by Ruthie Knox
“My hero.”
It was silly, but Ashley felt her cheeks warm with the praise. “What’s the deal now?” she asked. “We have a stay of execution, so …”
“You tell me. You said two weeks. If you still want them, they’re yours.”
“Why, though? I mean, it’s a nice gesture and all, but I’m not sure I get why you’re not going to just hightail it back to Florida now that I’m not holding the Key deer over your head.”
“You don’t?”
He held her gaze. There was heat in his eyes, humor in his expression.
Because of you. That’s what his eyes were telling her. Because I want to be with you.
“All the business I need to do, I can do over the phone,” he said. “I’d just as soon keep some distance from Heberto, at least until I’ve got an alternate plan to offer him. I know you want to talk to Esther about your grandma, so I think it would be good for you to do that.”
Ashley thought it over. “You know what I want?” she asked. “I want Esther to tell me why Grandma felt like she needed to keep so many secrets. I wouldn’t have been upset with her for selling Sunnyvale—at least not for long. It was hers to sell, but it hurts that she didn’t tell me. It hurts that she got sick and didn’t want me there, and then she arranged everything so that when she died there wouldn’t be a funeral. I need to understand why.”
“That sounds like a good enough reason to me.”
“You think?”
“Sure. Plus, we promised Stanley a ride.”
Ashley looked at Stanley, who was watching the conversation with his arms folded. “That’s true,” she said. “It would be kind of rude to abandon you here.”
“Ya think?” the old man countered.
“On the other hand, if we had a compelling reason to take you to Wisconsin, that might make it more enticing. Like, if we knew why you wanted to go so badly—”
“It’s because of Esther,” Nana said. “Didn’t he tell you that?”
“Shut your mouth,” Stanley said.
Nana perked up, eyes widening. “Ooh, he didn’t tell you!”
“Tell us what?” Ashley asked.
“Didn’t tell her nothing, either—”
Nana kept talking right over Stanley’s protests. “He’s in love with Esther. Has been for years. I imagine he’s figured out that with Sunnyvale gone, he’ll never see her again, so he latched onto your star to take him up north. Maybe he’ll finally declare himself. Get down on one knee and ask the woman to marry him. Is that your plan, Stanley? Because I have to say—”
“—just wanted to see the Great Lakes,” Stanley grumbled. “Got nothing to do with Esther.”
Ashley looked from Stanley to Nana and back again. “You’re serious,” she said.
“Dead serious,” Nana confirmed.
“How did I not know this?”
“I don’t know!” Nana said. “I thought everybody knew.”
Stanley was still emitting a nearly incomprehensible stream of muttering. “—get me wrong, she’s a nice lady, a fine lady, but I ain’t about to make a fool of myself at my age, declaring feelings that aren’t shared, and at any rate …”
When he realized they were all looking at him, he trailed off.
“His neck is actually crimson,” Ashley said to Nana. “I didn’t know it went that color.”
“Sometimes it gets redder than that around Esther,” Nana said.
“I can’t wait.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to miss it,” said Nana. “Stanley declaring himself to Esther at last—it’s a once-in-a-decade event.”
“You should come,” Ashley urged.
Roman coughed, and she looked up to see him drawing one finger across his throat.
“What?” she asked. “We have room! Nana and Stanley can sleep in the Airstream, and you and I can share the tent if we get the pole fixed.”
“I’m sure she wouldn’t want to impose—” Roman said.
“Oh, I love imposing,” Nana interrupted. “Plus, I have this thing where I pretty much have to say yes whenever anyone invites me to do something I’ve never done before. This counts, since I’ve never been to visit Esther in Wisconsin, or been involved in any sort of …” She waved a hand at Roman, Ashley, and Stanley. “Whatever this is.”
“Clusterfuck?” Stanley suggested.
“Holiday,” Roman said. “Holiday-slash-road-trip-slash-protest-movement.”
“No,” Ashley corrected. “It’s a quest. You said.”
“I never said that.”
“To Prachi!”
His forehead creased. “She called it a quest. I think I called it a crusade. But on second thought, she had it right.”
“I’ve always wanted to go on a quest,” Nana said. “The good news is, I have my own transportation. We can take Carly and Jamie’s camper. And can we ask Carly? Because I have a feeling she could use a break from the press, and plus she’s the kind of girl who likes quests, too.”
“And the baby?” Ashley asked.
“That’s a given—you take Carly, you take the baby. And probably Jamie, because he’s always game. So it’s you and me and Roman and Stanley and Carly and Dora, and Jamie if he’s free. I’ll have Carly bring the backgammon board and some card tables. And she’s got a blender in that mobile home for daiquiris. It’ll be a party on wheels!”
Ashley checked to see how Roman was taking all this. He looked good. Shoulders still relaxed. Just that one lifted eyebrow.
“What do you say?” she asked.
“Your quest, Ash. Your rules.”
She reached out to cover his clasped hands. Her other hand found Nana’s and squeezed it, and she met Stanley’s eyes across the table.
“Ashley-girl, you don’t know what you’re getting into,” he said.
