by Tara Sivec
“Shut up right now before I grab a pair of scissors and cut it up into tiny pieces,” I tell her, pressing my hand over my mouth to stop the dry heaves. “There will be no dry humping in this dress. There will be no humping of any kind until these interviews are finished. Just because I want to look nice means nothing.”
Tossing the dress on the end of my bed, I walk over to the dresser and pick up the phone.
“I’m hanging up now.”
“Wear the black suede ankle boots with the tall, skinny heel so your legs look sexy as fuck, and—”
I end the call before she finishes that sentence.
And march back into my closet to grab the black suede ankle boots with the tall, skinny heel.
“I’m coming! Hold on a second!” I shout to my ringing doorbell.
I’m in the middle of securing a big, silver hoop earring to my ear as I hustle across the living room, assuming it must be the stupid car service Baker ordered. I try to drum up some irritation that he took it upon himself to do that, but I can’t. It was thoughtful. Right after I graduated high school, I got a flat tire. I called Jake, the guy I was dating and whose dorm room I was on the way to when I got said flat tire, a mile away from the dorm. He told me that by the time I walked there, it would be time for dinner. And then asked me what I wanted for dinner. By the time I walked to his dorm, he did in fact have the Taco Bell I requested. That he’d already eaten. Because he got hungrier the longer he waited. For me to walk to his fucking dorm. I gave that boy the best blowjobs of his life, and he made me walk.
Baker didn’t want me taking a train and a bus to meet him, to do my job he is paying me for. Ne’er a blowjob in sight.
Goddammit.
Double goddammit. Not only am I thinking about how fucking perfect Baker is, but I’m also thinking about putting his dick in my mouth.
And the sounds he would make.
And what he would taste like.
And how hard he’d grip my hair in his fist.
And if he’d moan Ember or Tink when he came.
MOTHERFUCKING GODDAMMIT.
The ankle boots that really do make my legs look sexy as fuck click-clack loudly against the wood floor as I move to the door and look through the peephole. My dirty thoughts die a quick death, and with a muttered curse, I quickly unlock the deadbolt, unlatch the chain, and fling the door open.
“What’s going on? What happened? Lincoln, are you okay?”
I look back and forth between Brandon and Lincoln standing on the top step of my tiny, concrete porch before squatting down to my son’s eye level, checking him for injuries.
Even though I should technically get him back tonight since it’s Sunday, Lincoln doesn’t have school tomorrow. Brandon and I agreed he could keep him until tomorrow night. He’s never just shown up out of the blue, a day earlier than he was supposed to.
“I just need to get my iPad. Dad tried texting you,” Lincoln explains, before moving around me and running into the house.
Once his pounding footsteps disappear into his bedroom, I stand back up.
“Sorry about that. I was on the phone with Brooklyn and I must have missed your—”
“Are you okay?” Brandon cuts me off. “You’re quite flushed.”
Okay, so not all the dirty thoughts died a quick death.
Some clung on for dear life and put up a good fight. A fight that is currently splotched on my chest and my cheeks. This is what happens when you take a country girl who spent all her time out in the sun, and threw her into a metal prison where she became pale, and now the entire world knows when she’s sexually frustrated. Or embarrassed. Both of which I am currently experiencing.
“According to a recent study in Pharmaceutical Weekly, women approaching thirty-five are showing signs of—”
“I’m thirty-two,” I mutter through clenched teeth.
You dickhole. Say it. Tell him he’s a dickhole!
“Are you… going out? Like, on a date?” Brandon suddenly asks, forgetting all about whatever fucking study he was going to bore me with to look me up and down.
I squirm under his scrutiny, my bright porchlight illuminating everything I did to get ready. To what I am firmly denying is a date, because it’s not. It’s business. It is a business interview in a public place.
With a man who almost made you orgasm just by thinking about him a few minutes ago.
