by Dani Wyatt
I catch her eyes looking over toward my makeshift bedroom. I decide to ignore her question for the moment and deflect with my own.
“You see something you like?” Even as the words leave my mouth, I know it’s a mistake.
She narrows those amazing blue-white eyes, and I’m having a fucking hard time not dragging her by the hair to my bed.
“If I’m going to work here, that nonsense isn’t going to fly.” She shifts her weight, and her arms cross over her chest.
The way her demeanor can turn on a dime is fascinating. One second, she’s a warm, candle flame and the next, she’s hell fire.
Unfortunately, either one of those has my blood running south, and if she catches her eye on that effect, I can be sure I’ll be in a shitstorm of hurt without her here.
“Sorry, I mean . . .” I roll my eyes at myself, but I can’t help my inner chuckle at the fierce little firecracker staring down a scarred up Navy SEAL about three times her size.
Now she’s back to somewhere between her two extremes. Her eyes are still narrow, but she’s paused them for a second longer than a glance on the side of my face that most people avoid. I give her props for just taking a look. It doesn’t bother me. I’d rather people just get it over with and ask rather than the old, uncomfortable, eye dodge. “That was a joke. A joke bomb, sorry. I want you to be comfortable here. I have no nefarious intentions, I assure you.”
She still has doubt in her eyes, and I know I've got to shake off whatever it is she does to me that has my game evaporating around her. I mean, this is one girl I actually picture myself holding hands with as much as fucking her into forever. And, I haven’t managed to get much of anything right so far.
“Okay. So, you want me to go get to work?” She shrugs and swivels her head around.
I want you to move in. Preferably naked and perched on my face.
“Yes, well, I mean he’s fine for right now. You want something to drink?” I want her to keep talking to me, and I’ll do just about anything to make that happen. “I’ve got . . .” I open the refrigerator and realize I have a single bottle of Fiji water and a Gatorade.
Then, I remember the bottle of wine Louis sent over with the furniture. He thought I might need it, and true to history, that dude is almost always right.
“It sounds a little biblical, but I have water or wine. Or, Gatorade.” I’ve already got the corkscrew working, hoping she will choose the wine. That would put us on more familiar ground than water, and I’m all about baby steppin’ to the more familiar ground.
“I’m working.” She looks straight at me.
It’s not a “no.”
“Do you hate wine?“
She shakes her head and squints her nose just a bit.
”Well, you trusted me enough to come here and take the job, so let’s spend ten minutes getting to know each other. Ten minutes. Tell you what, you can ask me anything. I’m an open book. I can see you want to ask me something, I can see it.” I grin at her because I want more than anything for it to be true. “And, this is good wine. See, no box.” I hold up the bottle like a Sommelier.
Her stoic, silent stare is questioning, but I can see a tiny crack forming in her tough exterior. I can also see she’s changed out of her scrubs and into jeans and a black turtleneck. I’m pretending she did that so she would look better.
For me.
The cork makes a soft pop as I jerk it free, and I do an invisible high five when she unbuttons her jacket. I feel lighter. There were some fucking bricks on my shoulders, both from dealing with Dad this morning and my inability to stop thinking about how to get her under me. Now, I’m happy she is willing to take the glass of wine and take off her coat.
“Here . . .” I slide a half-full glass of burgundy toward her across the stainless steel counter then quickly move around to gently help her with her jacket.
As soon as I do that, her sweet, soft scent catches in my nose, and I’m frozen. It’s not overtly sexy, yet it is like a call to a primal part of me—a part that has rumbled around with other women before but never really surfaced. Not until now.
I’m suddenly very aware of her. I mean, I was before, but not like this. Now it’s acute.
Every tiny detail is standing up and calling to me. Every shining strand of her hair is more stunning than the last. The way she tips her head to the side and raises her shoulders as I pull the coat free has my senses spinning.
She reaches for the wine glass, and I settle her coat on the back of a chair, stealing a deep inhale from its soft fabric when she turns away.
“You’re beautiful,” I whisper before I can stop, then immediately I hope it was soft enough for her to ignore.
No such luck.
“What?” She spins around, the wine in her glass swirling and almost curling over the edge.
“Sorry, I meant you have beautiful hair.”
“See, there you go again with that.” She’s stepping back, darting her finger at my face, but she raises the glass to her lips, and I watch as she takes a sip.
Even just that simple act is one of the most precious, stunning things I have ever seen in my life. Watching the wine touch her lips before slowly being pulled inside, I am quickly lost again thinking of tasting the wine by tasting her.
“Okay. So what do you want to know? Ask me anything.” Quick subject change and hopefully I’ll save my ass from more humiliation. I pour myself a glass of wine while she decides just how creepy I am.
“What happened to your face?”
Gutshot.
I cough and half-choke on the sip of wine with a half-gasp half-laugh.
Most girls ask me about being a SEAL or what it feels like to shoot someone or something frivolous to get things started, but not Promise. She’s seen too much to dick around with useless small talk.
