Give and Take

by Lee Kilraine

  “No.”

  “So, no painting the walls, no accent wall, no curtains. None of that.”

  “Yep.”

  “I understand. It’s too semi-permanent of a change. Too big even. Totally get it. It’s a shared space, right? Okay. I totally agree. So, I’ll just hang my few posters on the wall. Thanks, Wyatt.” I turned my back on him and moved without hesitation to my selection of posters leaning against my stack of boxes. I didn’t even need the hammer and nails I’d brought, since all I had to do was remove Wyatt’s three black-and-white photos and hang mine in their place.

  I stood back to admire them. Nice. Nicely matted and framed photos of scenes from special occasions and elegant events. Rainbow balloons and a cake with candles, a whimsical bridal bouquet full of wildflowers, and a party hat and blower.

  “What do you think? Looks good, yes?” It said celebrate the big moments in your life to me. Right there for my clients to see.

  “I think I like my architectural photos better,” Wyatt said.

  “They are nice,” I conceded as I carefully picked up his framed photos and stored them in the closet. “But I needed something to represent me in this space. It’s called branding, Wyatt.”

  “I thought that fluorescent orange, feathered lamp in the corner was doing that.”

  My phone rang with the first verse of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” from the movie Rocky, which signaled it wasn’t a family member. I pretty much leaped through the air to answer it. I’d only been in business two months, so you could say I was desperately seeking more clients.

  “Hello. Seize the Day event planning, where we make even the smallest moment a big deal.” I glanced over at Wyatt whose eyes had gone big with my tagline. I winced. I’d been trying to find a great tagline for my business, but that wasn’t it. I’d keep trying. “Rhia Hollis speaking. How can I help you seize the day?”

  Aaaand… It wasn’t a potential client. Nope. It was one of my parents’ potential dates. Too bad I couldn’t assign a special ringtone for these poor dupes my family was trying to set me up with.

  Bachelor number forty-eight, Frank Smith, proceeded to tell me my father had given him my number, telling him how much I loved jazz music. He’d be honored if I’d accompany him to dinner at a local jazz club. Fun fact: I didn’t care for jazz music at all. I’d rather attend a lecture on the polar entropy of water molecules than listen to jazz music.

  My gaze darted around the room while I tried to come up with the nicest way to say no, when my eyes locked on Wyatt’s. For the first time all morning he’d taken off his work blinders. He sat leaning in his chair, watching me. There was absolutely no way I wanted him to know about how my family thought I was so hopeless that they were constantly trying to marry me off. No. That embarrassment I’d like to keep to myself, thank you very much.

  “I’m sorry, sir…er… Frank, is it? I happen to be totally booked up solid that day. And late into the evening. So, sadly, I’ll have to turn your event down. Good luck finding someone else for your dinner…event. Bye now.”

  I made a mental note to check caller ID before answering my phone from now on. From past experience, I knew my mother got on this matchmaking kick about four or five times a year. Probably timed with every beginning and end of semester when her new residents were arriving (potential man for Rhia!) and just before they left (last chance before he escapes!). It would start fast and furious and usually taper off and end a few weeks later.

  Wyatt stood, stretching his arms over his head, and I couldn’t look away from his nicely muscled shoulders under his crisply starched shirt. His eyebrow rose, letting me know I’d been caught, so I shrugged. What else was I going to do? I’d have stopped to watch a lion stretch too. It was only natural curiosity. And necessary research. I needed to get a sense of his personality to make this shared office deal work for both of us. That’s all it was.

  He shook his head and left the office. That’s when I noticed he had a nice butt. Purely an observation. Although, if I kept up this fascination with Wyatt, I may need to rethink turning down the next man my mother sent my way.

  Back to work. I emptied three of my boxes of supplies and sample books of invitations. Some items went right into my desk. Other samples, stored in my carefully sealed plastic containers of party supplies, I placed in the storage closet. I added a teapot and my own favorite drinks and snacks to the long counter that already held a coffeepot.

