by Alice Ward
I knew that in order to leave, I had to pass Caleb to get to the main entrance, and that was just absolutely not an option. I had finally gotten the opportunity of a lifetime, and I may have thrown it all away for a few minutes of sex. I needed time and space to figure out how to proceed. But I didn’t have it, had to figure out my next step without the luxury of planning time.
Straightening my back as I stepped out of the locker room, hoping to bypass a confrontation, I bit back a cry of frustration, and my fingers clenched the bag I carried. Just when I was sure that I would have to face him, I noticed the glowing red exit sign over the door at the side of the building.
Without a second thought, I walked out the door and into the cold February air, pulling the hood of my sweatshirt over my head. But even as I rushed toward the bus stop, I could still smell him on me. The throbbing of my lower half would not let me forget that his fingers had been there not minutes before.
When I walked in the door at home, I was confronted in the living room by my friend, Grace, who was watching Colby play a whichever Fallout game he’d gotten for Christmas. I suspected that Colby had a crush on Grace, and at the moment he was trying to impress her with his survival skills.
She looked up when I entered, doing a double take at my appearance, which I knew didn’t look much out of the ordinary after a workout. I’d checked in the mirror before leaving the gym. That meant that the encounter with Caleb was written all over my face. Or body.
I held back a grimace and said with a tight smile, “I’ve got to shower. What a workout today. Be back in a few.”
Colby yelled out an agreement, obviously happy to keep Grace occupied longer, and I hightailed it to the bathroom.
I scrubbed vigorously in the shower, washing off the gym’s grime like I did after every workout. Except today’s workout was fundamentally different from any other I’d ever had at the gym. Or anywhere.
Try as I might to put the encounter out of my mind, my brain kept flickering back to the events that had just unfolded. Caleb peeling my underwear down my legs. Caleb thrusting himself inside me. The way we moved together in sync, as if it had been pre-orchestrated. Amazing. Much more than I’d ever looked for in a purely sexual situation.
It was the stupidest thing I could have done. The best-case scenario was that Caleb would act like nothing happened, but I knew how incredibly unrealistic that was. He was either going to fire me outright for unprofessional conduct or assume that I was some kind of whore who slept her way to the top. Because in this situation, women were whores and men studs, right?
What happened between us was entirely my fault. I shouldn’t have gotten into that ring. What kind of fighter got into a ring with her sponsor, hoping to punch him out? I gripped the sides of my head.
“Hey, are you almost done in there? I gotta go!” I growled in aggravation as Honey banged on the door.
“I’ll be out in a few minutes!” I called back. Living with four siblings, there was no such thing as a long shower, even if the water heater held out.
“You’ve been in there for half an hour, and I gotta go!” Honey had recently learned to tell time and took every opportunity to announce how long an event was taking. But when Honey had to go, she really had to go. My sister had more energy than all of us in the house put together and went headlong until Mother Nature came to call.
“Fine! Just give me a minute.” I shut off the water and stepped out of the tub, grumbling the entire time. Wrapping myself in a towel, I opened the door, and she rushed past me, hopping up and down on her toes.
She perched on the toilet and let loose before I could give her any privacy, but she didn’t care about that and launched into conversation. “Did you see a spider?” Wide hazel eyes just like mine surveyed the black and white tiled floor.
“A spider?” I looked for the offending arachnid too. “Was there a spider in here?”
“Your eyes are so big, I thought maybe you saw a real huuuge one.”
“My eyes… Oh, no. I didn’t see a spider.”
“Her eyes are pretty big, Honey.” Grace stood in the hall, her head cocked, looking in on the scene with interest.
Dammit. I’d never be able to hide my secret from Grace now.
Without explaining, I headed to my room. Clementine was at an art design after school class, so I had it to myself for a precious amount of time.
Grace followed and shut us in, folding her arms over her chest and leaning against the door. “What’s going on?”
“Going on?” I parroted, my brain scrambling for reasons I could give Grace for being out of sorts. But I didn’t want to lie.
I found the comfiest pajamas I had and slid into them, feeling like it was a good day for early pajama donage. My mind immediately wandered to wondering what kind of pajamas Caleb slept in, or whether he slept in anything at all. I sighed and sat on the side of the bed.
“Well, something is.” Grace pushed off the door. “You come in all flush-faced, avoiding us all, scurry to the shower…” She pressed a finger to the small dent in her chin. “I’d almost think you had really satisfying sex, if I didn’t know you better.”
“Sex?” I squeaked and shut my eyes when Grace lit up and grinned.
“You did! You had amazing sex! It’s all over your face.” Her footsteps came closer. “And is that beard burn?”
I groaned and lightly pushed her away, flopping on my back on the bed. The room practically spun with my thoughts, all twisted up. “Okay. Okay. I did. But it was more than amazing, it was… razzle-dazzle.”
“You had razzle-dazzle sex? Is that the kinky kind?”
I pulled a pillow over my eyes. “Oh my god, Grace, no! And I’m never doing it again.”
“What?” She tried to pull the pillow away, and I fought to keep it in place. “Why would you want to do that?”
