Provocative

by Lisa Renee Jones

  He doesn’t give me time to react, let alone speak, before his lips are on mine, and he’s kissing me, a drugging, slow kiss. And it seems now that I feel every new kiss he claims deeper now in every possible way. He is the escape I’d hoped for, but he is so much more. And eventually we are once again naked, but it’s not kinky spankings and naughty talk. It’s not just sex at all. It’s passionate, and intense, yes, but it’s softer and gentler than before, in ways I don’t understand but feel.

  Until we are here and now, in this exact moment when the lights are out, the TV playing a movie with barely audible sound. His heart thunders beneath my ear, telling me that he is still awake as well. I inhale, breathing in that woodsy scent of him, wondering how one person can feel so right and so wrong at the same time. Macom had felt right and then wrong, though the wrong took me longer than it should have to admit, but he was never both at once. Ironically too, when I look into Nick’s eyes, I believe he feels the same of me.

  I’d told Nick that it’s easy to feel alone here in this house, but I didn’t tell him just how good that usually is to me. I didn’t tell him that alone is safe. I didn’t tell him that alone allows me to be me without fearing what someone will see or judge. Alone is a place where I take shelter, and can breathe again. But as necessary as being alone feels right now, Nick has awakened something in me and not just the woman. I am painting again, and suddenly I realize that painting is how I learn, grow, cope.

  My mind starts to travel back to the past, to how solitude became my sanctuary, and I meld myself closer to Nick, and somehow find myself asking, “Did you speak to your father often?”

  “No,” he says simply.

  “Do you feel guilty about that?”

  “No,” he says, no hesitation. Just straight up. This is how it is. This is what it is.

  “Have you cried for him?”

  “No,” he says again. “I have not.”

  “Me either,” I say, and I don’t mean to say more, but in the safety of darkness, my eyes hidden, my expression with them, I do. “And it feels bad,” I add. “Like I’m supposed to be crying for her.”

  “If the person didn’t deserve your love in life,” he replies, “they don’t deserve your tears in death.”

  I know he’s right. My mother doesn’t deserve my tears, but death is her friend and my enemy. Death is the gaping hole in your soul that just keeps spiraling into blackness. “Do you have siblings, Nick?

  “No.”

  “Other family?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re alone now, too.”

  “Sweetheart, I was alone when that man was in the room.”

  As was I with my mother, I think, memories trying to invade my mind, I do not want to revisit. I shut my eyes, inhaling Nick’s woodsy sent, losing myself in him. In sleep, I hope. And the shadows start to form. The darkness, too, but then suddenly, I don’t smell Nick any longer. That woodsy scent is replaced by flowers. So many flowers. Daisies. Roses. Lilacs. The scent of the Reid Winter Gardens. The scent of my mother that clings to my hair and clothes almost daily. I will my mind away from the place I sense it’s taking me. I fight a mental war I lose. I am back in time living my tenth birthday.

  My father has just picked me up from school and we’ve returned to the mansion, and I cannot wait to find my mother, a drawing in my hand, a present for her, while my father has promised mine will come soon. I push through the doors leading to the garden. I drop my drawing, and gasp when it starts to blow. I run and catch it, picking it up and staring down at the colors. So many colors. So many flowers. I’ve drawn my mother’s garden and I know she will be proud.

  With my prize back in hand, I rush to the gazebo where I always find her, but stop short when I spy a tall, dark-haired man with her. “I told you not to come here,” my mother says.

  “Return my phone calls, Meredith, and I won’t.”

  “You do understand I’m married?”

  He grabs my mother’s arm and pulls her to him. “I also understand you want me,” he says, and then he is kissing her, and I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. I turn away and start running and just when I reach the door to the mansion, it opens and my father steps outside. And he’s big and tall and like a teddy bear that loves and loves and I want to protect him like he protects me.

  “Daddy!” I shout and fling myself at him, hugging him.

  “Hey honey. Did you find your mother?”

