How to Catch a Rival

by Ana Ashley

  “You…what…where…huh?”

  “A Snarky Hyena. It won’t get you drunk but it’ll make you so so happy.”

  “What are you?”

  His question was like a bucket of ice-cold water on me. When the cold-water challenge did the rounds a few years ago Charlie and I had joined in with our department at work.

  Despite raising a lot of money for charity, I’d hated doing the challenge. But somehow, having a real bucket of water on me didn’t make me feel as cold as this guy’s words.

  I’d thought the days of coming across straight guys who thought they could catch the gay from me were mostly gone, but, sometimes, one of those rare birds flew too close to the sun. And I knew just how to singe their wings.

  “Oh, honey, no need to hurt your pretty little head trying to figure out complex biology.” My voice sounded sickeningly sweet, even to my ears.

  I took one step forward and this time my hands did land on his chest, but unlike before, my eyes didn’t leave his. His chest was warm and hard as I’d suspected, and I tried to ignore how good it felt, and how it would be if he used his strong arms to keep me safe from the world.

  Any other time I’d have allowed time to stand still as I explored the Adonis under my touch, but this wasn’t one of those. This was a game, and one I needed to win. Get your head in it, Tom. The right head.

  “Don’t give yourself an aneurism, sweetie. I like to keep the gay to myself, it’s more fun that way.”

  He laughed. He actually laughed.

  I was ready to show him my claws when we were interrupted and I realized I was at work. Fuck!

  “That woman brings out feelings in me I never thought I’d have for another human being. And not the good kind, if you know what I mean,” Abi said, approaching me.

  If he complained about me I’d certainly lose my job. Why couldn’t I ever keep my mouth shut?

  Frozen in my spot, I didn’t know if I should greet Abi or try to turn things around with the customer. After all, beastly customers were good customers if they were paying customers. I repeated the mantra in my head and turned to the guy with my best customer service smile.

  He wasn’t looking at me anymore, and for a split second I missed his gaze on me. Maybe I was hungry. Yes, that would explain it.

  Then I noticed he was focused on Abi with an expression of adoration.

  “I see you two have met,” Abi said.

  “What?” we both said at the same time.

  “Tom, this is my son Wren.” And then she turned to Wren. “Honey, this is Tom, my lifesaver in this store and the angel that kept your dad alive until the paramedics arrived.”

  Her voice wobbled a little, and as the feelings of helplessness from the other day came back to me, I hugged her tight.

  “How is he doing?”

  She cleared a tear that escaped her eyes. “He’s doing better than expected, but we nearly lost him. I can’t even begin to imagine if…”

  “Shhh,” I said, running my hands up and down her arms. “He’s strong. Just tell him there’s about a million pies in the fridge waiting for him, and you’ll see him run out of that hospital in no time.”

  She shook her head. “He’s going to be on a strict diet from now on. So help me god, if I find another stash of jelly beans hiding in the house when he’s back home.”

  We all laughed, which only meant that Jonas’s best-kept secret had never been a secret.

  “Anyway, you kept this hunk away from me,” I said. “Why have we not got any posters of him bare-chested in the storeroom? Can I play with him? Is he mine to keep?” I batted my eyelashes at her and she laughed. I didn’t miss the severe angry look that Wren was throwing my way. One that I totally chose to ignore.

  “You’ll have plenty of time to play together,” she said. “Wren is staying home for the next few weeks to help out in the store so I can focus on Jonas.”

  I put my hands together in a prayer gesture. “I’m so going to light a candle to my fairy godmother when I get home tonight.”

  Fuck.

  The words out of my mouth didn’t match the mortification I felt inside. Not only had I made a fool of myself by behaving like a nymphomaniac hitting on a straight man, he was also my boss’s son, and kind of my boss too now he was working in the store.

  And because he hadn’t so much as uttered a word to me in the time Abi was introducing us, I did what Tom does.

  “I think you should come round my place later and I’ll work all that tension out of you. What you need is a deep shoulder massage and a Tom cocktail.” I winked. “I’ll even let you pick the ratio of cock to tail.”

  Abi shook her head again and looked at Wren who, despite the stern face, had a cute blush rising from the collar of his shirt. I wondered if Abi had seen it.

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree, my dear,” Abi said.

  “I don’t want to bark at it, Abi. I want to climb it.”

  Wren picked that moment to leave us. I hadn’t even noticed the customers were hovering by the checkout waiting to pay for their goods. Wren smiled at the customers. Something churned in my stomach. Damn it, I really needed to eat something.

  The first thing I did when I got home was to enroll in the Pride bake-off. Now, more than ever, I needed to win that competition, because I was absolutely, one hundred percent sure that at some point in the near future I would do something that would cause Wren to complain about me and get me fired.

  What was it about the man that got all my feathers ruffled?

  6

  Wren

  It was strange being back home.

  The space above the garage had been converted into a fully contained guest apartment and even had its own separate entrance. This had been one of the projects my dad had promised to work on but had never got to it before I left for college.

