by Julie Kriss
“What?” Max asked. He walked over to the sofa, where he sat down and looked at me.
“Has anyone been bothering you?” I asked. “You seen anyone hanging around?”
“This is Shady Oaks,” he said. “I don’t think anyone’s legit here, except for maybe the girl across the way.”
Olivia. He was talking about Olivia. Max didn’t know about Olivia; I hadn’t told anyone. I’d been too scared for her safety. “There’s a cop living here,” I said, trying to sound normal. “A female one. I just saw her.”
“Yeah, she’s been around.” Max nodded. “It’s been interesting, having a cop in the place. She comes home from work, and half the residents scatter like cockroaches.”
“What about people who don’t live here?” I asked. “People who don’t belong?”
He looked away, thinking, and then he shrugged. “I’ve been threatened a few times.”
I stared at him. “Threatened how?”
“Small things. A guy made a comment when I came from the parking lot one night. You’re a dead man, it sounded like. I’ve had things thrown against my windows, and one guy tried to trip me on the stairs. Nothing specific. I think some guys look at a man with one leg and think he’s an easy target.”
An easy target. No one—literally no person ever—would look at Max and think him an easy target. He was an inch taller than me, and he was bigger, his shoulders and chest thick with muscle. He’d been a fucking Marine, which meant that before he lost his leg he’d done some of the hardest training possible, and since he came home he kept his training up at the gym. With that, and the tattoos on his arms, his shaggy hair and beard, and his perpetual don’t-fuck-with-me scowl, he was the kind of person you ran away from in a dark alley.
No, this was Gray’s work. Or Craig Bastien’s. They were backing up their threats.
“Okay, here’s the thing,” I said, pulling up a chair and sitting down across from Max. “The guy who set up the drugs in the TV’s that night. He wants me to come back to work for him. He knows we’re friends, and if I say no, he says he’s going to hurt you.”
Something flared in Max’s eyes—something deep and dangerous. “Oh yeah?” he said. “Let him bring it. I may have one foot, but I’m a fucking Marine. I’ll put his teeth down his throat, and I’ll enjoy it.”
Fuck. This was Max, my book-loving friend. He had some demons buried that he hadn’t quite put to sleep yet. “Yeah, I know you can deal,” I said. “Just keep an eye out and be careful, okay? Things are going to get ugly.”
“You’re not gonna work for him? I’m glad, because I’m not taking any more of your money.” He gestured to the bookshelf. “I was busting your ass with the books, but I want you out of the life, Devon. I always have.”
“I’m out,” I said. “It won’t be easy, because these guys don’t take no for an answer, but I’m out. And money isn’t a problem anymore.”
My best friend’s eyes narrowed when I said that, his expression going hard in a way I didn’t like. “Dev. What the fuck did you do?”
I scrubbed a hand over my face. I wanted to be pissed off, that he assumed any money I had was the result of something illegal. But I had to admit that in his place, it would be the first thing I’d think of too. “It wasn’t a job,” I said. “I inherited.”
Max blinked at me. “What?”
“I inherited.”
“From who?”
“My grandfather.”
“You don’t have a grandfather.”
“That’s what I said, but I had one, and with my father dead—my father is dead, by the way—everything comes to me. And it’s a lot.”
“Holy shit.” He took this in. “That’s crazy. I’d say you were high, except I’ve never known you to get high in your life.”
“Jesus, man. I’m not high. It’s the truth, and it’s legit. I inherited a house and everything, if you want to come live there. It’s nice.”
Max snorted. “I’m not coming to live with you, dipshit. What is this, a sitcom? I like this apartment. If you don’t want it back, I’m staying.”
I gritted my teeth. I wasn’t going to push it. When Max dug his heels in, he was the most stubborn fucker I’d ever seen. He hated change, especially change that wasn’t his idea. He’d lived in his no-good father’s place until the old man died, unwilling to pack his stuff and leave. He’d been dealing with the old man’s illness and his own PTSD at the same time. All of that was too recent, and he was still feeling the effects. So I left it.
