lust and disgust. The more she allowed herself to think about it, the thinner the line between them became. If Marion were with her she never would have had to experience any of it, not the fluctuating emotions or the embarrassing confrontation. But then again, if Marion were with her she would’ve been home, not in North Carolina.
Chapter Six
Carson finished for the day and packed up her tools and equipment. She had focused on her work for the entire afternoon, and it did wonders for her frustration. What it didn’t do was erase the image of a very alluring and feisty woman from her mind. Carson had shocked herself with the way she antagonized the guest on purpose. She was also surprised by how the other woman’s emotions affected her. Once Carson discovered how to exploit those passions, she fed off them, and it aroused every part of her. She struggled to find a rational explanation for her actions because she considered herself far from antagonistic. She had always been proud of her avoidance of confrontation. Carson decided the most logical explanation for her actions was the hangover that raged through her and strangled her common sense.
Carson knew the chance was slim, but she decided she would call security the next morning to see if they’d collected the woman’s name. The estate didn’t make a habit of collecting offender names for such minor violations, but she had threatened Carson with punishment for her inappropriate actions, so there was a slight chance. While she cringed at the idea of her boss receiving word of the issue, she secretly hoped it had been reported. The thought of being punished by the woman who held her mind captive became more of a reward than a penalty.
“You’re never gonna learn, are you?” Carson reprimanded herself for letting her appreciation for women cause such drama. Her stomach growled for food, and she dialed Jim’s number on the way out to her truck. She figured his niece would be settled in by now, and a family dinner sounded like a fantastic idea after such a strange day.
“Hello?”
“Hey. How are your fingers doing?” Carson asked.
“Oh. Yeah. They’re good. Fine.” Jim was scattered in his response.
“Okay then. So, would you and Bree be interested in dinner tonight? If she’s settled, of course.” Carson’s question went unanswered for several long seconds. “Jim? Hello?”
“Yeah. I’m here. You know, um…I don’t know. I’ll have to see if she’s up for it.”
“Um…okay.” Carson felt that something wasn’t right with him. He acted evasive, and that wasn’t a trait of his, not with her. “I’m on my way home to change and such. Call me back after you talk to her.”
“Okay. Yeah. I will,” Jim said and hung up.
Something wasn’t right, but Carson would wait for him to call her back. Any other time she would have blown up his phone with calls and texts. Once or twice in the past, she’d driven over to his house and made him talk to her. She didn’t feel that this was a situation that called for such extreme measures. Carson assumed that having his niece back had his full attention, so she headed home. She’d just wait for him to call back when he got the chance.
*
Jim hung up the phone without saying good-bye, and Bree recognized the oddity. “Who was that?” she asked.
“Huh? Oh, that? Carson.”
“Oh, really? You should’ve asked if she was busy. We could go to dinner. I can’t wait to meet her and talk to her about any job openings. Have you heard of any?”
Jim fidgeted in the driver’s seat. “Oh, right. I should have. No. I haven’t heard anything. I know Carson just got assigned the lead on the third-floor project, so she’ll be looking to fill a couple of positions soon.”
“That sounds great.” Bree was confident she had more than what it would take to do the job. She was encouraged by the news. She would work at the Biltmore, of that she was certain.
Bree looked over at her uncle, who clenched his phone between the steering wheel and the palm of his hand. His eyes were focused on the road ahead, but she wasn’t sure he saw anything in front of him. She waved her hand in front of his face until he blinked. “Uh. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sweetheart. Okay, not exactly.”
“Okay. I’m officially freaked out. What is wrong with you?” Bree was sick to her stomach. Her uncle was never so distracted. Bree’s face drained of color as he looked over at her.
“It’s not anything bad. Well, I’m not dying or anything like that.”
“Well, that’s…comforting.” Bree was relieved when they pulled safely into their driveway and parked. It might not have been life threatening, but it had him so preoccupied she was sure the discussion should be had while at a complete stop. “Now tell me, what’s going on?”
He turned in his seat and faced her. “Okay. Here’s the thing. Today. What happened in the Damask Room—”
“Yeah. How could I forget?” Bree had thought of little else beyond the woman and her yelling. The feelings of disgust and lust resumed the battle in her stomach.
“Right. Well, the thing is, the woman. The one that ‘yelled’ at you—”
He was stalling, and it frustrated Bree. “Just tell me already, dammit.”
“It was Carson. The woman was Carson.”
Bree was stunned into silence. So many things ran through her head. She couldn’t believe that Carson was both the gorgeous woman on the staircase with the crystal blue eyes that turned her insides to mush, and the horrible woman who verbally accosted her in front of an entire room of people. Bree sat in her seat for several moments as she tried to find her words. Her mind flashed between the sexy smile and the vicious mouth, both of which had induced very different physical responses earlier in the day. Bree inhaled deeply. “Okay. Let me get this straight. The woman, the one that condemned me for touching the chair is…Carson. Your Carson.”
“Yes.”
Bree’s ears started to burn. “Carson. Your best friend? Oh my God, and my potential supervisor.” Bree put her hand over her mouth and stared out the windshield of the truck.