Brandon has seen me plenty of times when I would put in a little more effort for date night. He knows all about short dresses to show off a lot of leg; he knows about the heels to make all that leg look longer and sexier. He’s banged his head against the wall while I lathered my body up with my favorite pumpkin spice body lotion, and spritzed myself with the matching body spray. He’s stared at his watch in annoyance when I took more time to pull up my high ponytail by adding a few more waves to it with my heating wand, and French-braiding my long bangs back and up into the ponytail. He’s huffed in irritation when I added a smoky eye and took my time covering my lips in a red, twenty-four-hour lip stain that won’t come off no matter what you rub your lips against.
All of the things I did to get ready for tonight. Which is not a date.
Brandon continues to stand there staring at me and the effort I put in to get ready, the way he asked, “Are you going out? Like, on a date?” playing on a loop in my head. It was so goddamn shocked. Like, he couldn’t possibly believe I really had plans. Completely astounded I finally pulled my head out of my ass and started giving a shit. The smirk on his face as he finishes looking me over says there’s no way in hell he believes I’m going on a date, even though it looks like I am. He seriously thinks I’m lying. That I gussied myself up just to pretend like I’m finished being a hermit loser who did nothing but feel sorry for herself.
I not going on a date, but fuck that shit if I’m going to tell that to this smirking bastard.
“Yes, I’m going on a date. With a charming man I met through work. He comes from good stock.”
What the hell are you doing? It’s not 1812!
“I thought you said you were interviewing some asshat for work and it was absolutely, positively not a date?” Lincoln announces as he steps up next to me in the open doorway, repeating something I muttered word-for-word the other day, like the good boy he is.
“Lincoln, language,” Brandon scolds, giving me the evil eye, because Lord knows stick-up-his ass over there never swears.
I want to punch the judgy look right off his face.
Why am I not punching the judgy look off his face? Baker would be seriously disappointed in me right now. Jesus, stop thinking about Baker.
“Lincoln, why don’t you go wait in Dad’s car? I need to talk to him about something,” I tell him, bending down and kissing the top of his head.
I watch as he races down the steps of the porch and wait until he’s safely inside the car until turning back to Brandon.
“Lincoln asked me again about getting a dog. He’s not going to give this up. His grades are good, he’s pretty responsible for his age, and I really think a pet would help settle him in here even more,” I explain, repeating the same things I’ve been saying to him via text for weeks.
“We discussed this already. I don’t have time to take care of an animal when Lincoln is with me, and it’s too much trouble to cart that thing back and forth anyway. Taking care of him is hard enough,” Brandon mutters, pulling his cell phone out of the inside pocket of his suit coat when it dings with an incoming text.
No. No he did not just complain about taking care of his son.
I can perfectly picture Baker’s face as he held onto that heavy bag and I beat out all my frustrations about the man standing in front of me, typing away on his phone like we aren’t in the middle of an important discussion about our child. Baker was paying attention to every single word that came out of my mouth, even the crazy shit that didn’t make sense.
I am not meek and mild Ember anymore, dammit.
“Fine, maybe not a d
og then. It’s not like I have a yard or anything for a dog. But I think it would do Lincoln good to have a pet. Maybe something a little less work than a puppy. Maybe a gerbil or—”
“He’s not getting a pet, Ember.” Brandon sighs, head down, still typing away on his phone.
I glance over at our son sitting in the backseat of the car, the light from his iPad shining on his face, which is currently laughing at whatever he’s watching on it.
I look back at my ex-husband who is completely bored with me, and wonder why I never noticed before now that he’s never not acted this way with me. Like he’s just waiting for me to stop talking so he can get back to something more interesting.
