Better Homes and Hauntings

by Molly Harper

  His laissez-faire approach in dealing with Regina had emboldened her. Because he didn’t react when she pushed a little, she figured he wouldn’t do anything to stop her when she pushed a lot. He shouldn’t have agreed to the trade-off she’d suggested. He should have just made it a simple no-interest loan. But he hadn’t wanted to embarrass Regina. He’d wanted her to feel as if she was earning her money, giving her the sense of accomplishment he got from earning his. His mistake was assuming that she cared about that sort of thing.

  He heard the telltale click-clack of expensive designer heels long before the knock on his office door. But he made her wait until he was ready to get up from his desk and get this meeting started. He didn’t want her to have any sort of impression that she was an eagerly anticipated guest.

  “Deacon,” Regina purred. “It’s been too long.”

  “It’s been a few days,” Deacon countered, his tone cold and dismissive. He moved back around his desk and dropped into his chair. He didn’t bother offering her a seat. But undeterred by his rudeness, she followed him around the desk and balanced her ass against it.

  “Yes, and in all that time, you haven’t called me. It’s going to be very difficult to complete this project if you don’t communicate with me. I want you to be comfortable telling me anything. Any little thing. And just to start this new level of honesty on the right foot, I should tell you that I think your little gardener has designs on you.”

  Deacon resisted the urge to grin. For some reason, it made him inappropriately smug that Regina had noticed Nina having a reaction to him and vice versa. He wished he could find a way to let Nina know she’d made Regina jealous and insecure without looking like a total jerk. Nina deserved to know that she had that kind of power. “And what if she does?” he asked. “I don’t see how that would be any of your business.”

  “Deacon,” Regina wheedled. “There’s no reason for us to do this silly dance. We should make our relationship official. We make sense. We’re from the same social circles. Our backgrounds are similar. Our lifestyles fit each other.”

  “That would be awesome, if I were looking for a tennis partner. But I think relationships require a little bit more than that, Regina.”

  “Oh? Like what?”

  Deacon’s brain immediately went to Vodka Pursuit and blueberry waffles. He thought of their circle of friends and the clash and complement of personalities. He thought of shy smiles he had to work like hell to get and how they seemed so much sweeter, knowing that he’d earned them. Those insubstantial and yet completely necessary aspects of a life together.

  Regina scoffed. “Like love? Love is for children and poor people, Deacon. People like us know what makes for a successful marriage. Marriages that last, that establish successful careers and social standing.”

  “Would we be having children in this scenario, or would they be raised by their polo coaches?”

  “Children would be negotiable,” she said. “After a reasonable amount of time.”

  “Negotiable?”

  “I would need some sort of incentive, I think, to bring children into the agreement,” she said, hooking her leg over his and sliding into his lap. She fussed with the collar of his button-down, smoothing it over his chest.

  Deacon managed not to recoil, but he did enjoy saying, “I think you need to leave. Also, you’re fired. Consider your debt paid in full. I don’t want to have anything more to do with you.”

  Regina’s expression didn’t change, but he suspected that was because of Botox. She unbuttoned his top button. “You’re making a mistake. I would hate to leave this job on bad terms, Deacon. The press might get wind of the story. And who knows what sort of details they might print?” She leaned close, as if to kiss him, and he was grateful when she stopped short of touching his lips. “And then lawsuits are filed, pending deals go wobbly, and you might not be able to finish this project without me.”

  It was Regina’s turn to pull back when he flashed an almost feral grin at her. “Details like inappropriate conversations or unwanted sexual advances?”

  “I—I wouldn’t be able to control what ended up in the news,” she stammered, trying to maintain her calm, seductive tone.

  “Well, I think I probably could, considering I have videotaped you every time you’ve met with me in this office or my offices in Boston. Oh, including this conversation, which would probably reduce your credibility with pretty much everybody.”

  And just like that, Deacon parted his legs, letting her drop to the floor on her ass. She scrambled to her feet just in time to see an image of her fall playing on the large-panel screen on Deacon’s wall.