She grinned—maniacal but happy. “That’s what makes it fun.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Carmen’s hands shook as she tore open the Caramello bar she’d stolen from the snack basket beside the microwave.
Perched on top of the desk in the center of Sunnyvale’s main office, she bit into the chocolate. A fragile ribbon of caramel landed on her chin. She scraped it off with one red fingernail and, after she’d chewed and swallowed the bite, sucked the sweet filament into her mouth.
The room was cool, fluorescent-lit. She wondered why the power still hadn’t been shut off. A loose end, and Roman didn’t usually leave ends loose.
They flapped about. Hit you in the face.
It was a day for unusual behavior. She didn’t eat candy. Or sit on desks. But she needed another minute after that conversation with Roman.
She needed another ten minutes.
As she sank her teeth into a second bite, a scraping noise broke into her concentration. Not muffled like the machine sounds from outside—this sounded like it came from nearby. “Is someone there?”
The office door flew open, and there was Noah, the sun behind him transforming him into a threatening black silhouette.
Startled, Carmen choked on wet chocolate and her own spit. She started to cough.
“Are you okay?” He crossed to her in two long strides, the open door forgotten behind him. His hands hovered around her shoulders, protective but undecided. “Wait, I’ll get you a drink.”
Noah filled a coffee mug from the watercooler while she tried to get her hacking under control. By the time he pressed the mug into her hand, she was able to take a small sip.
He stroked her hair. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t. I thought I heard something in the bathroom. I wasn’t expecting the door to fly open. It must have been you on the porch.”
“I guess.” He plucked the candy bar from her hand and ate the last bite, heedless of germs or any sense of ownership she might have possessed.
“What?” he asked when she gave him a look. “You want another one?”
“No, I shouldn’t have been eating that one.”
“Why n
ot?”
“Candy goes straight to my hips.”
She hadn’t meant it as an invitation for him to eye-fuck her, but he took it as one. “Your hips look perfect to me.”
“Thanks, but that’s kind of the point. If I ate Caramello bars all the time—never mind.” He’d already stepped closer, straddling her knees and dropping his head so he could nuzzle her neck.
“If you ate Caramello bars all the time, you’d be bigger and juicier, and I’d still want you.”
“So you say.”
“So I know.”
Her mouth felt strange. It took her a moment to understand it was because she was trying not to smile.
“What did Roman say?” Noah asked. “We good to go?”
She shook her head. “On second thought, can you get me those M&M’s?” She pointed to the bag in the basket.
Noah snagged it, tore it open, and poured candy into the palm of his hand. He plucked out a green M&M, pinching it between his blunt fingertips and lifting it to her lips.
“You can’t feed me candy,” she said. It would be too … something.
“Consider it an investment in your hips.”
He pressed it against her mouth, and she relented, sucking the hard dot out of his fingers. He fed her a red one. Then a blue. Then he put his hand behind her neck and tipped up her head, waiting for her to swallow so he could kiss her.
He was a thorough man, patient, present, and while the kiss lasted she stopped noticing that her life was becoming disorienting. North from south, up from down—it didn’t seem relevant when Noah stroked his tongue into her mouth and kneaded her thigh muscles through her skirt. He whispered, “You’re so beautiful” into the crook of her neck as he lifted another chocolate to her lips. “And tasty, too.”
Carmen let go of the desk so she could measure the size of his shoulder blades in each palm and then trace the shape of them, T-shirt over smooth skin over muscle over bone, this living, breathing person whose presence in her life she hadn’t invited, couldn’t get used to, couldn’t get enough of.
“Roman said we can’t wreck it today,” she said.
Noah dropped kisses along her collarbone and pressed his lips into the dip of her throat. “Why not?”
“He’s not ready to, he said. He’s considering some other possibilities.”
“But he’ll still want the buildings down, whatever he does.”
“I think he’s stalling for time. And I guess the woman—Ashley—she doesn’t want them down.”
“I’m sure Roman’s got good reasons,” Noah said. “He’s a smart guy.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.”
Noah stiffened for a second, then chuckled. “Right. Is it weird that I forgot for a second that you were with him until yesterday?” He lifted his head and looked right in her eyes. “It is weird, I know. But you already feel like mine.”
When she didn’t reply, he carefully selected a brown M&M from the dwindling pile in his hand and offered it to her. She vacuumed it between her lips and crunched it between her teeth. Then she raised his hand and cupped it to her lips and licked off all the M&M’s that remained, tasting chocolate and sweat and Noah.
Unhygienic. Repulsive, really, except that his chest rose and fell with rapid breaths and his eyes were right on hers as she crunched the candy and ground it to nothing.
You already feel like mine.
You, too.
He cupped her face in his hands, rubbed his thumb over her chin, her bottom lip. Stepped so close that she had to crane her head to see his face, and when he kissed her again, she thought, That can’t be comfortable, he’s all hunched, and then she didn’t care, because his kiss was his claim, and she wanted it. She welcomed it with her arms thrown around his neck, raked her fingers up into his hair and breathed in the warm smell of him, pressed against his hot chest, let him untuck her shirt, stroke her breasts, palm her ribs. She let herself be turned inside out, warmed by his sun, open and excited, alive. Alive.