No one I have ever met in my entire life before Brandon would have thought of me and the word boring in the same sentence. I was the wild child growing up, and well into my twenties. I’m the reason parents threaten to send their daughters to convents. I had sex in high school. I drank in high school. I went skinny dipping in high school. I corrupted Brooklyn and got her to have sex and drink and skinny dip in high school. I won a wet T-shirt contest during spring break when I was twenty-one. I got into a fight with another girl at a bar over a guy, the week before I met Brandon. She thought I was flirting with her boyfriend, when I really was just telling the poor schmuck he had a piece of toilet paper hanging out of the back of his jeans. She threw a drink on me; I screamed and ran like hell. Whatever, the cops were called. It was a big thing.
Brandon doesn’t even really know that Ember. I started toning it down after our first date. She poked her head out when Brooklyn moved back to town, but not enough. Not all the way.
Not like the way I am with Baker. Not like the way I want my son to see me. Strong and confident and a fighter, but you know, not so sweary when he’s in the general vicinity.
Leaning back inside my house, I grab my cell phone off the little flea market table I have sitting right inside the door and type up a quick text.
Brandon’s phone dings with my incoming text, and I watch him do a double-take when my text pops up on his screen, over the email he was typing. My text that said, Look up, dickhole.
Brandon looks up at me in exasperation.
“Was that necessa—”
“I’m getting our son a fucking pet,” I cut him off. “I don’t know what it will be yet. It could be a turtle, or it could be a chinchilla. You will help our son take care of the turtle chinchilla without bitching when he’s at your home, and you will cart the turtle chinchilla back and forth between our homes without bitching, because that’s what a dad does. He does something he might not like, to make his child happy.”
Taking a step back inside the house, I grab the door and start to pull it closed, pausing halfway to glare at Brandon, who’s still standing in the same spot, holding his cell phone in his hand, with his mouth hanging open.
“And if you ever make a comment again about taking care of our son and what a chore it is, I will punch you in your goddamn face.”
With those parting words, I step back farther into my house and slam the door. Turning around, I slump back against it and let out a long, slow breath.
It means absolutely nothing that thinking about Baker made me tell Brandon off. This still isn’t a date. But damn, did that make me feel good. I want to keep feeling like this. I’m not even going to think about dating the guy until these interviews are finished, but I can still have a little fun.
CHAPTER 14
BAKER
The Hatchet House
“I’m just saying, you have very questionable standards,” I tease, looking back over my shoulder at Ember as I bend over and grab the sharp tool from the ground where it landed.
“I do not have questionable standards,” Ember protests, putting her hands on her hips as I slowly walk back toward her. “It’s not my fault you’re slightly sadistic and thought bringing me to a place called The Hatchet House would be hilarious.”
I can’t help but chuckle that I’m such a goddamn genius. I’d been wracking my brain, trying to think of somewhere Ember and I could meet for our next interview, ever since I left her standing in my gym with an adorable, annoyed look on her face a few days ago. Her admission when she was beating the shit out of the heavy bag—that she hated the city and she missed home—kept playing on a loop in my head, and I decided to try and do something about it.
“Due to my normal and totally not creepy stalker tendencies, I know you grew up on a pumpkin farm in Montana, and you miss it,” I tell her with a shrug as she takes a sip of the beer she ordered a few minutes ago, and I try not to pant like a dog when she wraps her full, red lips around the bottle. “I couldn’t exactly take you horseback riding in downtown Chicago, but I could definitely find something outdoorsy for us to do during this business meeting. Not to mention, the name of the place tied in quite nicely with your assumption that I could be a serial killer.”
The Hatchet House isn’t a haunted house, or a place where murderers learn how to dismantle a body. It’s a bar with a laid back setting, and mismatched couches and chairs haphazardly spread out around the common area. In the back, you have a line of what looks like batting cages all along the wall. Instead of the brick walls around the rest of the huge space, this back wall is made out of wood, each cage having a giant wood bull’s-eye hanging at the end of it. After signing a waiver, a fifteen-minute instruction session, and a round of drinks, Ember and I were given a hatchet, assigned to a cage, and let loose to throw the mini axe at the wall at the far end of the cage.