  “She’s inside,” I say. “We have to find her. I need cake.”

  He laughs and takes my hand, leading me to the mansion. “Let’s find her and have cake.”

  My lashes lift, my eyes pierced by sunlight, and I blink away slumber with the sudden realization that Nick is gone. I jolt to a sitting position, pulling the blanket over my nudity, a ball of emotion I refuse to name in my chest. Of course he’s gone. Why wouldn’t he be gone? That ball in my chest expands and I reject it, refusing to name it. Glancing at the clock, I’m appalled to discover it’s after nine. I have the rest of today here before I go back to the mansion, and I’m wasting it in bed, which admittedly was more appealing when Nick was in it, but I’m damn sure not letting today suck because of him leaving without saying a word.

  Throwing off the covers, I walk into the bathroom and pull on my pink robe and shove my feet in my pink fluffy slippers. By habit, I brush my teeth and hair, and note the smudges of mascara under my eyes. “No wonder he left,” I murmur. I look like the scary chick from that horror movie, Grudge, or something like that. Only she had dark hair, meant to be Goth and scary. At this moment, I’m a close second to her though, for sure. I decide I don’t care either. There is no one to care but me and I just want coffee. And I think I might make me some gourmet pancakes my way. I need to stick to doing things my way. And bill collectors or not, I need to stop staying at the mansion. I need my space. I guess that is the gift Nick Rogers left me with.

  Me again.

  Or maybe that will turn out to be a curse, and I will in turn curse him for months to follow.

  I walk back into the bedroom, and note that he is, indeed, polite. He took our plates to the kitchen when he left. For some reason, that really irritates me. I walk into the living room, and my mind goes back to the dream, to my tenth birthday, and without a conscious decision to do so, I cross the living room and enter the library. Once I’m there, I walk to the bookshelf and pull out a worn brown journal and sit down on the chair beside it, opening it to pull out a piece of old, worn paper that was once balled up like one of the pieces of paper Nick used for paper basketball in my office yesterday.

  “Faith.”

  I jolt at Nick’s voice, looking up to find him standing in the doorway.

  “You scared the heck out of me, Nick,” I say, my hand at my chest, while his chest is hugged by a snug black t-shirt he’s paired with black jeans and biker style boots, the many sides of this man dauntingly sexy.

  He starts laughing in reaction, his jaw sporting a heavy stubble, while his hair is loose and damp, because apparently, he took a shower and I didn’t know.

  “It’s not funny,” I scold.

  “No,” he says crossing the room to sit on the footstool in front of me. “It’s not funny, but I hate to tell you Faith, as beautiful as you are, right now you look like the girl from—”

  “The Grudge,” I supply, remembering my make-up. “I noticed that but I thought…I noticed.”

  He narrows those too blue, too intelligent eyes on me. “You thought I was gone?”

  I could deny the truth but he already knows and games are better when naked or trying to get naked. “Yes,” I say. “I did.”

  His eyes fill with mischief. “And miss a chance to see how you look this morning?”

  I scowl and he leans in to kiss me, before saying, “Minty fresh. I find it interesting that you brushed your teeth and left your mascara like that.”

  “Maybe I wanted to scare you away,” I say. “And fair warning. I’m cranky without coffee.�
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  “We can fix that in about two minutes.” His gaze goes to the drawing. “What’s this?”

  It’s a testament to how this man distracts and consumes me that I’ve forgotten what I’m holding in my hand. “The past,” I say, and when I would fold it, Nick catches my hand.

  “Was this your work as a child?”

  “Yes,” I say. “It was.”

  “You saw things in color then. When did that change?”

  That day, I think, but instead I focus on the next time I created anything. “Sixteen.”

  “What made you change?”

  “Life,” I say, and because I have no intent of explaining, I add, “I really need that coffee. Actually, I really need a shower.”

  He studies me several beats, and then releases my hand. “I’ll be armed with coffee in the kitchen.” I shut the journal and Nick glances at it. “You’re a journal writer?”

