But I’m not Floyd. I can do better, so I picture a vise, jam the images into it, and crush them out of my mind. The dirty images and the horny aliens, too.
“And then I escorted him out of Lila’s home and said see ya later,” I tell her, finishing the story, as I drag a hand through my dark brown hair. “Like, in another lifetime later.”
“Hmm . . .” she says.
“Hmm, that’s great, or hmm, why did I give one of our suppliers the heave-ho?”
“Hmm, as in your story gives me a good idea. Something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”
“What’s that?”
Her eyes sparkle. Hers are a lighter shade than my dark blue. “Want me to find a new hinge supplier?”
The idea is beyond perfect. I smack my palm against the edge of her desk enthusiastically. “Yes. And for the record, you’re brilliant and beauti—” I cut the last word off so it sounds like a low bass note. Note to self: Don’t call her beautiful when you’re berating other men for hitting on her at work.
She’s watching me, waiting for me to finish my sentence, and somehow I twist the words into a new compliment, as I say, “Brilliant, and . . . bountiful.”
Bountiful? Seriously? What the hell was that? Maybe she won’t notice.
No such luck.
“Bountiful?” she asks, skepticism thick in her tone. As it fucking should be. “I’m bountiful?”
I nod, going with it, owning it. “Your brain. It’s like a cornucopia of ideas. It’s a Thanksgiving bounty. It’s bountiful,” I say, because I’ve got to sell this cover-up.
She squares her shoulders. “If you say so, Hammer. And this bountiful brain was two steps ahead today. I already found a new supplier. I called around, talked to some of our colleagues, and got some great recommendations. I already have a new hinge guy lined up.”
My smile spreads quickly. “Damn. You are three steps ahead of me.”
“A good assistant should be.”
“And you’re a great one. What do you say we go celebrate six months of you making WH Carpentry & Construction a much better business than it was before?”
WH stands for my name, Wyatt Hammer.
But WH also might stand for something else. You’ll see. Don’t worry. The whole Oreo, remember? I’ll give it to you.
2
She chooses the vegetarian bibimbap, supernova spicy style, at a Korean restaurant off Ninth Avenue, not far from the office.
“Bibimbap,” she says, like she’s weighing the word. “It’s challenging to pronounce and usually comes out like ‘bippity-bop,’ something a fairy godmother from a Disney movie says. But in fact, bibimbap tastes nothing like a Disney movie.”
“Or like a fairy godmother,” I add, stretching my neck to the side to work out the kinks in it from today’s job. Eight hours on my feet, screwing, pounding and drilling. Nothing like a hard day’s work, but man, I could go for a massage.
She shoots me a look. “And you know how a fairy godmother tastes?”
I realize how my comment came out, but I go with it. “Like all your dreams come true.”
“You’re telling me you’ve dated fairy godmothers?”
“Maybe I have.”
“I’ve dated genies, then,” she says, playing at one-upmanship as our waitress arrives. Natalie tells her what she wants, and I order the beef bibimbap for myself, so spicy it singes your hair off, then add in an appetizer and some beers.
We’re here because Natalie loves spicy food. The hotter the better. In fact, she’s challenged me to a few food dares over the last six months. Fortunately, I was born with fireproof taste buds and a competitive will of iron, so I usually beat her, but I’ve got to hand it to the woman. She can down a habanero pepper like no one I’ve ever seen.
Not gonna lie. It was a massive turn-on watching her eat a couple of those bad boys on a burger one night a few weeks ago when we got some grub after work. There’s just something about a woman who can handle her spice.
That is, it would have been a turn-on if I’d been thinking of her that way. And I hadn’t, so I wasn’t turned on.
Case closed.
A minute later, the waitress returns with two beers, and I raise a glass to toast Natalie. “To six months of your magic. You’re better than a fairy godmother.”
