PullMyHair

by Kimberly Kaye Terry

  Liza had gotten her degree in social work with the desire to help kids who were disenfranchised, just as she’d been as a child. To give kids that were often overlooked, a voice.

  However, her first job as a social worker had been in C.P.S., Child Protection Services, and she’d realized soon after working in the field that it was too close to home for her. She couldn’t stomach the condition many of the children had been living in. The first time she’d had a child as a client who’d suffered from severe neglect, she’d wanted to run up on the child’s parents and flat blast the both of their sorry behinds for what they’d done to the small girl.

  She realized that she was in the wrong field and had gone to work in an area totally unrelated to her education, before she’d stopped working altogether within a few years of her marriage to Greg.

  But, in the back of her mind, she’d wanted to return to social work.

  Liza smiled at the old woman and patted her on one thin shoulder. “You’re right Sister Pauline. Maybe it’s time I gave that some thought,” she said and spoke for a few minutes more with the old woman.

  She leaned down and kissed her leathery cheek, slipping a twenty dollar bill into her smock before she left the restroom and returned to the table with her friends.

  For the remainder of the lunch, Liza was nearly silent, only answering questions directly asked of her, her mind a million miles away. The old woman’s words rang sharply in her consciousness. Was she being selfish? Was it so wrong that she didn’t want to open the floodgates to her past? That she didn’t feel it necessary to talk about, work with, or associate with anything that reminded her of the bullshit of her painful childhood?

  Chapter Ten

  “I think that we’ll find greater success if we employ the Holt brothers. I’ve worked with them in the past and I’ve always been well pleased with their work,” Greg spoke on the phone to his client as he leaned back in the large leather chair, twirling one pencil between his thumb and forefinger.

  He listened as his client spoke, before answering. “Great. Mr. Holt has just left my office and he’s prepared to work on the case. He’ll be able to start right away,” he said and, after a few more moments of conversation, hung up the phone.

  “Renita, could you start the paperwork for Gaynor Holt? I’ve just spoken with Mr. Grimes and he’s fine with footing the bill for the Holt’s to take over the investigation,” he said into the small intercom.

  “I sure will, Greg. Actually, Mr. Holt is still here,” she said.

  “Oh really?” Greg was surprised the investigator was still in the office as he’d ended his meeting with Holt twenty minutes ago. “Well, since he’s there, go ahead and draw up the contract for him to sign. And after that, feel free to go home. I’m leaving in the next thirty minutes, myself.”

  After he hung up the phone, he glanced at the antique grandfather clock in the corner of the room. It was early for him to leave, it was just barely five o’clock, but he wanted to take Liza out to dinner.

  He and Liza needed a down and dirty, cut all the bullshit talk. The impasse they were at was grating on his mind, screwing with his concentration. Things weren’t right and he was determined to fix it.

  He picked up the phone and placed a call to Liza to ask her to meet him at Rigby’s. The surprise in her voice when he’d asked her out to dinner had made him feel a bit bad. She was obviously shocked that he’d asked. There was a time, when it was so commonplace that she’d have been surprised had he not called for dinner.

  After he hung up the phone, he began to clear his desk, anticipation settling in his gut. He and Liza were going to get some things straight. He wanted answers and by the end of the night, if all went well, he was planning on bringing up the discussion of making a baby with his wife.

  When he’d confided in Renita earlier, he’d felt as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He felt he knew what had to be done. He walked through his office to Renita’s and noted that Gaynor Holt was lounging against her desk in a deceptively relaxed pose.

  He’d interrupted them in the middle of a conversation and Greg picked up the irritable tone to her voice and he stopped to make sure everything was okay.

  “I suppose Renita has told you that Mr. Grimes has accepted the change in investigators?” he smiled and shook the man’s hand.

  “Yes, that’s what your lovely assistant and I were discussing…weren’t we, Ms. Nash?” he asked, in what sounded to Greg, like a challenging voice. As though he were daring her to disagree.

  Interesting.

  She smiled and agreed, “Yes. Yes we were, Greg.” The smile she threw the investigator’s way could only be described as tight-lipped.

  “Is there a problem?” he asked her. Just to make sure.

  “No, everything is fine. I’ll wrap this up and leave as soon as I’m finished. You go ahead. I won’t stay long,” she promised, with a side-look at Holt.

  “Have a nice night. Both of you.” Greg said, including Gaynor in his farewell. “I’ll see you in the morning, Renita. I’m going to meet Liza,” he said and left.

  “You can’t have him, you know.” Gaynor’s deep, scratchy voice forced Renita’s attention away from Greg’s departure.

  “What? What are you talking about?” Distracted, she felt her face heat. She stared directly into the investigators light gray eyes.

  He raised a dark eyebrow, not saying a word. His silence irritated the hell out of her.

  “Well? You can’t say something like that and just leave it at that.” She prodded him to finish what he started.

  “I don’t think you really want me to say anything else…do you?” he challenged. His voice was openly mocking.

  Renita refrained from telling the rude as hell investigator off, just in the nick of time. He didn’t know her like that.

