Enemies With Benefits: Loveless Brothers, Book 1

by Noir, Roxie

  Hell, a job where he’d have to think ever. I don’t know Zane — Lord, his name is Zane Payne, seriously? — or his parents, but they’re cousins to some of my high school classmates.

  The Paynes are not known for their intellect, cleverness, or wit, is what I’m saying, and Zane Payne seems to be performing to expectations.

  “I mean…” he says, and pauses. “I don’t think I saw them?”

  I shiver, despite myself. We’re standing in the walk-in cooler, our breath puffing up in front of us, and neither of us know where the oysters were. I don’t even know if we have oysters, despite ordering them last week for this event.

  If we don’t have oysters, I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do.

  “Okay,” I say, and push past him, swinging open the heavy door of the cooler. The kitchen’s bustling: the ovens on, pots steaming on the stovetop, my sous chef, Naomi is rolling out pasta on the stainless steel countertop for wild mushroom ravioli.

  “We’ll go check the loading dock,” I say, striding through the kitchen. “Naomi, can you keep an eye on the au jus that’s on the stove?”

  “Got it,” Naomi says, and I swing through the kitchen doors and into the wide, concrete-floored hallway, Zane on my heels. The kitchen is in the barn that was once a dairy barn — the other, which houses offices, was a former horse barn, I think Montgomery told me — and it still has a lot of those semi-industrial trappings.

  I push open the door to the loading dock and looked around. A few pallets of stuff, all wound up tight in plastic, stand around.

  There’s a pile of flower pots in a huge wooden crate. A precarious-looking plastic-wrapped stack of chairs. There’s a pallet stacked high with what, on closer inspection, turn out to be plastic-wrapped sod.

  We wander through the loading dock, looking for either someone who works down here or the oysters themselves. At this point, I’ll take almost anything as long as it provides a clue.

  We walk between more stacked-high stuff: old-fashioned lanterns; golf cart tires; throw pillows; cleaning supplies.

  No oysters.

  “Right, I don’t see them,” Zane Payne says.

  We walk around a few more piles of things — bricks, fake flowers — moving deeper into the sides of the loading dock. I pray that somehow, some way, the oysters managed to find somewhere cold and dark.

  My hopes are not high. I’m already trying to think of what to serve besides oysters. We’ll have to scrap the whole raw bar, obviously, but we can probably throw together some sliders, slap a few different sauces on there, and call it fancy.

  That’s the last resort, though, and I clench one fist as I walk around another pallet stacked high with something or other. I really, really don’t want to fuck up this job on my second week here, especially not after the wedding cake fiasco of last weekend.

  “This seems like it’s all not oysters,” Zane offers, still trailing behind me.

  I move further into the loading dock, finally finding the cement wall.

  “Is Zane your first name?” I ask, distracted.

  “Yeah?”

  Still no oysters, and I’ve hit the end of the pallets. I scan the docks, but it seems futile.

  “You ever think about going by your middle name?”

  “Not really,” Zane Payne says, shrugging. “I like Zane a lot better than Gomer.”

  Gomer. Oof.

  Before I can offer my condolences on a middle name that makes mine sound high-class and fancy, I hear voices on the other side of a towering stack of paper towels, talking in hushed tones. They sound like they don’t want to be overheard.

  “Poor Violet,” one woman is saying. “She must feel awful about it. Good thing Martin was there.”

  A prickle runs down my spine at Violet’s name, and I stop.

  “Did you know he could decorate cakes? I didn’t know he could decorate cakes,” a second woman says.

  Still standing behind a stack of paper towels, I frown. If Martin can decorate cakes, I’m a warthog.

  “Montgomery won’t take it from her paycheck, will he?” the first voice asks, growing fainter.

  Shit, they’re walking away. I backpedaled, trying to stay even with them. Zane’s disappeared around a corner, hopefully not lost forever in this maze.

  “Oh, no,” the second voice says. “It’s just an accident, he would never. Still, I’m glad I’m not Violet right now.”

