by A. L. Woods
I was paying the consequences for my desperation now. All I’d gotten was radio-fucking-silence and the painful reminder that no one was buying houses right now—people were abandoning them for non-payment.
I ground my molars together, my jaw tightening. “I’ll get my finances back in order,” I said, my voice apologetic yet still gruff as I considered how the fuck I had ended up in this position.
Oh yeah, that’s right. I hadn’t had a choice.
Look, the job itself is fine, and when the economy didn’t suck like a bad blow job that you wished would just end, it more than just paid the bills. When things were good, it had kept the cash flowing like a damn waterfall instead of the dried-up pond it was right now. It was just on days like today when my head was throbbing and Penelope was nagging that I craved the life I had given up to be here.
A decade ago, I had just been a dumb kid who couldn’t tell you what the fuck a supporting wall was, the difference between a beam and a joist, or how to drill a hole into a brick wall without eating the bit. I had learned everything I knew out of desperation because time was not on my side. I absorbed every lesson, every injury, every failure, and every success entirely on my own. Over time, I had developed an eye for seeing potential in houses that others had long since given up on, and started snatching up foreclosures and condemned properties to restore them to their former glory.
This one, though, I should have known was going to be a dud as soon as I pulled into the overgrown driveway. The roof on the colonial had barely been intact when I put in an offer on it; the porch had been holding on by a thread, the door had been kicked in several times, and some clown had tried to hold a fucking seance or some weird-ass shit inside, because they had spray painted a pentagram in the middle of the hardwood living room floors, which had inevitably made them unsalvageable…and had added another cost to the lengthy list of needed repairs.
“Don’t sweat it,” Penelope said, breaking up the barrage of my thoughts. She crouched low to the floor in a squat, balancing her weight on her ankle boots while pulling the corner of the earth-toned area rug with geometric print toward her. She studied the effect, first tilting her head to the left and then to the right before standing upright again. “Dougie told me you’re good for the money.”
Not that she needed it, but it was the principle. It wasn’t news that Penelope wasn’t rubbing two pennies together trying to make a dollar, but it still pissed me off that she and Dougie were talking about me. My spine grew steely, my jaw granite as the thought bounced around in my mind some more.
Dougie was never crass when he spoke of Penelope, but he had been elusive when it came to her—offering nothing but noncommittal head nods when probed, shrugging his shoulders and making periodic remarks about how they were just having fun. From the sound of it, though, his version of “just having fun” was forming a budding relationship with this pedigreed Satan.
He wasn’t fooling me with that shit, which was just fucking great.
Dread hit the depths of my stomach as I contemplated what the next two hours of my life would be like with someone who associated herself with Penelope. I didn’t have the patience for this today. I hated indulging people. Now I was going to make nice-nice and act like I “had my shit together” as per Penelope the entire time.
“I hope to God she’s not as annoying as you are,” I muttered to myself, moving toward the full-length mirror in the adjacent foyer that opened up into the living room. Penelope had informed me that I could have afforded a shave, but she had sprung this shit on me at the last minute, demanding I get to the house ASAP. My beard was neat, not in a meet-the-parents kind of way, but presentable. Clean. I had conceded on the suit jacket, but I had refused to wear dress pants. Both Penelope and the kid had met me halfway and agreed to hole-free jeans—and the shiny shoes, as per her highnesses’ royal decree.
There were just some battles not worth going to war over.
“I heard that,” she sing-songed. I shuddered. Her supersonic hearing was on par with that of my mother, and that woman never missed anything. “But I wouldn’t worry. Raquel’s a fan of brevity.”
I frowned. What the fuck did that mean? How could anyone who worked in a print-based industry be reliant on brevity? They talked all the time; they had to. Was that some kind of fancy term to suggest this Raquel person only spoke when spoken to?
How could you speak only when you had to when you’re a writer?
Was it writer? No, Penelope had said she was a journalist. I paused, frowning. That didn’t sound right, either. Or was she a columnist?