  That was about when Wyatt’s drafting desk in the corner by the windows caught my eye. I had the brilliant idea of moving it over a few feet to accommodate a small love seat I had stored at my sister’s house, when Wyatt reentered.

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said, narrowing his blue eyes, warning me, on his way over to the drafting desk. He pushed his rolled-up sleeves above his elbows, rolled his shoulders once, tilted his head to the left and then right, like he was trying to get kinks out, and then bent to his work.

  Okay, then. Wyatt’s drafting table was off-limits. Got it. It must be sacred space. Like where he can escape into his work. The place where he held the pencil in his hand, made art and graceful lines with balance and scale all while conforming to the tight engineering constricts needed. I bet it felt like composing music did to Mozart.

  I had an idea what that felt like. Working on something with such passion and feeling that the outside world simply fell away. Very soon I hoped to feel that same satisfaction after helping clients mark those special moments in their lives. I hadn’t felt it after the recent one-year-old’s birthday party, but I figured the whole mess with the clown had sucked that triumphant feeling right up.

  “What was that?” Wyatt’s head jerked up from his drafting table.

  “What was what?” Crap. The kitten. I’d heard it. The soft mew letting me know it was feeding time. The box was sitting on the floor right next to my desk. Poor kitty released another soft cry.

  “That.” Wyatt narrowed his gaze, moving it around the office and even outside the window.

  “Oh, that. That was me.” I forced a cough. And another two or three. Patted my chest and reached for the bottle of water in my purse before taking a sip while I pointed to my throat. “I woke up with a sore throat this morning. Just kind of scratchy. A woman in line in front of me at Starbucks told me I sounded like a sick cat.”

  Wyatt looked at me with his deep blue eyes, and it felt like he could see into my soul. Like an X-ray. Like a human lie detector. My goal not to piss Wyatt off on my first day in the office was not looking good. Not that I could even picture Wyatt pissed off. Talk about calm and cool. This guy was serious and even-keeled, as if nothing could bother him. He must be amazing to have around in an emergency. I was okay in an emergency once I reeled in my imagination. I could think up crazy-pants scenarios and let myself get overexcited before I settled down and handled things. But I did handle things. And I needed to handle the hungry kitten.

  “Oh, Wyatt, I forgot one of your brothers came looking for you when you stepped out of the office a few minutes ago.” Lie, but a very little one. Sometimes, a person had to weigh which was more important: a small harmless lie or saving a kitten. An easy choice.

  “Which one?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. The one with the beard and sawdust on his shirt.”

  “Eli.”

  “That’s the one. He was walking fast, so I figure whatever it is, it’s important. Maybe you should go check.”

  “Sure,” he said slowly, like he thought I was lying or something. He placed his pencil into the wooden holder on his desk as he walked by. “Don’t touch my drafting table.”

  “Of course not.” I watched him exit, then jumped up to rescue the kitten from the box and resettle him into my bottom drawer, soft blanket and all. After rooting through my purse quickly, I found one of the bottles I’d prepared and leaned over to feed the hungry baby. Phew.

 
Ten minutes later, the kitten fed and back asleep, and Wyatt’s drafting table moved over one inch, Wyatt returned.

  “Everything okay with Eli?” I asked, avoiding his eyes by setting up my laptop and planner on my desk.

  “No idea. Couldn’t find him. Even looked out back in our shop. Gray said he thought he left for a jobsite an hour ago.” From the corner of my eye, I could see him standing near the door, his gaze swinging from me to his drafting table. He thought I’d tried to move it.

  Fine. Worked for me if it helped me feed the cat. Plus, I had. An inch. I figured an inch at a time, he might not even notice, and then one day soon I could slide my loveseat into that nice little spot where the sunlight warmed so nicely.

  “No. This isn’t right,” Wyatt said, his hands resting on the side edges of his drafting table.

  Uh oh. I stood and walked halfway across the room to look. There was no way he should be able to tell the table was moved one inch. One inch. Seriously?