  She turned away from him and typed a few words into her computer and opened the document which had the firm’s standard contract used for contractors. She swiftly modified it according to Greg’s direction, printed it and handed it over to Gaynor for his inspection. As he read over the document, pulling out half-lenses, she stifled a laugh at the picture he presented as she observed him while he wasn’t paying attention to her.

  Unlike Greg, who was immaculately dressed at all times, Gaynor was barely presentable on his best day. Most of the time he was either dressed in jeans and t-shirt-if the weather was nice- or jeans and sweatshirt if it was cold. Occasionally, he’d call himself dressing up and wear slacks. With a sweatshirt. Or a t-shirt.

  It wasn’t that he was unattractive, she thought as her glance slid over him. He was just too damn big, several inches taller than Greg, who was over six feet in height and broader throughout his chest and legs, hands, feet…everything. She never liked to stand next to him because of his sheer presence.

  It wasn’t only his physical presence that was, overwhelming. It was him. He was attractive enough, she supposed, in a sloppy, Detective Colombo kind of way. His light gray eyes were fringed by thick, dark lashes that looked ridiculous on a man of his size. Well…maybe they weren’t that ridiculous looking, she admitted reluctantly to herself.

  His squared chin had the slightest hint of a dimple, just enough to make a woman look closer, but was constantly covered with light stubble, as was his lean cheeks. He probably had to shave more than twice a day to keep it clean.

  She wasn’t into men that hairy.

  He kept his blond hair cut close to his head, almost military style. At first she’d thought he’d dyed his hair as his eyebrows and eyelashes were so dark and his hair so blond. He kept the top of his hair a bit longer than what she’d think would be army regulation, as she discreetly observed the way his hair fell over his knitted brow as he concentrated on the document.

  Her gaze swept over his large, lean body. That was the other thing that irritated her about him. How damn big he was.

  She was very petite and although she liked tall men, he was way too tall, and way to big.
He wore his jeans loose, but she could still see the way his thighs bulged through the faded jeans, the way the jeans cupped his muscular butt when he bent down to pick up one of the pieces of paper as it fell from his hands.

  His large, very masculine hands.

  She looked at his hands and wondered why they weren’t rough and dry. That would fit more than the way they did appear. Sure, they were overlarge just like the rest of him, but instead of rough and calloused, they appeared strong and surprisingly smooth. When he’d taken the sheaf of papers of the contract from her hands, she’d immediately noticed how good, how smooth, his fingers felt as he took them from her.

  “Everything looks to be in order,” he commented, bringing her attention away from his hands and back to his face. He placed the contract on the corner of her desk and dug inside his pockets in search of a pen. She handed him one and he gave her a half-smile of thanks. A deep dimple flashed in his cheek as he did so.

  Renita suppressed a sigh of irritationas she pulled at the collar of her silk blouse. She felt hot and wanted him out of the office. Now.

  “Here you go, signed and sealed,” he said, catching her as she was unbuttoning the two top buttons of her blouse.

  “Thank you, I’ll make a copy for your records,” she said as she rose from her desk to walk to the small copier in the far corner of her office. When he followed her, she turned around and stopped him with a raised brow. “I can handle this, Mr. Holt,” she said, suddenly nervous with his close proximity.

  The room seemed smaller with his overwhelmingly large presence. She needed to get away from him, if only for a minute. It was always like this with him. She could never stay too close to him, without feeling the need to escape.

  She felt nervous and was, as usual, hyperaware of him. The way he stared at her made her feel like some kind of prey. All jungleish and just plain crazy.

  She felt a shiver run down her spine when he laughed.

  “No problem, Ms. Nash,” he raised his hands in front of himself, as though surrendering as he walked backwards to her desk. “But may I ask you a question?”

  “Would my saying no, stop you?” she muttered.

  “Probably not,” he laughed low in his throat. “Why are you always so irritable with me? Always so ticked off? What am I missing? Have I ever done anything to you?”

  She glanced in his direction and saw that he’d crossed his thick arms over his broad chest as he leaned on her desk. She quickly turned back to the copy machine.

  But she felt the eyeball darts he shot at her back.

  She refused to turn around and demand that he explain his question.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she denied, despite the quickening she felt in her stomach at his words.

  Whenever she was in his presence, she could only take being around him alone for just so long before she felt claustrophobic with the need to get away from him. She didn’t like the way she’d catch him looking at her, from beneath dark lashes, staring at her from those strange looking eyes of his.

  “How long have you and Colburn been together?”

  “How long have we’ve been working together?”

  “Isn’t that what I said?”

  Renita knew he was playing with her. She didn’t know what he got out of it, but whenever he caught her alone, he found it necessary to try and get under her skin. When he’d worked for the agency that handled the firm’s investigations, she’d worked with him often and found it increasingly difficult to stay aloof around him.

  Holt was picky. And because he was a top-notch investigator at his agency, they’d allowed him to pick and choose which clients he’d work with. He and Greg worked well together, so Holt had been the sole investigator assigned to their cases, because he liked the attorney.

