by Sally Felt
“What a relief,” she said. “I know I’m tired of being asked. I thought we’d agreed anything still here belonged to me.”
“I need the money.”
“You’d pawn an heirloom for money?”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand. That’s why I couldn’t tell you.”
Isabelle rolled her eyes. This was the Steven she knew. Ready-with-the-excuses Steven. Manipulative Steven. Slimy Steven.
“Oops,” she said. “Well, you have now. You may as well tell me what you need the money for. Something worthwhile, I hope. Maybe to buy a conscience? The ability to tell the truth? Or failing either of those, a vasectomy? Say yes to any of these and I’ll cosign the loan, if necessary.”
“Where did you put the ring?”
Isabelle went cold. Where did she put it? That meant Steven knew she’d moved it.
Which meant he’d been in her house to look.
Which meant he was the one who’d stepped on her hat.
Chapter Seven
“Phone call for you,” Jules said. Kim swore. He had his duffel in hand, ready to be gone. First time he’d tried to leave, Damon asked him to stay and open the gym so he could go home after their early workout and shower. Second time, Damon talked him into holding down the floor while he brought some guests through—guests Kim wasn’t introduced to, not that Damon was obligated. Lucky for Damon, Kim loved Wall Werx. But he was ready for his own shower, his own priorities. It was time to leave.
Now this.
Jules tagged along as he made for the office, saying, “You used all the towels? How could you use all the towels?” Her skin gleamed and sweat stains showed at the waistband of her knit shorts and on her green bra top between her breasts. She’d pulled her dark hair back in a big plastic clip but stray strands were glued to her face and neck. Her shoulders said she was pumped but he wasn’t going to check the rest of her. They weren’t lovers anymore.
“Sorry, Jules. We’re nasty, sweaty pigs. Any idea who’s on the phone?” If it were Isabelle, he’d walk faster.
“Nope. Damon answered it. Said you could use the office.”
So it might be Isabelle. Kim dropped his bag and opened the glass door.
“When you’re done, I want to change in the storage room,” Jules said.
“I’ll wave you in,” he promised.
Jules had been cool about the end of their relationship, for which Kim was grateful. Otherwise one of them would probably have had to leave the gym. Instead they seemed to have fallen into comfortable friendship much like he and Damon enjoyed.
The Wall Werx office was a painfully narrow space, barely accommodating a metal desk and broken-down office chair to the left and a tall filing cabinet straight ahead. Piles of paper swamped the furniture, letters and receipts and catalogs for everything from outdoor clothing suppliers to a specialty catalog of nothing but carabiners. There were even boxes of stuff on the floor, though a rough path doglegged around the desk to the door on the far wall that led to the storage closet.
Kim leaned across the desk, picked up the receiver and punched the flashing button. He considered answering as if sure it were Isabelle, something just for her, but she had him too confused to guess how she might react.
He said simply, “Kim.”
It wasn’t her.
“Kerry,” said his half-brother, mimicking him.
Kim kicked the leg of the metal office desk. Damon had known who it was—and known Kim wouldn’t want the call—and he’d sent Jules after him because he knew Kim would smell any attempt to lie about it. Coward.
“Hey, man. What’s up?”
“What was that? You okay?”
“Fine. Just some work being done here at the gym.” Kim kicked the desk leg again. Hopefully, the more he kicked the desk now, the less he’d feel like kicking Damon when he got off the call. “What’s on your mind?” he asked, though he’d have preferred to go with, What do you want?
“Your home number is disconnected. Can’t a brother worry?”
Half-brother, Kim thought. Only half. “Well, I’m not on the street. No heroin habit or pregnant girlfriends. Hope that’s not too much disappointment for one day, bro.” He wondered whether Kerry was home or if he was calling from Glassner’s Fine Jewelry. Was he checking in on the blue-collar dropout in moments between helping well-to-do clients choose the perfect diamond?
“So I guess you didn’t call the home security company we talked about.”