I sat up, hugging the pillow to my chest. “I can’t. I just can’t. I may have ruined everything.”
“How? You did it with your trainer?”
“Andre? No!”
Her eyes went huge, and if I wasn’t mistaken, her face paled a bit. “Oh my god! You did it with the billionaire!”
I groaned and fell back on the bed, going limp with surrender. “I did,” I whispered, unable to keep the awe out.
“He didn’t, like, pressure you or anything, right?”
I gave her a look. “Who could ever pressure me into anything?”
“Good point, but you can’t blame me for wanting to make sure my best friend is safe.” But she wasn’t content to let the conversation end there. “So, is there a reason why you’re reacting like you just had a bad encounter?”
I lifted my head off the bed and gave her a duh look. “Because I jeopardized everything by getting a lil’ somethin’ from the guy with the deep pockets. This is my chance. And I prioritized getting laid over my big break.” I covered my eyes with my hand, my stomach churning.
“Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, this Caleb is a bigger man than that and that he wouldn’t let your razzle-dazzle affect your working agreement?”
I uncovered my eyes, hope spearing into me. “Do you think so? I guess that’s possible.”
“If you’d lower those walls of yours maybe you could see over them. So, do share. Is he hung?”
I let out a squeak then smashed a pillow over my own face, muffling my response. “You have no idea.”
“Really?” Grace sat on the bed next to me. “How hung?”
“I’ve never in my life…”
“You gonna tell me, or are we going to play twenty questions?”
I elbowed her, laughing as I came up for air. “You’re bad, you know that? It’s like he’s some sort of magnet, constantly pulling at me with this crazy irresistible force. I can’t seem to make it stop.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t make it stop. But you should definitely tell me more details.”
“I’m sure Caleb wouldn’t appreciate my telling everyone what his kisses—”
I flew off the bed. “Honey! It’s not nice to eavesdrop”
Honey looked up at the ceiling. “What’s dropping? Eve? Oh! Like Adam and Eve?” She began strutting, chanting, “Cherry and Caleb, like Adam and Eve.” At the “Eve,” her feet hit the floor hard in punctuation.
I flew off the bed. “Shush!”
She giggled as my brother, Sage, hit the top step out in the hall, bellowing, “Cherry has a crush on her boss?”
My face heated. “He’s not my boss. And I don’t have a crush on him.”
Sage stopped in the doorway, his dark brown wavy hair mussed from a day of work at the hardware store, rubbing his chin like he was thinking particularly hard about my predicament. But the sly upturn of the corner of his mouth told me that he wasn’t taking Honey’s proclamation as fiction.
“You’re fidgeting, and your face is red.” He turned to Honey, who we all knew was like a town crier. “Honey, I think our big sister is in love.”
Honey squealed at a pitch so high I was surprised it didn’t shatter the glass sconces on the ceiling fan over our heads and planted her hands on her cheeks. “Are you getting married?”
Horrified, I went to the door, making a herding motion. “I don’t get crushes. I’m not in love. And I’m definitely not getting married.” I pursed my lips as if I was insulted at the very suggestion.
Sage tapped his head. “Correction, you’ve never had a crush before. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have one now. And in the end, there’s a first time for everything, isn’t there? And sometimes it ends in marriage.” His eyes sparkled, telling me I was giving him the best entertainment he’d had all day. Probably all week.
“Not this time.”
His eyes widened, and I realized I’d given myself away. He had what he’d wanted. “Fine, whatever you say. But would it be so bad to have a crush on him?”
“Yes!” I answered instantly. “Now out! All of you. Training takes a lot of energy, and I need my rest.”
“Uh-huh. What about dinner? Trainers eat, don’t they? Mama left you dinner.”
At the mention of food, my stomach rumbled. “Yeah, I’ll be down.”
They all filed out, Sage asking Grace if she was staying for dinner — now, there was a crush. She declined but sent me a this conversation isn’t through look before she went down the steps.
Shutting myself in, I groaned and let my head fall against the door. “I just have no idea what I’m going to do now,” I whispered to the empty room.
I closed my eyes, and a sudden memory overtook me. It was me and my dad, out in the orchard digging a hole for a new cherry tree to expand the wide variety of trees we had already. I’d been about Clementine’s age and couldn’t make more than a teaspoonful of dirt move with the tip of my shovel and had thrown it down in frustration.
“I can’t do it, Daddy.”
Daddy stopped fingering the root ball of the new tree and looked me over with his piercing green eyes that never missed a thing. “Sure you can. Maybe you’re a little on the light side just yet, but you can wrangle that shovel into submission, girl.”
“It won’t submit.” I shook my head, tears pricking, wanting to be as good a farmer as my dad. “It’s too hard.”
“Hey now. Bowers have never had it easy, but we always come through on the other side.”
As I sniffled all over the shovel, he pulled the story from me about how the girls at school were making fun of me because I liked to use the punching bag in the school gym.
He listened, then picked up the offending shovel. “The important thing is that you hold your head high and march in there tomorrow like absolutely nothing happened. Don’t let them decide what possibilities you have. Be proud of your interests, and they’ll back off, then this will be a blip in your autobiography.”
