Checkmate: Checkmate, #8

by Finn, Emilia

  “All of them.” I stop beside her and laugh when she looks up with a filthy glare. “Oh, you mean which one are we taking today?” Juggling my bags, I take a set of keys from my pocket and beep open the black Range Rover three along in the row. I don’t bother taking her hand or leading her there. She’s too independent for that, so I walk ahead and toss my things into the trunk.

  Libby already packed her bags, so I jog to the car Olly drove us here in and take them from the trunk, then I toss them onto mine and laugh when, instead of sliding into the luxurious vehicle, Lib folds her arms and lifts a brow. “Do you wanna know what I think?”

  “It’s a high possibility I don’t. No doubt you’re gonna tear me apart with your words.” I open her door, and grab her elbow when she refuses to move. I lead her in, help her climb up, and when she settles into the soft leather and makes a soft groan at the back of her throat, I laugh and jog around to my side. As soon as I climb in, I turn to her and lift a brow. “What, Libby? What do you think?”

  “If you fired all of your servants, the cooks, the cleaners, the assistants, and if you drove one single regular car, instead of seventeen different luxury vehicles, you would never have to eat turkey again. You could afford the good stuff.”

  I switch the engine on and smile when the dash lights up and Lib’s eyes, even against her wishes, widen with surprise. She’s impressed. And it bothers her that she’s impressed.

  “Do you wanna know what I think?” I pull out of my parking space and head toward the garage door.

  “Probably not. You’re gonna have a witty reply, which will annoy me, and when we have sex tonight, it’ll annoy me that I wasn’t able to hold out on my silent promise not to give it up.”

  I stop at the garage doors, scan a card over the sensor outside, and turn to her as the doors slide open. “When did you make that promise to yourself? But also, sex tonight sounds perfect. Thanks.”

  Her eyes narrow. “About three minutes from now when you say something else that annoys me.”

  I chuckle and speed out of the garage and up the steep driveway to enter the street. “Well, I’ll do my best not to annoy you. I really want you tonight. You can come into it with whatever mood you want, but your body… that’s mine.”

  “You’re a pig.”

  I smile. “Do you wanna know why I have those people on my staff? Do you wanna know why my high-maintenance ass has to have a cook?”

  Reaching into a small leather bag, Libby fishes around for a moment until she locates what she wants. Pulling out a pair of sunglasses, she slides them on and makes me smile when she turns to me and grins. “Sure, explain to me why you need someone to cook and clean for you.”

  “Because Marianne, the woman who stocks my house, is a single mom with three sons. One of those sons is immunosuppressed. He gets sick often and needs someone home with him all the time. Her second son has problems with crowds. He gets overwhelmed and lashes out if people are all up in his space.”

  “Okay…”

  “So I give her a job where she can be with her boys all the time. She’ll cook me a meal, but her sons are nearby all the time. She literally can’t put the youngest into school yet, because of his immune system. That also means no daycare and no preschool. The kid who doesn’t like crowds tried school, but it wasn’t working out for them. Now she and her boys have a full-time residence that is all theirs. They never have to worry about eviction or any of the bullshit. She cooks me a meal right alongside cooking her kids’. She washes my laundry, right alongside her kids’. She takes care of my needs so that I don’t have to waste time on it, and in exchange, I give her–”

  “Stability.”

  I smile. “Right. She’s already cooking and cleaning, so why not extend that out to me? She’s paid well, her home and food is taken care of, and her health insurance covers her and her kids’ needs. When she needs to take off because her youngest is in the hospital getting treatments, I cook my own turkey, and everyone is okay.”

  “See, it really annoys me that your reasons are honorable and sweet as hell.”

  I chuckle and slow at a set of lights. “Annaliese, my assistant–”

  “Is really, horribly beautiful. I hate her, and I hate you, because I know you’ve gone there. I know your type, Gunner. And I know you’ve bumped uglies with that beautiful woman.”