You mean that you talked about. Endlessly. He was done arguing with Kerry about his condo. He’d made that mistake too often to forget. When he’d first seen the drawings. When he’d put down his deposit. When he’d hired a decorator. Last time he’d talked to Kerry, he’d set the phone down so the blowhard could get it out of his system without interference.
The next day, he’d had the phone disconnected, grateful he’d always dodged Kerry’s efforts to get his cell number.
“You don’t feel safe living downtown, don’t live downtown,” Kim said. “I happen to like it.”
“Adding security will help it sell.”
“Who said I was selling?”
Kerry didn’t need to say. Damn Damon and his big mouth. Kim kicked the desk again, glad to be wearing his street shoes. If he were still in climbing slippers, he’d really be paying for this.
“What area are you looking at?”
“South,” Kim said, unclenching his jaw enough to force a laugh. “Austin. Didn’t I tell you?”
“Austin! You’d leave your client base? Do you have any idea how tough it is to get started in a new place?”
Better than you, heir to Wassily the Great’s well-established business. But that was Kerry, always butting in. Always trying to be the one who knew what was best for Kim.
Other buttons were flashing on the phone. Kim ignored them. Damon’s problem, not his.
“Don’t worry about it,” Kim said.
“I do. I will. I can’t believe you never mentioned it.”
“Yeah,” Kim said, “well.” Damn if he would apologize. Tomorrow’s house-hunting expedition was going to seem just a little sweeter after this reminder of what he’d be leaving behind.
“The kids will be heartbroken if you disappear. They ask about you all the time.”
Kim had nothing to say to that. He liked Kerry’s wife. He was crazy about their kids. But he and his brother couldn’t manage to share air for more than five minutes, which complicated things.
“Lisa starts high school this fall,” Kerry said.
“No way.” Kim had been in high school himself when his niece was born. How weird was that.
“Driving before you know it.”
Trust Kerry to dash regrets of not often seeing his nieces and nephews with a classic dig—a little reminder that Kim had promised Kerry’s oldest he’d teach her to drive. “Cool. She can drive the whole busload of Glassner spawn to spend weekends with Uncle Kim.”
“Not in this lifetime.”
Kim’s jaw started to ache.
“That was a joke, Kim.”
“Oh. Good one.” He kicked the desk.
“So have you researched the market for plumbing services in Austin?” Kerry asked.
Kim thought about saying that yeah, there was a backlog of demand. A veritable shit ton of business to be had. Or better yet, he was going to change his name to Glassner and call the business Glassner’s Fine Potty Works. What a glowing legacy for the Glassner name. What a testament to the wonderful man Wassily Glassner had been and how much happier their mother had been married to him than worthless drifter Brian Martin.
“I have a few business ideas,” he said instead. Damn if he’d discuss his future plans with the man who’d spent half a lifetime manipulating them.
“You’re giving up plumbing,” Kerry said as if Kim had let him down.
“Thought you’d approve,” Kim said.
“You quitting climbing too?”
“You know me,” he said. He aimed a fu
ll series of kicks at the front of the desk. The last one left a dent. It was college all over again, but with one important difference. Kerry hadn’t yet found a way to interfere or one-up or control this part of Kim’s life. Being older gave him no advantage here. Wouldn’t Wassily Glassner be disappointed.
“You okay, Kim?” It was Jules, her head in the office doorway. He’d forgotten she was waiting to change clothes.
“I’ll be just a minute,” he said. She frowned but let the door close.
“They need me on the floor,” Kim lied. “Are we caught up?”
“You’ve got a big birthday in month or so. Ann really wants you to come for dinner.” At their gigantic new house, where they could celebrate Kim’s thirty-year lack of accomplishments.
“Yeah, well, if I’m still in town…”
“Yeah, well, if you’re still a brat…” Kerry said.
Kick. “So I guess we’re caught up.”
“That was a joke, Kim.”
“Yeah, Kerry, you’re a riot. No wonder you and Damon get along so well.”
Kerry’s laugh sounded forced, though this conversation was actually quite civil for them. Kim wondered if it might be Isabelle’s influence on him—the two-year-hobby realization had helped.
