Enemies With Benefits: Loveless Brothers, Book 1

by Noir, Roxie

  Open a brewpub with Daniel and Seth. Expand the brewery, have your own kitchen. Quit working for Montgomery, because twenty grand aside, he’s a terrible boss.

  That’s actually not a bad idea.

  I’m lugging three gallon-sized cans of whole tomatoes back from storage when the kitchen door opens, and Violet steps in quietly.

  She looks like hell. Her hair’s a mess. Her eyes are red, puffy, glassy, her face splotchy.

  And she glares at me like she’s trying to set me on fire with her mind.

  I drop the tomatoes on the counter with a bang. Everyone else in the kitchen looks over at the noise, looks at her, looks at me, and quickly goes back to whatever they were doing.

  The bottom’s already dropped out of my stomach. She walks over to me.

  “Eli,” she says, her voice a rough whisper, her eyes flat with anger.

  Before I can answer, she walks away. I don’t know what else to do, so I follow her though the kitchen, around the corner, into the cold storage room.

  In a flash, I remember the time I kissed her here. In the middle of that awful wedding. We’d been up all night and just make five hundred cranes together, and when I saw her come in here, I had to follow her. I had to kiss her just that once or I thought I might die.

  Violet turns. The sharks in her eyes snap their teeth. We’re not here for a kiss.

  “Why?” she asks, her voice breaking.

  I don’t know what’s happening, but I go to take her by the shoulders. I want to comfort her, tell her that whatever’s happened, it’ll be okay.

  She steps back before I can touch her.

  “Don’t,” she says. “Don’t you dare right now.”

  Panic stabs at me. Anger blossoms in the wound, a gut reaction, a pure and simple reflex at Violet’s fury. I haven’t even done anything. I keep myself in check.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “I should have known,” she says, her arms crossed in front of her chest. She’s shaking. She looks away and a tear runs down her cheek, her jaw flexing. “Of course you didn’t change. Of course you’d fuck me over for that much money, you fucking asshole.”

  Her words feel like bricks, hitting me one by one.

  “You think I fucked you over to win?” I say, cracking the knuckles on my right hand, anger booming inside me, hot and dark. “I win one goddamn thing and you can’t handle that?”

  She snorts, derisively. She looks at me like I’m something she found on the bottom of her shoe, tears streaming out of both eyes now.

  “He showed me the picture,” she says, like I’m stupid.

  I feel like something gets yanked out from under me.

  “What picture?” I ask.

  “I can’t believe I was this stupid,” she says, ignoring my question. Her voice wobbles, but she keeps control. “I can’t believe that after everything I knew about you, all the shit you used to do to me, how much I knew you hated me growing up, that I would fall for this just because you got hot. Well, good job, joke’s on me, you win.”

  “What picture?” I say, louder this time.

  “No,” she says looking me dead in the eye. “Fuck no, I’m not falling for that.”

  “Goddammit, Violet, what picture?” I say, stepping forward, clenching my teeth so I don’t shout. Violet stands her ground, crying and glaring.

  “What picture, Violet?” I ask, my voice deadly calm.

  “The picture of me in the wedding barn, Eli,” she says, like I’m an idiot, her voice so quiet I can barely hear her. “The one you sent to Montgomery.”

  Black tendrils curl around my windpipe, choking me.

  Montgomery has a naked picture of Violet.

  I feel like the wind’s been knocked out of me.

  “The one I let you take when we were drunk last weekend?” she says. Now her voice has a mocking edge to it, lashing out. “The one I told you wouldn’t work as blackmail? Tell me, did I give you the idea myself?”

  “I swear to God I didn’t send Montgomery anything,” I tell her. The panic knife turns, opens a hole in my chest. “I promise you I would never —”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” she hisses, her eyes wide. “Did you think you’d just win and he’d never tell me and we would just keep fucking until you got bored of me and moved on? Or did you not mind that I’d find out?”