  “Well…” I push the car into gear when the lights turn green. We’re heading to the interstate, and in the small town closest to my cabin, we’ll stop for groceries. “Yes, we have.” I swing out and snatch her hand when she turns away. “Relax, Libby. It was a long time ago, but her work ethic is better than her performance in bed.”

  She turns to me with a wrinkled nose. “Ew!”

  “My point is, she’s worth more to me as an assistant than she was as a fuck buddy. So we severed those extra ties, and our professional relationship remains exactly that; professional. She’s good at what she does. In fact, without her, my company would suffer. Annaliese raised her little sister when their folks died in a car accident when she was seventeen. She never went to college, she never pursued her dreams of becoming an artist. But you can bet your ass she works herself to the bone for me in exchange for college tuition for her sister. I pay for the sister’s degree, Annaliese is thankful and would never jeopardize her position at my company, so you have nothing to worry about.”

  “She’s so pretty.” Libby’s chin juts out with a pout. “It bothers me that she knows everything you need for her to be your most valuable employee. You don’t need me like you need her.”

  “That’s a lie. Yes, I need her to run the company, but I need you to breathe. So without you, there is no company, there’s no Griffin. There’s nothing, which means Marianne’s world, and Annaliese’s sister’s degree, all of the other employees that have similar stories, they all depend on you. Without you, there’s no me.” I bring her hand up to my lips. “I need you, Lib. So don’t stay mad for long, okay?”

  23

  Libby

  Spit Shake

  Just as Gunner said, it takes three hours to hit the edge of a tiny town not a lot different from the town I live in. Forest encroaches on the edges, as though the people that settled here stopped in the middle of the woods and decided it was a cool place to set up camp.

  They took out only one tree to make room for their hut, and two hundred years later, they’ve now cleared out a couple thousand trees to make room for a few houses, a hospital, a dollar store, and at the top of what I figure is Main Street, a grocery store that looks a lot like Jonah’s.

  We stop in there and start our first ever domestic act; we go shopping together.

  I thought it would be frustrating to shop with Mr. Turkey-is-all-we-need, but when we pass the cookie aisle, he takes down one single sleeve of chocolate chip. “All yours. It’s more than your macro count allows, but it’s not so much that you’ll leave this place in a week with a potbelly and self-loathing.”

  How can he know me this well? How can he know exactly what I need when we barely even know each other?

  As he turns the cart and tries to move away, I grab his arm and pull him back with a jerk. The top corner of the cart hits the shelving, but it’s completely forgotten as I grab onto his collar and pull him down. His eyes light up with fun, his hands come to my hips. But before his lips can touch mine, I stop him and stare into his eyes. “Thank you.”

  “For the cookies?” He lips tug up into my favorite grin. “You’re welcome.”

  “Yeah, for the cookies. But also, for this time away. For coming back for me.”

  “I promised I would.” He leans in the rest of the way and slides his tongue along my bottom lip. “We spit shook on it. We can’t break that kind of promise.”

  I laugh straight into his mouth as he continues to kiss me. “So maybe when we get married, instead of a regular ceremony, we can spit shake on it.”

  He pulls back with a huff and throws his hands in the air. “There you go again with the mar
riage talk. Jesus, Elizabeth. We only just met!”

  “I hate you.” I push away from him and steal the cart so I have something to do with my hands. On the way past the sleeves of cookies, I snatch up a second packet and flash my middle finger at a laughing Gunner. “We are not buying turkey. You can go fuck yourself.”

  * * *

  This ‘small’ cabin that Gunner speaks of is bigger than my apartment. Not that that’s hard to achieve, but still, his attempt at humility irks me a little. Twenty minutes after leaving the grocery store, Gunner turns the Range Rover on to a steep gravel driveway that stretches for a full mile or two. Trees line both sides of the windy driveway, so we can’t see the house until the final bend and crest opens up to a small clearing and the cutest log cabin I’ve ever seen.

  It’s massive, double-story, but the romance isn’t lost on me at all.