“To six months of solid employment, at last,” she jokes. Natalie was bouncing around at various odd jobs before I hired her. She’d needed work, and she was blunt about it. In fact, the night she approached me in her job hunt perfectly underscores my point about dudes saying women are hot for us.
Because we have no clue if they actually are. We’re all fumbling and bumbling around, blind to what women really want. Women are basically the most complicated creatures ever invented, and approximately twenty thousand times more complex than the world’s smartest computer. At my friend Spencer’s wedding last fall to Natalie’s sister Charlotte, Natalie made her way over to me with a determined look in her eyes, and I’d joked to my twin brother Nick, “She wants me.”
Wrong. Dead-as-a-doornail wrong.
Turned out she was making a beeline for another reason. When we’d chatted the night before, I’d mentioned some of the issues my firm was facing—the main issue being my complete disorganization—and she’d devised a plan for how to improve operations and put my firm in a position to expand and win even bigger jobs. She’d presented it to me over a game of pool at the wedding hotel. Her proposal had been airtight and exactly what I soon realized I needed.
I’d hired her two weeks later.
Now, after half a year together, I can’t imagine WH Carpentry & Construction without her running the business side of things. Her savvy frees me up to focus on what I’m good at—building, making, working.
She nudges my arm with her elbow. “Remember the day I started? And you went to an appointment that was actually on your schedule from a year before?”
I groan. “Don’t remind me.”
She shakes her head in amusement. “But I saved you! I called you literally as you arrived at the client’s apartment building, about to go in and give an estimate on a kitchen you’d already redone.”
I nod as the memory flashes before me. “Yup. Good with tools, bad with appointments.”
“And now you’re good with both,” she says, her lips curved up in that winning smile of hers. I look away briefly. I can’t stare at her smile. It would probably hypnotize me. Make me do its bidding.
“And business couldn’t be better,” I say. “We should be able to expand now, the way we first talked about. Hire more guys—regular employees, so we’re not just relying on day laborers for each job.”
“Exactly. With the new work we have lined up for the summer, we can bring some full-timers on, cover their health benefits, and all that good stuff.” She rattles off some of the projects she’d booked—a number of high-end kitchen remodels. Since it’s Manhattan, those gigs can net us six figures or more.
“By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask. How did you ever get to be so organized? Do you have file folders in your head? Admit it. It’s like the Container Store up there,” I say, tapping her noggin.
She pretends to pant, her tongue lolling out of her mouth like a dog in summer. “Don’t get me excited. The Container Store is my favorite place in the universe, and I’m convinced I could happily live there.”
“So that’s the answer?” I ask as the waitress arrives with a fire chicken appetizer that’s practically curling from the smoke. This one is going to be stomach scalding. Excellent. “Your affection for the store is how you became so organized?”
Natalie squares her shoulders. “Have I mentioned my clothes are hung by color in the closet? That all my books are arranged alphabetically, and that I never once missed a day of school in my life?”
“And your panties are probably arranged by—” I slam the brakes on the subject of her lingerie. Shit. Where is the fucking filter in my brain? I swear Floyd tampered with my head today. Maybe
his hinges were faulty.
“By color,” she answers with a chirpy little sound, like she knows I went there. She knows I slid into a zone where I shouldn’t go.
But yet, here I am, asking more, “And the most popular shade is?”
An eyebrow rises, and the corner of her lips quirks up. It’s like she just slid on the perfect flirty-girl face, and now I have one very ready-for-business appendage.
Fucking dicks. Sometimes it’s unfair that we have these fuckers to do battle with all day. And believe me, it is an epic battle. Man versus hard-on.
Man rarely wins.
Boners are too powerful.
An answer falls from her glossy pink lips. Natalie wears some kind of sparkly pink gloss. Not lipstick. Yes, I know what gloss is. I’ve kissed plenty of women, and I’m not some Neanderthal with a toolbox who doesn’t know the difference between gloss and lipstick. One is slick and tastes amazing coming off a girl’s lips when I kiss her; the other one is thicker and tastes amazing coming off a girl’s lips when I kiss her.