  Zane’s head pops around a corner as the voices fade away, my heart beating faster, something tightening in my chest.

  Why would Montgomery take something out of Violet’s paycheck?

  She’s the one who saved that stupid cake, not Martin.

  “Still no oysters!” Zane reports, too cheery for my tastes.

  “Keep looking,” I growl, more angrily than he deserves, and his head disappears.

  I keep looking too, but despite the ticking clock and the very imminent disaster, I’m no longer thinking about oysters.

  I’m thinking that if Martin’s trying to take credit for Violet’s cake heroism, I’ll rub poison ivy on the inside of his jacket when he’s not looking. Sure, Violet’s annoying, but at least she did the work instead of just trying to take credit afterward.

  “No oysters here either!” Zane Payne says from behind me.

  “Right. Thanks,” I say, my mind returning to my current disaster.

  Just as I’m giving up hope, a door in the wall opens. A man emerges: bearded, burly, wearing flannel, and about fifty. He looks like he knows what’s what down here, I jog over.

  “Howdy,” he says, pushing a baseball cap back on unruly hair. “Welcome to the loading docks. You here on business or pleasure?”

  He grins, laughing at his own joke. I smile despite myself.

  “You haven’t seen a few bushel bags of oysters, have you?” I ask. “They were supposed to come in this morning, and no one’s seen them.”

  Bearded/burly runs a thoughtful hand through his beard.

  “Oysters,” he says, reflectively. “Oysters. Hold on a tic, will you?”

  I’m flooded with hope. This man just might be my redneck savior.

  “Hey C.J.!” he shouts into the doorway from which he emerged. “Were you the one telling me you found some oysters this morning on top of those tables?”

  “Yup!” a voice shouts back.

  I crack the knuckles on one hand, silently praying: please tell me you found somewhere cold to put them.

  “Where they at now?” Bearded/burly hollers.

  “You know that old chest freezer down along the far wall where they took out those vending machines last year?” C.J. shouts back. “Tossed ‘em in there, didn’t know where they were supposed to go but figured they ought to stay cold.”

  Thank you, oyster Jesus.

  Thank you.

  “Thanks, man!” Bearded/burly calls back, then looks at me, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “There’s a chest freezer over yonder against the wall that doesn’t freeze anything any more, but it ought to have kept oysters cold enough.”

  I thank him profusely, then jog off to find the freezer. Zane is right behind me as I open it.

  Inside are four red mesh bags, all filled with oysters. I stick my hand in to see how cold it was, but Bearded/burly is right: it’s kept the oysters cold enough.

  “That them?” his voice says behind me.

  “Yup,” I say, already heaving one out. “I think you just saved my ass.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he says, pushing at his baseball cap again. “You know, it was the weirdest thing. Found those this morning by accident. They were on top of a shipment of tables that we were about to return to a rental agency, up where no one could see ‘em, only one bag happened to slide off. Figured someone must’ve made a mistake so I tossed ‘em into the old freezer. Hell of an odd place to put oysters, though.”

  I glance over at Zane, the wheels in my head already turning.

  “Well, you’re supposed to keep them somewhere cold and
dark,” Zane says earnestly. “Maybe someone just got confused.”

  “Must have been pretty confused,” B/b says.

  I pull two bags out and hand them to Zane before he can offer any more thoughts, then hoist the other two on my shoulders.

  “Come back now, y’all hear?” B/b calls out as we leave.

  “Thanks!” I call as the loading dock door swings shut behind us.

  “All right,” I say to Zane, already power walking toward the kitchen, albeit carrying an extra seventy pounds. “How fast can you shuck oysters?”

  * * *

  We finish at 5:05. I’ve never shucked oysters faster in my entire life, and somehow, I manage to do it without stabbing myself even once.

  I guess miracles really do happen, even minor ones.

  We get the oysters out the door, along with the rest of the happy hour appetizers. It’s all a few minutes late, but the bar was open on time so hopefully no one noticed.