  The two-story Victorian-esque home has a top level made of logs, and the bottom level, stones. It stretches out so the front has the perfect grassed space with beautiful daisies circling the driveway, but the forest encroaches everywhere else. Pine trees stretch high above the A-framed home so branches provide shade, and in place of logs or stones for the A in the in A-frame, a window that makes it impossible to see in, but I’d bet any amount of money, when inside, we get the most spectacular view of more forest.

  It almost breaks my heart that he has these kinds of homes. In one day, I’ve been inside Griffin Plaza, a Range Rover, and now this. And the fact I’m holding his hand while here does weird things to my heart. My brain rejects the money, it rejects the idea of having access to something so… easy.

  But we spit shook on it.

  “Stop freaking out, Tate. It’s not as bad as it seems.”

  “No?” I pull my bottom lip between my teeth in contemplation. “Because it seems like I fell in love with a Bishop. That Bishop has a metric ton of cash, and wow, look at that coincidence; a Bishop, a Tate, and lots of money. It looks fishy.”

  “Not from where I sit.” He squeezes my hand when I try to pull away. “No one buys you. No one buys me. None of my money was made while hurting innocents. You need to relax and stop overthinking this.”

  “Would you consider giving everything away and coming to live in my little apartment?” I stare up into his eyes and obnoxiously flutter my lashes. “You could be my station’s IT support, where you’ll earn a paltry forty-five thousand a year like the rest of us.”

  He scrunches his nose and flashes a playful grin. “Babe, I’ve already made more than forty-five-k… today. I’m not giving that up after working so fuckin’ hard all my life. But! If it makes you feel better, when I buy you an engagement ring, it’ll be cheap and ugly. Ya know, the opposite of gaudy and attention-seeking.”

  “Ugh.” I throw his hand away and push the car door open. “Engagement ring? We literally just met. Why are you going full clinger on me?”

  I love that instead of copping an attitude, he only slides out of his side and meets me at the back of the car. Gunner sent no one ahead of us – sorry, Marianne – so there are no lights on, no welcoming party, no candles or a meal in the oven.

  Which is perfectly okay with me.

  I don’t ever want to meet his personal care team. I don’t want anyone except him serving me a meal or washing my clothes. I get the theory behind why he has them; if he’s earned forty-five thousand dollars and it’s not even four in the afternoon yet, then his time is better spent doing whatever it is that he does with computers, and not cleaning his home. By focusing his efforts where they’re most valuable, he also provides employment for people who have families to feed.

  But that doesn’t mean I’ll ever be okay with someone else washing my panties.

  It’s a hard line.

  Gunner and I packed light for this week; one small suitcase each, my handbag that comes with a phone and my weapons, and his laptop bag that comes with enough technology to run an empire from afar.

  Grabbing them all but my handbag, Gunner closes the trunk and still manages to free up a hand to take mine and lead me toward the house.

  “It annoys me a lot to say this…”

  He chuckles. “Okay.”

  “But your house is really pretty. I love how secluded it is. Your closest neighbor is, what, five miles away?”

  He nods. “About that. No one will hear you scream.”

  I roll my eyes as we make our way up the dozen or so steps at the front of the wooden porch surrounded by stone. “Funny guy. I like being alone. I like the quiet and seclusion, so I suppose, if I must live in luxury for a week…”

  “This’ll do?” He stops at the front door, sets our bags down and, digging his hands into his pockets, pulls out a set of keys and pushes them into the lock. “It’s not quite Griffin Plaza. But it’s not an alleyway.”

  “Something between, then?”

  “Yeah.” His lips pull up on one side. Throwing one arm over my shoulder and pulling me in close, he pushes the door open to reveal a massive room that is open on both levels.

  Wood logs everywhere, every wall, every staircase banister, every doorway. A long island counter made of the same wood as the rest of the house takes up a massive portion of one end of the room, stainless steel appliances behind it. A circular staircase leads up to the next floor, and a mezzanine-type balcony spreads around so sleeping spaces surround the living room.

  I turn at the A-shaped window I saw outside and, just as predicted, draw in a deep breath at the sight of the driveway, a rainbow of daisies, the car, and beyond that? Nothing but trees. The road is a full mile almost straight down, so we don’t see any cars through the trees, we don’t hear them.

