by Holley Trent
“There might have been. I didn’t look.” She’d gotten all the measurements she’d needed and gotten the hell out of there before her compulsion to rummage through the mystery man’s drawers overcame her.
She got her feet onto the floor and stretched the gnarly kink out of her back. “How did you get my number, anyway?”
“I tried calling Carine, but she was being coy for once, so I called Clay who called Carine and told her to give it to me.”
“That’s impressive.” Valerie padded into the bathroom, turned on the light, and cringed at her sleep-ravaged appearance. “So, what can I do for you this early morning?”
“I figured we could meet somewhere.”
“Why?”
“I’m sure you have questions about my house. I wasn’t exactly available to answer them last night, and I didn’t want you to think I believe the project is unimportant. It isn’t. I know you’ll be busy at Shora during the week.”
“So, you’re trying to book up my weekend time while you can, huh?”
“I’m used to asking for what I want. What’s the worst you can say, besides no? Are you going to tell me no?”
Valerie knew she probably should tell him no. If she sat across a table from him again, she’d have her flip-flop off within five minutes and would be sliding her foot up his thigh to try to get his attention, and she’d insist that he let her finish.
An adamant no wasn’t what came out of her mouth, though. “Where were you thinking of meeting?” she asked in a businesslike tone.
“I could meet you in Shora—”
“Hell no. Not gonna happen. I have spies, apparently, and they report back to your brother.”
“How do you know that? And besides, it’s just a business meeting.”
“Because he told me about it yesterday when I was waiting with Carine for her car to get towed. Someone saw you drop me off on Friday night. And right—just business, hmm. Both times we’ve tried to do so-called business so far have started or ended with oral sex.”
The memories had Valerie rubbing her thighs together to try to slake some of the ache of arousal. The man was going to drive her crazy with want, and she hated begging.
“You make that sound like a problem,” he said. “Did you not enjoy it?”
Too much.
“How about somewhere more public?” she asked, ignoring his question. “The library, maybe?”
“There are no libraries open on Sundays around here. Or at least, they won’t be by the time I’ll be ready to get out the door. I was reading the paper in bed when I decided to call. I wasn’t going to call.” He said that last part in a nearly indecipherable mumble.
She wasn’t going to dwell on it. She already knew why he hadn’t wanted to call. Carine had said he didn’t ask more than once, and that he never begged. “You’re still in bed?”
“Mm-hmm. The paper is the only thing covering me right now.”
“You’re—” Due to her suddenly weak grip, Valerie nearly dropped her six-hundred-dollar phone into the sink. She managed to catch it against her belly before the corner hit the marble, though.
She didn’t want to think about that man in any state besides fully dressed, or else she’d probably be on her knees the next time she saw, him waiting patiently for him to place his balls on her tongue.
“You there?” he asked.
Breathing out a shameful little titter of self-hatred, she plopped gracelessly onto the tub’s edge. “I’m here. Um…”
Think, think.
“How about a coffee shop?” she suggested. “I can think of a couple that have tables wide enough to work on.”
“You can’t really have a good conversation there. Too much background noise.”
“True. Well, I know of a quieter place that has a back room. A deli. The owner lets me work in there sometimes if it’s not reserved.”
Tomato & Basil was a perfect spot to meet Tim. Valerie would be forced to keep her hands—and feet—to herself, they’d have to keep the innuendo and dirty talk down for the sake of public decency, and she’d be able to see for sure that Tim actually did want her help and wasn’t just trying to pull a dom snake charmer routine on her. She’d taken a risk two nights ago and told him yes, foolishly thinking that she’d be able to avoid him afterward if she wanted to.
She hadn’t thought then that she wouldn’t want to.
He took so long to respond that she thought he was going to refuse. But finally, he asked, “Where is it?”
“I’ll text you the address. Meet me there at eleven, maybe?”
“Eleven-thirty. You’ll let me buy you lunch.”
“I don’t need you to. I could write it off as a partial tax deduction.”
“I’ll buy you lunch.” He disconnected.
She sat there on that uncomfortable tub rim for a while longer with the phone held to her ear and bobbing her knee nervously. There weren’t very many personality types she clicked well with, especially when it came to sex, and Tim was already hitting way too many of the right buttons for her.
He was quickly turning into a distraction.
___
Tim had somehow managed to beat Valerie to Tomato & Basil. She found him in the back room, seated in front of what looked to be Maria Lucia’s Deluxe Catering Spread, although a severely downsized version.
Valerie whistled low as he pulled out the chair at the head of the table for her. “That’s a lot of food for one guy.”
“Believe it or not, I didn’t order any of it,” he said with that warm laugh she was starting to become so addicted to. “Maria Lucia insisted that she bring me something to tide me over until you got here.”
“Doesn’t look like you’ve touched anything yet.”
“Nah, she just brought it. Help yourself. I’m sure she’ll poke her head in and ask what you really want to eat as soon as you get settled.”
“I’d probably be content with this.”
