by Amelia Wilde
It sounds stupid even in the privacy of my mind, but last night was some kind of magical. For once, I didn’t have to explain what I wanted. Beck just gave it to me. Then he gave it to me some more, and more after that. I don’t think I’ve fallen asleep so peacefully in eight years. And I must have dreamed it, too, but I thought I heard him say that he loves me, a whisper as I was drifting back into a dream. Even if he didn’t say it, that’s what it felt like.
And this morning…
There was so much to be explored, the morning light playing over the hard lines of his body, that he was almost late for work. At 6:45, when we were lying beneath the sheets, catching our breath, he swore.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
“What?”
“I have to be at the plant in fifteen minutes.”
He’d leapt out of bed, an athletic maneuver that I don’t think he could have pulled off in college, and scrambled straight into his jeans and shirt. But he didn’t leave just then.
He climbed onto the bed on his knees, scooping my head up with one arm, and kissed me like he was going off to war. When he pulled back, I could see all the words he wanted to say hiding behind his eyes.
“You can take your time. I put out a towel for you in the bathroom.”
“Damn,” I’d said, tracing a finger down the line of his jaw. “You’re a true romantic.”
“It’s my nicest towel.” Then he gave me that half-grin that just lights me up, climbed off the bed, and ran down the stairs to the first floor. Did I fling myself back on his pillows and bask in the night’s events for another ten minutes before I got into the shower? Yes. Yes, I did.
Calley’s eyes on me derail this pleasant train of thought, not least because—in the few seconds it takes me to respond—they trail down to my breasts. And linger.
Missy’s words come back to me in a flash. He didn’t come on to you, did he? That day in the hallway, she had seemed relieved that nothing had happened between Calley and me during the meeting. I meant to ask her about it over drinks later, but one thing had led to another, and there was never a good moment to do it. Now I wish I’d made the time.
As I make a mental note to find out exactly why she was so relieved, I clear my throat, redirecting Calley’s attention back to my face. “What are your concerns, Mr. Calley?”
There’s nobody else in this meeting. When I walked in, I wasn’t paying attention to that fact—why would Calley’s people matter?—but I flip through my memories of all the other meetings over the past couple weeks. They were there at every single one.
My stomach turns over, and not in a good way. If he tries anything—
“I’m wondering if these areas couldn’t be—” He purses his lips, leaning back in his chair. Today he’s wearing a lightweight suit in a heather gray, perfectly matched to the mild weather outside. It looks expensive. His salt-and-pepper hair has been recently trimmed. “—a little grander.” He gives me a smile that makes my skin crawl.
I peer at the plans like I’m trying to picture the areas he’s talking about, but I know them backward and forward and upside down. I don’t need extra time to consider them. “Well, we’ve already expanded the outdoor sitting area to three times its original size, and the entry signage has significantly more plantings than when we began. What else did you have in mind?”
“Maybe ‘grander’ wasn’t the best choice of words. What I’m looking for is more…personal attention.”
I force myself to keep my eyes on Calley’s. They’re a cold steely gray, and I honestly can’t tell if they’re glittering with some kind of creepy lust or if it’s just the reflection of the light coming through the windows, which are made of some kind of tinted glass that gives the illumination a slight off-quality anyway.
“You know what, Mr. Calley, I’m sure our team at Ryder & Bloom can come up with exactly what you’re looking for.” I can’t stand to sit here for one more second with his eyes focused on me like that. He might be in his fifties, maybe even his sixties, but that doesn’t mean he can’t get repulsive ideas. Under any other circumstance—if there were any other people here—I’d wait for him to dismiss the meeting, but I’m out of my seat before even I fully realize what I’m doing. “There are likely some adjustments we can make.” I scoop the plans off the desk, rolling them quickly into my hands and grabbing the tube holder I carry with me to all the meetings.
“I don’t think—”
“Oh, no, Mr. Calley.” I flash him a big smile, like everything is fine, just fine. “I just need to consult with my team members about the options we can offer. How firm is the budget on these areas?”
He’s looking up at me with narrowed eyes. I get the impression that not many people abruptly end meetings that he’s leading. Maybe nobody ever does. Maybe this is the first time. Well, there’s a first time for everything, and if I’m right, Calley’s not going to want to admit that it happened.
“We have some room,” he says with a little sigh, cocking his head to the side. Then he gives me something between a smile and a grimace. “Obviously, this plant is a top priority for these kinds of enhancements, but let’s try to keep it reasonable, shall we?”
The only person running this project over budget is you, you idiot.
I keep the thought to myself. “Understood. I’ll check back with your office tomorrow—we should have revisions by Monday.” The next meeting is also at two o’clock, but I don’t confirm. I just turn toward the door and go.
“Have a wonderful afternoon, Mr. Calley,” I say, the door closing behind me. My shoulders sag with relief.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Beckett
Sam picks at her plate of nachos, the relentless music at Cinco Amigos not making a damn bit of impact. Whenever I’ve been here before, which was mostly with Sam circa ten years ago, it hasn’t been quite so loud, but tonight it’s blaring. It doesn’t help that it’s half-off drinks and appetizers on Thursdays, so the mariachi music is competing with the obnoxious laughter and voices of more than just a few tipsy assholes.
