It Takes Two

by Judith Arnold

  She had barely a moment to admire his bare chest, a stretch of taut muscle and sinew, before her own sweater and bra met the same fate, joining his clothing on the floor. Their pants followed, a bit less elegantly as they kicked away their shoes and plucked their socks from their feet. And then they were naked.

  Not what she’d expected when she’d agreed to come to his house for dinner…except that somewhere, deep inside, she had expected this. Wanted it. Hoped for it. Dreamed of it.

  Two would make this dream come true.

  He continued to move slowly as they arranged themselves on the bed, her closer to the wall and him on his side, barely avoiding falling over the edge of the mattress and landing on their discarded clothing. He ran his hands across her body, gliding between her breasts and then over them, tweaking her nipples, tracing the ridges of her collarbones, dipping his thumb into the hollow at the base of her throat. Then down her body once more, teasing her breasts, skimming her belly, sliding down to her crotch. Her back arched as his fingers found her, damp and hot and eager.

  She ran her hands down his body, as well, stroking, seeking, curling her fingers around his erection. He groaned, then groaned again and murmured a curse. Cautiously, he eased away from her and shifted his back to her as he rattled open the drawer in the nightstand.

  “Oh, thank God,” he whispered, turning back to her and displaying a square packet. “This was my brother’s bedroom. My brother was always a responsible boy.”

  “Good for him,” she said as Will tore open the packet and pulled out a condom. “Your mother raised her sons well.”

  “She did, but I don’t want to think about her right now,” he said. His smile was infectious, all dimples and brightness. It faded once he’d readied himself and rose over her, bowing to kiss her again, settling his body between her thighs, letting her bring him into herself. No more smiles, no more jokes. Just the two of them. Just a dream coming true.

  Her orgasm seemed to last forever. Or maybe it was that Will seemed to last forever, holding back, easing his pace and then thrusting hard, reading her body as if she were some sort of brilliant puzzle only he could solve. When he finally climaxed, he settled heavily onto her, holding her tight, his chest pumping against hers as his breathing gradually relaxed. She let her fingers twirl wearily through his hair, felt his lips brush gently against her shoulder, and thought of the song. It said that one could talk about being in love, but two could see how it really felt.

  This was how it really felt.

  ***

  They wound up moving across the hall to his bedroom. The master bedroom had a full bed, but the idea of making love to Brianna in his mother’s bed was kind of unsettling, and he had every intention of making love to her again. The bed in his bedroom, like the one in his brother’s, was a little snug for two people, but that meant she simply had to remain in his arms. Either that, or one of them would tumble to the floor.

  There were worse things in life than sleeping with Brianna in his arms. And somehow, he did manage to fall asleep, despite the temptation her nearness posed. She fit so well against him, her body soft and slender, her head tucked into the curve where his neck met his shoulder. He felt as if his body had been molded around hers. Yin and yang, or two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, or an effective line of if/then coding. He and Brianna complemented each other.

  He hadn’t set the alarm on his phone, but she awoke around six-thirty. The sky was still more dark than light, and she groaned.

  “Go back to sleep,” he mumbled, pulling her back down to the mattress when she tried to sit.

  “I can’t. I’ve got a client who wants green granite.”

  That sounded vaguely familiar. She must have mentioned her quest for green granite before. “What does your client want green granite for?” he asked, pulling her closer. Half-asleep, he imagined that if he held her tight enough, she would forget the granite.

  “Countertops in her kitchen,” Brianna told him, easing out of his embrace and sitting up. “Do you know how hard it is to find the right color green in granite?”

  “Actually, no, I don’t.” Conceding that she wasn’t going to go back to sleep, he blinked awake and pushed away from the pillow. At least she had a client. If she didn’t land the Town Hall contract, she’d still have someone willing to pay her to install green granite countertops in her kitchen—assuming Brianna could perform the challenging feat of locating the right color.