  As soon as the food is out, I tell Naomi I’ll be right back and book it out of the kitchen. Forty-five minutes of angrily shucking oysters hasn’t done much to make me less pissed about what I overheard.

  Sure, Violet’s annoying, and she’s a know-it-all, and she’d probably eat her grandmother’s ashes if it gave her a competitive advantage in something. I don’t want her to win the twenty grand at the end of the summer, because I want to win it.

  But Violet at least worked her ass off. If she did win, which she won’t, at least I’d know she didn’t cheat.

  I walked into her office just as she stands from her desk, slinging her purse over her shoulder.

  “Hey,” she says, then sniffs. “Seafood?”

  Right, I probably reek.

  “Oysters,” I say. “We need to talk.”

  Both her eyebrows go up, and I take a step forward, lowering my voice.

  “What do you know about Martin?” I ask.

  Her eyes dart to the open door behind me, and she shifts her purse on her shoulder.

  “He’s fine,” she says, her voice perfectly neutral, and nods at the door. “Why?”

  I step back and close it. My heart thuds in my chest.

  “He’s a brown nosing shitweasel,” she hisses, dropping her purse on her desk. “Last year, the weekend before Labor Day, we were short almost fifty chairs for a wedding, and an hour before the ceremony started we finally found them in this old shed in the woods. Fifty chairs! In a shed, half a mile from the ceremony site.”

  “He stole the chairs?”

  “I couldn’t prove it, but I think he was trying to make me look bad, like I’d screwed up this wedding by not having enough of these fancy, special-order chairs that the bride wanted,” she says, her cheeks flushing slightly pink.

  I watch her, something slowly unfurling inside me. Violet is always beautiful when she’s angry, but now she’s angry at someone else even though I’m in the room. It might be a first.

  The door’s closed. I could kiss her again right now, right here. Forget Martin. Forget everything.

  “How do you know it was him?” I ask, folding my arms over myself. In the past week, I’ve only had brief interactions with the man, but I don’t particularly like him.

  She shakes her head.

  “It was just little stuff,” she says, eyes still blazing. “When the chairs first showed up, he had all these questions about them, wanted to know where we were keeping them. For a few days before the wedding, he’d get here really early in the morning, and sometimes I’d see him using the golf cart to drive across the lawn when I was getting in, and he’d always say that he was checking in on something in the Lodge, but it never quite added up. And when we couldn’t find the chairs, he seemed like he was trying to pretend he wasn’t happy about it.”

  She slides back into her chair, crossing her arms over her chest, eyes still sparking. I force myself to look her in the eye instead of checking out the way her her blouse fits her really well.

  “And he’s pulled other shit too,” she says, shark-colored eyes still boring into mine. “I know he’s switched orders before, hidden stuff, taken credit for other people’s hard work. But no one’s ever proven it, and Montgomery likes him for some reason, so he stays.”

  She narrows her eyes, the diatribe over.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I think he’s been telling people he saved the cake on Saturday,” I say.

  Violet goes red, her mouth a thin line. Her eyes glint dangerously.

  “That lying bastard,” she whispers.

  I sit in the chair opposite her and tell her the whole story about the oysters: the trip to the loading docks, what I overheard, how the burly, bearded guy narrowly averted a seafood disaster.

  “It’s the money,” she says when I’m finished.

  “Really?” I ask dryly.

  She shoots me a look.

  “Twenty thousand dollars is crazy,” she says. During my story, she’d grabbed a pen and now she’s furiously tapping it on the top of her desk, scowling at the wall. “Martin was a pain in the butt last year over two grand. What is Montgomery thinking offering that kind of money? Someone’s gonna get stabbed.”

  “As long as it’s Martin, fine with me,” I drawl.

  “Don’t joke like that,” she says, but a smile ghosts across her face.

  “I bet I could make it look like an accident.”

  Violet just rolls her eyes.

  “We can’t let him win this,” she says, still keeping her voice low. “He can’t take credit for our work and sabotage people and get rewarded.”

  “No,” I agree, leaning forward in my chair. “I have a proposal.”