I gave my head a shake, suddenly realizing I was spending my last few precious minutes of freedom before I had to turn on my airs and pretend to be civil while I got read the riot act by someone cut from the same cloth as Penelope. I wondered if her friend was a social elitist, too. If she’d roll up in a Mercedes, with the same red-soled shoes that would make my kid sister gasp with delight, or if she would be a bottled blonde with good bone structure and the best rack money could buy.
Hell, a little piece of eye candy might be exactly what the doctor ordered to kill the pounding that lived between my eyebrows.
Then again, I couldn’t imagine some silver-spooned reporter/writer/journalist/whatever-the-fuck-she-was working for some low-tiered borderline inconsequential product based in Eaton, of all places. That place was tiny next to the forty-nine square miles that made up Boston.
Eaton, Massachusetts was an unassuming and bucolic bedroom community nestled in Bristol County that lived up to its Old English name. The town ran parallel to an ambling creek that spilled into the Taunton River. It was as forgettable as it was boring, but the real estate was cheap, and the commute was short enough for me to drive in from Fall River, yet too far for my Ma to make the trek out to chastise me or my guys every day.
We reserved her lectures for Sundays. She was doing the Lord’s work after all, and someone needed to remind me for the hundredth time that I was getting old, needed to settle down and give her a legitimate grandchild (I’ll get to that one in a bit), since Maria, her firstborn, was married to her work and about as interested in settling down as sitting on the turnpike on a Friday night at 6PM. My two younger sisters had no business even so much as sharing the same oxygen as another guy.
The waiting game was making me antsy. I tugged on the ends of my dress shirt, feeling completely out of my element in the getup, the unsettled churning in my stomach gnawing at my insides. I was more of a Hanes white T-shirt and work jeans kind of guy...not whatever Penelope had called this while smacking her mint-flavored chewing gum.
Oh, yeah. “Very Wall Street.”
“Also, before you ask, she doesn’t have a boyfriend.” Her tone was unusually businesslike as she rounded behind me, like it would have only been a matter of time before I asked that question. She frowned, her hands coming to my waist, adjusting the shirt that I had just modified to make myself feel less like the innards of a burrito. “But you’re one hundred percent not her type, so let me spare you the trouble and tell you don’t even think about it.”
I let out a breathless laugh. “No problem, Princess.” I had enough headaches as it was right now, and I didn’t need to add fucking one of her friends onto the agenda. It would be enough if she was a nice piece of ass, but I wasn’t looking to date anyone of her ilk. There were about a hundred other things that would have been a better investment of my time and emotional well-being, that was for damn sure.
The sound of a car in the driveway had Penelope’s ankle boots thundering across the foyer, a whistle shriek that was barely perceptible to most but grating in my fucking ears leaving her throat. This was why she didn’t have to worry about me showing even a morsel of interest in one of her friends. I imagined they would be an exact carbon copy of her, or at least trying to emulate her to some degree. The inhuman sound that had left her just now settled things for me like a gavel had been struck down—case closed.
As soon as I could get rid of P
enelope and her convoy of “brilliant ideas”, she was outta here. Then I was going to consider taking a very long break, maybe go somewhere warm for awhile: palm trees, stiff drinks, the ocean, sand between my toes, sleeping till noon, fucking a few broads with low expectations—the whole shebang.
The wooden front door we had stained a deep red on the exterior swung open, allowing a cold draft of air to circulate across the foyer and making goosebumps erupt across my skin underneath my shirt.
“Hi!” Penelope called, her voice suddenly several octaves higher than normal.
I was going to be sick.
A female voice with a thick South Boston accent barked out a hoarse laugh that sounded like she had smoked a pack a day for the last twenty years.
“Close the door, you’re messing up my shot.”