  Of course she could perform that feat. She was brilliant and talented—to say nothing of incredibly sexy. She could do anything.

  They untangled themselves from the blanket. He located a spare toothbrush and towel for her, and she said she thought it best to shower at home, where she had clean clothes to change into. She made use of the toothbrush, though.

  She gave him her address and he told her he’d see her for dinner that evening. After waving her off, he returned to his bed and flopped onto it, exhausted and envying her energy. If she was a morning person, they might not be such a perfect fit, after all.

  Yeah, they were a perfect fit. He could get used to waking up early. Or she could get used to sleeping a little later. If he kept helping his mother out at the tavern, he’d have to work late. His mother and Ed had adjusted their circadian rhythms to suit one another. Will and Brianna could do that, too.

  He was still smiling at the thought as he prepared a pot of coffee. Once he settled at the kitchen table with a steaming mug, he used his phone to check his email. A message dated yesterday awaited him, from Gaurav. Think I found an apartment, he wrote. Too expensive, but everything here is too expensive. Great view. Spotted a gorgeous woman in the mail room off the lobby, getting her mail. Gorgeous women are like cockroaches. If you see one, you know there are more. Come on out and join the fun!

  Will’s smile faded. He knew Gaurav was just being a wise-ass. Not that he doubted his friend had spotted an attractive woman in the apartment’s mail room, but Gaurav was hardly the Lothario he pretended to be.

  And that wasn’t the point, either. The point was, Will wasn’t exactly eager to join the fun in Seattle. He wanted to have fun here in Brogan’s Point, with Brianna.

  It was crazy. They’d only just met. They’d clicked, they’d connected, they’d set the world on fire last night—but he shouldn’t be thinking about rearranging his circadian rhythms for her. Pacific Dynamic was waiting for him.

  He didn’t want to think about Pacific Dynamic, and the pretty women like cockroaches in Seattle, so he wouldn’t. When it was time to move out west, he’d go. But he wasn’t about to spoil what time he still had in Brogan’s Point by worrying about having to say good-bye to Brianna.

  Who knew? Once they’d spent more time together, he might discover that she wasn’t a perfect fit for him, after all. Sex could be phenomenal. Easy conversation was a blessing. Dancing to an old rock-and-roll song was cool. But it didn’t add up to love. And he wasn’t particularly looking for love, anyway—not right now, when everything in his life was so temporary.

  He closed his email app and opened a newspaper app to keep his mind occupied while he drank his coffee. As usual, most of the news was bad, but he was a responsible citizen, and he felt obligated to read a few depressing articles.

  Once he’d finished his coffee, he busied himself repairing some tile work on the floor of the master bathroom. He’d noticed the grout had crumbled, and his mother would never have the time or inclination to patch it. Since he was living in her house rent-free, the least he could do was fix a few things that needed fixing and spruce the place up a little. After all, if she wound up marrying Ed, she would want to list the house for sale, and it would need to be in good shape for that.

  It would be easier to sell if it had a greenhouse window in the kitchen, he thought. Brianna had noticed that right away.

  Shit. He didn’t want to obsess about her. But he couldn’t seem to help himself.

  By the time he was done regrouting the bathroom
tiles, the library would be open. Since he was obsessing about Brianna, he decided to drive over there after he’d cleaned up from the bathroom repair. He wanted to see if her ex-colleague-slash-ex-boyfriend had corrected the price tag on his Town Hall proposal.

  The proposals were on display near the library’s front desk, as they’d been yesterday. Will picked up the binder containing Davenport’s proposal. A new first page had been inserted into the binder.

  Please note: A question has been raised concerning discrepancies in the cost estimate I announced at the Town Meeting and the cost estimate here. Out of respect for the taxpayers of Brogan’s Point, I’ve been able to present this proposal with a lower price tag by cutting some of the bells and whistles in the original design.

  “Cutting some corners,” Will muttered under his breath.