“White,” she says, and the situation south of the border intensifies.
I grab a fork and dive into the fire chicken. Maybe that’ll be the cure for wood. “And now I know where all your business skills come from. Underwear drawer organization.”
“Pink’s a popular one, too.”
And we’re talking steel right now. Pink panties on Miss All-American is pretty much a recipe for a Viagra Dick—constantly erect.
“Pink. White. As long as they’re color-coded, that’s what matters.” She gestures to the chicken. “Time to blow our brains out.”
We one-up each other in eating a chicken dish that tastes like a lit match going down your throat, then douse the flames with beer, and move on to the main course.
At the end of the meal, my phone buzzes twice.
Natalie points in the general direction of my pocket. “Work text,” she says quickly, reminding me she set my phone to a double buzz when messages to the work number route to my personal phone.
As Natalie busies herself checking her own phone, I grab mine and open a message from Lila Mayweather.
I’ve got the go-ahead! Can’t wait to discuss the new project with you. Would love to start soonest! When you come by tomorrow, can you bring along Natalie?
I smile. It kind of makes me proud that my clients love her so much. I’m about to show her the text, but she’s still busy on her phone, tapping away. I can’t help but wonder who she’s texting. I’m tempted to peek, but I restrain myself. When she stops and puts her phone away, though, I catch a flash of one word—torture.
Interesting. But I’m not keen to play Sherlock tonight, so instead I show her Lila’s text. “You’re wanted, it seems.”
She beams. “I wonder what it could be. Do you have any idea?”
I shake my head. “No clue. But we’ll find out tomorrow. Think we can fit this in?”
“The next job doesn’t start for a while. Let’s get the details, but I think we can do it.”
“Pretty sure you deserve a raise,” I say.
She beams. “I’m really glad I’ve been able to help you, Wyatt.”
“Me, too,” I say, because even though she’s a stone-cold fox, even though she’s gorgeous in more ways than I can count, and even though if she weren’t my assistant, I’d be a persistent motherfucker to get her to go home with me, she’s also fucking amazing at what she does.
She sets down her napkin, looks at her watch, and shoots me a sad smile. “I should go. I have a class tonight. Only time I could get at the dojo this week.”
“Totally understand,” I say, and when she takes off, I half wonder if she’s really going to class, or if some guy was texting her when she was checking out her phone. Maybe hanging out with me was torture? Nah. I’m a barrel of monkeys. Besides, I remind myself, it’s not my place to know about her life beyond work.
That’s exactly why I don’t think of her when I head to my apartment later. Or when I take a shower. Or when I crash into bed, and thumb through an article of interesting facts about animals, including that dolphins never enter deep sleep. Their brains are too active.
That’s one of the nice things about being me. I can turn off my brain.
Women are complicated, but the situation with Natalie is simple. I keep my hands to myself.
And I swear it’s not made more complicated the next morning when Lila presents us with her plan.
3
Lila Mayweather serves us coffee in delicate china cups with a rose pattern around the edge. For the record, I’m not a delicate cup kind of guy. But when in Rome . . .
Seated in a high-backed chair in her dining room, Lila wears a tennis skirt, and her brown hair swings high in a well-groomed ponytail. Everything about her is impeccable, down to the fact that she offers us cream in one of those specialty thingamajigs with the spout and then holds up pewter tongs for sugar cubes.
“I’m all good,” I say. I can’t remember the last time I drank coffee from anything but a paper cup or a mug with a broken handle.
But Lila’s home oozes class, and her remodel is one of the fanciest I’ve ever done. I have a feeling it’s going to open a lot more doors for the business. She and Natalie had hit it off from the start, and right now they’re discussing Natalie’s martial arts skills.
Lila drops a hand on Natalie’s arm, bare in her short-sleeved white blouse. “I’d love to take one of your classes sometime. I love to try new workouts.”