Penelope obliged, beaming at me like a child who had just been informed she could singlehandedly eat an entire chocolate cake. I scoffed, arousing her attention. She turned her head toward me, pegging me with a tight smile and eyes that screamed, Behave, or I’ll turn your balls into earrings! all while beckoning me toward her with a jerk of her head, her beaded chandelier earrings singing as they swayed from her earlobes.
I hesitated, but that smile seemed to strain a little deeper on her face—her thin lips curling in a way that told me if she had to silently warn me again, it really wouldn’t just be the beaded earrings she would be sporting anymore.
Okay, I got it.
Penelope swung the door open once the knock came from the other side, stopping only to wave me forward with her hand in a cupped motion, like she was scooping air, before she was out of my sight.
“Raquel,” she began. I heard Penelope’s heeled boots creaking along the porch as I rounded the open doorway. I took a fortifying breath, swallowing my underlying anxiety as my frame filled the threshold of the front door.
“This is Sean Tavares,” Penelope concluded.
Cinnamon eyes shrouded by long, dark lashes flickered from the porch swing I had constructed myself, to meet my own. My balls tightened, my heart jerked, and my lids grew hooded as I gave her the once over, though her gaze never left my face.
Where flaxen golden strands grew out of Penelope’s head, this woman’s locks were a deep brown color that fell to her shoulders, the ends bluntly cut. The mid-morning sun cast soft shadows across the curvature of her heart-shaped face, her nose was cute and pert with a dusting of faint freckles against her alabaster complexion. Her lips looked almost too full for her face, her bottom lip noticeably fuller than the top.
Raquel was Penelope’s opposite in every way, and I was fucked from here till next Tuesday.
Danger whipped through me, every alarm ringing violently in my brain. My synapses demanded I abort my mission, retreat away from enemy territory, but I was already too far gone, standing here in the doorway gaping at her like a total idiot.
This was the all-consuming and wild attraction my mother had warned me about when I first started dating as a teenager. The bruxa who left me spellbound, beguiled by her smoldering cinnamon stare and unimpressed pout as if it really was witchcraft at play.
Women like Raquel were dangerous; they were the kind that men incited wars over just to have a taste.
“Mr. Tavares.” Her cadence dripped with a hybrid of luxury, but the vowels carried a sort of depth that only came when you had been raised deep in the heart of Boston’s blue-collar community. Her inflection rolled upward, taking my breath with it.
I said nothing, my throat working frantically trying to free the words that were trapped in my larynx alongside all my other previous vitriolic sentiments from all of five minutes ago, when Penelope had warned me not to even consider pursuing her best friend.
What had I said again?
“No problem, Princess.”
No. This was a problem. A huge problem.
“I’m Raquel Flannigan. I work for The Eaton Advocate.”
I stared at her outstretched hand. Her nails were short, sensible, and free of any polish. The skin of her hands was smooth with no marks, a slight sheen to them, as if she had just moisturized. She smelled like freshly squeezed citrus and vanilla with just the faintest traces of musk from tobacco—a lethal combination that tangled into a tantalizing aroma that set off a warm buzz in the depths of my stomach.
I was suddenly afraid to touch her for some inexplicable reason, as if the connection alone would make me liable to do something crazy and out of character. I stared at her proffered hand like she was anything but ball-wrenchingly beautiful, like she didn’t have said balls kicking to life demanding I do anything to touch her at all.
The tragedy would be that I would never know how soft her skin was against mine. I didn’t need this kind of liability in my life. Not now, not when I barely had my shit figured out.
“I know who you are,” I said, my voice clipped, keeping my hand at my side, my fingers twitching against the seam of my jeans. “Take off your shoes when you come inside.”
Guilt jerked my insides, and I winced, the white pain shooting to my belly button. Her face was impossible to read. If my brisk greeting insulted her, she didn’t show it. I watched as her cinnamon gaze swung from me to Penelope, an amused look blooming on her face as she drew in her bottom lip, stifling a laugh.
I thought I heard Penelope mutter a death threat, but it went otherwise unnoticed.
This approach was for the better.