“The woman across the way,” I said to change the subject. “Have you seen her?”
Bad move. Max wasn’t my best friend for nothing—he picked up on the vibes right away. “She one of yours?” he asked. “You have a little thing going on with the neighbor when you were here?”
“Maybe. It, um… it wasn’t really a thing.”
“Uh huh.” Max pressed his hands together, steepling his fingers like the asshole he was, and regarded me. “Not really a thing, but you definitely fucked her. Interesting. That means she probably dumped you.”
I frowned. “Why does it mean that?”
“Because I’ve seen her. She’s good-looking, and she’s hot, but she has class. So if she fucked you, she probably dumped you.”
“She liked me,” I protested.
“Uh huh,” he said again. “And now that you’re an ex-con?”
Fuck. “I’m not talking about this anymore. Do you know where she is?”
“Probably at work. I’ve noticed she works late hours.”
“Does she still work at the ad agency?”
Max shook his head. “I have no idea, my friend. You know, here in the twenty-first century, when a person wants to know about someone they once fucked, they use Google.”
“That’s pathetic,” I said.
“Asking your one-legged friend about her is pathetic.”
I stood up. “My one-legged friend has perfectly good eyes. Which reminds me, don’t ever say that she’s hot again.”
“I can’t help it if I know a hot woman when I see one,” he said to my retreating back. And then he laughed.
Because I slammed the door. But I took the OJ book first.
Chapter 13
Olivia
By eight o’clock, my eyes were gritty and my stomach was rumbling. The granola bar in my desk had only gotten me so far, and my skirt and top felt like I’d been wearing them for days, but it didn’t matter. The mockups were printed and placed on the board for tomorrow’s meeting, the sushi had been picked up and delivered, and all the other things that had been thrown my way were done. I sat at my desk and wearily pulled my purse from the drawer, as I’d done an hour and a half earlier.
I looked up and saw Corey coming toward me across the half-darkened office. Again. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, then snapped my mouth shut before he could hear me. “What is it, Corey?” I asked when he got closer.
“There’s a… man here to see you,” he said, hesitating. He glanced behind his shoulder, as if he thought someone might be behind him. “He’s at reception.”
I stared groggily at him, a faint bell of alarm going off somewhere in my spine. “A man?”
Corey shrugged. “He says he knows you.” He didn’t sound like he believed it.
Oh, no. Oh, no. I jerked my chair back and stood up. I didn’t know any men. My father was dead, I had no brothers or male cousins. I had no boyfriend or ex-boyfriends in the city. There was only one man I could think of who could come to see me. One man who would make my boss look like he was about to call the cops.
I’ll find you.
He’d said that two years ago. And I already knew that Devon Wilder never said anything he didn’t mean.
“I’ll handle it,” I said to Corey, and I brushed past him, hoping he wouldn’t notice that my breath was short. Or that I was practically running toward reception.
The receptionist had gone home hours ago. The reception area was dark, just a desk and a
couple of waiting chairs. Standing in the middle of the space, half hidden in shadow and half lit by the fluorescents from the hallway, was a familiar figure. Those legs, the line of his shoulders, the impatient way he rested his weight on one perfect hip. He looked as out of place in this office as if he’d come from another planet, another lifetime. Shit, oh shit. The one man with the power to make me stupid.
He watched me approach. “Olivia,” he said, and I saw his body tense. He wasn’t sure what I would do—he thought I might tell him to turn around and leave.
I should tell him that. What the hell was I supposed to do with Devon Wilder in the front hallway of Gratchen Advertising? My heart was pounding behind my ribs. I glanced behind me—Corey was out of sight. On impulse, I strode forward and grabbed Devon by the wrist. “Meeting room,” I hissed at him.
He let me lead him. His wrist was thick and warm in my hand. He was wearing a long-sleeved black Henley, jeans, and boots. Nothing over-the-top—no earrings or rings, no leather jacket. But Devon Wilder, in just jeans and a shirt, looked like he could kill someone—or like he already had.
