“But when I call back in, how will they know which case belongs to me, if I don’t know the case number?”
I’d hoped that he would see the illogic, but I had no such luck. “I’m afraid that you’ll need the case number,” he insisted, obliviously trapped in his stupid loop of circular logic.
I thought about arguing some more, but I feared that my blood vessels wouldn’t sustain much more conversation. “Thank you, Andrew,” I said sourly.
“Of course. Thank you for being a loyal customer of Builders Insurance.”
“Not for long, asshole,” I told the phone as it clicked, Andrew terminating the call. “As soon as I get my payout, I’m never giving you guys another cent.”
Inside, Lisa’s smile shifted to a frown as she took in my expression. “What’s wrong?” she asked immediately.
I shook my head. “Nothing. The insurance company is processing my claim, apparently, but it’s going to take some more time.”
“Are you going to be okay to keep paying Rick?”
I nodded, trying not to think about the decrepit state of my bank account. “I’m sure that things will be fine,” I said. “Look, let’s just talk about something else.” I picked up my latte, took a sip. It had turned cold during the time I’d been outside, but I didn’t care.
Lisa continued to look a bit concerned for a moment, but I asked her how Shay’s latest extracurricular activities were going, and she immediately forgot about anything else but her daughter. I sat back, tried to not think about my situation, resolved that I didn’t need to bother anyone else with this.
Chapter Seventeen
Eileen
* * *
“What’s wrong?” Rick asked, the moment that I walked in the front door of his little house.
I froze, looking up at him. “What?”
He’d stuck his head out of the living room at my return, but now stood up, stepping out into the hallway. “Something’s wrong,” he repeated, looking down at me. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said, trying to brush it off, stepping forward in an attempt to go around him.
He didn’t move, solidly in my way as he shook his head. “Not buying it, Ellie. Come on, tell me what’s going on.”
“I thought I told you that I didn’t like you calling me Ellie,” I said.
He grinned. “And yet, I do it anyway. Besides, Eileen is a ridiculous name.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It sounds like the name of a grandmother,” he admitted. “The kind of woman who’s a round little ball behind a pair of Coke-bottle glasses, always smelling like cookies.”
“Doesn’t sound too bad to me.” I made another attempt to slip past him, but he reached out and dropped both hands on my shoulders to keep me in place.
“Something’s bothering you,” he repeated. “Come on, get it out.”
“Maybe I don’t want to talk about it,” I riposted. “Ever consider that?”
He shrugged. “Considered it, sure. Believe it? No. You’re just dying to yell at someone about whatever this is, get it out. Might as well be me.”
“You want me to yell at you?”
“I want you to not keep repressing this. Whatever’s bothering you, I mean,” he corrected. “I know that if you keep your mouth shut, I’m going to go upstairs in five minutes and find you screaming into your comforter.”
“Don’t be silly.” It would probably be my pillow.
“And sooner or later,” he continued as if I hadn’t interrupted, “you’re gonna start snapping at me. As if it’s my fault.”
“Oh, I see. So you’re only asking to avoid getting yelled at.”
He just waited, eyes locked on mine, and I felt myself give in. “Okay, but it’s really nothing.”
“Is telling me about this nothing going to take more than a couple minutes?”
“Maybe?”
“You’re impossible.” Before I could respond, he led me back into the living room, where he dropped down onto the sofa and pulled me alongside him. “Turn around,” he instructed.
Confused, I shifted to face away from him. The reason behind his command became clear a second later as his fingers settled onto my shoulders, pushed gently but firmly into my skin and began to move in slow circles. I fought down a moan, settled for a sigh as I shifted back towards him.
“That’s really nice,” I murmured, arching my back a little so he could better hit some of the sore knots I hadn’t even realized had formed.
“Talk,” he commanded.
My eyes half closed so I could focus on the feeling of Rick’s strong fingers kneading at my back, I told him about my call with Andrew the insurance representative, how even after all this time, the insurance company was only now just starting to investigate my claim. “How much investigation do they need?” I burst out, my anger briefly strong enough to overcome even the wonderful pressure that Rick’s fingers were radiating into my back. “They drive by the former site of my house and see the smoking pile of ashes! What else could they need?”
“And there’s no way to contact them?”
“Not as far as I could tell.” His fingers moved down a little lower, brushing over the bump of my bra before splaying out to press against my lower back. This time, I did let a soft little moan slip through my teeth as I leaned forward. “I need a case number to get info, but they don’t have my case’s number yet – and they can’t give it to me unless I have it. How’s that for a catch twenty-two?”
“Pretty awful,” he murmured. I half imagined that I could feel the breath from his words against the nape of my neck, just beneath the bob of my ponytail. His fingers pushed in against me, rubbing away all the tension that had been building up over the course of the day. How had I never realized just how good it felt to have a massage like this?
I nodded. “I don’t know what else I can do.”
“I’m sure you’ll work out a way to solve it.” He sounded more assured than I felt.
“How do you know?”