“Damon and I may be close, but he still wouldn’t give me your phone number. How about you do that for him?”
“You want Damon’s number? Is there something Ann should know?”
“Please, Kim.”
“That was a joke, Kerry.” Kim read off his number and actually heard Kerry copy it down. Kerry liked to use wood pencils and he pressed hard. The man carried a little battery-operated sharpener in his pocket. Or used to. Kim hadn’t seen him in a while.
“I really have to go,” Kim said.
“We’ll see you on your birthday?”
“I’ll have to let you know,” Kim said.
“You do that.”
Kim hung up and kicked the desk leg again. Anyone who’d met Kim’s brother seemed to think he was Mr. Family, so levelheaded and mature. You had to have lived with Kerry—no, under Kerry—to know how comprehensively he took his self-appointed role as father figure to Brian Martin’s slacker son. Always assuming the worst, dishing out unwanted advice and wanting Kim’s world to match his own standards for success. The worst of it had been the whole college debacle. Kim had hoped it would stop once he’d dropped out, became the blue-collar man Kerry most feared—hoped Kerry would give up and butt out. It would never stop. Kim had learned to not even mention him anymore, except to Isabelle. Isabelle had asked—Isabelle, who loved her brother, a man with whom she shared not a drop of parental blood. Lucky her.
Kim gave the desk a final kick before letting Jules in. The leg collapsed. Damon’s stacks of paperwork and catalogs and assorted junk slid toward the floor. Fitting. Things seemed to fall apart once emotions started running high. It was why Kim liked to keep things light. It was why he’d gotten so good at letting go. Or, as Kerry preferred to say, quitting.
“I’ve got it,” he said to Jules as she tried to help him with the mess. She must have understood the warning in his refusal to look at her, or maybe it was his less-than-subtle barking. She moved on past him to the storage closet to change.
Past him. Moving on. Yeah, he was so good at it, the women in his life were learning from him. Isabelle had learned it before they’d even made it past the couch. She recognized the son of Brian Martin before she could make the same mistake his mother had. Smart woman.
* * * * *
She’d been an idiot. Isabelle could see that now. Steven wasn’t going to stop until he had that ring. Satisfying as it had been to flush it, it hadn’t been smart.
“He’s in the office,” said the young woman she’d met just inside the front door at Wall Werx. “I’ll take you there.”
“Thank you.” The relief of not having to enter the building’s cavernous core eased Isabelle’s nerves. She’d had to come in person. The only phone number she had for Kim was his service. He wasn’t answering service calls. Not from her, at least. So here she was.
She followed the woman through the claustrophobic corridor-like outer space littered ankle-deep with jackets and pants and shoes. It was almost as disorienting a space as the sickening area where yesterday she’d seen the kid, Cameron, fall. The Big Top, Kim had called it. There the walls canted inward at uneven intervals, making her feel she was trapped inside an overturned, partially crushed, giant paper cup. Not only did the walls bend in, out and over to create challenging climbing surfaces, they were warty with colored plastic grips the climbers used to defy more laws of nature than the walls were breaking.
The place was almost as ugly as the ring she’d come to ask Kim to dig out of her toilet, if such a thing were possible. The toilet thing, not the ugly thing. As many unorganized homes she’d been in with her Space Craft business, she knew the ugly thing was possible.
The athlete’s long blonde ponytail bounced as she led Isabelle. She wore one of those strappy, stretchy tanks yoga people wore as if it were a real top—pink—along with similarly tight shorts. Apparently, climbers didn’t worry about exposed skin being scraped off the way Isabelle would, if ever she were demented enough to try defying gravity.
“Have you ever gotten hurt?” she heard herself ask. “I mean, do you worry about it?”
“Why would I? Kim is a great teacher.”
Isabelle just about turned her ankle trying to avoid stepping on a discarded shoe. Hard to miss seeing the disruption still plaguing her own house overlaid on this littered floor. “Kim?”
The young woman stopped, turned and treated her to a head-to-toe assessment. Her lowered brow suggested she didn’t trust Isabelle’s score. “I’ve been with him since, like, December.”