  I can bring this building in at the estimated price contained within this proposal, Will read. Should the town decide it wants some of those bells and whistles, they can be added at a later date.

  Will thumbed through the rest of the binder, searching for any changes Davenport had made, other than to add this new first page. If he had eliminated some bells and whistles, there should be fewer bells and whistles in the written proposal than what he’d presented at the town meeting. But the specs in the binder looked identical to the specs from the meeting: the same soaring glass and arched steel beams, the same marble flooring, the same spacious offices and public areas. The same fancy landscaping. The same square footage. The same everything.

  So what had he eliminated? How had he managed to subtract seven million dollars from the cost without eliminating a single expensive feature?

  A toxic brew of cynicism and indignation churned inside Will. He was furious—not because he gave a rat’s ass about the building itself, but because of Brianna. Davenport had screwed with her once, and he was screwing with her again. He was an asshole. Will wanted to throttle him.

  He wouldn’t do that. But damn it, he’d fight for Brianna.

  Tossing the proposal back onto the display shelf, he stormed out of the library and drove over to the old Town Hall building. He parked, took the stairs two at a time to the pillared entry, and strode down the corridor to the town manager’s office. As she had yesterday, the woman with the curly silver hair and the forbidding horn-rimmed eyeglasses stopped him in the anteroom. “Can I help you?” she asked. He tried to guess if her steely expression meant she recognized him from yesterday and didn’t like him, or had no idea who he was—and didn’t like him.

  “Is Ms. Cassini in?” he asked. “I’d like to talk to her.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  Of course he didn’t have an appointment. He hadn’t had an appointment yesterday, either, but he’d been granted a few minutes of the town manager’s time. “It’s important,” he said.

  “It’s always important,” the woman muttered. “Nobody comes to see Diane unless it’s important.”

  “Tell her Will Naukonen wants to speak with her. I promise not to take up too much of her time.” He’d trade on his name if he had to. If Diane Cassini wanted non-oak Chardonnays at the tavern, she’d better clear her calendar for him.

  Pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes, the silver-haired woman vanished through the door to the town manager’s private office. After a minute she emerged, looking disgruntled. “You can go in,” she grumbled.

  Will swept past her and stalked into Diane Cassini’s office. “Thank you for seeing me,” he said.

  The town manager remained seated behind her desk. In the morning light seeping in through the window, he noticed the scuffs and scratches marring its surface. How many town managers had used that desk? It appeared as dingy as the building that surrounded it. “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  He forced himself to shape an ingratiating smile. “I appreciate your looking into the reduced price Davenport attached to his Town Hall proposal,” he said. “I checked his proposal at the library this morning, and he inserted a disclaimer saying he’d eliminated some of the fancier elements in order to lower the price.”

  “Good.” Diane Cassini seemed pleased. “I contacted him yesterday evening and he said he’d provide an explanation for the new price. He said he’d email me the new specs. I haven’t had a chance to go through my emails yet, but—”

  “Here’s the thing,” Will said. “He didn’t change a damned thing in his proposal—except for the price. I didn’t see any change in the specs.”

  “Well, I suppose he couldn’t print up an entirely new proposal overnight. I imagine he’ll provide new specs at some point today.”

  “Either that or he won’t.” Will struggled to suppress his anger. “It could be he’s just trying to con the town into thinking he can deliver his flashy building at a discount price.”

  “It is a flashy building,” Diane said. “Very dramatic.”

  “It’s a twenty-million-dollar building,” Will pointed out. “Not a thirteen-million-dollar building.”

  “I appreciate your concern, Mr. Naukonen.”

  She might appreciate it, but she clearly didn’t share it.

  “Sometimes we have to have a little faith,” she continued. “I asked Mr. Davenport to explain the altered price. He’s provided an explanation. We need to assume that he knows what he’s doing.”

  Yeah, he knew what he was doing: deceiving Brogan’s Point and screwing with Brianna. But it didn’t look as if Diane Cassini was willing to view things that way.