“Bree, she’s a good person. There has to be a reason for why she did that. That’s not like her.”
Bree looked over at him. “Wait, so when I told you it was Ms. Harper, you knew it was Carson, and you didn’t tell me? You told me you didn’t even know a Ms. Harper.”
“Right. For this reason. I wanted the two of you to meet under different circumstances. I wanted you to be friends, and when you told me what happened I needed to figure out how to make it right. Needless to say, I didn’t think of anything. Then Carson called and said she wanted to go to dinner and meet you. There isn’t any way for me to avoid telling either of you.”
“Carson doesn’t know it was me?”
“No. I haven’t told her yet.” Jim rubbed his palms up and down the tops of his thighs.
“Did she tell you what happened?” Bree was curious to know what she had told her uncle without knowing who she was. Had she insulted her? Or maybe even complimented her in some way?
“No. She just said…she called you…never mind. It’s not important.” Jim tried to retract his statement.
“Oh, oh, no way. What did she call me?” Bre
e demanded.
“She might have called you a menace,” Uncle Jim said as he shrank back from the impending explosion.
“Uh-huh, a menace. Really?” Bree’s blood began to boil.
“And gorgeous,” Jim offered.
“Gorg—What? She called me gorgeous?”
“‘A terribly gorgeous rule-breaking menace.’ But she said ‘gorgeous’ first.” Jim smiled in consolation.
Bree had nothing more to say. She should be angry, but instead she was annoyed and flattered that Carson called her gorgeous. How was she supposed to work not with, but for, a hotheaded boss she found both infuriating and handsome in equal parts? There would be no way in the world anything good could come from such a situation. Bree felt lost. Things were turning into crap and she needed to regroup, and fast. “I’m gonna go in. Go to dinner with her. I have some things I need to take care of.” Bree didn’t wait for him to respond before she got out and headed up the hill to her house.
*
“Shit,” was all he could say as he watched Bree walk away. He fiddled with his cell phone before he dialed Carson’s number. He should’ve known that his two girls wouldn’t make things easy for him. Jim had hoped things would go a lot easier, and he now had less than twenty minutes to come up with something brilliant to get things back on track.
Jim waited at the table for Carson. He had just ordered a pitcher of beer when he saw her come in and waved her over. As she approached, she glanced around in search of the missing person.
“Jimbo. Where’s Bree?” She patted him on the shoulder before she sat across from him.
“She wasn’t feeling well,” Jim lied.
“Oh. Well, that sucks.” Carson expressed her true disappointment. “I hope she feels better soon. We should order her something and you can take it back for her.”
“Uh, sure.” Jim figured he wouldn’t drag it out. “Well, that was a lie.” He needed to tell Carson the truth, and he hoped it would work itself out naturally. He just needed to figure out where Carson stood after their encounter that morning. “In a way. We’ll get back to that. Tell me what happened this morning. You didn’t say much after you smashed my fingers to bits with the door.” Jim raised his hand and flexed his fingers to show that they still worked in spite of the injury.
“Um. Okay. Nothing really. Some woman touched a chair in the Damask Room, and instead of waiting for security, I pursued her. I was going to confront her about it. I feel kind of bad about it now. I don’t even know why I was so harsh with her. I kind of egged her on.”
Jim could see the sincerity on Carson’s face. He did know her very well, and just as he’d told Bree, it wasn’t like her.
“Oh, I see.” Jim hoped she would continue.
“Yeah. She had said it was an accident. I guess looking back at it, there were a lot of people, and she may have just been pushed forward and reached out to keep from falling. I do feel like a jerk. I’m going to call security in the morning to see if they got her name. I’d like to apologize for what happened.”
“So why do you think you did it? It isn’t like you.”
“I don’t know. I mean, I had a wicked hangover, I was running three hours late, and Becky was talking shit. But…Oh, man. I’d seen her on the stairs about fifteen minutes earlier, and I almost died. She was so beautiful. I saw her touch the chair so I followed her, but then…then I just stared at her. She was so angry, but it was gorgeous, and I couldn’t help it.”
Jim listened as Carson described Bree as gorgeous and beautiful. He puffed with pride. She was very beautiful to him, yet he had never heard someone else describe her with such ardor. He couldn’t help but think that the cause might not yet be lost. “So, what if I told you I know who she is?”
Carson sipped her beer and eyed him skeptically. “And how would you know who she is?”
“Well, funny story—” he began to say.
“Oh my God. It was Bree. That was your niece. Wasn’t it?” She set her beer on the table and crossed her arms.
“Yes. That was Bree and that’s why she isn’t here. I put two and two together this afternoon and told her on the way home after you called about dinner.”
“What the hell, Jim? Why didn’t you just tell me straight up?” she asked him, agitated by his method.
“Turns out I’m bad at revealing delicate information,” he said as he smiled and raised his shoulders in submission.