“What do you mean, ‘with him’?” Isabelle asked carefully. She dreaded getting confirmation that Kim was a man ready to cheat on his woman, a pretty woman with firm, small breasts, a full butt and an enviable waistline. If it were true, it meant Kim had lied last night when he insisted he hadn’t cheated.
But that could just as easily be her, letting her own past color the meaning of this woman’s words.
She endured another canny assessment. Was this a girlfriend, growing suspicious that Isabelle was the other woman? Or could there be another reason for the catty calculation that animated the young woman’s features?
“You’re not a climber,” the blonde finally said. It didn’t seem like much of an answer, but it was enough for Isabelle to hear a hint of petulance in her tone, enough to notice just how young she was. If she was telling Isabelle to back off, it might not be because she’d already scored with Kim. It just meant she wanted to.
Beyond her, a glass door with the letters “Office” stenciled on it promised an end to this nonsense.
Isabelle pointed toward the door. “I see it now. Thank you for your help.”
She waded up to the door, shaking off the encounter. There, see? She could get over it. Besides, Kim Martin’s groupies had nothing to do with her reason for being here. She opened the door. Oh, if ever a space needed her services, it was the Wall Werx office. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of snapshot prints were taped to the walls, many of which showed muscular people clinging to walls of rock in breathtaking natural settings. Others were of people clinging to walls here at the climbing gym. The clutter on the office walls met its match in the clutter elsewhere, making the corridor she’d just left tidy by comparison. The place was tiny, cramped and all but featureless with clutter. The desk seemed to have collapsed with the weight of it.
Appalling as the space was, she had no trouble spotting Kim in the maelstrom. He was squatting on the floor at the far end of the office. His back was to her, and still she knew him. Maybe it was the pull of his sleeveless navy-blue shirt across his shoulders that she recognized. Or the back of the neck her fingers had enjoyed last night. Or his lean, muscular arms. Or that tight, climber’s butt…
Was it warm in here?
And then a woman’s voice said, “Kim, I can’t find my bra. Do you have it out there?”
Isabelle took an involuntary step backward. The stack of magazines she stepped on slid. She fell against the doorframe and caught herself on the edge of the desk—the desk that apparently hadn’t collapsed under the weight of clutter, but rather something even lower on Isabelle’s list of things she wanted to see.
Kim Martin and a woman who couldn’t find her bra, for example. While a blonde would-be conquest hovered outside.
“Sorry, Jules,” Kim said. When Isabelle’s stumble caught his attention and he pivoted toward the door. “Isabelle!” His hair was ruffled, his color high on his cheeks. She wouldn’t picture how either had happened. She wouldn’t. She w—
He was on his feet and reaching for her almost before she could push the office door open to flee.
Almost.
Blood rushed to her head as she found her clumsy way toward the main entrance, making it hard to see. What kind of man had sex on a messy desk? Behind a glass door?
The same kind of man willing to have sex on a sofa in a messy house behind a shattered one, apparently.
To think she’d been tempted. To find that, even now, she flushed imagining the possibilities presented by a man who so freely followed his passions.
She’d reached the parking lot before common sense caught up with her.
Passions? He was a man ruled by his penis. She didn’t have to imagine that. She’d been with a man like that—two, counting Daniel who’d gifted her with chlamydia upon his return from France.
She paused, keys in her hand. Running away was beneath her. Yes, Kim Martin was passionate, and ridiculously good-looking besides. So, what? She needed a capable plumber, whatever sort of package it came in. She could ask for a referral at least. What’s more, it wasn’t any of her business what Kim had or hadn’t been doing on that desk before she walked in.
They certainly weren’t dating.
* * * * *
Kim finally caught up with her in the parking lot. He didn’t know what her deal was, but he wasn’t going to let her go easily. His day had had too little else in it that was good. Not that he could count her flinching from his touch in the office good, or her storming through the vestibule to make last night’s stomp up the sidewalk look like a casual stroll either. But her being here was good. Being here to see him was very good.