  She raises one eyebrow, turns slightly pink.

  “I’m still not comfortable with stabbing,” she says.

  “I say we make a pact,” I go on. “We work together.”

  She taps the pen a few more times, saying nothing.

  “I only want to win this thing slightly more than I want you not to win,” I admit, totally candid. “And I’m fairly sure you feel the exact same way, but you know what I want most of all?”

  “For Martin to lose.”

  “Bingo.”

  She blows air out the side of her mouth, pen still tapping her desk, her eyes on me.

  “Listen,” I say. “I admit that I’ll be pissed as hell if you beat me, but at least I’ll know you earned it. That’s more than I can say about that slimy fucker.”

  Violet says nothing.

  “Just imagine,” I say, leaning back in my chair, locking my hands together over my head. “It’s the end of the summer. Montgomery calls a meeting or whatever it is he does, and with every single employee there, he announces that Martin beat you. He wins the twenty grand, and he did it because he’s a backhanded shitweasel.”

  The pen taps faster, her face stormy. I know for Violet the worst thought isn’t failing to win the money. It’s the thought of someone else winning dishonestly.

  “This isn’t some ploy is it?” she asks, still suspicious. “Where I help you and then at the end you screw me over somehow and take it for yourself?”

  “Hand to God, it’s not,” I say, raising my right hand over my head. “I just don’t want Martin to win.”

  She nods, watching the pen tap against the desk.

  Then she stands from her chair. She leans over and holds her hand out.

  I don’t look down her shirt. The effort that takes is Herculean.

  “Deal,” she says.

  I stand. I take her hand in mine, and we shake. Her hand is smaller and more delicate that I imagined, and for a moment I wonder if I’m being too rough.

  Then she gives my hand a squeeze so hard it crunches my knuckles together, and I stop wondering.

  All right, if that’s how we’re going to do this.

  I squeeze her hand back. Her jaw flexes, but she doesn’t say anything. Of course she doesn’t. It’s Violet.

  “Deal,” I agree.

  The shitweasel is going down.
>
  Chapter Sixteen

  Violet

  Kevin grunts, sliding his foot into the shoe, then stands. He does a couple of deep knee bends, then takes a few exaggerated steps around the carpeted lobby before bouncing on his toes, looking contemplative.

  “Yeah, I think I need a bigger size,” he says, sitting back down on the bench, next to me.

  I wiggle my toes in my own shoes. Bowling shoes always pinch a little bit — that’s the nature of bowling shoes — but do these pinch too much? Not enough? Do I look like I’m wearing clown shoes?

  Across the way, Lydia is already in one of the several lanes reserved for Bramblebush employees. We’re having one of our happy hour team building outings, where Montgomery tells everyone to leave work at four o’clock and we all go do an activity together.

  It’s been a week since Eli and I made our pact, and it’s been blissfully uneventful. No one’s sabotaged anything. No cakes fell over. Last weekend’s wedding was a small, intimate, relaxed affair, and I was home and in bed by ten p.m. That’s practically unheard of.

  Most astonishing of all, Eli and I have barely fought. Admittedly, I’ve been avoiding him a little, because when I see him I can’t help but think of him in the elevator and then also him shirtless, and neither of those images are particularly conducive to a pleasant day for me.

  I’d love to stop wondering whether he had sex with the maid of honor. I’d love to convince myself that it doesn’t matter, because it doesn’t, and yet I seem unable to quit thinking about it, and yet I’m also unable to quit thinking about how much I enjoyed seeing him half-naked.

  Ugh.

  I watch Lydia enter our names into the computer, a pitcher of beer on the table behind her. Her bowling shoes seem to fit fine, but she’s also one of those people who could wear a paper bag as a dress and a cactus for a hat and look effortlessly stylish, so that hardly counts.

  “What size were these again?” Kevin mutters to himself, flopping the shoes off his feet and picking them up.

  I catch a glimpse of his feet, and then can’t help but stare in horror.

  “Kevin,” I say.