Sleeping with Her Enemy

by Jenny Holiday

  He and his sister rolled their eyes in stereo.

  “It is, Mom,” Kat said. “It totally is.”

  He hadn’t disagreed, and he tried to remember that fact as he rounded the corner to the executive suites at Winter Enterprises. Amy hated him. It was possible that because of Saturday night he might have been upgraded from hate to mere disdain. But either way, she wasn’t his biggest fan. And the feeling was mutual. Or it had been, historically. The part where she’d wrapped her legs around him while he devoured her mouth wasn’t really germane to the situation because she’d been reeling from the jilting and probably a little drunk. In other words, not herself. And though he was always up for a little no-strings-attached fun, he wasn’t foolish enough to think a woman who’d just been dumped in such grand fashion could ever come with no strings.

  All of which was why he sped up a little as he passed Amy’s office, which was on the way to Jack’s. He didn’t even look in.

  “Dax!”

  Damn. His heart sped up as if he’d been caught doing something illegal.

  He backed up and glanced inside her office. Relief replaced trepidation as he realized Jack and Cassie were there, too.

  Amy, looking fresh-faced and pretty and not at all like she’d just been epically and publicly dumped, waved him inside. Maybe he’d been right, and Amy was already over Mason.

  “Dax!” Amy said again, waving him inside the office. Obeying her summons, he felt a little like he was walking a gangplank to his doom.

  A very stylish doom, he thought, taking in the space that looked like it belonged in the pages of a design magazine. He’d been in her office only once before, and that had been last Saturday afternoon, and he’d been focused on her, weeping and heartbroken, and not on her surroundings. The office felt like her, though, from its huge, teal overdyed Persian rug to the crystal chandelier that hung above her desk. He smiled in spite of himself. An office fit for a Strawberry Girl.

  “There you go,” Jack said. “You can take Dax.”

  “He can be your knight in shining armor again,” Cassie said, laughing. “You two can bicker through the whole game.”

  Amy narrowed her eyes. “Yeah. He’s probably a Yankees fan.”

  In addition to being confused about what they were saying, Dax was struck dumb by Amy. She wasn’t sitting behind her desk, and she wasn’t dressed for work. She was sprawled out on a sofa in a small meeting area in a corner of the office, where Jack and Cassie also sat on armchairs. And she was wearing shorts. Short shorts. White short shorts. He also couldn’t help but notice that when you looked close, her eyes were all red and bloodshot. Maybe Cassie had been right after all, and Amy was putting on a brave face.

  “Well, okay, if neither of you is going to budge, I’ll resort to Dax. Dax, you want to go to a Blue Jays game with me?”

  Somewhere in his brain, he knew that Amy was a Toronto Blue Jays fan, and she was wearing a tank top branded with their logo to prove it. He squinted at her. And little blue jay earrings. Damn. “Excuse me?” was all he could manage.

  “Jack’s making me take two weeks off, so I’ve been forced to be a lady of leisure, and it’s driving me bonkers. I’m going to a game today, and I’m trying to rustle up a date.”

  “Hey, that’s not true!” Jack protested. “I just said you could come back Monday.”

  Amy smirked. “Right. One week off. Jack needs me for a new deal we have in the works, otherwise he wouldn’t have even let me in the door today.” Then she grinned at Jack. “You only love me for my crack real estate negotiating skills.”

  “Damn straight!” Jack said. “And you’d better thank your lucky stars, because if we didn’t have this deal with McQuade going down, I would be making you take another week off.”

  “McQuade the golf course guy?” Dax asked.

  Jack nodded. “You know that crappy old course in Scarborough? He’s closing it. We’re trying to get him to sell us the land.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. Something. It’s not out in the boonies like it was when it opened. It’s surrounded by city now, so it’s prime for developing.”

  “Anyway,” Amy said, pitching her voice over them. “I am, at this moment, on forced vacation, and I have two tickets to the 2:05 Jays versus Yankees game, and I can’t convince either of these two workaholics to come with me.”