  Whenever he was around her, she’d catch him staring at her. She immediately went on the defensive and had called him out on several occasions. The first time that she did, he was clearly surprised. She knew what image she presented.

  Cool, calm, and collected, Renita.

  Which she felt that she was. As long as no one…messed…with her. Then, she’d turn into the Renita who had to be sent away to boarding school by her bourgeoisie parents to help “control” her more wild tendencies.

  But she’d come a long way from the wild-haired, out of control kid she’d once been. The same kid who had continually embarrassed her parents, from the time she was a young girl caught ditching school, to the young woman who flunked out of college.

  She was a respectable grown woman, had a degree beneath her belt, and was close to finishing her law degree.

  It had taken her a while to control her natural inclination to want to do serious damage to anyone who stepped to her crazy. But, she’d overcome the tendencies by turning to yoga, meditating, drinking herbal teas…and often locking herself in her apartment yelling, screaming, dancing buck-naked, or whatever…to calm herself when she felt the sometimes irresistible urge to act a fool and do something she knew that she’d regret later.

  It was a process and she was a work in progress.

  At least that’s what her mother would remind her, that she was a work in progress, when she visited her parents during her weekly Sunday visit to their home for church and dinner.

  “Greg and I have been working together for three years…why?” She turned cool dark gray eyes in Gaynor Holt’s direction as she asked the question.

  “Just wondered if you thought it was time to move on. Have you given any thought to that?” he asked.

  “Why would I want to move on? I enjoy what I do. I enjoy law and have no desire to do anything else. Why?” she demanded.

  As she’d spoken he’d walked toward her, slowly, stopping within mere inches of her. She had to draw her head back in order to look at him. The look on his chiseled scruffy face made her heart leap in her chest. She resisted the urge to shove him away from her. To do so, would show him he had an effect on her. It would show him that she was uncomfortable with him standing so near.

  She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  “My brother and I are looking for someone to work with us. Someone to help us in our research. With your background in law, you would be perfect,” his scratchy voice had deepened.

  “I have no interest in leaving Greg…the firm. I’ve worked here for three years and as soon as I take my bar exam, the firm has offered me a position,” she said and licked her suddenly dry lips. “Why would I leave that to be a secretary with you and your brother?” she scoffed.

  “You would be much more than a secretary, Renita.”

  As she stared up at him, the look in his eyes was hypnotic. She felt crazy as hell and just as disoriented having lost the thread of the conversation.

  “If you came to work with me, you wouldn’t feel the need to be so…uptight,” he told her, his scratchy voice deepening as he took a step closer to her.

  “What makes you think, uh hum,” she started and had to stop to clear her throat from the sudden restriction before she could go on. “What makes you think that I’m uptight?” she finished, taking an involuntary step back when he reached one of his big hands out, as though to touch her.

  She felt foolish when he simply removed the copy of the contract from her nerveless fingers. But the small contact from his fingers on hers was electric. She felt like a heroine in one of her spicy romances she secretly read, but she could almost felt a strange burn with the contact.

  She needed to get out more and date real men. She’d definitely, definitely, been reading too many erotic e-books.

  It’s where she’d been getting her “fix” as of late.

  “All those buttoned-up collars that you sport, all those stuffy navy blue suits…definitely uptight,” he mocked gently. “Don’t you ever just want let go, Renita?” he all but whispered, surprisingly enticing her with his low-talking barrage.

  She had to move away from him.

  “I have no need to ‘let go’ Mr. Holt…�
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  “After a year of working together, don’t you think you could call me by my first name?” When she only stared at him, from across the room where she’d made her escape, he continued, “Come on, Renita…” he drawled her name. “Say it. Say my name. Don’t be scared. I won’t bite.”

  The way that he asked her to call him by his first name, promising not to bite her, made her treacherous carnal mind come up with images of her calling him Gaynor in a totally different setting than the office. And her welcoming his bite. Wherever. Wherever.

  She wondered if he knew the effect he was having on her.

  Not only did she feel her face heat, she felt her neck, breasts, torso, legs and her toes all catch fire from the look on his handsome, scruffy face and the way he was, staring at her.

  The look on his face confirmed to her that he knew exactly what he was saying.

  “I’m not afraid of anything, or anyone, Gaynor, and I think I’ll pass on the offer,” she said, straightening her back and secured the top buttons of her silk blouse. She caught the flash of amusement and something more in his eyes before he closed down any telling expression.

  “As I said, I’m happy where I am, but thank you,” she said and accepted the signed copy of the contract and filed it away before she turned back to the investigator.

  “Well, the invitation is there. Think about it,” he said.

  She said nothing more as she gathered her things in preparation of leaving for the day. Work with Gaynor Holt and have to see his strangely appealing gruff behind everyday? No way, she thought with an inward laugh.

  She’d stay right where she was, working at the very prestigious law firm that her parents had pulled several strings for her to get. One that had been willing to overlook her juvenile records, records that to the high-powered attorneys would not have remained sealed.

  She had no intention of disappointing her parents again.

  No matter how appealing the thought of working with him seemed to be, she thought, as she slid him a sideways glance from beneath lowered lids.