The windows and door to the deck lined the whole front wall to the side of the bed, making the whole room as bright as the one below.
"Pillow barrier," Warren suggested as I stood there silently.
"What?"
"Bed is huge. Pillow barrier. I don't think either of us wants to deal with a year of backaches from sleeping on that hard as hell couch downstairs."
He wasn't wrong.
It was one of those couches.
The kind you got from a box store cheap, stuffed to the point where it was barely comfortable to sit on, let alone sleep.
I had been sleeping on a twin-sized bed since childhood. I was sure I could stay on my own side. And while Warren was a giant - at least to me - he wasn't all that wide. It could work.
"Sounds like a plan," I agreed as I moved past him to check out the bathroom, finding it surprisingly modern with an all-glass shower enclosure, a simple white soaking tub, toilet, and pedestal sink.
"It's well made," Warren said from behind me, making me start. "Soulless, but well made."
"Yeah," I agreed, nodding.
After that, we hopped back into the truck to hit the foodstore before coming home to cook, then shower, then get ready for bed, only occasionally speaking, mostly about little nothing things like the house, the area, what the next day would be like.
As I walked out of the bathroom, showered, changed into shorts and a tank, there was an odd, but distinct swirling feeling in my stomach that I couldn't call anything other than nervousness.
I was nervous.
About slipping into a bed with Warren.
Even though he had already built a border with the pillows we had picked up for just this purpose.
It felt weird and childish as I looked at it, as strangely necessary as it felt. Like something terrible might happen if our bodies accidentally touched in our sleep.
"Light off?" he asked from the side of the bed as I got to the other, climbing in, and pulling the blankets up over my body.
"Yeah," I agreed, lowering myself down as he flicked off the light.
The windows had curtains, sure, but no blinds - an odd choice likely meant to let the light in first thing in the morning, but to me, had a slight voyeuristic vibe to it. And right then, the moon was nearly full and high in the sky, casting beams of moonlight across the space, making it lightly illuminated even if the world was dark.
Which made it hard to miss when my eye caught motion to my side to find that Warren was still standing beside the bed. And had reached up to discard his shirt.
I was tired.
That was the only logical explanation really.
For what happened.
Chemicals, too.
Purely a chemical reaction.
Misfirings of the parts of my brain that controlled such things.
Because there was no other reason for the unexpected - and, of course, unwanted - pre-orgasm fluttering I felt between my legs at seeing the long, lean, but muscular column of his chest and abs, the muscles etching deep enough to run a finger through.
My fingers actually twitched at that idea.
"This gonna be a problem?" he asked.
The only thing worse than having an odd surge of attraction to this man was him catching me ogling him.
Ogling.
Oh, holy hell.
"Is what going to be a problem?" I asked, hoping for unaffected, pretty sure I had pulled it off. I was getting good at something that hadn't ever been my forte before. Lying. Pretending. Putting on a show. Whichever phrase felt more comfortable on any given day.
"Guess not," he said, shrugging as he pulled up the blanket, making the cool air wash over me.
I turned right at that moment, rolling onto my side to face the window, praying he didn't see the shiver and - God forbid - misinterpret it.
Just a year, I reminded myself.
It was just a year.
Oddly, as I drifted off, I had the strangest, most impossible thought.
Maybe he would grow on me.
"Just cock your hip a little more to the left," the photographer barked out his orders in the somewhat brisk, though not unfriendly way he'd been doing for ages already.
I couldn't imagine that my hip cocked to the left instead of the right like it was right now would make all that much of a difference. But seeing as he was the professional, I was going to ignore the ache in my feet and the little trickle of sweat sliding down my spine because the studio was way too damn hot considering they totally had working air conditioning.
I was just grumpy.
I had fitful sleep, tossing and turning in a way that generally wasn't my habit. I whacked into the pillow barrier several times, waking up in almost a panic, heart thudding, stomach sinking, at the idea of crossing that border.
When I had finally fully passed out, I had woken up just three hours later completely cuddling the damn barrier wall like a lover, leg and arm cocked up over it, head dead to the center. The blankets were tangled around my calves, leaving my legs bare up to the very short hem of my shorts.
The only good thing about it was Warren seemed long gone already, likely out taking an early morning stroll down the pier or something.
I had showered again, gotten dressed, but left my hair and face alone, knowing someone else would only have to wash off whatever I put on or undo what I did once we got to the studio.
By the time I went downstairs, Warren was back with coffee made and some sliced fruit waiting.
Sliced fruit.
That was all I had eaten all day.
And it was nearing four in the afternoon.
So on top of the heat of the room, and my lack of sleep, I was starving as well.
