Working Title

by Holley Trent

  “Do you…know about those things?” she asked Keely, keeping her voice level, and trying to sound like what they were talking about wasn’t a Big Fucking Deal. She was always looking for ways to bolster the Bungalows’ occupancy rates during the offseason. The Burnout Bungalows wasn’t just a passion project for her—it was how she supported herself. Failure was not an option.

  “Oh, sure.” Keely screwed off the top of the tin of balm Joey had been fidgeting with and said, “Rub it between your fingers to soften it and then put it on chapped skin. It’s so yummy!”

  Joey raised a brow but opted to say nothing.

  If he abandoned his swag bag in his room, Lisa would be more than willing to rehome its contents.

  Maybe I should just go ahead and take it. I deserve it.

  She could call it one of many installation payments for him wasting her time and her feelings for so many months.

  “We should have a meeting about that after these corporate groups leave,” Lisa said to Keely.

  “The balm? Well, that just takes five seconds to explain.”

  Lisa said a silent prayer for grace.

  Her late grandmother might have said that the woman couldn’t hold a thought for longer than it took a bird to shit.

  But some people were just like that, Lisa realized. They couldn’t help it. In fact, she had friends like that. Most of the time, they were logical enough, but they didn’t think in straight lines. Their thought patterns were more like checkerboards. And a few just didn’t process speech in normal ways.

  “No, Keely, love, the ballroom. If there are things we can do with it that are more valuable than using it for spillover conference room space, we should see how feasible they are for next season.”

  Keely blinked a few times in that “Computing, computing,” way. Then she fixed her face and also a few more bag bows. “My daddy’s a contractor.”

  “What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Joey muttered under his breath.

  Lisa almost didn’t hear it because the movie had reached the end scene and one of those lachrymal orchestral statement pieces was playing and the female part of the audience was loudly booing the screen.

  “Are you suggesting your daddy would do the work?” Lisa asked. “For cheap? Or free? Free sounds better. I’d pay for supplies and subcontractor labor, of course.”

  “Anything for family.”

  “Say what?”

  Whatever the punchline was, Lisa didn’t get to hear it.

  The Athena staff started their stiff march to the exit.

  Keely scurried over to the queue with a basket of bags, calling out names.

  Naturally, Lisa started to walk her way to help, but a familiar tug of her belt loop stopped her short.

  “Lisa—”

  “You’re turning into a broken record, Mr. Novak.”

  “What do you expect me to say when I know, and you know, that you’re trying to get my dander up on purpose?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh really?” he asked flatly, right as Finch approached.

  A very perplexed Keely held out the bulging gold gift sack to Finch that had her name on it.

  Obviously, one of the bags was not like the others, and Lisa had everything to do with that.

  “You think that’s going to chase me off?” Joey asked.

  “Not everything’s about you. There’s no rule that says I can’t make friends just because you’ve decided to plant yourself five feet from my ass.”

  “I wouldn’t have to plant myself so close to your ass if I didn’t think you were giving me the runaround.”

  That accusation annoyed her.

  She turned to him to be sure he could see it in her eyes.

  He did. She could tell by the way his eyes narrowed slightly, but he’d never been the sort of person who’d back away if her mood didn’t look like an easy one.

  It was one of his superior qualities.

  She got as close as she dared, not caring who was watching or what anyone thought about what they were doing.

  Let them speculate. I don’t give a fuck.

  “The things I say to you…” Her tone was tight, voice quiet as shifting sand. “Are as clear as Greek beach water. I’m not speaking in riddles, Mr. Novak. I’m not asking you to chase me or to try, try again. Words mean nothing if actions don’t change.”

  “Me loving you means nothing?”

  “I suppose it means approximately the same as me loving you back, but what does it matter if it hurts?”

  “I don’t want you to hurt.”

  “Me, neither. And that’s why we’re at an impasse. You getting what you want means that I’ll be the one hurting.”

  His teeth grated the same way they always did when he had too much to say but no leave to say it.

  Finch padded over, clutching that overstuffed bag against her chest and looking warily from Lisa to Joey and back again.

  Lisa was glad she’d interrupted. She knew how things could be when she and Joey were at odds, and nothing about that was fit for public consumption.

  And he had to go back to work with those people on Monday. The soap opera the two of them were caught up in wasn’t grist for the Athena rumor mill.

  “You get off on this, don’t you?” he said to Finch. “Is this your idea of a good time?”

  “Joey—”

  Although her cheeks had burned red with the offense, Finch shook her head and waved off the insult. “I was hoping you’d show me where the cards are,” she said to Lisa.

  “Seriously?” Joey asked, incredulous. “You’re not going to apologize for interfering? For interrupting? Read the fucking room, Finch.”

  “No.” Finch looked to Lisa.

  And Lisa looked from one to the other, feeling torn in two, and it was her own damned fault. If she’d been in Joey’s shoes, cool and collected would be the last thing she’d be, especially if some other person were taking a special interest in him.

  Just because she couldn’t be with him didn’t mean she wanted anyone else to have him.