She’s a force. I can see her thick walls made of stone and topped with razor wire. I also see the cracks, those places where I will get in and, from the inside, work my way out, becoming the reason she no longer needs her own defenses—because I protect what’s mine.
She wraps one arm around her waist as the other spins the wine glass around on the counter, making a rhythmic sound in the silence of the concrete and metal.
“Well, okay. When I was ten, our house caught on fire. My face got burned, and I couldn’t see through the smoke. So, when I found a window, I crawled through it, but there was some glass—”
“Okay.” She cuts me off, and I’m not sure which one of us is more relieved.
“So, my turn.” My need to know her overrides my need to make her comfortable.
“What do you mean, your turn? That was not part of the deal. You said I got to ask you a question, not the other way around.”
“Do you have something to hide?” I can’t stop thinking about that pink and black lace that winked at me earlier from under her scrub top. I can’t stop imagining it holding up what is a damn nice rack under that curve-hugging, black sweater.
“No.”
She takes another sip, so I figure she at least hasn’t slammed that door all the way shut. Like a moron, I shove my head inside, pushing.
“Would you have taken twenty-five dollars an hour?” I want to ask her a million other things, but more than anything, I want to see her smile.
“What?” Her incredulous reaction is followed by a shocked smile. Leaning forward just an inch, looking me dead in the eyes, she says, “Not a penny less than forty-nine.”
I have the sudden urge to bury my lips into hers and taste the flavor of the wine. It’s got to be so much better that way. Then, the next thought is of burying my face between her legs.
I also know that flavor would put this $300 bottle of French Burgundy to shame.
She’s holding back another smile, and I have the realization that I want to be the one to put that smile on her face for the rest of her life.
“But we already agreed, so you are just going to have to swallow that one dollar premium.” She’s got me by t
he damn short hairs, the way she gives it right back to me.
“Fair enough. I won’t expect anything more for that extra dollar.” My eyes playfully scan her from nose to toes.
She is deciding if I just crossed into the creeper category again, but when I hear her let out a short sigh followed by a shake of her head, I feel like I just won the damn lottery.
“So, do you want me to get drunk with you or take care of your dad?”
“You’re on to me. My dad is really able to take care of himself. We just set up this elaborate plan to get you here to get drunk with me.” I take a long swallow from my wine glass, unable to stop myself from covering her from top to bottom again with my eyes, which draws up a strange, nervous tension in the back of my neck.
There is nothing about her that does not call to the beast she seems to have awakened in me.
“How do you know it wasn’t my plan to get you to pay me fifty bucks an hour to get drunk on your wine?”
She smashes the ball right back in my face, and I’ve got nothing to return.
She lets out a full laugh this time in answer to my paused response, and it’s like the damn Forth of July inside my head as well as inside my boxers.
This was not what I was expecting when I swung that door open to my Dad’s room two days ago. But, I’m almost inclined to call a truce with God and give a nod of thanks.
She’s so much more than I’d imagined, and there’s so much more to discover. For the first time in my life, I want it all.
I see how fragile she is, standing there, taking the last bit of wine between her lips. I want to crush her under me and fuck all the delicate parts of her. I want to treat her like she is strong and powerful even as I break her in such a stunning way that only I can put her back together again. I need to hold her as much as she needs to be held. She just doesn’t know it yet.
Over the next four hours, I do my best to keep my instinct to stalk her under control. The primal part of me that has surfaced is intent on her every move, but I manage to get a few hours of focused work done on the letters and the drawings.
Louis and I are meeting tomorrow to go over the book project, and, even with the biggest distraction of my life floating around in the next room, I manage to make some progress.
The book is a culmination of some seemingly random connections that, when put together, become so much more than just the sum of their parts. Faces have always fascinated me, and even before the fire, I would scribble silhouettes on scraps of paper, napkins in restaurants, and school books.
I could see pain in faces—I never seemed interested in drawing the happy people. I always saw the distraught, the lonely, the grieving. Those are the ones that I could never forget. I still can’t.
Sitting at one of the long tables, I’m scribbling notes on a clean page of a fresh notebook, one that looks exactly like the hundred or so others on the twin table to my right.
My eyes look first at the letter, then, selecting the words that strike me, I write them inside the small sketch of a young boy’s face.
“He didn’t even cry. He took it like a stoic soldier trained for that kind of torture. That was the day I became the real monster. The one that took away his childhood.”
I drop my head before I scribble more notes. Most of the time I don’t know why I still do this, why I need to know more. I’ve seen enough. Read enough. Felt it in the marrow of me.
There is real evil in the world. The worst of it comes packaged inside those that promise to love and protect us the most.
Promise
I had already decided on my way over not to be friends with him.
No, not just friends but anything with him.
He is just the $50-an-hour guy and nothing more.
The son of Mr. Fitzgerald.
Beckett. BFF.
If only he would follow in his father’s footsteps and have no interest in speaking to me other than to complain.
But, no.
Beckett has an interest.
He looks at me like I’m somebody.
It’s unsettling.
I like it. That is the real problem.
I’ve managed to cultivate a demeanor that matches my looks.