  Sighing, Will thanked her once again for sparing him a few minutes and left her office. The indignation that had been simmering inside him when he’d left the library was still with him. He wanted to track down Davenport and rip him a new one. No, rip him two new ones, one for his dishonest Town Hall proposal, and one for the way he’d treated Brianna.

  Of course, if he hadn’t treated her that way, she might still be working with him at his firm. And if she was still working with him, she would never have submitted her own design for the Town Hall building, and Will would never have met her. Maybe he ought to track Davenport down and thank the guy.

  Leaving the building, he took a moment to stand at the top of the stairs and gaze out at the town green. The grass looked like shredded wheat, brown and wiry in the chilly air of early spring, and the trees—maples, sycamores, and oaks—were just beginning to bud. He tried to imagine what the heart of Brogan’s Point would look like without that park-like public square.

  It wouldn’t look like home, that was for sure.

  Viewing the green, and the pale blue sky above it, calmed him. What would be would be. If Davenport won the Town Hall commission, he’d build his flamboyant modern building, but this green would still be here. So would the Town Hall building, unless someone tore it down. Either way, Brianna would survive. She’d survived her relationship with Davenport. She could survive anything.

  Reassured, he descended the stairs, walked to his car, and drove to the tavern to see if his mother needed any help.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gus could not imagine a more welcome sight. Even Ed Nolan’s appearance at the tavern would not have cheered her as much as Will’s arrival did. Will had exactly the expertise she needed.

  The place was relatively empty—just a few lunch-hour patrons munching on wings and wraps and washing the food down with draft beers and soft drinks. The quiet had allowed her and Manny to review their inventory, comparing what the computer said they had with what was actually in the basement storage area. Like the vodka last night, there were other inconsistencies. She and Manny were meticulous about entering their deliveries into the software system she used, but her tablet kept deleting new additions and reverting to the inventory list she’d entered weeks ago.

  “I need a computer genius,” she greeted Will as he walked across the dance floor to the bar.

  He grinned. “I could phone Gaurav and Craig.”

  “No. You’re the genius I need. The
re’s something wrong with the software we use for our inventory,” she told him, shoving her tablet across the bar to him, and then the written list Manny had compiled and fastened to a clipboard.

  “What software are you using?” Will asked.

  “I don’t know. Manny is downstairs. Go ask him. And then please find some new software for us. Design it yourself if you have to. I put in an order for Absolut last week because the software said we were running low. Turned out we had a gross of bottles that the software was telling us were Stolis, and now we’re practically out of Stolis. Same thing with Bacardi and Myers. It’s like we enter one label, and the computer registers it as a different label.”

  “Are you sure you’re entering it correctly?” Will asked.

  She leveled a look at him. Yes, she was sure she was entering it correctly.

  “All right.” He lifted the hinged bar top to join his mother on the business side of the bar, then gathered up her tablet and the clipboard. “I’ll go downstairs and have a look.”

  “The problem isn’t downstairs,” Gus argued, jabbing her finger at the tablet. “It’s here.”

  “I’ll check out the system,” he said. “Give me a minute and I’ll figure it out.”

  She laughed at his arrogance. “It might take ten minutes.”

  “You were the one who said I was a genius,” he reminded her.

  ***

  Brianna’s day was going well. She’d finally found a sheet in of granite close enough to emerald green to please her clients. And she’d be seeing Will that evening—and quite possibly that entire night. After returning from an inspection of the granite with her clients at the stone wholesaler’s warehouse, she picked up two turkey-and-provolone sandwiches in the gourmet shop one floor below North Shore Design and brought them upstairs for her and Michael to lunch on.

  “You’re in a chipper mood,” he observed as she set the sandwiches on one of the work tables. The coffee maker was still half-full, and he filled their two mugs. “Now I know that a single slab of granite is all it takes to cheer you up.”