  “You videotaped me without my knowledge?” she shouted. “That’s illegal!”

  He shrugged. “Technically, I did it with your knowledge. It was on the fourth page of our employment contract, under ‘Confidentiality.’ It’s not my fault that you don’t read what you sign.”

  She snarled at him, possibly the least ladylike thing he’d ever seen her do.

  And he just smiled. He was going to have to show Nina this footage at some point. Much, much later, when they were on steadier terms and the sight of Regina in his lap wouldn’t make her nervous.

  Regina calmed her expression and straightened her dress. She snagged her briefcase from Deacon’s desk and turned on him. “Mr. Whitney, you will be hearing from my lawyers.”

  “I know your lawyers!” he called after her as she minced down the hallway in her high heels. “And they like me better than you!”

  NINA WAS GOING over a checklist with George, her grader, when Regina stormed outside. Cindy turned at the scrape of heels on the stone walkway. Jake and Dotty were also nearby, discussing Dotty’s lack of progress on her curse research. But unfortunately for Nina, she was the first person Regina laid eyes on.

  “Nice to see you dressed up for work,” she snarked as she passed.

  Nina glanced down at the stained work shirt, jeans, and muddied rubber boots she was wearing. OK, so it wasn’t her most elegant ensemble. But she’d spent most of her morning up to her knees in mulch. And her outfit was a hell of a lot more appropriate than Regina’s, which included spike heels that got stuck in the lawn every few steps. But somehow, Nina was left feeling dowdy and grubby.

  Well, screw a bunch of that.

  Nina pushed the clipboard into George’s hands and followed Regina across the lawn. “You know what? Screw you, Regina.”

  Regina’s eyes went wide with shock. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You have done nothing but condescend and sneer and prance around in those ridiculous little outfits. News flash, we don’t work for you. None of us. We’re partners in this, just as much as you are. So the next time you think about telling Cindy to fetch you a coffee or poke at some poor defenseless construction worker’s bicep like he’s a piece of meat on display, I want you to ask yourself, ‘How difficult will it be for me to remove Nina’s size-seven garden boot from my ass?’ The answer? Very difficult.”

  Regina drew up to her full height and said in her most dignified voice, “I will not stand here and be insulted like that.”

  “Well, it’s a hell of a lot easier than doing jumping jacks while I insult you. Now, run along.”

  Regina sneered at her but turned on her heel and walked away. She didn’t stop or look back until she made it to the dock.

  Deacon came out of the house just in time to hear Nina let loose an F-bomb-laden rant. She did George Carlin proud, using the F-word for all the parts of speech.

  “I know we’re not super-religious, but maybe we shouldn’t use the F-word quite so much. Those angry vibes can’t be good around the house,” Cindy said, wrapping her arm around Nina’s shoulders. Nina’s head shot up, and she glared at Cindy, who put up her hands in a defensive position. “I’m not saying no F-word, just, you know, less.”

  Dotty watched as Regina got her heel stuck in the planks of the dock, barely avoiding tripping headlong into the bay. Dotty bit her lip and shook
her head. “She is not having a good day.”

  She expected some response from Jake, but hearing nothing, she turned to see that he was far too busy practically dancing with glee. “The only thing better would be if Nina had suddenly demonstrated some heretofore unknown cage-fighting skills and roundhouse-kicked her to the face Chuck Norris–style.”

  “Not all gingers know karate, Jake,” Nina grumbled. “It’s a misconception spread by the antiginger media.”

  “Impossible. Chuck Norris invented the media,” Jake protested.

  “I want you to block him from Chucknorrisfacts.com right now,” Cindy told Deacon. “Or we will be hearing these all day.”

  “You do realize that I don’t control all of the Internet, right, Cindy?”

  “I think you can probably pull it off,” Cindy retorted, just as Jake quoted one of his favorite facts about Chuck Norris and steak.