I didn’t need to turn around to know that he was smiling. “Because you’re bullheaded and insistent, and no one can stand up to you for long. You get this Andrew guy on the phone again, and in five minutes he’ll be offering you every bit of information he can, just to get you to let him live in peace.”
At that, I did turn my head, enough so I could look back at him over my shoulder with one eye. “Is that what I did to you?”
He paused. “What?”
“Did I bully you into letting me stay here?”
“Not how I remember,” he said, still smiling a little. His hands were very warm against me, his legs spread so that one lay trapped between my body and the back of the sofa, the other dangling off the front. “I was the one who invited you.”
“But then I came in, and I insisted on getting involved in your business… maybe you didn’t want to say yes except that I kept on pestering you and being annoying!”
His smile was still in place, but I also caught the rolling of his eyes. “Now you’re just acting crazy,” he muttered.
I straightened up a bit in indignation. Rick’s hands, which had slid up to again rub my shoulders, paused for a second as I squirmed beneath him. “I’m not crazy!” I protested, turning a little further to better glare at him. “And I thought you were supposed to be distracting me, not getting me more wound up-“
And then, suddenly, I couldn’t talk any more.
Not because I’d run out of words, mind you. I could certainly say more, make quite a few criticisms of Rick’s method for calming me down, of his smile that always seemed to be half-teasing, of how, now that I’d straightened up, his hands seemed to have shifted dangerously close to cupping my breasts instead of massaging my back.
All of these things would have made great points, had I been prepared to speak them.
Instead, I found myself briefly paralyzed by firm pressure, my vision suddenly filled with Rick’s face, very close. This close, I coul
d see every hair of his stubble, the craggy lines of his cheekbones. If his green eyes had been open, I could have seen myself reflected in them.
Instead, those eyes were closed as he leaned in against me. His hands tightened to hold me against him, and his mouth found mine.
And that was consuming most of my attention.
Wow. His hand slid up along my spine, wrapping around my neck and guiding me in closer to him. His mouth was firm, commanding. I found my eyes closing, all my attention shifting down to focus on him.
Even as he kissed me, he pulled me forward, leaning against him. The awkward position of my body meant that I had to twist my head over to one side to keep my lips on his, but I wasn’t ready to break away, not yet. A tiny little voice in my head was trying to comment on this unexpected happening, to think about it, but I shoved its words away.
I wasn’t ready to think. For the moment, let me stop thinking. Let me focus just on what was happening, on the sensation – just in case it never happened to me again.
What felt like an instant later, we were breaking away, both of us panting slightly as we sucked in air. I felt my eyes flutter open, gazed into Rick’s face. Why did he look nearly as shocked as I felt? He was the one who decided, out of nowhere, to kiss me!
I opened my mouth, not sure if I wanted to tell Rick off, tell him to explain himself, or tell him to do it again. I couldn’t seem to find any words, however, and just felt them slipping away like water through my fingers.
“Wow,” I said instead, aware that I sounded like an idiot but unable to say anything else.
“Yeah,” he echoed.
For a moment, both of us just stared at each other, apparently simultaneously struck mute. I scrambled for the right words.
“Why?” That was just a single word, but it at least seemed to point in the right direction.
He opened his mouth, blinked. At least he seemed to be struggling as much as I felt, like some trickster opened up both our brains and poured in molasses. “I needed to distract you,” he got out. “And I wanted to.”
Staring at him with my neck craned to look over one shoulder was growing more and more uncomfortable by the second. I twisted in between his legs, turning to better face him, and he groaned.
“What?”
“That’s not helping,” he said, looking back at me – but this time with added hunger burning in his eyes.
I glanced down, realized that I’d positioned myself to lie right over his crotch. Oh. Had I hurt him?
He shifted a little, his hands hot against me, and I saw the stretching pressure against the fabric of his jeans from what lay beneath.
Ohhhh. Oh wow.
That little voice in the back of my head chose this totally inappropriate moment to once again pipe up, suggest that maybe we shouldn’t be doing this. I never before realized just how much, in the heat of the moment, I could despise a part of myself. Trying to blot it out, I leaned forward again, seeking Rick’s lips for another escape.
He met me, pulling me further atop him as he sagged back. We ended up both laying on the couch, me straddling him on top, making out like a pair of lovestruck teenagers left alone for the first time! Rick’s hands were on my hips, pulling me up against that hard body strengthened from manual labor. His fingers burned into me at the small of my back and then slid up, pulling my shirt along with it. I felt him bump against the strap of my bra across my back, mentally begged him to grasp it and pop it open-
“No,” he burst out, a half-strangled gasp.
What?
“What?” I asked.
He was already pulling himself out from beneath me, grimacing as he extracted his limbs from where they’d intertwined with mine. “I, uh, I’m supposed to go out and meet a buddy of mine,” he got out, his eyes still wide and his hair adorably askew.
Half my mind still lost in bliss from that kiss, from that skin-to-skin contact, I just stared up at him. He was pulling away from me? Of the two of us, Rick was the one who chose to not keep making out and feeling up the other? Had the entire world turned upside down?