“What’s an autobiography?”
He laughed. “The story of your life. Now we’re going to teach this shovel to submit. Submit, Mr. Shovel!”
I’d giggled as he showed me how to put all my weight on it to get more dirt.
I opened my eyes, and those precious memories faded away, a sense of calmness replacing them. Returning to my bed, I sighed heavily, feeling just a bit less lost.
We Bowers have never had it easy, but we always come through on the other side.
While it was true that we were still struggling after my father’s death years ago, the one thing we had was a whole unit that we could trust with anything. Well, except Honey, unless you wanted your business broadcast on the six o’clock news. I knew people who didn’t even have one soul in their lives like that, so I really was lucky.
Tucking myself under the covers for a nap, I fervently hoped that luck could spill over onto the dream job that I had possibly just torpedoed.
Fingers crossed.
CHAPTER TEN
Caleb
I stared out the window of my penthouse at the mid-February morning light barely tinting the horizon, but the view did nothing to quell the whirring in my mind.
I had never been one to overthink other people’s reactions, but yesterday’s encounter with Cherry had kept my brain spinning all night. Thinking about her mouth under mine, the way the room lit up with sparks when our eyes clashed. The way she’d slipped out the door while I was still in the afterglow.
While I was no stranger to someone making a hasty exit after the euphoria of sex wore off — usually me — her retreat had been so hasty that I’d begun to wonder if I had crossed some sort of line.
What we did wasn’t professional by any stretch of the word. Hell, I’d fucked her on a mat where people had sweated throughout the day. What kind of bastard was I?
Then again, we’d just erupted into a hot blaze. I hadn’t seen it coming. Didn’t regret it for one moment. Every moment inside of her had been rapture, and… I had never felt so complete with another human.
Which was bizarre, to say the least. While I respected every woman that I bedded, I didn’t consider myself a romantic. Sex was a fun activity for two or more people, and that was it.
But it wasn’t that way with Cherry. Not only was she breathtakingly beautiful, when she’d been bare and writhing against that gym mat, everything had seemed to have so much meaning. The sounds she made. The way she tensed around me. The experience had been perfect. So, when she’d practically run from me, I’d been astounded. I began to doubt if the experience was as good for her.
I knew I hadn’t inadvertently pressured her. I’d asked her multiple times, and she’d given enthusiastic consent, even begging me not to stop.
If this was any other woman, I would have dismissed it, chalked it up to playing games. But Cherry didn’t seem like one for games, so I just ended up turning the situation over and over again in my head.
But that was getting me nowhere. My eyes wandered down to the street, and I watched a man wearing camo and a battered coat pushing a cart piled high with miscellaneous items. I needed to talk to Neddie.
With a purpose other than running each individual breath of Cherry’s over in my mind, I showered and shaved, and stopped at Please & Thank You for an extra-large coffee.
Neddie was already at his post, guarding the lane in front of the truck entrance from anyone who might deign to park there. He spoke to everyone who passed, and it seemed like he actually knew them. When he saw me, the smile he’d been sporting faded. “Morning, Mr. Birchmeir. I know why you’re here. I’ve enjoyed working this job, but now’s as good a time for an old feller like me to retire. So you don’t have to feel bad about firing me—”
“Firing you?”
“Yeah, I mean…” Neddie’s brows knitted together, “that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“No, Neddie, I’m not f
iring you. I want to know more about Wayne and Rosemary, her husband and the little girl’s situation. I offered to put them in a hotel yesterday, and they wouldn’t accept.”
“You did that?” Neddie’s voice rose to a higher octave, and his eyes blinked rapidly. “They didn’t tell me that. Or Kyle didn’t anyway. Proud bastard.”
“The point is, Neddie, that those people can’t live underground. Now, I don’t care what part you had in it, and I’m sure you were just trying to help. But if they won’t accept my offer then I know there’s a couple of shelters where they could go.”
But Neddie was already shaking his head before I could finish the sentence. “Damn shelters are full to bustin’, and only safe if you can sleep with one eye open. When the city shut down Good Samaritan Shelter, it left almost twenty families on the street. Place had separate bedrooms for each family so they could have some semblance of normal.”
“So I’m told. What happened to make them close?” My stomach churned, knowing there were even that many homeless families in the city.
Neddie spotted a potential parker in his protective lane and yelled, “Hey!” and the car sped up.
“I’ll let you get back to work. Let me know if you hear anything. I’ll make some calls, and you see if you can convince them to let me put them in a hotel for now.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Birchmeir. Mighty fine man you are.”
On the top floor, I sat at my desk, staring dolefully at my computer but not reading any of the reports in front of me. Normally, concentrating wasn’t an issue for me, but nothing seemed normal lately.
Even with the distraction of work, the screen blurred into Cherry straddling me, raising up and—
“Caleb!” I jumped when Hunter practically shouted my name, rushing in, holding his tablet up. “You have to see this!”
A pounding headache began right then, joining the sensation of my skull full of cotton.
I grimaced. “Good morning. What’s got you moving so fast this morning?” Hunter was notorious for his late nights, sliding in later than the rest of us.