I pulled him into the office meeting room and closed the door behind us. It was dark in here, with no windows, and I patted the wall for the light switch, bringing up the dimmer. I only lit the room halfway without thinking, as if I couldn’t quite stand to look at Devon in full light after two years.
“Okay?” he said.
I looked down and realized I was still holding his wrist. It was the hand with the No Time tattoo. I let it go. “You shouldn’t be here,” I said. Panic made my voice sharp, and I immediately regretted it. I was shaken, but part of me was happy to see him. Fiercely, wildly happy.
“I know,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
I asked the obvious. “Where have you been, Devon?”
“Prison.”
I felt the breath go out of me. I put my hands to my temples. Prison. I’d suspected it, but I hadn’t been sure. I’d worried that he was on the run, that he’d left the country, that he was dead, that he didn’t want me after all. I felt all of that swirl around my brain and then disappear. Prison. Two years.
“The TV thing?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
Okay, stupid question. But they were the only words I could summon to say what I really meant. Was it awful? Were you hurt? Will you heal?
The question seemed to surprise him. His green eyes—in the half-light I could still see their color, their utter focus on my face, my hair, my neck—flickered as something passed behind them that I couldn’t read. But he didn’t laugh. “I suppose I’m okay,” he answered.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m a little flustered.”
That brought a ghost of a smile to his mouth. “My fault. I was going to wait to see you until you were done work.”
“You were going to wait. And then?”
He shrugged. “And then I didn’t.”
And there it was. That flutter, deep in my stomach and flittering across my skin. Pulsing quietly between my legs. The smile had left his mouth, and I watched him watch me, thinking of that last night together, his big body flexing above mine, his mouth between my legs. The last two years fell away like a dry and dusty dream.
In sci fi movies, there is always that portal in the spaceship, the hatch that sucks everything out into space when it’s opened. That was what Devon Wilder was to my life. The hatch. I was so totally, totally screwed.
“How did you know I was here?” I managed.
Devon exhaled a breath, and he put his hands on his hips. He was relaxing slowly, realizing that I wasn’t going to kick him out. “I went to Shady Oaks first, but you weren’t home,” he said. “I had to look you up on the internet.”
“Oh.” My name was on the Gratchen website, I remembered—listed on the “Meet the Team” page.
“So you’re still a designer,” he said. “That’s good.”
“I guess.” But that felt wrong, telling Devon that. So I said, “I hate it.”
His eyebrows went up.
“I get treated like shit,” I elaborated. “Everyone thinks that’s part of it, that you have to get treated like shit in this business. But it’s starting to sound like a lie.” I shook my head. “Sorry. You just got out of prison, and I’m whining about my career problems. Do you need anything? Do you have somewhere to stay? There’s some other guy in your apartment at Shady Oaks.”
He looked at me for a long time. “You’re really doing that, aren’t you?” he said quietly. “You’re offering to put me up.”
I felt my face heat. “Is that rude? I just thought—I wasn’t talking about sex or anything.”
He scratched his jaw. “The guy in my apartment is my friend Max. I gave him the place. I’m letting him keep it. I have… somewhere else to stay.”
My face got even hotter. Did he mean he had a place with a woman somewhere? I’d thought I knew what Devon was saying, even when he wasn’t saying much. But maybe that was wishful thinking on my part, backed up by luck. I was second-guessing everything. I didn’t know what he was saying anymore. I took a step back and crossed my arms.
“You think I’m talking about a woman, don’t you?” he said, reading my mind. “Fuck. There’s no woman. Let’s start over.”
“I don’t—”
He stepped forward, took my face in his hands, and kissed me, and I stopped talking. His mouth felt familiar—I’d been remembering it for two years, the way he tasted, the way he kissed me. It was a bold kiss, confident, a kiss that told me everything he hadn’t said. I opened my mouth and kissed him back, my hands curled over his wrists, the silence a living thing around us in the deserted meeting room as we had our conversation.