  “You all forget that I don’t actually work here,” Cassie said. “I’m just here having lunch. I have another job.” It was true. She was an analyst at a nearby bank.

  “I know, I know.” Amy mock-scowled at Jack. “And you’re too busy plotting to pave over the world.” She sat up straight and pointed melodramatically at Dax with both hands. “Sometimes a girl has to settle for her third choice. What do you say?”

  “I can’t,” he started, casting around for a reason that didn’t sound lame. “Even if I wasn’t slammed with work, I don’t really do third-choice duty.” He could feel himself falling into that old sparring pattern with her, which, after all that had happened, was both strange and familiar.

  “Oh, right,” she said, “I forget that you have women lining up for the honor of your company. Silly me.”

  “Welcome to the Amy and Dax show,” Jack said. “You guys should start charging for tickets.”

  “You’re right,” she said to Jack as she popped up from the sofa. “This is stupid. I’ll go hit up the Boy Geniuses, see if one of them will come.”

  “No.” He must have spoken a little too vehemently because all eyes swung to him. It was just that he was imagining the lust-addled programmers falling all over themselves when she arrived seeking company. They would probably devise some sort of mock medieval tournament to decide who got the honor of taking her to the game. “I can’t spare any of them right now,” he lied. “We’ve got a huge project under way.”

  “So that’s why I just saw Spencer in the kitchen building a Lego Death Star?” Cassie teased.

  Caught out, Dax sighed. “I’ll go. Just give me a sec to go back to the office and close down.”

  “Because you’re not needed for this huge project,” Cassie said.

  He shot her an irritated look. She was usually so good-natured. Why was she busting his ass today?

  Amy leaped to her feet, saving him from having to respond to Cassie’s barb. “Okay! But hurry. I don’t want to miss the national anthem.”

  …

  “So what’s with the national anthem?” Dax asked an hour later, when they slid into their seats just in time for the opening strains of O Canada.

  Amy shushed him and paid attention as a middle school choir sang. Oh, it got her every time, the start of a ball game. The anthem, the anticipation, the sense that anything was possible—even if the Jays were playing the dreaded Yankees and would almost certainly get their asses handed to them.

  After both the Canadian and American anthems were over and they’d sat down, she leaned over and explained. “I just like the ceremony of it all. Arriving in time for the anthem is part of my routine. It’s like how some people can’t stand to miss the previews in movies. I feel like the game really starts when everyone shuts up, puts down their phones, and pays attention. That hardly ever happens in the world.”

  Dax’s stomach growled loud enough that she could hear it. “And does your routine include snacks?”

  “Yes! That’s why I always buy aisle seats. These aren’t the greatest because I only bought them this morning, but aisle seats are essential for maximum snack access.”

  “Well, I haven’t been to a baseball game since I was a kid, and we always sat way up in the five-hundred-level nosebleed seats. So I have to say, your ‘not the greatest’ seats are kind of impressing me.” He stood. “You want anything?”

  “I don’t go for my first snack until the bottom of the second.”

  “Is that a rule?”

  It did sound kind of stupid when she thought about it.

  When she didn’t
answer, he went on. “Yes. I see. Transmitted from on high and carved into stone tablets.” He adopted a booming tone that was a parody of seriousness. “Thou shalt consume no hot dogs before the second inning.”

  “Fries. I’ll have fries.” Leave it to Dax to upend her routines. “But not from the regular concession stands. The ones from Quaker Steak & Lube. It’s in section 143. With mayo on the side.”

  “Fries from Quaker Steak & Lube with mayo on the side. He grinned and bowed. “Yes, my lady.”

  Then he was gone, and she was left a little breathless. The pageant spread out before her as the Jays took the field was familiar, comforting, but she also sort of felt like she was watching the scene through glasses that amped everything up. The colors seemed hyper saturated, the shouts from the crowd volleyed with more vehemence than usual, the organ was extra jangly, evoking a manic circus. It was an unsettling but not necessarily unpleasant sensation, like she was Dorothy waking up in Technicolor Oz.