After a long while, he drew away. “I want you,” he said. His voice had gone husky.
“Not here,” she said. “Later.” She had trouble catching her breath. “Work to do first.”
“I guess I have to send the crew home. What’s Roman thinking, schedule-wise?”
“He said he needs a few more days.”
“I swear he makes it impossible for me on purpose.” Noah sighed. “All right. I’m going to charge him for a half day today, though. I can’t keep calling my guys out here and then sending them home without pay.”
“But they didn’t work.”
“Roman won’t mind. If he was here I’d just tell him to pay them and he would.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “It’s the right thing to do. He doesn’t always see what the right thing is, but once I point it out to him he listens.”
“I didn’t know he was such a softhearted boss.”
“Not softhearted, smart. He makes the business decisions. I make sure he doesn’t alienate the whole world with that heartless routine of his. We’re a good team.”
“I don’t know that he thinks of you as a team.”
Noah smiled. “He probably doesn’t think of us as friends, either, but that’s Roman. He’s all right.” His hands found her thighs again, sliding up and down the muscles. So warm. “If we’re knocking off here, you can come home with me, huh?”
“I, uh, have to call my dad.”
“After that.”
“I should probably go back to the office. I don’t usually … yesterday was …”
“It was, wasn’t it? Let’s do it again.”
“I can’t.”
“It’ll be mid-afternoon by the time you get back to Miami.”
“Early afternoon.”
“It’s a nice day,” Noah coaxed. “Stay here, I’ll take you out on my boat.”
“I don’t really do boats.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “You’ll like it.”
“I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“You won’t need a swimsuit.”
“If we’re going to be—”
“Just say yes, baby. Yes, you want to see my boat.” He licked over her lips. “Yes, you want to go out on the water and get hot and drink a couple beers with me. Then we can grab some awful fried seafood and go back to my place again.” He moved his mouth over her cheek. “I’ll strip that skirt off and eat you out in the shower. We’ll drop onto my bed naked and dripping and fuck each other until we’re so worn out we can’t move.”
Carmen couldn’t respond, or really even breathe, or think of anything but the picture his words made. She could see it. She could feel what it would be like to take this from him—to accept the gift of life the way Noah lived it.
She could imagine, almost, what it would be like to belong to this man not just for today but for every day, stretching out into the future.
When he looked at her, he saw a woman she’d never been.
When he touched her, she became someone she liked. A woman who responded. Who felt. A Carmen who writhed and smiled and ate fried food.
She gazed at his face—those kind, smiling eyes—and she wanted to be that woman. She was right on the verge of telling him yes when movement behind his arm caught her eye, and she refocused her gaze on the doorway.
Where she saw her father.
The flush came over her so violently, she felt for a moment as though she might be having some sort of health crisis. A stroke. A heart attack. Death by embarrassment.
“Papi! What are you doing here?”
She hadn’t called Heberto papi since the fifth grade.
He’d never caught her with a strange man straddling her thighs and her shirt untucked.
“It’s a good question,” her father said mildly. “I could ask you the same.”
“I’m—working.”
He raised an eyebrow. A trick he’d picked up from Roman.
Carmen hastily tucked her blouse back in. “H
eberto, this is Noah, um—”
She didn’t know his last name. And he had lipstick on his chin. Fuck.
“Noah Archer.” He stepped forward, extending his hand. “Roman’s contractor. Nice to meet you, sir.”
Heberto glanced at Noah’s hand and turned his gaze back to Carmen. “You’re messing around on Roman with an employee?”
“Roman dumped me,” she said flatly.
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. He’s sleeping with Ashley.”
“Should I know who that is?”
“Ashley the palm tree protester?”
Her father looked briefly surprised, but his expression subsided into mild dissatisfaction, as it always did. “So this is revenge,” he said, glancing from her neckline—almost certainly askew—back to Noah’s hand, which he’d dropped to his side when it became apparent Heberto had no intention of shaking it.
Noah opened his mouth to speak. Carmen shot him a quelling look and jumped down from the top of the desk, wobbling for a moment on her heels. Even with her father here, she felt the effects of that last kiss—the things Noah had said—
But now wasn’t the time for that. Nor was it the time to defend Noah’s delicate feelings, if he had them. There were more important issues to discuss.
“What are you doing here?” she asked Heberto again.
“You haven’t been answering your phone.”
“I was going to get back to you after I had this situation resolved.”
He glanced at his watch. “Which would be when, exactly? You should be half done with the demolition by now.”
“I had to wait until I talked to Roman.”
“Don’t tell me he hasn’t got the woman under control yet.”
“He says he’s planning something. He needs time to think.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“He wanted me to tell you that this is …” She glanced at her father’s frowning mouth. He was going to hate this. “He said it’s his property, and he’ll knock down the buildings when he wants. He’ll get in touch with us when he’s ready. Until then, he doesn’t plan to take our calls.”
Her father walked away. Bracing his hands in the doorway, he leaned out to look to the left, where the rental units surrounded the swimming pool. He looked for half a minute, maybe more.