  “I didn’t fucking do anything.”

  “You made up this whole Martin story,” she whispers. “You fucked with the cranes, you made shit go missing, you put the bull in the pool and I fucking believed you about all of it because you’re hot now and Martin’s always been a douche.”

  I turn away from her. I have to. I want to punch something: the door, the wall, a side of beef, throw fifty pounds of potatoes at the wall. I want to absolutely wreck some shit right now.

  “You really think I did this?” I ask, my own voice shaking.

  “I think you fucked me over for twenty grand? Yeah, it tracks,” she says like she’s spitting daggers.

  “Two months,” I say, turning back toward her. I feel like I’m crumbling. Turning to rubble.

  She swallows, sniffles, her face furious, her arms still locked in front of her.

  “We were together for two months and you don’t believe me?” I ask. My voice rises.

  “We weren’t together.”

  It stings. It shouldn’t, but it does.

  “I don’t get the benefit of the doubt for one second.”

  “Not you, no.”

  I just stare at her, because I feel like I’ve been thrown into a pit with no rope, no ladder, no way out.

  “You think that’s who I am?” I ask. “I did all that in some plot to win money?”

  “I don’t think you minded the sex.”

  “I can’t fucking believe you,” I say. I turn away again. I can’t look at her right now.

  “A naked picture of me magically gets transported from your phone to my boss, you win twenty grand, and after all the shit you did to me for years and years I’m supposed to think that it wasn’t you?” she says.

  Fuck this. Fuck her. Fuck me for thinking there was something between us.

  “Yeah, I thought maybe I’d earned two seconds of trust,” I say, walking for the door. “I forgot you only like people when you think you’re better than them. Fuck you, Violet.”

  I open the door, warm air hitting me in the face.

  “Fuck you, Eli!” I hear as it closes.

  I storm back through the kitchen, rage radiating through my bones from a black supernova somewhere in the vicinity of my heart. I want to to smash every piece of glass in this place, knock over every appliance, throw every pot. I want to shout at Violet until she hears reason.

  And I want to kill whoever sent that picture. It never once occurred to me that someone might find my phone and go through it, even though I don’t have it on me most of the day. Jesus Christ, it’s not even locked.

  Fuck me, this is all my fault.

  I shove through the kitchen doors. I know everyone’s watching me. I know they probably just heard the fight Violet and I got into, but see if I give a damn.

  I’m at Montgomery’s office door in thirty seconds flat. I ignore his secretary and push it open.

  “Who sent it?” I ask, not bothering with preamble.

  He goes red. There’s a woman sitting across his desk from him, her mouth a small O of surprise.

  “Excuse me —”

  “Who sent the picture of Violet?” I ask.

  “Elijah, you can’t just barge in here —"

  “I took it,” I tell him, stepping to the desk, both my palms flat on it. “In the barn. Last Saturday. We were drunk. You want to see the rest?”

  “No,” he says, his face bright and his voice cold. “I’m not interested in your lovers’ quarrel, Elijah.”

  “This is not a lovers’ quarrel,” I say, fighting to keep control of myself. “This is someone stealing a private photo from me —”

/>   “A photo which clearly shows her acting inappropriately on company property.”

  “—and sending it to you without her permission or knowledge. Tell me who sent it.”

  “Get out.”

  “Tell me —"

  “Get out before I fire you both and cancel that check,” he says, standing slowly, adjusting his tie. He’s still bright red with anger. “I don’t want to lose either of you, Elijah, but so help me God if you don’t leave my office this instant you will both be out of a job.”

  I don’t give a shit about my own job. I’m seething with rage, tempted to just grab his computer and leave with it, see if I can’t find out myself.

  But I can’t do that to Violet. As furious as I am, I can’t get her fired, too.

  I turn and leave without another word. His secretary goggles, and I ignore her, stalking back into the hall, winding through the maze of offices.