  “You moved my drafting table.” He looked directly at me, pinning me in place. And then like a stalking puma, he stepped toward me, slow and sure, each step making me want to take a step back. But I needed to hold my ground. He kept coming at me. Closer.

  “Psscht. No.” Holy heck, he stood two feet away from me, and once again his scent got to me. It made me want to drape myself across his drafting table and let him focus on me with that singular way he had.

  “Rhia…” Our gazes locked on to each other, and everything fell away. It was just us, and not enough air, and a prickly feeling along my skin, and butterflies throwing themselves against my stomach. “You…”

  “Yes?” I stepped closer until I felt the heat of him, tilting my head back, since his gaze wasn’t letting mine go, no matter how hard I tried to pull away.

  “You have the most amazing eyes,” he said, shaking his head the slightest bit like he was as dazzled as I was. Yet, he moved closer still. “They look vibrantly green. Then blue. And now they’re like a faceted aquamarine gemstone.”

  “They’re my nona’s eyes.” My gaze dropped to his lips. I was so close; if I went up on my tiptoes, I could press my lips to his. I went light-headed at the crazy idea. “I mean, they’re my eyes, but I inherited them from my nona. She called them the mark of the fey.”

  “Fey, fairy, mystical. That feels about right.” Wyatt’s head drew closer until his lips hovered above mine.

  “Wyatt?” I whispered, unsure of what was happening right now, only that whatever it was, I didn’t have the strength to stop it. “What are we doing?”

  “What?” Wyatt blinked, and pulled back with a sudden jerk, taking a giant step backward and away.

  Chapter 7

  Wyatt

  “What are we doing? I’ll tell you what we’re doing…” Ah, fuck, as soon as I figured it out. What the hell was wrong with me? I had no time for a distraction. And my attraction to Rhia was a huge distraction. There was no room in my schedule for a relationship, let alone an office fling. And office flings were bad. Not that I’d had one, but both Gray and Ash had, and it had been hell finding a good receptionist ever since. I voted no on office flings. This was not going to happen. “We’re about to lay down some ground rules, that’s what.”

  “Rules?” Rhia looked like she was coming out of a trance, one I totally understood. She blinked, ran her hands over her dark auburn hair, smoothed her bangs from her eyes, and readjusted her long ponytail.

  The fact that I wanted to pull her ponytail out and run my fingers through her thick curls was a bad sign. Time to employ drastic measures.

  “Rules, Rhia. Rules help make sense of chaos. You know who didn’t have rules?”

  “No.”

  “Mad Max. Life is just a free-for-all in the Thunderdome.” I opened the walk-in storage closet near my desk, found the exact box I was looking for, and came back into the room with a roll of painter’s tape. “That’s no way to run an office.”

  “Are you talking about the movie? Because that’s not real. And not even close to sharing an office.” I heard the humor in her voice like she thought I was overreacting.

  The pull she had on me wasn’t funny. The way my body tensed when her mystical aqua eyes hit me wasn’t funny. I had a lot at stake over the next few months. There was nothing funny about passing my exams.

  “No one in Mad Max had respect for someone else’s property.” I caught her with my gaze. “Did you or did you not move my drafting table?”

  “Okay, fine, yes. But only one teeny, tiny inch, Wyatt. You can’t seriously—”

  “Rule number one: don’t touch Wyatt’s stuff.” I walked to my drafting table and moved it back where it belonged.

  “Your brothers touch your stuff all the time.”

  “That’s different.” I knew they did, and I knew why too. They thought I was too controlled and regimented, bordering on OCD. I didn’t agree with them. But I owed them everything, and they could mess with anything I had.

  I peeled up the end of the painter’s tape and pulled out a few feet, then handed the end to Rhia.

  “Hold this and walk toward the door.” I walked backward until my back was against the window. “This looks like the middle to me.”

  “Are you serious right now?”

  “Very.” One look down to the other end of the tape at Rhia with her wild, red hair, mystic eyes, and her generous, soft curves was all I needed to reinforce I couldn’t mess around.

  “Wow, okay, North Korea. Let’s lay down our DMZ then, shall we?” Her eyes twinkled, but I wasn’t falling for it.