Tim put his elbows on the table and leaned in close. He smelled like cedar and citrus, warm and yet fresh—a scent that made her want to crawl onto his lap and purr.
She wouldn’t have put it past him that he’d chosen that particular soap knowing how enticing the lingering scent would be.
Monster.
“Don’t tell her that,” he whispered. “I think Maria wants to keep us in these seats for a while.”
“Why?”
“Because if we’re in here,” he said, “she can refuse seating to the big groups who keep popping in.”
“Oh?”
“She wants to clean up and go home early today to watch baseball or something.”
“Ah.” Valerie started to sit back, but Tim slipped his fingers around her neck and gently held her in place. His breath tickled her ear and his proximity made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
Her instinct was to reach for them and to rub them down, but he stopped her from doing that, too. He had one hand at her throat, the other steering her hand back down to her thigh.
She didn’t dare move.
He was pushing those buttons again, expertly operating her without the benefit of instruction. Knowing how to manage her.
How?
“You didn’t say hello to me, pretty girl,” he whispered.
She dragged her tongue across her dry lips and pressed her free hand to his fingers against her throat. If he pressed a little harder—stole a little of her breath—he could push her into that headspace where everything was wonderful and everything felt so good.
But he wasn’t her dom, and she didn’t intend to let him become that. They were just playing a little, and that had to be enough.
She slipped her fingers beneath his and gave them a squeeze. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to be rude.”
“So tell me hello.”
“Hello, Tim.”
“Hello, Valerie.”
The low rumble of his voice churned her libido like a propeller in still water.
She deci
ded it was a very good thing that she’d chosen such a public place, even if they were the only ones in the back room at the moment.
He sat back right as Maria Lucia rounded the doorway into the room carrying two small ceramic crocks.
Valerie prayed the old woman didn’t call her out for her burning cheeks and probable wide-eyed expression.
Maria Lucia set a serving of soup in front of each of them along with spoons. “I’m clearing out what’s left. Don’t order nothin’. I’ll take care of you.” She shuffled away without another word.
Valerie swallowed hard and forced her gaze up to Tim. “What’d you do to earn such special treatment from the mean meatball mama?”
“I know folks.” He said it so matter-of-factly and without a bit of humor. That intense blue gaze didn’t seem at all cheerful.
Maybe he’s just tired?
“When I take the boat out on longer trips,” he said, “I usually come here and load up a cooler.”
“Ah. So, she’s who you get your salami from. No wonder I liked it so much.”
“Mm-hmm. And her sister is my housekeeper.”
Valerie’s gut lurched at his admission.
She’d tried to get them to meet on neutral turf, but he’d managed to beat her at her game without even knowing he was playing it.
“I’m always going to try to have home court advantage,” he said, as though she’d telegraphed her thoughts to him.
Perhaps her look of surprise had done that.
She fixed her face and tried to affect a serene mien. She suspected, based on the tightness of her jaw and the slight twitch of her left eye, that she was failing.
“You should have told me,” she said sourly. “Should I just assume you know everyone in the damned state and that you have allies wherever you go?”
He put his elbows on the tabletop and twined his fingers, staring at her over them.
“Fine. Don’t answer.” She turned her attention to the minestrone and picked up her spoon. She needed to be doing something with her hands. “I should tell you about your house. I have to admit that this is hard for me. I don’t like to criticize my peers, but I have to be honest.”
“The plans I paid for are garbage, is what you’re leading up to.”
Leave it to him to cut right to the meat of the matter.
“In summary, yes. Obviously, I took umbrage with the way he’d enlarged the rooms without rearranging the floor plan in his proposal, but when I stepped into your kitchen, I had a hunch that his measurements were way off. The kitchen is far narrower than what’s on paper. Those bad measurements carried through to the rest of the structure. I believe he guesstimated and thought you wouldn’t know the difference.”
After a few seconds of staring vacantly at her, Tim’s shoulders rose then fell.
He grunted.
He seemed entirely too unsurprised by the circumstances.
Valerie furrowed her brow.
“He knew I couldn’t check his work, even if I wanted to. I was too busy. Further, the information the County Records office had on file for the house was incomplete. The original blueprint filed for the structure was destroyed in a fire decades ago. I paid him to do the work. I didn’t want to think I needed to redo the measurements myself to see if they were bullshit.”
His voice was still so neutral. Neutral was usually good—it meant a person’s energy was at even keel and that she shouldn’t expect any surprises. But she didn’t know Tim well and didn’t know what that flat tone meant for him.
She needed more time to figure it out—to learn his nuances and cues, and to see how far his range of emotions went.
And time meant attachment. She couldn’t afford either of those things.
She looked up to find him leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed, staring at the mural on the ceiling. She couldn’t handle a long look—not unless she wanted to get trapped in that dominating gaze again—so she wasted just a couple of seconds admiring the curves of his lips before returning her attention to her soup. Of course he’d have sinful lips on a mouth that dirty.