  “No,” I say. “I paint. I don’t write. It’s actually my father’s.”

  He tilts his head. “Did you read it?”

  The question cuts right along with the answer. “Every page many times over and I understand him less now that I ever thought possible.” I stand and shove it back on the shelf, thinking of the words inside with biting clarity. “He loved her so damn unconditionally.” I look at Nick, who remains on the stool. “And affection to me is as you said, with tears. It has to be earned.”

  “As it should be,” he says, and this leaves me curious about him but I tell myself it’s time to just stay curious about Nick. To stop talking.

  I walk toward the door, but that curiosity wins. I pause before exiting. “Has anyone earned that from you, Nick?” I ask, turning to find him standing by the stool now, facing me.

  “There were a few swipes I tried to turn into something right, but they were always wrong.”

  “Why?”

  “The only answer I have is that I don’t believe in happily ever after,” he says. “That doesn’t sit well with most women.”

  And just like that he validates an acceptable reason for me to continue to bypass my hard limit of one night. “Since I don’t either,” I say, “Then we really are the perfect distraction for each other, now aren’t we? It’s really kind of liberating. I don’t have to worry about you falling in love with me and you don’t have to worry about me falling in love with you.”

  I don’t wait for a reply. I exit the library.

  NO LOVE.

  No happily ever after.

  In these things, Nick and I are kindred souls, but that begs the question: Can one soul know another before the two people realize that to be true?

  This is what is on my mind as I shower, then dress in faded jeans and t-shirt, concluding that with Nick and I this must be the case. It’s the only explanation for the right and the wrong of us together. We aren’t so much about dark lust as I’d started out thinking, as we’re damage attracting damage. He’s damaged. I’m damaged. We see each other. We know each other. The understanding between us, of each other, exists beyond the short time we’ve known one another. But do damaged people cut each other deeper? Or do they heal each other when no one else can? I don’t know this answer but I do know that in a short time, Nick has changed me. Or maybe just opened my eyes.

  As if it’s not enough to feel this, I am staring at the logo on my t-shirt that reads: Los Angeles Art Museum. My ex-employer, where by day, I embraced art, and then by night, I went home and embraced it again with a brush in my hand. I’ve let the past invade the present. No. I’ve let me be me. I’d say that is a good thing, but it exposes things I can’t afford to expose. I think it’s bad, like Nick, but also like Nick, it feels good. But bad is bad. Why can’t I remember that with this man?

  This thought lingers in my mind as I finish flat-ironing my hair and apply light make up, a brush of pink here and there, and no more. Satisfied that I no longer resemble a chick from a horror flick, I walk to the closet, stick my feet into black UGG sneakers, and then head toward the bedroom, only to stop dead in my tracks. On the white tiled ledge that frames my equally white tub, is Nick’s bag. I just didn’t look for it. Maybe I didn’t want to see it. Maybe I just wanted him to be the asshole I’ve called him because that would be simple. But he’s not simple and I don’t feel like we’re simple together at all. I like simple. It’s easy to explain and control, and yet, I find myself walking toward the living room, seeking Nick out, with simple feeling overrated for the first time in my life.

  I know he will make demands. I know he will want too much. I know everything for me should be too much right now. And I don’t care. I just want to find him again, and inhale that scent of his, that is positively drugging in all the ways Nick is right and wrong. God, I love it.

  Exiting the bedroom, the low rumble of Nick’s confident voice draws me toward the kitchen. Rounding the corner, I find him sitting at the island in profile to me, his hair now tied at his nape, his orange and black Tiger tattoo displayed as he holds the phone to his ear. The art is detailed, exquisite really, but somehow simplistic and fierce, while the man too is fierce, there is nothing simple about Nick Rogers or what he makes me feel.

  “Damn it, North,” he scolds into the phone, glancing in my direction his eyes warming as they find me, and when I might expect him to somehow make this moment sexual, he does not. He lifts his cup to offer me his coffee, an intimate gesture that does funny things to my belly. I start in his direction and he scowls at something North has said. “Think like the enemy,” he scolds the other man. “I would have prepped my client for every question you gave me for this witness.”