“So, what you’re telling me is that I not only yelled at my best friend’s gorgeous niece, I accused a well-educated conservator of violating the number one rule of preservation? And I goaded her on in front of a room full of people just to satisfy my own voracious attraction? Geez, she was no doubt kicking her own ass about it the whole time.” Carson covered her face with both hands. She was embarrassed for a variety of reasons.
“So, yeah. It seems that things may have gotten off to a rocky start,” Jim said before he sipped his beer.
“Do you think, genius? Shit.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
Chapter Seven
“Why couldn’t you be a painter? Or one of those glassblowing artists? There isn’t a piece in this room that weighs less than a ton.”
“Have you ever used a chisel on glass?” A short, fiery redhead motioned toward a workbench off to the side of the room. “Take a break then. We don’t have to move it all today.”
Kelli was Carson’s best girlfriend and a very talented sculptor. She worked in a variety of mediums, including bronze, wood, and marble. Carson had a decent amount of artistic ability, but Kelli far outreached even Carson’s wildest wish for talent. Kelli preferred to work in a very large scale, so it required both brute strength and industrial equipment to crate, move, and ship her pieces. Carson was the designated forklift operator in her spare time. She didn’t mind because it meant she could spend quality time with Kelli. Plus, Kelli’s studio was based out of the multi-use warehouse Carson owned and lived in, so it only made sense.
For the most part, quality time involved talks about Kelli’s love life disasters and conquests, which most often contained drama at its highest levels. Kelli wasn’t perfect, and anyone willing to deal with both her and her work would require incredible personal fortitude. They’d tried dating when they first met, but both of them realized early on they didn’t have what the other needed, beyond mind-blowing sex. It was something they’d succeeded with keeping between them for about a year after they had broken up. Carson guessed that it was both the first and last time she’d had a successful friends-with-benefits arrangement. She had tried with several of her ex-girlfriends, but just like Becky, it hadn’t worked out very well.
“So Becky went bat-shit crazy when you told her it was over, huh?” Kelli hollered over a large bronze casting of a semi-nude merman.
Carson admired the finely chiseled abs of the sea creature. “Not quite, but she was pissed. I should have expected it. I mean I did expect it. I don’t know why I thought she would be able to overcome her feelings and have it work.”
“I told you that, Car. She’s what? Ten years younger than you, and I’d bet that you’re her first real lesbian girlfriend. You know, outside of college crushes and curious straight chicks.” Kelli rubbed a polishing cloth over the scaled bronze tail. Carson knew Kelli hated not being present when the movers uncrated the piece for the new owners. Kelli liked to see the faces of her clients when they first laid eyes on their commission. She said it was better than being paid. Carson agreed, but only to an extent.
“Bah, not my girlfriend. I know. I guess I just hoped it would work for both of us, that’s all. I mean what’s so hard about it? Good sex, an occasional dinner out, a movie, and more good sex. I don’t understand the problem.”
“Maybe you’re too old for that. Maybe you’re ready to find that someone to settle down with. Time to grow up?” Kelli jumped back out of the way as the workers lowered the crate over the sculpture. “Hey. Watch it,” she yelled out.
Carson knew a
s well as anyone, including her regular work crew, that if they didn’t threaten to crate her in with the piece she would spend countless hours fussing over her creations. “Almost got you that time.” Carson laughed. “I am grown up, and that is exactly what I’m trying to avoid. I have just about everything I could want—great job, amazing friends, beautiful home, and the ability to pick up and go if and when I want to. It’s all I need.”
Kelli walked toward Carson. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound as lonely as you make it look.”
“It’s good—hey! I’m not lonely,” Carson screeched as she threw a shop towel at Kelli.
“No?” Kelli ran a soft, seductive finger up Carson’s arm.
“Stop that!” Carson jerked her arm away. “It’s creepy. And no, I’m not lonely. I have you.” Carson reached out for Kelli, who looked wounded.
“Oh no. It’s creeeepy!” Kelli’s voice was thick with sarcasm as she imitated Carson’s words.
Carson didn’t honestly think it was creepy. It was just that their relationship had changed over the years, and there was no longer any lingering sexual attraction between them. Carson adored her, and while she nurtured even Kelli’s most questionable endeavors, they weren’t compatible as a couple. There were a few times when she wished Kelli was her “one,” because of how easy things worked between them. The idea was short-lived and they accepted that they were meant to be nothing more than devoted friends. Carson had tried to maintain friendships with a handful of her ex-girlfriends, but it was Kelli who had made it for the long term. That was okay with Carson, since Kelli’s drama was about all she could handle in her life.
Kelli scrutinized the workers as they placed the lid on the crate and nailed it in place. When it was complete, she made several notations on the shipping documents on the clipboard she held. Carson was impressed. She was always certain that if Kelli put her mind to it, she would be a thriving artist. It seemed that once she’d gotten a taste of the success, her business took off. Every week, Carson moved more pieces than the week before. Considering that most of Kelli’s work was of monumental size as well as price, Carson was happy to see that things remained strong for Kelli. It also helped that she didn’t often turn down a commission, whether it be a headstone, a garden monument, or bronze portrait statue.