  Something was happening. It wasn’t just the baseball game. Since the non-wedding, everything was just…more. The cauterizing blade of heartbreak, yes, but also everything else. Food tasted amazing, lights seemed bright. The sharp ping of loneliness as she lay on Cassie’s bed contrasted with the beautiful little apartment that sheltered her. She sometimes felt like she was a pendulum, careering between extremes. There was no middle ground, just agonizing beauty, giddy despair.

  But she liked it. It wasn’t sustainable. She was self-aware enough to recognize this as a transitional period. But for now, she welcomed every color, sound, emotion, experience. Because this intensity, this immersion—this was new. This was not something she was used to feeling. And there was some comfort there. Her heartbreak was real, but she was already beginning to see that she would be okay. Because nothing had ever been like this when Mason was around. Everything had been fine. Acceptable. Enjoyable, even. A cheer arose from the crowd and a glance at the field showed the Jays’ first batter had hit a home run at the bottom of the first. She looked down at the impossible emerald green of the Astroturf. There had never been colors like that. Though she remained sitting while everyone around her jumped to their feet, she felt the thrill. No one had been doing the wave when she was with Mason.

  And then Dax was there, sinking into the seat next to her, handing her a perfect container of fries that smelled like heaven. Her skin tingled where his arm brushed against hers, and her core tightened.

  There had also never been…this.

  She wasn’t kidding herself. Dax was still a world-class jerk. But she was willing to concede that he had his uses. He had shown her something. Something about attraction—okay, lust even. He’d shown her that these things were real, that she could feel alive. That she could expect more. It wasn’t that expecting a man to be kind and thoughtful and to share common interests was wrong. It was more that now she wanted that and…this. Whatever this was. And that guy was out there somewhere. When she was ready, when she had healed, she would find him.

  In the meantime, an idea was forming. Why the heck not? She was young and single, and, unlike her wedding night, stone-cold sober. She shifted in her seat a little in Dax’s direction. Damn, the man smelled good. It was like sunscreen but something else, too.

  “Hey,” he said, nudging her. “Look at that.”

  She followed his gaze down twenty or so rows, to the bottom of the section they were sitting in. A woman was marching up the stairs, screaming something only partially comprehensible—something about making a mistake. As she passed them on her way out, she said, “Your phone ceases to be your private property once you’re using it to sext other women, Jason!”

  “Yeah, well, what about you?” the guy yelled as he followed her. “What about all those evening work meetings? Do you think I was born yesterday?”

  Dax let loose a low whistle of disbelief as he—and everyone else around them—watched the pair storm out. Amy didn’t know whether to join in their laughter or to cry. Did anyone live happily aver after anymore?

  “Hey.” More nudging. “They had great seats. Let’s go grab them.”

  Sure enough, the unhappy couple had been sitting in the front row of the 200 section, affording them a perfect view of the field. Too bad. “I don’t do that.”

  “What do you mean? Don’t do what?”

  “I don’t like to sit in seats that aren’t mine.” Wow. That sounded amazingly prissy, even to her own ears. “Half the time when you try it, the people show up, and then it’s awkward and you miss part of the game, and—”

  Dax stood up, and he seemed to be taking her with him, as evidenced by the fact that he’d grabbed her elbow. “Come on. Live on the edge for once.”

  Oh, what the hell. She was supposed to be turning over a new leaf, right? Maybe a life of crime would turn out to be just the thing to snap her out of her funk.

  “How’d you become such a big fan?” Dax asked as they settled into their new seats.

  The question startled her—she’d been looking around, expecting an usher or some other person with authority to come and arrest them. “I guess, initially, it was because my older brother was. Our parents were…” She stopped herself. But then, looking out at the rich colors of the game, remembering that she’d been thinking earlier about embracing this transitional phase of life, she unstopped herself. What did she care what Dax thought of her family? “Our parents were kind of mediocre.”

  He laughed. “Mediocre? That’s a funny word to use.”