  My mom didn’t say when it had been done and dismissed it as just something they did so my aunt who lived in Colorado could visit, but I wondered if underneath it all they’d hoped I’d one day come home, or at least visit more.

  Having the privacy the apartment afforded me was a plus, considering I’d fully expected to go back to my childhood bedroom, except it had been turned into a study room for Troy. A study room that looked more like NASA’s mission control.

  Troy had always been interested in gadgets, electronic stuff, and then as he’d got older it was computers. I’d always suspected he would end up doing something in that area so I was more than happy to see my old room transformed to allow my younger brother to work on his computer stuff.

  When I’d arrived home from the hospital Troy had been revising for an exam. He’d given me a half-apology for taking up my room but had then started talking about all the cool stuff he could do with his computers, and within a minute I’d had him in a headlock and had ruffled his hair like I used to do when he was younger.

  Mom had caught us and half-heartedly told us off, but I could tell she was happy to have us all home. I just hoped my dad would be able to join us soon. I knew I wouldn’t go back to San Diego until I’d had a chance to spend some time with him too. As it was, I already had too many regrets.

  One of them was how disconnected I was from the family business.

  We’d always expected that I wouldn’t follow in my parents’ footsteps because of my interest in sports, but Mason’s had been in the family for four generations and it was part of who I was.

  I remembered Mason’s as the store that sold a little bit of everything. The one-stop store for the people of Chester Falls, and often it was where they stopped even when they didn’t need more than a chat and sharing the local gossip.

  Walking back into the store had been surreal. So much was the same but also totally different.

  The storeroom was full of boxes of decorations for the Pride window. My mom had told me they’d got them all out the day Dad had had the heart attack, and it looked like nothing had been done with them since.

  The office was the same mess I
remembered, and I was pretty sure if I lifted some of the paperwork, I’d find invoices going back a few years. “It’s an organized mess,” my dad always said. And true to his word, whenever you asked him about anything he always knew where it was.

  Now the desk was also occupied by a number of cakes, and when I dared look inside the small fridge I saw it had enough cheesecake and food to feed a battalion. Who brings cheesecake to a sick man, anyway?

  It had taken a while over dinner the night before to convince my mom that I wasn’t compromising on my stay. I wanted to help out, and I would stay as long as it was needed and run the store while she focused on Dad.

  She was worried about all the games and training I’d miss while I was in Chester Falls and reassured me that Tom was a great help already. Troy had looked at me, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. I’d simply told her not to worry about it.

  My first job in the store was to introduce myself to the man who’d not only saved my dad but had kept everything going in my parents’ absence. Both Mom and Troy wouldn’t stop talking about Tom: how helpful he was, how much the customers loved him, how he fitted in so quickly after moving to Chester Falls, how creative he was—the list was endless. I started to think this Tom was so perfect he had to be a figment of their imagination.

  What I hadn’t counted on. What hadn’t even crossed my mind, was that Tom might be around my age, and totally, unmistakably, my type.

  One of the reasons I had never bothered coming out to my parents was that there had never been any boys at school that I’d been interested in. For the longest time I’d thought being bisexual was all in my mind because even though I found guys in magazines and on TV attractive, and had jerked off numerous times to images of these guys, in real life I’d never seen a guy I’d wanted to do those things with in Chester Falls.

  And now, here he was, my unicorn, and he was very real, and very out of limits for more reasons than I wanted to list.

  Initially I’d mistaken him for a customer. I mean, who wears a bright-yellow sweater with rainbows to work? For a moment after we’d locked eyes it was as though time stopped; I wasn’t sure what color his eyes were because they looked violet. Surely that wasn’t a real eye color. His dark-brown hair had been styled to perfection.

  When he’d come closer I’d frozen, but when my body had demanded I take a breath, my senses had been filled with the scent of perfection, home, and everything I’d always wanted.

  After so many years of hiding, when I was put on the spot my instinct was to be the football player everyone knew, the icy-cold, hard-to-read person. I knew Tom would take it the wrong way, but it was safer that way. Better that he thinks I’m a jerk than to start looking at me like I’m not and then see more than I’m ready to show.

  The customers by the checkout had been the perfect excuse to leave my mom to catch up with Tom. It had taken me a while to get my head around the new computer system they had, but I managed it, joking with the customers all the way.

  After they’d left I didn’t see my mom or Tom, so I’d gone back to the computer to study the new software. There was a tab with an icon I’d seen on the shopping bags but hadn’t really noticed properly until now. I clicked on the tab and was shocked to see Mason’s had its own website.

  I was impressed by how professional the website looked. There were pages for the different departments, a home-styling option where customers could pick a few items they liked and the website gave them suggestions for other stuff that matched.

  Tom came out from the storeroom carrying some throws. He winked as he walked past, sashaying down the aisle like he was on a catwalk. His pink jeans left nothing to the imagination. Tom had a good pair of legs and a great ass, and he knew it. Fuck. Me.

  I took a deep breath and went back to learning the payment software, hoping boredom would deflate my half-hard cock before I went searching for my mom.

  “Mom?”

  “At the back, dear.”