“I promise I will make you sweat,” Natalie says playfully, as she crosses her legs.
You can make me sweat.
What the fuck? The horny aliens are back, taking over my brain again.
“I’ve been wanting to learn self-defense. How long have you been teaching karate?”
Natalie is a high school karate champion. Yeah, like that’s not a major turn-on. Not the high school part—the karate. But if I let myself linger on the fact that she knows how to fight, the flag will be flying at full mast all day long.
Instead, I think about sugar cubes. And rose petals on cups. And matching china. Because I’m not Floyd.
They chat for a few more minutes and I drain the coffee, because prissy cup or not, I’m a coffee whore, and I can pound that delicious substance morning, noon, or night. Lila sets down her mug, folds her hands in her lap, and says, “The reason I asked you both to be here today is I have an exciting new project. Craig is investing in some property, a beautiful new building, and I have carte blanche to redo the penthouse any way I see fit.” Glee seems to radiate off the woman, as she shares more. “Naturally I thought of WH Carpentry & Construction first, and I’d love to see if you’d consider doing the kitchen remodel. I’m simply in love with what you’ve done here, and I can’t imagine letting anyone else put his hands on my appliances.”
I can’t even try to contain my grin, not just because of the unexpected innuendo, but because the work could help fund the new hires. And the smile just stretches across my face because this would be the definition of a no-brainer. I’m not really sure why she wanted to set up coffee to ask me to do more work. Of course, I’m interested. I like work. I like building. I like happy clients.
“It sounds fantastic,” I say.
“Where is this lovely apartment?” Natalie asks.
“It’s on the twenty-second floor. It’s absolutely gorgeous, and it has a stunning view.”
“Sounds amazing. What do you have in mind for a start date?”
“I thought first I could show it to you, so you know what you’re working with,” Lila suggests.
I nod. “Definitely. Want to check it out now?”
She laughs lightly and shakes her head. “Oh no, I’m sorry, I didn’t make that clear. You’ll need to take my private jet to get there.”
I swallow dryly and look at Natalie. She blinks at me. Unspoken words pass between us. I’m pretty sure they are all of the holy shit variety.
You don’t have to say private jet more
than once for me to say when do we take off? So I do. I shrug happily. “When do we go wheels up?”
“Is the end of the week too soon? It’s on the Strip. The building is near the Bellagio.” She brings a hand to her chest. The egg-sized diamond on her finger nearly blinds me as she says contritely, “Oh my, I should have asked. Would you be willing to work in Las Vegas? I’d be happy to pay you twenty percent above your New York fees for the inconvenience of working out of town and needing to find the right crew and workers and so on.”
I think this woman might be a fairy godmother.
“I would be thrilled to check it out, Lila,” I say. “I’m sure we can figure out how to make it all possible.”
Lila flashes me a smile then tips her forehead to Natalie. “That’s why I thought of both of you. I know Natalie is vital to making all this happen,” she says, waving a hand in the direction of the kitchen, “and it seemed to make sense for you to go together.”
The last word echoes.
Together. Together. Together.
No one says a word at first, then the silence spreads. Grows heavier. Weightier.
I remind myself that we’ve had dinner just the two of us. What’s the harm in traveling together?
I clear my throat and meet Natalie’s blue-eyed gaze. I swear I see excitement in her eyes. “Natalie, would that work for you? For your schedule at the dojo?”
She nods at the speed of light. “Yes. And once we know the scope of the job, I’ll do everything I can to make this fit into Wyatt’s work.”
Lila nearly bounces in her seat. “Wonderful. I can even arrange for you to stay in a suite at the Bellagio. Would those accommodations be suitable?”
She’s serious. That’s the most incredible part of her entire request. That she thinks there’s a chance we’d find the Bellagio unsuitable. “Yes, I believe it would suit us just fine,” I say, in a serious tone. “Natalie, does the Bellagio meet your standards?”
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