  Deacon cringed. “Yeah, I’ll take care of it.”

  “Where is Nina going?” Dotty asked, watching as their favorite landscaper made considerable progress across the lawn, toward the beach on the opposite side of the island.

  “She probably just needs to blow off a little steam,” Jake said. “Having that kind of confrontation, after so many years of holding it in and being polite, it’s a shock to the system. She’s probably panicking because she was just really rude to someone and she doesn’t regret it, and she doesn’t know how to process that. She just needs a few minutes.”

  Cindy was staring at him.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “That was an insightful and intelligent observation,” Cindy told him. “I think I’m a little turned-on right now.”

  Jake’s eyebrows winged up. “Really?”

  Dotty kept her eyes on the second-floor windows. “I think I’m going to go . . . elsewhere.”

  “I’ll just go talk to Nina,” Deacon said, ducking away while Cindy and Jake stared at each other.

  Deacon caught up to her on the beach. The choppy dark blue water rolled across the little inlet east of the house. Nina was sitting on the dunes, with her shoes off and her toes dug into the sand. Her expression was unreadable as she stared across the water. She didn’t seem upset, but she certainly wasn’t smiling.

  Deacon sank into the sand next to her, stripping off his shoes and socks and stretching out his legs.

  “So that was a lot of curse words,” Deacon said. “An impressive amount of them. A plethora of curse words, if you will.”

  “Yes, it was,” Nina said, nodding. “I would say I’m sorry, but I’m not. I won’t even lie about it.”

  “You shouldn’t. Regina had it coming,” he agreed. “I appreciate your restraint in not smacking her in the face with a rake.”

  “Why are you friends with her?” Nina asked.

  “I’m not. Really,” he swore. “Maybe we were, once, when we were too young to know better. I think I should explain why I’m in a business relationship with her. A strictly business, no-other-past-history-implied relationship.”

  He heard Nina grumble under her breath.

  “About three years ago, right after EyeDee took off and my offices were still in the basement of my ratty old apartment building, Regina came to me. She needed money, a lot of it.”

  “I thought she already had money.”

  “Her family has money. Regina has an allowance from her parents, but it’s pretty limited for a girl of her tastes. She doesn’t come into real money until she inherits, and her parents are hale and healthy. Her decorating business is more of a full-time hobby. Her overhead is pretty ridiculous. She keeps an office in a very swanky part of Boston. Nothing but the best furnishings. And despite the crazy prices she charges, she’s not making a profit. So she started opening credit cards, a lot of them. When she maxed one out, she would just open another. She’d racked up some pretty hefty debts, and her creditors were getting impatient with her. She could ask her parents for money, but they already give her an annual stipend in addition to her monthly allowance to help her along. She didn’t want to admit to them what she’d done with the cards, so she came to me and asked for a no-interest loan. In exchange, she offered to decorate the offices I’d just purchased and any future jobs I might have for her.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

  “I just wanted you to know that I never dated Regina. I don’t really date anybody, but be certain, I am not, will not, and won’t ever date Regina. I just wanted you to know that.”

  Nina beamed at him, ridiculously pleased. “Not really your type?”

  “No, I’m more into the Titian-haired, secretly snarky earth-goddess type. Especially lately.”

  Nina’s face blushed beet-red. “But you don’t date?”

  “Not in a long time,” he told her. “I got hit with three paternity suits last year by women I’d never even met. They thought I would just pay them off to make them go away. A woman walked up and kissed me as I walked out of a Celtics game with Jake, and the next morning, I opened the papers to find out I was having an affair with one of the Real Housewives of Long Island.”

  “Charmaine?” Nina asked, vaguely remembering a news blurb about the EyeDee founder getting hot and heavy with the spray-tanned wannabe starlet.