“Are you hearing this?”
She scoops some of the toppings onto a chip, then puts all of it down, looking up at me. “What?”
I circle my finger in the air. “This music. It’s loud as hell.” I was hungry until I ate my way through two-thirds of a burrito while Sam barely made a dent in her plate of nachos.
A smile flickers across Sam’s face, but her laugh is half-hearted. “Oh. Yeah.”
I put both palms down on the table and lean toward her, eyes wide. “Sam.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s going on with you?”
She shakes her head, running her fingers through her hair and leaning back onto the wooden backing of the booth. “It’s nothing.”
“You’re not a good liar.” I raise my voice to shout over the mariachi music. Right on cue, the shit cuts out, making it seem like I’m yelling at her across the booth.
For the first time all evening, Sam dissolves into laughter, covering her mouth with her hands, shoulders shaking. “Oh, my God, that was perfect.”
I’m not nearly as amused, but I like to see a smile on her face. “Let’s get out of here.”
“I’m not done with my nachos.”
“You can eat them at my place.”
Her eyes light up. “Your place?”
“Yeah. You didn’t like it there last night?” I narrow my eyes, giving her a look. “Was it the pillows?”
She laughs again. “The pillows were fine.”
“The towels?”
“Also fine.”
“The…” I let it linger, relish the blush rising into her cheeks.
“Incredible.”
“Case closed.”
I signal for the bill, and the waitress is there in seconds. She lingers only long enough for me to pull out two bills, then darts off to make change. She’s probably got too many other tables to stay long, but she drops off a to-go box before I ask. Not bad.
&
nbsp; Sam tips the plate of nachos into the box while I count out the tip, and then she rises gracefully to her feet, hips swaying while she walks out to the entrance. I drove, so she heads straight to my car, getting to the passenger side a few seconds before I can unlock the doors.
Inside the car, she balances the to-go box on her knees and leans back in the seat, looking out the window. There’s that faraway look in her eyes again. I don’t say anything while I climb into the driver’s seat, put on my seatbelt, and start the car. I don’t say anything until we’re out on the highway, heading for home.
“So.”
“So…” Sam echoes me, turning her head toward the front windshield.
“What’s bothering you?”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Let’s skip the part where you tell me it’s not a big deal, and I tell you that anything that’s making you less happy than you were this morning is a big deal, and whatever shithead made you feel this way is going to have to answer to me.”
My tone is lighthearted when I start out, but by the time I finish what I’m saying, it’s deadly serious.
The corner of Sam’s mouth turns up into a little smile that I only catch out of the corner of my eye. “Yeah…that’s what I don’t want to have happen.”
“I’m not actually planning to take anybody out.” Well… “Unless there’s a good reason.”
“You know, I’m not even sure what happened.”
“What happened when?”
“At my meeting today.”
“With the big brass?”
“With Edison Calley.”
I give a low whistle. “Well, damn. He owns the place.”
“Exactly.”
Then it dawns on me. “Wait—what did he do?”
“He didn’t…do anything.”
“Okay…what did he say?”
Her face twists with something that looks like disgust. “It wasn’t so much—” Sam lets out a frustrated sigh. “He was acting just…vaguely creepy.”
“How?” The fact that it’s taking this long to draw it out of her tells me that something definitely happened. “Look, whatever it was, I’m not going to do anything…reckless.”
“I wouldn’t want you to lose your job over this.”
Her eyes are on me now, even though her face is hardly lit by the ambient lighting from the radio display. I can feel them more than I can see them. I don’t want to take my eyes off the road.
“Should I…pull over, or something?”
“No.”
“We’re not far from my house. This can wait.”
“This was the first meeting that it was just him and I.”
“Okay…”
“That’s the thing,” she says, hands going to her hair again, then dropping back into her lap. “He gave my boobs a good, hard look, and then he said something about personal attention. It was nothing that he couldn’t deny, but I got out of there—”
“He said that to you?”
“Yeah.”
I grit my teeth, my gut super-heated at the thought of Edison Calley hitting on my…on my Sam. I’ve never met the guy. I’ve only ever seen his car when he visits the plant, only seen him at a distance when he tours the floor, which is not fucking often. He’s clearly not the kind of guy who wants to witness hard work.
“And you left?”
“I got the hell out of there. Like anyone would, I think.” She sighs. “The next meeting is Monday afternoon.”
“You have to tell your boss.”
“No.”
Sam’s voice is so firm that it almost takes me by surprise. “Why the hell not?”
She shakes her head. “I can’t risk that. My boss is a good woman, but the minute I complain is the minute she tells Calley.” I feel her gaze on me again. “That’s the same minute I have to leave this job and go back downstate.”