  I saw my mom up a ladder trying to reach out for something on the top shelf right at the back of the storeroom. My heart was in my mouth as I picked up pace to hold the ladder in place for her.

  “What are you looking for? Couldn’t you have asked me to get it for you?”

  “You were busy with those customers; besides, I’ve got it now.”

  She gave me a small box and then came down.

  “This is where we keep the key to the safe. Last year when I hurt my back I got thinking what I would do if it had happened to your dad—”

  “You hurt your back?” I interrupted. When had this happened? And why did I not know about it? My expression must have given away what I was thinking.

  “It wasn’t a big deal. I pulled a muscle and was out of action for a couple of weeks, nothing major. Anyway, your dad had to do everything for me but there was no issue with the store because he was the one that did all the paperwork. When I got back on my feet I made your dad write down all the information I’d need if he was ever sick.”

  “And it’s all in the safe?”

  “Yes, it’s mainly passwords to access the checking accounts, but there’s also the checkbook for the store account to pay some of the suppliers that still want to be paid that way. Most of it is on automatic bill pay now. Anything you’ll need is in there.”

  “Thanks, Mom, this will definitely make it easier.”

  Once my mom left to head back to the hospital I went to the office and got to work. I didn’t know if there were any outstanding bills and didn’t want my parents being chased for payments.

  Hours later my head hurt from squinting and trying to understand my dad’s handwriting to compare it to the information he had on spreadsheets on his computer. So far I had figured out there were no pending bills for this week, which was a bonus, but there was something else I couldn’t make sense of.

  I needed a coffee and fresh air. Instead of leaving through the back door I decided to go through the front and check in on Tom. We hadn’t said much to each other earlier, well, I hadn’t said much to him earlier, but I couldn’t avoid him completely.

  Tom didn’t see me as I approached him. He was so focused on his notebook and whatever he was scribbling I couldn’t help stop and look at him.

  It was like I was looking at a different person. He wasn’t trying to be anyone, or put up an image, which had clearly been what he’d been doing earlier on. His bottom lip was stuck between his teeth and occasionally his tongue came out at the same time as a tiny smile graced his lips.

  He replaced his lip with his pen between his teeth and then looked up at the top of the window. He hummed an “ah-ha” as though he’d found the answer he was looking for. I thought I had time to make myself known, but in my trance I forgot all it would take was a small turn and Tom would know I was there.

  “Holy mother of Coco, are you trying to kill me?” He put his hands to his chest.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “Then next time don’t lurk like a creeper.”

  This guy was made of equal parts adorable and irritating, and I didn’t know how to deal with it.

  “I’m going to grab a coffee; can I get you one?”

  “No, thank you,” he said, going back to his notebook. I made my own mental note to ask my mom what it was Tom was working on.

  With a large coffee and a slice of one of the cakes left for my parents in my stomach, I went back to the accounting. Tom had long shut the store and gone home by the time I figured out what it was I wasn’t seeing earlier.

  There was nothing wrong with my dad’s records, there was nothing missing, or any mistakes with the invoices. They simply didn’t have much money in the store account. My parents’ business was surviving on a month-by-month basis.

  I tried to get my head around my findings. They knew. There was no way they didn’t know. Why hadn’t they told me the business was struggling? My head was still spinning as I walked into the apartment after checking in on Troy, who had made his own
dinner and was revising.

  This wasn’t the time to confront my parents about it. There was too much going on. But maybe I could figure out a way to help them? I didn’t have much in terms of savings. After my retirement from football I’d used my savings to buy my apartment and now lived on my teacher’s salary. I was also pretty sure they would refuse any kind of financial help, but maybe there was another way.

  I smiled when I saw Aiden’s name flash on my phone.

  “Hey, Aid, what’s up?”

  “I’m the one who’s meant to ask that.” He laughed.

  “My dad is okay. It was weird seeing him in the hospital, but I think he’s coming home within the week.”

  I paused, debating if I should tell Aiden about Tom.

  “Oh-huh, what’s his name?”

  Damn his perception.

  “His name is Tom, and he’s off-limits so this conversation ends here.”

  Aiden laughed. “I take it you haven’t told your parents.”

  “It’s one of the many reasons he’s off-limits, and not even the most important one.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “Understatement of the year. It’s late here so I’ll catch you soon, okay?”

  My knee hurt from the lack of movement so I decided on a hot shower before bed. I had a lot to do in the next three weeks, and my shattered knee and traitorous cock seemed hell-bent on making it hard for me. Pun intended.

  7

  Tom

  I’d never been one of those people that stay in bed on their day off. There was always too much to do to waste time in bed, especially when there’s no one else in it, but the fact I’d slept through my alarm and hadn’t woken up until ten in the morning was a testament to how tired I really was.

  Between working extra hours in the store and then working at home too, I was beyond exhausted.

  Or maybe it was because I hadn’t truly relaxed at work since Wren had arrived to help, even though he wasn’t helping at all. He spent the day in the office going through paperwork, or god knows what, and he only ever came out to give me a break so I wouldn’t have to eat my lunch behind the checkout desk.