“If it’s not out of my place to ask, can you tell me how you found the guy?” She couldn’t even taste the soup. It went from spoon to mouth to throat without her taste buds weighing in. Her mind was too scattered.
“I got a referral from someone at the country club. I think they overstated his qualifications. He was a young guy. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and help him build his portfolio, though. I paid him and sent him on his way.”
“It was kind of you to want to help him. But, silly measurements aside, you didn’t like the plans?”
“They weren’t what I asked for. I’d hoped that what he did was competent, at the very least. I’d hoped he knew what he was doing.”
“Sorry.” She had one mind to ask for the guy’s card so she could call him for a chat—so that he knew that she knew what a hack he was—but it wasn’t her place. And perhaps the guy had gotten better in the years since then. Besides, Tim could certainly fight his own battles and didn’t need her as his champion. She just hated people getting taken advantage of, especially people like Tim who seemed to go out of his way to give his associates a fair shake.
“I know you’re busy,” Tim said, “but if you think you can come up with something more suitable, I’ll make it worth your time.”
“I might be able to squeeze it in. The way my days are structured now in this phase of the Shora project gives me pockets of free time. My employer doesn’t need to know what I’m doing when I’m not poking around job sites, so do me a favor and don’t tell them.”
“I’m good at keeping secrets.”
“So I’ve heard,” she said softly. She spooned some more soup into her mouth to keep herself from running it.
“What have you heard about me?”
“Nothing worth mentioning.” Or rather, nothing she could mention without giving away too much information about herself at the same time.
Fortunately, he didn’t press her on the issue.
“Will you let me know what you come up with in a couple of weeks?” he asked. “If you have any questions, Clay will probably be able to answer them.”
“Are you going somewhere?”
“I’ve got a major account in Bermuda I need to do some in-person maintenance on, so I’ll be gone for about ten days starting on Thursday.”
Two weeks. In two weeks, she’d probably have a much better idea of when the project phase at Shora would end and when she could move on to the next one. Two weeks was the perfect amount of time to douse her burgeoning obsession with him.
“Two weeks,” she said. “Yeah. I can probably swing it.”
“I’ll leave you a set of keys if you need them. Make yourself at home.”
“I don’t think it’ll be necessary for me to pop in more than a few times to check structural things, but I appreciate the offer. And I do like your house, Tim. I understand what you meant about not wanting to raze it. It’s got good bones and some really pretty woodwork you might be able to salvage, but it’s not a great place for kids.”
“Have you redesigned homes before to accommodate family spaces?”
She leaned back in her seat and pulled her half-finished coffee closer. “No, but…I can do it. I mean, I have, it’s just that none of those ideas have made it into my portfolio. When I was a kid, I used to try to reconfigure my Barbie houses with spare parts I’d find at thrift stores and yard sales. I’ve always been interested in making spaces fit needs rather than intended function. A living room doesn’t serve anyone any good if no one’s doing any living in it, right?”
He bobbed his eyebrows.
She didn’t know what that meant, but she wanted to talk—couldn’t stop talking. She had to give those words to someone, and he was a convenient pair of ears.
“When I was in college and starting to do mock-up designs, I’d play around with floor plans I found online in tax records. Like, there was this one skinny thr
ee-story Victorian home in the neighborhood I grew up in that I fantasized about all the time. It eventually got condemned, but before it was, I made up a bunch of new plans for it that would make sense for different kinds of scenarios.”
“Like what?”
She couldn’t stop herself from grinning because he sounded like he actually cared a little. Usually, peoples’ eyes started glazing over when she started talking about house stuff.
“One was for a couple of sisters who wanted to live together but not necessarily see each other.” She’d come up with that one with Leah in mind. Valerie had more or less partitioned the house into two halves with a common kitchen and laundry room. “Then there was one I made with my grandmother in mind. That was tough, because of all the stairs. She’s had a hard time climbing them for as long as I’ve been alive. And then there was for the family I thought I’d have someday.”
Back before I knew better.
For a while after graduation, she’d held out hope that a partner and a few kids would be on the horizon for her. Work jaded her. Memories of her mother’s smiley depression jaded her even more.
“Tell me about it,” Tim said softly.
“About what?”
“The house?”
“Oh.”
Valerie took a long sip of her coffee and stared at the creamy brown liquid to gather her thoughts. “In that house design, I put in everything that made me feel warm and happy during childhood. The floor plan was laid out in such a way that I could always be visible if my kids were looking for me. I got rid of a lot of walls but made sure to keep some niches a little girl could hide in if she just needed to be alone in the dark for a while. I…” She set down the mug because her hands were starting to shake and the liquid threatening to slosh over the rims. “I went on to play with a bunch of other houses that way,” she said, faltering at the urgent stream of memories bombarding her. “The designs became more sophisticated in time as I became more conscious about efficiency and green living. My favorite kinds of houses to play with were the small ones like the one I grew up in. My grandmother’s house was tiny and cramped and loud.” She let out a dry laugh and met his gaze. “So loud, but it was a loving loudness. I miss that sometimes.”