  I reach the island and pick up Nick’s cup, my eyes meeting his as I place my lips where his lips may well have been moments before, but the instant the hot beverage touches my lips, the harsh taste of plain black coffee has me scowling. Nick laughs and apparently North is confused, because Nick says, “No. That wasn’t funny and you will get your ass handed to you by opposing counsel and then by me. “

  Yikes. North is in hot water and I decide to let Nick focus. I set his cup back down, and I walk to the coffee pot and get another cup brewing for me, listening as he goes back and forth with North for the next couple of minutes. My coffee has brewed and I’m just pouring white chocolate creamer in my steaming cup, when Nick says, “Just meet me at my place at five. We’re going to be ready in the morning if we’re up all night.” He ends the call.

  And I feel the end of the weekend like a punch in the chest.

  I stand at the counter, my back to him, not about to turn until I figure out what the heck this reaction is that I’m having. What I’m feeling, which I guess is another curse and gift, Nick has given me. I am feeling things again because of him but he’s about to leave. And, of course, he is. It’s Sunday. And rental property or not, he lives and works in another city, and I’d planned on telling him to leave anyway. Hadn’t I? No. I hadn’t. I’m just trying to make myself feel simple and in control. And I am those things. This is a fling. This is a weekend fling. It was supposed to be one night. It’s just a—

  Nick steps behind me, his hands at my waist, his touch radiating through me with more impact than any man should ever have over me, especially since this is the last time I might ever touch him. And it feels much worse in premise than I’d imagined.

  He leans in and nuzzles my hair, inhaling like he is breathing me in. And God, I really love when he does that. “Come to the city with me,” he says.

  Shock rolls through me and I face him, my hands landing hard on his chest. “What?”

  “Come with me, Faith. I have to go back to San Francisco. If you’re with me, then we can deal with the bank together. And you need a break from all of this. We’ll come back here for the weekend.”

  “I have to run the winery, Nick.”

  His eyes darken, and not with disappointment, but rather awareness I have not yet realized. “At least you didn’t decide your new hard limit includes me leaving and never seeing you again.”

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nbsp; He’s right. I didn’t. This man is unraveling every carefully crafted plan I had and I can’t seem to care. And I should care. This is trouble. He’s trouble. I’m trouble. “What are we doing here, Nick? What is this?”

  His hands settle on the counter on either side of me, his big body crowding mine without touching me. “I don’t know, Faith,” he says, “but let’s find out.”

  “You don’t—we don’t—”

  “I could supply a number of phrases to end that statement, but it would be words. Just words. I’m not done with you and I hope like hell you’re not done with me, Faith.”

  “I wish I was,” I say, angry at him for complicating my life. Happy that he has at the same time, because yes. I’m still fucked up.

  “Ditto, sweetheart. We’re here now, though. Agreed?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Agreed.”

  “Then let’s make a new hard limit. The only hard limit that exists until we decide together otherwise, is we take this one day at a time.”

  Until we decide together. I realize with those words part of Nick’s appeal. He’s this uber alpha male. He’s sexy. He’s demanding. But he has this way of knowing when to back off, when to ask. This is new to me. This is right, not wrong. “One day at a time,” I agree.

  “Come to San Francisco with me.”

  I want to, I realize. I want to know who he is in his own domain, but want doesn’t equal need. And I need to be here. “I can’t just leave the winery.”

  “You have a manager. A good one, you said.”

  “Kasey is amazing,” I say, “But I do my best to protect him and the staff from the bill collectors who stalk us during the week. I can’t leave, Nick. I won’t. Not now.”

  The doorbell rings. “Holy fuck,” he says. “This isn’t helping my case.” He starts to move away, but I catch his arm.

  “Damn it, Nick,” I warn. “Just because we agreed to take this day by day is not an invitation for you to take over my life. I run my life.”