He broke the kiss and leaned in, kissing the spot below my ear, his beard rasping against my skin. “Two years,” he said.
He dropped his hands, and I gripped his shoulders. They were like granite beneath the warm fabric of his shirt. His hands moved expertly to my skirt, lifting it up, sliding up the backs of my thighs. I bit back a sound and leaned into him, taking in his smell. His skin and clean laundry and a hint of leather, maybe from his car. We shouldn’t be doing this. I wanted to sink my teeth into his skin.
He cupped my ass beneath my skirt, his palms moving over me almost reverently. “You have a boyfriend?” he said against my neck.
“No,” I said.
His fingers moved to my hips beneath the skirt, hooking into the sides of my panties. “You fuck anyone since me?” he asked.
It was a rude question. Inappropriate. Absolutely none of his business. But still I said, “No.”
He moved one hand to the front of my panties and slid it inside. “So this,” he said softly, feeling how wet I was, “is for me.”
My breath stopped. How did he do that? How was it that his hand on me felt even better than my own? I didn’t answer—I didn’t have to. He already knew the answer. He could feel it.
He moved his fingers, but I put my hand on his wrist, stopping him. If he could be unreasonably possessive, then so could I. “What about you?” I asked, still pressed against him. “Have you had anyone since me?”
“I think you’ve missed the plot,” he said. “I’ve been in prison.”
True. But how long did it take to fuck someone? Ten minutes, twenty, thirty? I knew nothing about him, really. Maybe he had a lineup of women waiting for him to get out. Maybe I was his third visit today. “How long have you been out?” I asked.
He calculated the answer, his hand still in my underwear. “Nine and a half hours,” he said.
I almost laughed, it was so precise. But I’d asked. He’d been released this morning, and he’d come to find me. I tilted my head and looked up at him, taking in his shadowed jaw, his perfect mouth, those green eyes fixed on me. “And you haven’t had sex in those nine and a half hours?” I asked, half teasing.
“No,” he said quietly.
God, it would be so easy. I could just lean b
ack on the table. Push my underwear down. Then I remembered we were at my work. The door wasn’t even locked; anyone could walk in here and see me with my skirt pushed up, his hand between my legs. I squeezed his wrist again and pushed him away gently. “I’ll tell you what,” I said, trying to get a grip. There was no way I could have a conversation with his hand there. He let me push it away and right my panties, pushing my skirt down. “Tomorrow, we’ll have dinner.”
“Dinner?”
“Yes, dinner. Like people do.” People who aren’t fucking like crazy every time they’re in the same room. “I’ll even buy. It’s on me.”
Something flashed across his expression at that. I didn’t know what it was or how to read it, and suddenly I had the feeling there was something he wasn’t telling me. Not a woman, maybe, but something else. Devon Wilder’s story wasn’t as straightforward as it appeared to be. And I knew that the decision to have dinner was the right one. We needed to talk before I dragged him into bed again.
And I would drag him into bed again. That much I already knew.
“When?” he asked.
“After I’m done work tomorrow.”
“You’re working on Saturday?”
“We have a big client presentation, and tomorrow is when the client is free.” There was no such thing as non-work time in the advertising business, I was learning. The client was always king.
Devon frowned at that, but he let it go. “Meet me at seven,” he said, and he named a restaurant in North Beach that I’d heard of but never been to. It was outside my budget, and he added, “I’m paying the bill.”
“Devon.”
“I’m paying,” he said again. And then he added, “Trust me.”
What did that mean? After two years, were we going to argue about a stupid restaurant bill? Maybe when the time came I’d insist we go Dutch. “Okay, fine,” I said. “Tomorrow at seven.”
I thought he might kiss me again—maybe I just hoped it—but he only looked at me, the corner of his mouth smiling again. “Wear something easy to take off,” he said, and then he turned and left the room, and was gone.