  She was self-aware enough to know she was unreasonable.

  But she also didn’t think that expressing the bare minimum of interest in someone who’d been sweet to her was cause for hostility.

  Sighing, Lisa gestured toward the door. “I’ll show you the stash, Finch.” To Joey, she said, “Let’s douse the static so I don’t end up banned from Athena’s vendor list. Meet me at the cabin in ten minutes. Wipe that scowl off your face before you get there. It makes me hate looking at you.”

  Suddenly, she wasn’t sure that was a problem.

  Actually, it might have been a solution to a lot of things.

  Her looking at him for far too long was one of the reasons she’d gotten into a gnarly affair with him in the first place.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Joey had picked a hell of a fucking time to be on his best behavior. The Athena rumor mill was one of the most powerful machines in the state of New York, and the last thing he needed was to have his personal business spread, warped, and repeated to every ear in the company. Unfortunately, Lisa was making it nearly impossible for him to have a private conversation with her. That interloping editor seemed to have a knack for showing up everywhere he needed to be and squashing what little chance of success remained.

  If he wasn’t so fond of his thick head of hair, he would have already pulled every single strand out in frustration.

  He paced in the great room of Lisa’s cabin, glancing at his watch every thirty seconds or so.

  How long does it take to get a pack of cards?

  He was starting to suspect that Lisa was pulling his leg just to frustrate him. It’d been fifteen minutes.

  But then he heard the jangling of keys outside and muffled complaints about the cold.

  He tugged the door open before Lisa could reach for the knob.

  Finch walked past him without looking at him and without saying a word.
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  Lisa stepped inside, stomped moisture off her boots onto the sisal mat, and thrust a picnic basket at him. “It’s snowing. Forecast says you should be able to get out of here the day after tomorrow as scheduled, though. It’ll probably melt mid-morning.”

  “What’s this?” He lifted one of the basket flaps and his nose was immediately pelted by a barrage of cinnamon, nutmeg, orange, and brown sugar scents.

  “Bribe basket from a local business. They left it at the desk for me. Roofing company, I think. I don’t get offended when they try to drum up business like that. Everybody’s gotta make a living and I know half the structures here are due for new roofs. So, let’s talk.”

  She said that last bit flatly while fidgeting with the thermostat. Creature of habit she was, she always liked to turn up the heat before she took off her coat.

  He wondered if he should take off his coat, and if it were going to be one of those conversations where temperatures rose because everyone couldn’t stop yelling.

  Fuck, I hope not.

  He got enough of that shit at his mother’s house.

  Finch sat primly on the edge of a sofa cushion, knees pressed tightly together, looking at them both like she belonged there. She looked at him like he was the thing that was out of place, and that infuriated him because he wondered all too often if he was that out-of-place thing in Lisa’s life.

  Maybe he could never offer enough to keep her.

  “Does this really need to be a three-party conversation?” He set the basket down on the kitchenette counter and reset the lid. Normally, he would have dug in, but his appetite had fled months ago.

  “Apparently it does.” Lisa settled onto the middle sofa cushion next to Finch and gestured to the remaining spot.

  Never one to refuse an opportunity to be next to her, he took it.

  “All right. Who’s going to start?” Lisa rubbed her eyes and sank low against the sofa back.

  Joey didn’t say anything because he simply wasn’t interested in Finch gleaning any more of his business.

  Finch was too busy doing one of those thousand-yard-stares to nowhere to respond.

  “Okay. This has been extremely educational. I’m going to go make phone calls. Need to make sure the bakery isn’t going to flake on delivering the stuff I ordered for breakfast.”

  She started to stand, but like always when she began to move away from him, panic flared, and he grabbed her wrist.

  “Let go of her,” Finch snapped, and Joey did, only because he was so stunned that she’d actually been paying attention.

  But then he got pissed because he didn’t like that tone—that you’ll hurt her tone, when he’d been losing sleep every night since he’d met Lisa about what would happen if he hurt her.

  When he hurt her.

  “Just…just stop. She obviously doesn’t like it.”

  “You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”

  Lisa put a hand up at both of them and squeezed her eyes closed tight. “Wait. Hold on a damn minute. What exactly do you think is happening here, Finch?”

  “It seems to me that from the moment he arrived, he’s been harassing you. I mean, I knew he was a womanizer, but I didn’t know he was so persistent. You don’t have to take that. You could have better than him.”

  Lisa should have laughed at that.

  She should have given Finch a placating pat on the head and informed her of what was what.

  She didn’t do that, though.

  She buried her face into her hands and went quiet as an empty church. Her body was rigid with tension.

  Joey’s little tickle of anger was beginning to turn into an outright scratch. Clenching and then unclenching his shaking hands, he met Finch’s timid gaze and counted down backward from ten in his head.

  When he thought he could speak without growling, he said slowly, tightly, over Lisa’s back, “You know nothing.”

  “I know that hit dogs will bark.”

  He didn’t know that woman one little bit, except that she had a reputation for always letting her work phone roll to voicemail and that she could doctor some of the least articulate books into bestsellers. She was a shadow and her name wasn’t one people at the office floated around when they made spontaneous plans to do things outside the office.