  Not for a second. My self-preservation instinct was good. I’d learned at a very young age to listen to it when it spoke. I bent down into a crouch, waiting for Rhia to do the same. We lowered the long stretch of tape onto the beige office pile carpet, right down the center of the room.

  “There. Now, you stay on your side, not touching my stuff,” I said as I stood back up. “I’ll stay on my side, enjoying you not touching my stuff.”

  “Is that it?” Rhia stayed in her crouch, her elbow resting on her knee, her hand covering the smile I could hear on her lips. When she finally stopped smiling, she stood. “Is that the only rule then, don’t touch Wyatt’s stuff?”

  “No. We’ll keep a running list and add to it as needed,” I said. I wanted to leave my options open for anything I might find distracting.

  “I enjoy working to music. Will that be oka—”

  “No. Rule number two: no music.” While I preferred to work in quiet, I did occasionally have music in the background. So, it wasn’t that I didn’t like music, it was more that I couldn’t imagine our musical tastes being on the same dimensional plane. “I’ve got the next part of the ARE coming up, so I’ll need the quiet to study.”

  “What’s the ARE?”

  “The Architect Registration Exam. I’ve got to pass all seven sections of the exam to become a licensed architect.”

  “Fair enough. I’ve got a rule. Rule number three. No cologne.” She walked toward me until we stood a few feet apart, each on our side of the tape divider. “I find it distracting.”

  “Distracting how?” It wasn’t even cologne, just an aftershave I liked.

  “I think I’m allergic to it. It makes me itchy.”

  “Okay.” I hadn’t seen her scratch or heard her sneeze, but fine. Maybe she was simply trying to lay claim to a bit of her own territory in our shared space. No, I didn’t mind a bit. Not when I remembered her own soft, flowery scent. “I agree to rule number three but with an amendment: no cologne or perfume.”

  “I can work with that,” she said, her chin notching up. “Okay, so three rules.”

  “For now,” I said. We each walked behind our own desks and sat. Like boxers going to their separate corners. Like duelers pacing off in opposite directions. I didn’t like when people invaded my space, so even though we wer
e figuring out how to share an office, it felt a hell of a lot like preparing for battle. And after whatever that weird thing was standing toe-to-toe with Rhia, I needed to shore up my defenses if I wanted to get any work and studying done.

  I was just refocusing on my next set of AutoCAD drawings for a new lake cabin when I heard it. “It” being the noise I’d heard earlier that Rhia had claimed she hadn’t.

  “Tell me you heard that,” I said, my gaze whipping across to Rhia who was sitting, back ramrod straight, peeking over at me from the corner of her eyes.

  She squeezed out a little cough that sounded nothing like the sound I’d heard. I stood, then moved around my desk and walked to the middle of the room. I would have kept moving right over to Rhia’s desk where the sound came from, only Rhia stopped me.

  “I don’t think so, Wyatt.” Loudly clearing her throat, she gazed down at the line of tape. “Please tell me you aren’t about to break rule number one already. I mean, heck, we only made the rules not five minutes ago. If you break a rule this fast, then I think we can throw all three rules right out the window. Which is fine with me, because I am dying to play my ‘get down, get funky’ list on Spotify while I work.”

  Get down, get funky? No way in hell. Not while I was alive. It was looking like she’d outmaneuvered me with that, and then the noise sounded again. And I was close enough to hone in on where it came from.

  “You’ve got a cat in your desk.”

  “Oh my Lord, will you listen to yourself? Who would keep a cat in a desk? I’d have to be a different sort of crazy to keep a cat in my desk, now wouldn’t I?”

  “You said it, not me. Open your bottom left drawer, Rhia.”

  Rhia’s shoulders slumped as her hand slowly and ever so carefully opened the desk drawer. Mew.

  “You’ve got a kitten in your desk.” Yes, I was stating the obvious, but I was flummoxed. This woman was a puzzle. A crazy, jumbled up pile of puzzle pieces that I felt I’d never be able to piece together.