“Okay,” I said, if only to fill the growing silence between us.
“Right. Yeah, I’ll be back later. There’s plenty of leftovers in the fridge if you get hungry, and plenty of wine, too.” I couldn’t make heads or tails of what Rick might be feeling. “Look, I gotta go.”
I opened my mouth to say something – maybe goodbye, maybe to ask him what had gotten into him to make him suddenly go from a hundred miles an hour down to zero, and then to a hundred an hour in reverse – but I was too slow. Before I could speak, Rick was out of the living room, striding for the front door like his life depended on a quick escape. I heard it slam behind him a minute later.
I sagged back on the sofa, reaching up to run a hand through my hair, pulling the hairband out to free my hair from the ponytail. On its way back down, my hand also paused to tug my shirt back into place.
That had been… unexpected.
But not bad at all, I added. Yes, I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t get involved romantically with Rick at all. It wouldn’t do to cross business and pleasure, especially with the added complication that he was also my landlord.
But perhaps, if we set some ground rules and guidelines, we could have a bit of fun together without things getting out of hand.
Closing my eyes, I remembered the intensity of his hot lips on mine, the way he gripped me and pulled me against his big body, how I’d felt him shifting beneath me, so strong and powerful and alive.
It had been a long time since anyone had touched me like that, and I now remembered just how much I’d missed it.
I’d been upset when I came home, I remembered now. What had even been bothering me? It took me a minute before I remembered the call with Andrew, the obstructive insurance representative, and how that had raised my hackles. It was surprising what a little venting to a friend could do to remove that stress, I considered.
Especially when that friend had strong hands and hungry eyes and lips that drank me in…
Another minute passed before I shook off the vivid memory. “Dinner,” I told myself aloud. “I’m probably just delirious and weak from lack of food.” I didn’t feel that hungry, strangely enough, but I got up and headed for the kitchen.
Maybe I could wait for Rick to get back later tonight, ask him what made him suddenly bolt for the door like a frightened rabbit.
Chapter Eighteen
Rick
* * *
Niall didn’t waste any time on niceties. “What the hell is going on with you?” he asked, as soon as he dropped onto the stool next to me at the bar. “You look…” he paused for a second to think, “…like someone just told you that you’d won a million bucks, but you need to chop your hand off to get it.”
I took a long drink of my beer before replying. I’d already finished off most of my first pint while waiting for Niall to arrive, but he’d just have to work a little harder to catch up.
It was still early enough in the week for DeVere’s, an Irish pub that stayed almost aggressively authentic to its roots, to have plenty of open seats. Only a couple geezers well into retirement age were here, occupying some of the other stools at the bar. The bartender leaned back against the rear rail of the bar, obeying the time-honored tradition of polishing a glass as she waited for the regular crowd to start arriving in the next couple of hours.
Niall raised his fingers, and the woman behind the counter strolled over to us. “One of whatever this guy’s having,” he told her, gesturing towards me with his thumb. “Since he seems to be gulping it down so fast, it must be good. Certainly couldn’t be any other explanation.”
“Sarcasm isn’t nice, Niall,” I said as the woman moved to fetch his drink.
She returned before he could respond, and he took a long draught. “Ah, that does hit the spot.” He gave the woman a smile along with his credit card, and she favored him with one in return before sauntering towards the register. “Keep it
open, love.”
I shook my head. Niall’s approach to flirtation was always to go wildly over the top. In some cases it worked, but it more often than not resulted in him falling flat on his face. Still, I usually found it entertaining to watch.
“Now,” he said, turning back to me after he’d finished admiring the bartender’s backside, “what’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“Nonsense,” he countered immediately. “You can’t hide secrets from me, chum. Cough it up.”
I sighed, but this was the entire reason I’d called Niall out to meet me at DeVere’s. “Fine. You remember how I told you about my renter, Ellie?”
“Your new female roommate, yes!” Niall smirked at me over the rim of his pint glass. “You know, you haven’t invited me over to meet her yet. It’s been more than a month. Are you ashamed of having me as a friend? Or perhaps jealously fearing that I might swoop in and steal her away from your clumsy groping attempts at romance?”
“Because you can do any better?” I cracked.
He put a hand on his chest. “You wound me. In truth, is it jealousy that keeps me away? Or is she hideous, and you’re ashamed to admit that the two of you have already conceived a child that will inherit the ugly looks of both parents?”
“Cool it, Carrot-Top,” I said. “No, there’s nothing going on between us.” Immediately, memory of this most recent kiss swam up, accompanied by the ghostly feeling of Eileen’s body against mine, curves hiding beneath the businesslike blouse and jeans. “I mean, nothing long-term.”
“As opposed to short-term?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” I sighed, scratched my head. “She said from the beginning that she wanted to keep things professional between us. I figured that it was probably a good idea – wouldn’t want to have an angry woman living with me, right?”
“You mean that, after you disappoint her sexually, you can’t just run away and never see her again like you do with most of your conquests?”
“Without the meanness and the insult to my bedroom abilities, yeah, something like that.”
“So what changed?”
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