“Sam—” I don’t know how to describe to her the roiling sickness that’s taking over everything in my torso. I have to do something about this. I can’t just let this—
“I’ll think about it, okay? I’ll think about it. But I’m going to have to tread really carefully.”
Otherwise we’re going to lose time together. I get that, and I fucking hate it, but what other option is there? She can’t keep going in there if…
She doesn’t say another word on the rest of the drive home.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Samantha
“We can add some bells and whistles, but if he keeps making…adjustments…like this, he’s going to be coming in way over budget. There’s no way around it. You’re going to have to tell him that.”
Michelle, as I suspected, isn’t thrilled about this next round of revisions. I’ve been on a conference call with her and two of the other lead architects for an hour. This isn’t the only round of changes the team at Cerberus has requested, and they all need to be made keeping within both statewide regulations and local ordinances. As soon as all of this is hammered out, I’ll be meeting with someone from the township of Lockton…which could mean even more negotiations, because they’re notoriously stingy with putting their stamp of approval on anything. Or so Michelle says. Either way, I’m definitely not looking forward to being the go-between for Calley and the township.
Not after the meeting yesterday.
The team couldn’t meet yesterday, so first thing this morning, we got on this conference call. I’m still in sweats and a tank top, and my gut is still churning with unease about the way Calley was acting yesterday.
Beck was not happy about it. I could see from the set of his jaw that even the hint of something weird going on put him on edge, and it made me nervous as hell.
That was the Beck who came out when we discovered, a little more than eight years ago, that I was pregnant.
He’s always been a little intense, a little brooding, but when we were younger, he was happy. Until then.
He’d just had to take control of the situation, even though I’d wanted to make a decision together and then just ride out the consequences. I’d been so convinced—
I shake my head, trying to clear my thoughts. The point is, seeing him like that last night, insisting that I go to my boss, so focused on the one solution he approved of.
I should tell her. I should bring it up. But the longer the call goes on, the less I’m sure how to bring it up without sounding like…I don’t know. Sounding oversensitive. Michelle is a business woman, a partner in this business, so she should understand what it’s like to have to face off with men on a daily basis, sometimes in situations like the one I was in, but…
There’s something stopping me. In college I always thought of myself as the kind of person who would stand up for women who were harassed, women who were taken advantage of, whether it was at work or elsewhere, but now that the situation is closer to home, it suddenly seems…unclear.
Was what happened really enough to be called harassment? Am I really willing to go there? Will Michelle still feel confident enough to send me on these kinds of jobs if there’s a problem on the first one out? I haven’t had such a major assignment yet, and I don’t want it to go down in flames because…
Ugh. There’s no way to win. If I keep my mouth shut in the interests of climbing the career ladder, I let Calley win. If I say something, I might find out that nobody else considers his behavior a big deal. Still, I want to speak up, I just…
I have to answer Michelle. The silence on the call has lasted several beats too long.
“I’ll tell him. Our next meeting is scheduled for Monday afternoon.”
“Well, that should give us enough time to work a little something up, but this is going to have to be the last round of adjustments on these areas unless he wants to go back to the drawing board in terms of the budget.”
“No problem.”
“Is everything all right, Sam?”
This is my big chance, right here, right now. I open my mouth to answer her, to start to describe what hap
pened, but nothing comes out.
Where do I start?
The fact that he gave me a slightly creepy feeling the first time I saw him?
The fact that he stared at my breasts?
The fact that he said he wanted more personal attention?
The fact that I got up and left the room?
Even when I imagine saying the words out loud, they don’t sound…convincing. They don’t sound like anything to worry about. They sound like something I should be able to brush off. God, I don’t want to be known as the woman in the office who can’t handle any hardship.
At the same time…
“Yeah, everything’s good,” I say, and they’re not the words I would have chosen, it’s not the way I wanted to handle this, but they slip out before I can stop them. And once they’re out there, I can’t shove them back in my mouth.
My next words should be actually, no, there is something I wanted to talk to you about, but instead I say, “I was up a little late eating dinner and going over Mr. Calley’s adjustments. Slow start.”
Michelle laughs. “It’s tough being away from home base. Take care of yourself.”
My face goes hot. If I were really going to be taking care of myself, I’d tell her right now what went on, even if it made me sound stupid, even if she didn’t think it was anything to worry about. I’d lay the groundwork in case anything else happened.
But nothing else is going to happen. It’s not. Somehow, I’ll just handle it by myself. Maybe, when all of this is over, I’ll mention his behavior just as a warning, in case she doesn’t want to deal with Cerberus anymore. But if the contracts keep coming, that could mean thousands of lost dollars for Ryder & Bloom.
“I will.” I open a new sheet of notes on my computer screen. “I don’t have anything else to report.” The lie tastes bitter in my mouth. “Was there anything on your end you wanted to go over?”
“I don’t think so. Guys?”
Both of the other leads chime in. They don’t have anything else to talk about, either. They don’t feel the weight that’s settled in my chest, the shame that burns hot in my face for being so conflicted over…