Besides, I was sure Raquel was used to dealing with worse than me—she certainly looked like she could hold her own. I wouldn’t do either of us any favors. She wasn’t getting anything more out of me than necessary. Once this shit was over, I was going to go home and stroke one out and be done with this little influential Hemingway-wannabe before this story hit the presses.
“Sure,” Raquel said with a shrug of her shoulders. She sidestepped me to enter the house, her back flush with the door, sliding forward. Traces of her perfume wafted off of her as she passed by me, the scent teasing the inside of my nostrils in the process, “Let’s start the tour.”
Get a fucking grip, Sean.
I stifled the groan that managed to claw its way through my throat—bypassing all the polite pleasantries I should have greeted her with. Penelope’s stare bore into me like hot beams, the veiled threat obvious in her eyes as though she was going to crack the vase on the mantel over my head any minute now.
I probably deserved it, but it was hardly my fault, and Raquel wasn’t doing me any fucking favors right now. She bent over at the waist in the foyer, unlacing her boots. I tried to keep my eyes fixated on the portrait above the fireplace, but they seemed to unwillingly drop to her ass and the denim straining against her peach-shaped cheeks.
Penelope cleared her throat, drawing my attention to her. She folded her arms across her chest, tilting her head at me, pegging me with the unspoken reminder that I could look at the menu, but I wasn’t allowed to order from it.
This was gonna be a long fucking morning.
CHAPTER THREE
“So, why century home restorations?”
If Raquel’s question was meant for me, it was hard to tell. She didn’t bother to level her eyes on me as she paced around the living room in a sort of timed and choreographed dance, pausing to snap photos of the small details that had been put in place at Penelope’s behest—the stained ornate mantel that encased the fireplace, the statement ceiling light fixture, and the herringbone floorboards. Penelope, who had seemed to forget about my existence, stared at her with the kind of reverence and adoration better suited for a mother watching her first-born during a ballet performance—hand to chest and all—and not her best friend, a grown-ass woman, whose mere presence was quickly doing one hell of a number on both my balls and my mental health.
At my silence, she quirked a brow from behind the camera that was at eye level. “Does he speak?” she asked, her tone sardonic, while lowering the camera to look at Penelope.
“Sometimes. We’re still working on helping
him form complete sentences.”
The snort that left Raquel’s throat was unflattering. My body bristled, heat creeping up my neck. I hadn’t been the one to arouse the humorous response from her, I had merely been the cause—the butt of the joke.
“Money,” I bit out, the single noun sucking the air out of the room, sobering everyone in it.
If Hemingway wanted a story, she would get one.
Raquel tilted her head toward me, a hostile look blossoming on her face, as if she wasn’t impressed by my response any more than I had been—but it was the truth.
When cancer had ripped my father from my family prematurely, I had to act fast. In spite of the success of his Portuguese-American immigration story and how well he had appeared to be doing, things weren’t as they had seemed. The whole thing had come down like a house of fucking cards when we realized that the life we had been leading was a massive fucking lie.
Humans are interesting creatures when we’re forced to act out of desperation—we make sacrifices at the expense of our own undoing. I gave up everything to ensure my family’s survival: to keep food on the table, the heat on in the house, to keep my older sister’s career ambitions alive so she could get through law school, to ensure that my younger sisters never wanted for anything—money was the objective, the name of the game. Its procurement would be what would make things right. I sacrificed so they wouldn’t have to, made hard choices quickly to avoid causing any more turmoil during a point in our lives where everything was as fragile as heated glass. That was who I was. That was who I had been raised to be.
Struggle. Fight. Survive.
Raquel’s face was expressionless as she held the camera in my direction, her finger finding the shutter, setting off a flash of light in my direction that illuminated the room.
“I’m not part of the house,” I snarled, ignoring my body’s demands to preen under the assault of her lens.
“You’re right,” she offered flatly, adjusting the zoom ring before pegging me with another shot. “It’s part of you.”