  When inside this home, it’s as though we could be the only people on the planet.

  “Jesus, Gunner. Compensating for a small dick, or what?” I walk away from the window when he comes back through the door with our bags, drops them, and closes up behind himself.

  It’s March, so the snow is gone, but the mountain air is still chilly.

  This weather is kind of exactly the same as it was when we met. Cool, windy, but when a man takes you in his arms as Gunner does now, it’s not so bad.

  “Are you tired?” He presses a kiss to the side of my neck and squeezes me tight. “Wanna sit, or take a tour?”

  “We’ve been sitting for hours.” I turn in his arms. “Let’s tour.”

  “Okay.” He smacks a noisy kiss on my cheek, then pulls me toward the kitchen. “This is the space allocated for women. It’s often where they prepare meals for the men in their life. The women are usually required to be sans footwear.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  He laughs and passes through the state-of-the-art space. “No to the cooking, or no to the bare feet?”

  “All of it. You can go fuck yourself.”

  “But I’d rather fuck you.” His hand slides around my hips and up to cup my left boob. “Come on, copper. I have heaps more to show you.”

  He leads me out of the space between the oven and the counter, only to stop again when we clear the tiniest gap in the wooden floorboard. Reaching to his right, he flips a switch that I would have assumed was for the garbage disposal, but it makes a rectangle of floor about six feet long and four feet wide lift, lift, and then reverse to reveal another wooden staircase that leads into pitch blackness.

  My heart races when the unknown opens up right in front of me. “I never once agreed to being murdered in this home, Gunner. Suddenly I’m reminded that we really did only just meet. Perhaps you’ve become a psycho in the last twenty years.”

  “Nah.” He flips a light switch that illuminates the staircase and leads me down. “I was a psycho long ago. Pretty sure I was born with it.”

  “Like a Maybelline model?”

  His brows furrow. “Huh?”

  “Nothing.”

  I don’t truly think he’ll ever hurt me, so I trust this strange man to lead me down a flight of stairs, and for every foot we descend, the temperature drops. Goos
ebumps mark my skin, but Gunner compensates for the chill and pulls me in closer until we stop at the bottom as blue lights illuminate what may be moving steam.

  “A hot tub?” I move out of his hold and walk forward in the shadowed light until I climb three stone steps and stop in front what I would call a pool, but it’s inside and heated. “Please tell me this thing has jets.”

  “Geez, now who’s high-maintenance? Little Miss ‘I refuse modern luxuries… but there must be jets in the giant tub’.”

  “Do you purposely try to annoy me?” I dip one hand into the cool liquid and frown. “It’s cold.”

  “Yeah, it’s cold. Because you refused to let someone come here to set up first. The heaters are going now. In an hour or so, it oughta be warm enough for us to spend some time in. Bathing suits are forbidden, but cookies and wine are not.”

  “I don’t drink, remember?” I turn away from the tub and try to pass him so I can go back upstairs, but he grabs my arm and pulls me to a stop.

  “Why do you frown like that each time you tell me you don’t drink?”

  “Frown like what?” I do exactly that. I frown and stumble when my body wants to keep moving forward, but Gunner’s hand wrapped around my forearm stops me. “What? This is my face.”

  “No.” He pulls me around until my arms are crushed between our bodies, and looks down at me with those big blue eyes and thick, pouty lips that I’m certain, alleyway dweller or not, the girls would have been panting for when he was a teen.

  He was a handsome eleven-year-old, and he’s everything I dreamed he would look like as a man. I mourn the fact I never knew a sixteen-year-old version of Gunner Bishop. He could have been the quarterback, the prom king, the guy the whole school would have been lusting after, and since I claimed him when I was nine, I wouldn’t have been shy about slamming some bitches to the ground in a show of dominance.

  “Lib… You do this frown that seems so out of place. It’s so sad, so wrong, and I don’t like it. It happened once, but I let it go since we were just finding our feet. But now it’s happened a second time, so I’m asking, what’s your problem with alcohol?”