  She was regularly forgotten—forgettable because she had the superpower of being not at all unusual.

  But apparently, even forgotten people could make themselves unignorable at times, and Finch did it with her eyes. They were the darkest of browns and the shapes were hieroglyphs for undiluted anger and blame, and something else. Her eyes didn’t say it, though. The tilt of her chin did.

  It said I hate you because you don’t deserve that, and that was Lisa.

  He probably didn’t, but that wasn’t for the likes of Finch to judge—not when it was so fucking evident that she was doing it for the attention. She wasn’t just playing at being the teacher’s pet. She was too meek for that. She was trying to snatch the attention of the showstopper because she either wanted to be her or be with her.

  Lisa had that effect on a lot of people she met. Her personality was big, and she wasn’t afraid to take up space.

  And yes, she was gorgeous. A star would look pale beside her.

  He wasn’t quite sure which thing Finch wanted, though.

  “Finch, that’s…that’s really sweet of you to try to defend me,” Lisa said quietly, finally sitting up. “I don’t think you understand what’s going on between me and him. Maybe it looks messy because that’s how it’s always been with us, but, honey, this is just what the tail end of breakup looks like. At least, for us.”

  He didn’t know how, but he kept his mouth shut about that word breakup.

  It was a bogus word. It didn’t fit what they were.

  They weren’t broken up. They were still attached, still magnetically drawn to each other in spite of everything.

  The problem was that one of them—the her of them—didn’t want a “half-time husband.”

  Finch sucked in a sharp breath. “So, you’re…together.”

  “Yes,” Joey said at the same time Lisa growled out a “No.”

  He was tired of arguing, but he wasn’t done fighting. If he needed a new tactic, so be it. He’d find one.

  “Anyhow,” Lisa said, squeezing Finch’s hands as though she worried the woman would float helplessly away.

  She’d never squeezed his hands like that.

  Maybe he hadn’t given her a reason to think he needed her to.

  “You can safely ignore any dysfunction you think you see between me and him. We’ll sort it all out eventually.”

  “Are you sure?” Finch asked. “I mean, are you sure you want to? Sort it out, I mean.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Joey asked.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve known you longer. Or have known of you longer. Your reputation persists in my mind. I just wonder if she knows as much about you as she thinks.”

  “So, I’ve been rolled into the grave and you’d like to be the first to throw dirt in on me, is that it?”

  She wouldn’t let go of Lisa’s hands. She’d taken possession of them like a child who wouldn’t let go of that bag of chips their mother gave them to hold in the grocery store just to keep them quiet, because now those chips were theirs and someone had to pay.

  Apparently, she intended to make him pay.

  “I probably know more about him than he realizes,” Lisa said.

  Perplexed, Joey furrowed his brow.

  “Remember, I’m best friends with a woman who worked in his department and her partner is someone who still does. I get all the dirt. I assure you, it’s all old.”

  If that reveal was supposed to gratify Joey, it didn’t work. If anything, it unsettled him more.

  “Besides, I’m not one to throw stones about body counts. I don’t see the point.”

  “Still,” Finch said in nearly a whisper.

  “
It’s okay. I can handle him. Thank you, though, for the concern.” Lisa managed to free her hands from Finch’s grip.

  She stood, smiling as always, and bent to notch Finch’s hair behind her ears. “There. Now I can finally see your face. I can’t stay here any longer to stare at it, though. I’ve got to go make calls. I’ll be in the office. Call if you need anything.”

  She left without so much as a backward glance, taking a few of her belongings along with her.

  Stunned and wildly unmoored, Joey remained on the sofa, trying to sweep his thoughts into a less dispersed mess.

  He must have been taking too long to do it, because Finch cleared her throat.

  Growling softly under his breath, he stood and unbunched his coat at the sleeves. “Just mind your business, Finch. That’s all. We’ll get along fine if you just mind your fucking business.”

  “You seem to be laboring under the misperception that this hasn’t become my business.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She pulled in a long breath and let it out. Her shoulders shook. She was obviously trying too hard to hold herself together.

  Maybe she always did that. He didn’t know. He’d spent years overlooking her.

  Or maybe he was an especially difficult foil for her, and she was just trying to stay in the game.

  He could respect that, he supposed, even if he didn’t want to.

  “You shouldn’t be surprised that someone else would pursue her,” Finch said, her voice artificially level. He could tell that it would shake if she didn’t try hard to control it. “And…perhaps I’m not the sort that people would gravitate to in a bar or purposefully seek out at a party, but I’ve decided that for once in my life, I’m going to take a chance at something.”

  “You’re talking about taking a chance at my girlfriend?”

  She actually said that. He hadn’t misheard or misinterpreted anything. The dangerous little harpy wasn’t hiding the cards she was playing, not even a little bit.

  She waved a shaking, though substantially dismissive hand in his direction. “I understand what rebounding is. We’ve all been there. Well, I suppose I could be a soft place to land.”