  I have a pretty good idea who did this. I don’t know how he knew there were pictures like that on my phone. I usually leave it in my locker. Maybe he’s been going through my things this whole time.

  When I get to Martin’s office, my rage has simmered to a slow, even boil. I walk inside and he looks up, then looks worried as I shut the door behind myself.

  “Congratulations on the —"

  I grab him by the front of the shirt and pull him bodily from his chair, his arms windmilling.

  “What the —"

  “I know it was you,” I say, and shove him against the wall. “You’re a vile fucking piece of trash.”

  His eyes go wide in fake shock. I know a liar when I see one.

  “Know what was me?”

  His hands grab at my wrists, but I’m locked on, rage-fueled.

  “Don’t fucking play,” I say, keeping my voice down. “I know it was you, I know what you did, and you’re going to fucking pay for it.”

  Martin’s breathing hard. He’s average-sized, but I’m bigger, and more important, I’m angrier. His eyes search mine.

  And then, I swear to God, he smirks at me.

  “Prove it,” he says.

  It takes all my self-control not to strangle him. I want to. I want to give him two black eyes and a broken nose for what he did to Violet, for going through my pictures of her, for sending them to her boss. Nothing seems like enough for violating her like that.

  “I will fuck you up,” I say, getting right in his face. “If you ever so much as look at Violet again I’ll rip your heart out and serve it as an appetizer.”

  Then I let him go, turn around, and leave his office before I can do something that could land me in jail.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Violet

  “Everyone heard it,” I say through my hands, leaning both elbows on Adeline’s kitchen table. “Everyone. The kitchen staff. The planning people. They probably heard it out in the Lodge. Jesus, they probably heard us fighting in Roanoke —”

  “There’s too much road work on Interstate 81,” she says. “Don’t worry.”

  “I can’t go back there,” I say, taking a deep shuddering breath. “My boss has seen my tits because my ex-fuckbuddy screwed me over for twenty grand.”

  Adeline just strokes my hair, but I see her fist clench on the table.

  “I can’t believe that’s all it took,” I say, and by the time I get to took my voice is nothing more than a high-pitched squeak. “Who does that? Fucking Eli couldn’t just dump me, he had to —”

  I break off and take a deep breath.

  “He’s a fucking snake,” she says, and her voice is soft but there’s steel in it.

  “I told him I liked him,” I say, miserably. “Like five days ago. God, I’m so dumb. He said we were gonna go on vacation together to a cabin with a hot tub and I bet the whole fucking time he’d already sent Montgomery a picture of my tits in the barn.”

  “You’re not dumb,” Adeline says, pushing my hair out of my face. “You’re human.”

  “For money,” I say, for at least the thousandth time.

  I start crying again. I don’t know how the hell I haven’t cried all the liquid in my body out today, but apparently there’s more. Fuck.

  “I knew how he was. I fucking knew, Adeline. And I went and let him take a picture of my tits anyway.”

  She doesn’t say anything, but a muscle in her jaw clenches.

  “And he fucked me over for twenty grand,” I say.

  My chest feels hollow, like someone’s scooped it out, except I’m still breathing and my heart is still beating so I guess I’m fine, technically.

  “Do you want me to help you hide the body?” she asks, her voice perfectly gentle.

  I grab a tissue and blow my nose.

  “Where?” I ask.

  She leans her chin on her own hand, still stroking my hair. I let her, because it feels nice, and because my hair’s a wreck right now anyway.

  “A body of water is probably the best place,” she says, her voice still so soothing and gentle. “It’ll help get rid of any evidence, and the police almost never have the resources to properly search the deep ones.”

  I sigh a deep, shuddering sigh.

  “Last week they pulled a car out of Evans Lake that had been there since 1977,” she says.

  “A car?” I say.

  For half a second, I forget about Eli.

  “Yup,” she says. “I think it was a Buick.”

  “No one noticed it there?”

  Adeline just shrugs.