“This plan of mine backfired,” I tell Ember, stopping right in front of her and holding the hatchet out between us. “You’ve seen my skills with a hatchet, and you’re even more afraid of me now, aren’t you?”
Ember’s hand reached out to grab the hatchet while I was speaking, and instead of snatching it away, when a few of her fingers overlapped mine on the handle, she paused. And slowly turned those gorgeous green eyes up to meet mine.
My eyes dart down to the smooth column of Ember’s neck, and I watch her swallow nervously. It’s the first sign she’s given me since we got here an hour ago that she’s full of shit when she says she wants to keep this professional. She put up a good show, keeping her distance from me and playing it cool, but that nervous swallow and her eyes staring right at my mouth prove otherwise. It’s good to know I’m not the only one struggling right now.
When she first got here, I’d already been inside, sitting on one of the couches that looked out of the big picture windows that took up the entire front of the bar. I’d been anxiously stalking my Uber app, staring at that damn Monopoly-looking board, watching the car I ordered for her slowly make its way from her house to where I was waiting for her. I knew as soon as she arrived, and I looked up right as she was getting out of the black SUV. It was like something out of a cheesy ’80s movie. Or cheesy ’80s porn. The same hip music playing in the background, and the same hot-as-fuck blonde walking onto the scene in slow motion, with the wind gently blowing all that hair away from her face, every guy watching her move getting a boner, with their mouths dropped open as she walked by. I am man enough to admit I got a boner and my mouth dropped open as I slowly stood up from the couch and watched her walk toward to front door.
And then it hit me that I felt like I was in an ’80s porn, because there had been an ’80s song playing through the sound system at the bar. And the wind gently blowing Ember’s ponytail around actually turned into hurricane-force winds in the blink of an eye, because this is the windy city and all. Right before Ember got to the door, she paused to try and claw her hair out of her mouth that was whipping all around her face. And got smacked in the side of the head with an errant page of the Chicago Tribune.
I smile, thinking about that moment and how annoyed Ember was when she finally made it inside The Hatchet House. And got even more annoyed that I couldn’t stop laughing. The laughter stopped me from grabbing her hand, pulling her into the first dark corner I could find, and pinning her against the
wall with the power of my dick alone.
Whoever invented a flannel shirt-turned short, sexy dress should be our next president. Or at the very least, sitting on the Supreme Court. Ember is short as fuck, but with the boot heels she’s wearing, her bare legs look long as hell. Not to mention, they bring her face up closer to mine. They bring her mouth up closer to mine. A mouth that is smudged with some kind of red stain. Red, full lips I can’t stop thinking about wrapped around my dick the same way they were just wrapped around that beer bottle.
But, you know, much wider. Because I’m bigger than a fucking beer bottle, thank you very much.
Our hands are still holding the handle of the hatchet between us, and since I’m staring at her lips, I can clearly see her mouth the word goddammit.
In the blink of an eye, whatever she’d been thinking while we stood there, holding onto the hatchet handle without moving, is gone. Ember yanks the hatchet out of my hand and spins away from me, stepping over to the chalk line on the floor.
“You do realize that by bringing me here, you took your mediocre status and flushed it down the toilet, right? What’s a word for below mediocre?” Ember asks, bringing her right arm up by her ear and then flinging it forward, letting the hatchet fly.
You know how when you go through the pictures on your phone and click on a hundred of them to delete, the screen kind of flashes rapidly as they all get erased? That’s exactly what happens when I watch Ember throw that goddamn hatchet, and it thwacks right into the center of the bull’s-eye. Every spank bank image that has been stored in my head since I was fifteen years old and saw Jamie Bergman’s January issue of Playboy flash out of existence right in front of my eyes. They’ve all been replaced with Ember throwing a fucking baby axe like it’s her goddamn job, with her round little ass jutting out as she bent forward, the hem of her dress riding higher up her thighs, and the satisfied look on her face when she whirls around and fucking struts toward me.