  “Yeah, they weren’t abusive or anything, they were just kind of…self-absorbed. But not, like, together—each of them in their own ways. Still are.” She had never said a bad word about her family to anyone. Once she started, though, it was actually strangely enjoyable. Telling the truth felt good. “My mother, for example, is obsessed with appearances. You know the phrase ‘keeping up with the Joneses’?” He nodded. “That’s my mother. Nothing is ever enough. In my more charitable moments, I actually feel sorry for her. It must be hard to go through life so paralyzed by what other people think of you.”

  “And your dad?”

  “Alcoholic. Functional, mind you—holds down his fancy bank exec job, but all the same, he was always…busy drinking.” Amy warmed to her story. “So anyway, my brother is three years older, and he sort of looked out for me. We stuck together. I’m making things sound more miserable than they were—we had lots of fun, actually. I used to beg him to take me to games with his friends.” She pointed up and to the side. “We used to sit in the nosebleed seats, too. You could see a game for ten bucks or something back then.”

  He was looking at her kind of strangely, head cocked slightly. Probably he was about to say something insulting, so she lobbed her own question out before he could talk. “What about your family?”

  “They’re great.” Then he narrowed his eyes at her. “What?”

  She must look as bewildered as she felt. It was just hard to imagine the arrogant, womanizing Dax coming from a nice, normal family. He seemed like the kind of person who had been raised by wolves. In a mansion.

  “What?” he protested again. “They are. They’re kind of insane, mind you, but I love them.”

  Huh. The easy, casual way he said he loved his family surprised her. “They must be really proud of you.”

  He nodded. “Ridiculously so. It’s actually a little embarrassing—you should see my mother’s Christmas letter.” He stole a fry from her. “I just wish they would let me help them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They still live in the tiny house I grew up in, in a not-great area of Scarborough.”

  That surprised her. He was such a force, so confident and capable—and rich—that she just assumed he’d come from money.

  “It’s fine,” he continued. “It’s just that they could be so much more comfortable. And they’re getting old. It would great to have them somewhere they don’t have to shovel or take care of the lawn. But they won’t move.”

  “They sound g
reat.” She meant it, even if she was simultaneously a little jealous. What would it be like to be surrounded with people who loved and supported you, people you didn’t have to constantly be managing? People who thought you were enough?

  A jeer went up from the crowd around them.

  “What’s happening?” Dax asked.

  Amy had been paying attention as they talked. “Buehrle struck out the last two batters, and the count was two-two, but that guy just hit a single.”

  “Ah.”

  She glanced at the scoreboard and grabbed a handful of fries. Just because Dax had inserted a premature fry course into her normal routine didn’t mean she was skipping her bottom-of-the-second-inning snack. She handed the basket to Dax. “Eat up. After the next out, it’s time for ice cream.”

  He grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Chapter Six

  Damn, Amy knew baseball. Dax wasn’t particularly a fan, but he’d thought he had a good enough handle on the game.

  Still, in the sixth inning, when she grabbed his arm and shrieked with delight, squealing, “RBI with no swing!” he was forced to say, “What?”

  “The bases were loaded,” she explained without looking at him, sitting forward in her seat and beaming down at the field. “And there was a full count. The last pitch was a ball, so the batter walked. Since the bases were loaded, the runner at third walks home. The batter gets an RBI, and he never even swung the bat!” She clapped her hands. “It’s one of those weird baseball things.”

  “Yeah, ninety percent of baseball I understand fine, but there is some arcane shit, isn’t there?” Though possibly part of the problem in this case was that he was watching Amy more than the play on the field.

  “I’ll give you arcane. Listen to this one! What is the weirdest way to get a runner to first base?”

  It had to be something more than just the usual hit or walk. He searched his memory. “Ah, the batter is hit by a pitch?”

  “No!” She bounced up and down in her seat. “A runner is on first when a game is suspended. If that runner is traded before the game resumes, a new runner gets to go in. So he gets to first without ever picking up a bat!”