  “Apparently not,” she says. “I think the trick is to make sure it doesn’t float back to the surface. Because if someone finds a hand on the shore —”

  “Okay, okay, you have to watch fewer true crime shows,” I say.

  “I’d be really good at murder, though.”

  “Adeline, you’re a nurse,” I say.

  “Well, besides the murder part,” she says. “I think I’d be really bad at that. Except with Eli.”

  I sniffle. I lean my forehead against my hand, a tissue wadded up in it.

  “Murder is probably worse than sending someone’s boss a naked picture,” I say.

  Despite myself, I replay it. The picture. Montgomery’s face. The punch to the gut of knowing that Eli picked money over me.

  “I thought he’d changed,” I say, another wave of misery washing over me. “I mean, he was still kind of an asshole but I thought he was an okay asshole. But no, he just got worse and meaner and bad and fuck everything, Adeline, I quit. I fucking quit life.”

  I say that last part with my forehead against her kitchen table.

  “It’s okay to quit,” she says.

  “I am getting twenty cats and moving to the mountain,” I say. “Cats don’t even know what money is.”

  “Aren’t you allergic to cats?”

  “Don’t ruin my plans,” I tell her.

  “Sorry.”

  I take another deep breath and look over at the clock on her stove. It’s 6:30.

  “You should go to work before you’re late,” I tell her.

  “I’ve got a few minutes.”

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  She keeps stroking my hair, pulling it off my face where it’s sticking to my tears.

  “Stay here tonight, okay?” she says.

  I just nod.

  “Take a bath, watch a movie, you know where all my stuff is, right? Use a toothbrush from the hall closet, I just got a value pack of new ones.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  Fuck, his toothbrush is still on my sink. His pillow probably still smells like him. I think there’s bacon still in my fridge that he bought last week.

  I let Eli into my life and he fucked me over. He fucked me over and he wasn’t even sorry.

  Pressure pounds at the back of my eyes, and I push at them with my fingers, like I can ward it off.

  “Go to work,” I say. “I’m fine.”

  “Violet,” she murmurs.

  “Fine-ish?” I try.

  I look up into her blue eyes, he
r eyebrows knit together. She’s been sitting here for almost three hours, listening to me sob the same stupid story over and over again. Adeline might be an actual angel.

  “Seriously,” I say.

  She stands, glancing at the clock again.

  “I think there’s a relaxation aromatherapy candle under the bathroom sink,” she says.

  “Does that work?”

  “No,” she says. “Aromatherapy’s bullshit. But it smells nice, and that’s something.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  She grabs her stuff, pulls her hair back, grabs some yogurt and an apple from the fridge.

  “Try to sleep, okay?” she says, kissing me on the top of the head. “You know the Netflix password. No romcoms, promise?”

  “No,” I mutter.

  “Violet.”

  “Fine, no romcoms.”

  “Movies with explosions only,” she says, grabbing her purse. “I want to come back in the morning and find that you’ve watched The Rock’s entire body of work.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  “Eli’s a shithead and an asshole and he’ll get what’s coming his way,” she says. “I’ll see you in the morning. Explosions!”

  She shuts the front door behind herself. I rub my eyes. I blow my nose again, then put my mug in the sink and my tissues in the trash.

  I don’t feel better. I still feel like a hamburger wrapper that someone left on the side of the road, discarded and tossed aside. But I also don’t feel worse.

  I head into her living room, flop on the couch, fire up Netflix, and find a movie that stars The Rock, because I’ll do anything to keep my mind off Eli.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Eli

  The guy who opens the door is heavyset, fiftyish, white, and has the bearing of someone who’s accustomed to giving orders. I’ve never met him before. He must not live in town.

  “Help you?” he asks, hands on hips.

  “Hope so,” I say. “We’ve been having a problem with some of our pantry items growing legs and walking off, and Montgomery thinks you might be able to give us some idea of who’s to blame.”