I just wanted to be done.
But every time the photographer would take a break to scroll through the pictures, he would declare Not quite yet.
For almost six hours.
Six hours.
Of posing.
One moment, I was on a ladder, waving out a ruler like I was dictating what Warren did. The next, he was on the ladder, and I was pretending to try to knock him off. Then when he thought those were too campy, he had us actually pretend to be looking over plans or doing pretend fixing of the half-painted room he had us in with debris scattered around to attempt to make it look like an actual work site.
Too stock image looking.
That was the last feedback we had gotten.
I was in the middle of trying to work a knot out of my right shoulder with my left hand when Vander - the photographer - declared a little loudly, "There. Hold still, Brin. Warren, give her a kiss. On the temple."
A kiss?
No.
No kisses.
But, really, I couldn't say that.
It was a miracle he hadn't demanded a full-on makeout session yet.
So I stood still.
And Warren's lips pressed into my temple.
That was when another weird thing happened.
A tingle.
A freaking tingle.
But, no.
It couldn't have been a tingle.
I mean unless it was the start of an allergic reaction.
That would totally make sense.
"Seems too staged," Vander sighed. "How about we bring in that doorframe thing again," he suggested to his assistant as she moved to jump up and push the thing back, making Warren - ever the gentleman thanks to his grandfather, even if he hated having to be so toward me - rush to help her put the door we had pretended to paint earlier back into the space. "What about... I don't know... open the door from behind, lean out with smiles. Like you are welcoming someone into the work site."
Warren and I moved behind me, as I took a deep breath, so I could force out another smile I didn't feel.
Then we leaned out, Warren towering over me, smiles plastered on our faces.
He clicked.
"That's the one," he declared, nodding. "Let me just double-check," he said, flipping through. "Yeah, that's i
t. I've worked with Rachel and Mica before, they will love this. They can even put the show title on the door. It's perfect. Thank you, you two. You were good sports."
"Do you need anything else from us?" Warren asked, those being the first words I had heard from him since he asked if I was ready to hit the road that morning. "If I don't get something in her stomach soon, I think she's gonna go ahead and chew my head off. And, for a change, I don't think figuratively."
To that, Vander chuckled, clearly charmed. "No. I think we are all set for now. Sometimes they will call me back in mid-season or something if they need something specific from you two, but that is rare."
We said our thank yous and goodbyes before heading back outside.
"I never thought a model's job was hard before," I said as soon as we were in the truck. "But I am sore everywhere. And I wasn't in heels or anything," I added as he cranked up the air, blasting us with disgusting heat for a long moment before the AC kicked in.
To that, he made some grunting noise. "Want to go eat somewhere, or make something at home?"
At home.
My body stiffened at those words.
They sounded odd.
They implied things.
Like our home.
But the thing was... it was our home. For the time being. For a year. We lived there. Together. Our and we were words I would have to get used to hearing. And saying. Because they were accurate. Even if they made me feel weird inside at hearing them, let alone attempting to say them myself.
"Home," I said without having to give it much thought. Six hours was long enough to pretend, to be pleasant, to be all smiles. I wanted some privacy so I could grumble and stuff my face and relax in a tub without anyone maybe seeing and interpreting a look I sent Warren the wrong way.
"You think you're ready to work together again?" he asked much later that night as we both stood on the balcony, watching the street below as people made their way toward the town to do all the fun things that came along with a beach town vacation - eating, drinking, dancing, shopping. Ice cream eating.
I turned my head, giving him a long look.
"Yeah, I think we've got this."
I was wrong.
I was so, so wrong.
SIX
Warren
You learn a lot by living with someone.
It wasn't a situation I had been in the position to know about. At least not since I was a child. And then it didn't count.
Things had simply never progressed that far when I was with a woman. Hell, who was I kidding? It never even got far enough to clear out a dresser drawer, let alone think about cohabitation.
It wasn't something Brin was unfamiliar with though. She never spoke of her roommate, but I knew she had lived with him since she got out of school, had been friends with him since they were kids. But that was about it.
So she was used to it, the ebbs and flows of someone else's cycles, moving around someone without getting in their way - or on their nerves.
Having no such experience myself, I found I got in her way, in her hair, and on her nerves.
To be fair, her nerves were like rayon or velcro - everything got on it.
She recognized it a lot of the time, though. Whereas it definitely felt amplified in a home environment as opposed to simply a few hours a week on a job site, she was also more likely to point out that she was grumpy, tired, frustrated, or hangry, and apologize for being so short-tempered.