  “She set the whole thing up to try to get more air-time on the show. And what better way to do that than to make your formerly wealthy real-estate-developer husband think you’ve displaced him with someone who’s in the financial papers? So yeah, I don’t know what to expect from women anymore. And I don’t know what they expect from me. I consider Papa Massimo’s pizza and a movie to be a quality first date, but I think they expect foie gras and the symphony.”

  “Papa Massimo’s?” she repeated. “They make this incredible garden-veggie pizza with—”

  “Eggplant and broccolini?” He chuckled. “Yeah, it’s one of my favorites. Have you tried their white pizza?”

  “Are you kidding? That pizza is practically its own food group!” she exclaimed.

  “By the way, this is my awkward way of asking you out on a date, just in case you hadn’t noticed,” he said.

  “I wouldn’t have to watch one of your crazy sci-fi movies in this scenario, would I?”

  “Do you consider Sean Connery running around in red suspendered Speedos and a man-braid a crazy sci-fi movie?” he asked.

  “I’m ninety percent sure that I would.”

  “Eh, we can debate the merits of Zardoz versus . . .” He paused and waited for her to name a title.

  “Oh, uh, Legend.”

  Deacon frowned. “Really? With the Peter Pan version of Tom Cruise?”

  “With the supercool demon version of Tim Curry,” she retorted.

  He considered it for a moment, then nodded. “I concede. So this weekend? We could actually leave the island. I won’t make you ride a boat, if that’s a determining factor.”

  “It’s a date,” she said, grinning at him.

  He smiled right back. “It is.”

  He settled back on the sand, his hand settling in the space behind her back. She smiled, keeping her eyes on the water as it rolled and pitched before them. A long, lovely, silent moment passed, in which they could enjoy the sound of the sea, away from the noise and chaos of the house.

  “I was thinking,” Deacon began.

  “You always are.” She giggled.

  “I was thinking that we’re not going to have a normal first date. I mean, we’ve practically lived together for the last few months. It’s going to help us get past a lot of the usual first-date awkwardness.”

  “Surviving the terrors of a haunted house together is a bonding experience every potential couple should go through,” Nina agreed.

  “I’m going to let the ‘haunted’ comment slide for the sake of harmony,” he said. “But really, the only big first-date hurdle we’ll have to get over is the whole awkward first kiss.”

  “You’re assuming I kiss on the first date,” Nina said primly.

  De
acon groaned and clutched his chest. “Way to snatch a man’s hope away, Red.”

  She laughed. “You will never know if I’m teasing.”

  “OK, well, assuming there would be a first kiss on our first date, that would be the only potentially weird moment we would have to overcome.”

  “I’m sensing a scientific hypothesis in the making.”

  He cleared his throat. “It’s more of a proposal.” When Nina’s eyes went the size of saucers, he added, “Not that kind of proposal! Not before a first date! I’m eccentric, not insane!”

  She flopped back onto the sand, cackling.

  Deacon carefully eased down on his elbow, aligning his stomach with her side. When she stopped giggling, he said, “I propose that we avoid the awkward first kiss at the end of our date by getting it out of the way now.”

  “Getting it out of the way?” She poked his ribs with her fingers. “That’s a really romantic way of putting it! Also, we’ve already kissed.”

  “You know what I mean.” He laughed, nudging her right back. “And we haven’t had a first-date kiss. Totally different experience from just a regular kiss.”

  “Spoken like a man who has been negotiating deals with scary international conglomerates for years. Your game needs work, my friend,” she said, shielding her eyes from the sun so she could look up at him. She smoothed his wavy hair back from his forehead and considered it.

  “Well, maybe you can help me practice,” he said, leaning just a bit closer.

  She pulled at his collar, guiding him down to the sand with her. Deacon ran his nose along the line of her own and pressed his lips to hers. She kept her eyes open, watching the light play on his tawny eyelashes. He seemed so absorbed by the act of kissing her, totally devoting that giant brain of his to running his tongue along the rim of her bottom lip, teasing her mouth open. Nina moaned as he pulled his mouth away from hers, sliding his lips against her cheek, over her nose, her eyelids.