Cold. Disquieting. Off-putting.
I’ve become the ghost.
I may be blind in one eye, but I’m blind in other ways as well, ways that have kept me safe.
The truth is, I just don’t like people all that much. That, plus my cool demeanor, has kept me from making any real human connections for a very long time. With men especially.
Well, okay, outside of Bruce, who managed against my will to wiggle himself somewhere between boss and friend.
Unfortunately, there is something about Beckett—this half-faced mountain of testosterone and calm control that ignored my well-cultivated stone walls. Before I could smack myself back into line, I’m drinking wine and laughing with him.
Laughing.
Because he’s funny. Sort of. I think.
I haven’t busted out a laugh like that in months, and then it was with Bruce, and he is completely harmless when it comes to that kind of flirtation.
Is that what he was doing? Flirting? Yes, most definitely. And me? No, I was not flirting. Was I? Oh god, please, no.
When I’m on stage at the club, men look at me, but I don’t feel anything. They aren’t necessarily interested in me. I’m an anomaly. A sexual aberration.
And they never flirt.
They gawk.
They ogle.
I’m like an exotic jar of pickles they want to pick off the shelf and take home. But, they’ll throw the empty jar away when they’re done.
God, my mind is strange, pickles? Really, I’m a jar of pickles?
Anyway, it’s never just flirting.
I’ve showered Mr. Fitzgerald (Paul actually, but I like to show respect, keep a professional distance), changed his bandage and read to him for an hour, and now he’s leaning his head back on the burgundy La-Z-Boy, his breathing deep and even.
Now what?
I tap the toes of my brown loafers on the cement floor, unsure what to do next.
Every once in a while, I can hear the sound of movement out in the enormous space of the loft. I wish I’d brought my jacket into the apartment with Mr. Fitzgerald, then maybe I could just slip out.
I catch a glimpse of the orange of my jacket still hanging on the back of the chair.
Where he put it when he slipped it off my shoulders, when he brushed my neck with his fingers, and I forgot how to stand.
He’s paid me for five hours today already, and I’m just pushing three and a half now. What am I supposed to do for another ninety minutes with Mr. Fitzgerald snoring away?
I feel the distinctive tension low in my belly playing over and over the two times we’ve touched. Barely touched. But, it felt like some Oprah “ah ha” moment. Dang it.
STOP.
I don’t stop. I think more. I heard him take a deep breath as though the contact between us latched onto something painful inside of me that he felt as well.
STOP STOP STOP
This is not me. I’m not that girl, the one that turns from lead to liquid at the touch of a man.
I lean forward, tapping my feet faster, and I see Beckett sitting at one of those massive tables covered in notebooks and what looks like letters. I think they are letters because each one has an envelope stapled to the top.
Maybe it’s fan mail. Maybe he’s some secret porn star, and I should be going all fangirl over him.
But, there are other stacks of odd-sized papers without envelopes. They are all set in absurdly perfect stacks at absurdly perfect distances from each other. He’s got some OCD stuff going on.
This place is as organized as a barracks. I thought I would do some cleaning earlier when I put Mr. Fitzgerald in the shower, but there’s nothing to clean. Even the cement floor is sparkling.
He’s got one letter or whatever it is to his right, there's a notebook open i
n front of him, and he’s drawing or writing in it. The notebooks are larger than the kind you take to school, and I raise my head and squint to try to get a better look.
They aren’t notebooks, after all; they’re sketch books. And, he’s sketching.
I can’t help the little, ironic giggle that comes out.
Maybe because he doesn’t look like the sketching type. If you took a picture of him and regarded it objectively, you would immediately think gym rat or jarhead.
That’s completely unfair, but I know how people decide who you are at first glance. And, that is what you would think, looking at not just his size but his face and the presence of him. The force that surrounds him.
When he speaks to me, there is a protective sort of kindness that comes through. Something about him makes me want to step closer even as something else about him pushes me away.
I look over as Mr. Fitzgerald lets out a groan and adjusts himself in the wine colored lounge chair. The little apartment is as neat as a pin, and I think of the chaos back in my own room at Bruce’s apartment.
I can’t stop tapping, so I cross my legs. I’m pretending there is not an enticing pressure growing between my thighs. When I look back up to see what Beckett is doing, I practically jump off the chair because he’s leaning in the doorway watching me.
“Jesus! You scared the crud out of me.”
He must have a freakin’ stealth mode because I only looked away for a second and damn if he wasn’t here without a sound.
He busts out that gleaming smile and that chipped front tooth catches my eye again.
How can a tooth be sexy? God, I’m a mess.
I slip my hands over my forehead and down the sides of my hair in an attempt to push it behind my ears when little, sharp tugs remind me I’ve got it tangled up in a bun on the top of my head.
He’s smiling bigger now.
He is clearly amused at the way I pulled my own hair because I couldn’t freakin’ remember if it was up or down.
#pathetic
In the awkward moment of silence, my stomach decides to let out a croaking, painful growl. It’s always done that. And usually at the most horrifying moments possible.