It's my mother's blood in me, I swear, she told me one night after dinner when she'd snapped at me for suggesting she take a walk before bed since she was clearly having trouble sleeping at night. And, well, it was making her grumpy. Yes, I said grumpy when we all know what she was really being.
She'd assured me back at my house that she was an early riser, that she was used to getting by with very little sleep. So I wasn't quiet at first when I got up, moved around making food or smoothies. Until I noticed her getting up bleary-eyed and moody.
I don't know if it was because everything was unfamiliar - new bedding, new mattress, new sights and sounds - or because of me, but her sleep schedule wasn't what it used to be.
Rings formed under her eyes after two days.
She started to mainline coffee on the third, even skipping the sweet shit she usually put in it out of necessity and desperation while we toured the first home with cameras watching our every move, catching every nuance of facial expression or tone of voice as we made general observations about the extent of damage there, what could and could not be fixed, what architectural bits we could save.
To her credit, she stayed on-point when we were on the job, mustering up energy and enthusiasm I knew she didn't feel, so I did my best to try to be more talkative, take the weight of conversation off of her even though it wasn't exactly my nature. If she was trying, the least I could do was put some effort in as well. I needed this just as much as she did. More, really. If you thought about it, much more was riding on this for me.
She would find her way. Whether we got this show or not, she'd have found her way, gotten her name out there. She was good. She hustled. It was inevitable.
But me?
Had I not found this opportunity that would give me what I needed to be able to put an offer in on the farm, I would have lost it. I knew that. There was simply no other way. No bank would loan me the full amount I would need to buy it off. But a couple hundred k after a hefty downpayment thanks to the sale of my current house and the money from the show? That wouldn't be a problem.
And that farm meant everything.
So when she put shit down, I had to pick it up.
That was how this had to work.
That was how every partnership worked.
And that was exactly what this was.
A partnership.
A business arrangement.
An odd one? Sure. One built on a giant lie that we had to protect? Yeah.
But we would make it happen.
We both had reasons to.
Even when she couldn't seem to bite her tongue.
I tried to bite mine.
Or say nothing.
Never let it escalate.
That way, it wouldn't seep into the work aspect of things.
That was, of course, until the arguments - inevitably, it would seem - started to be about work.
"No," she said, tone clipped, arms crossed, jaw tense.
That was her serious stance.
"Yes," I countered, waving a hand out toward the space that had been a perfectly nice kitchen at some point. But since the roof caved, was a space that needed to be completely gutted and rebuilt. We'd actually found a family of opossum there the day before, much to the delight of the filming crew who thought audiences would get a kick out of the little babies.
They're so ugly they're cute, they'd insisted as they called animal control to have them relocated.
"Absolutely not. It won't fit the house."
"What house, Brin?" I countered, remembering to smile, remembering we were supposed to not just tolerate each other. "There's barely anything left. We can go a different way if we want to."
"Modern doesn't fit," she shot back, waving toward the windows where we were surrounded with coastal houses, all blues and whites and tans, melting into the landscape beautifully.
"Neither does a Victorian when we are going to have to lift it anyway."
She knew I was right.
A lifted Victorian would look laughable at this point.
"What's the point of restoring something if all we are doing is rebuilding it?" she asked, shaking her head. "Why not call a spade a spade? We aren't bringing this back to its old glory. We are creating something completely new."
"You need some coffee? One of the sandwiches in the break room?"
"Oh, my God. Not everything I say is because I'm hungry," she told me, the words tight and airless, like she was barely holding onto her tongue. "This is about the plans. And the fact that I don't like them."
We were being filmed, of course. We were always being filmed. Even when we were standing around sketching, the cameras were rolling, looking for some hidden gem of a moment they could catch and use in promos or something.
They had us on camera talking about the damn weather this morning and how it had made Brin's hair 'wild,' though to me it didn't look any different than usual. I swear if one hair was out of place on her head, she thought it was unruly.
"If I moved this," I said, pointing down at the plans, "would you like it better?"
"I think I would like it better if you burned it and started again," she suggested with a saccharine smile that had the lighting guys in the corner smirking.
"Someone get this woman a sandwich," I called to the crew. "And a valium," I added, smiling when she slammed her palm into my shoulder. "Maybe a couple shots," I went on, watching as some of the tension finally left her face, her lips curving ever so slightly.
"Alright. Fine. We can talk about it over some food," she agreed, taking the first deep breath I had seen all day.
"What's going on with you?" I asked, not realizing it was too blunt until her head swiveled, eyes piercing into me. "You're tense, Brin. You've got to feel it too."
"We fought all the time when we worked on the last job," she insisted as we climbed in the car.
"Yeah, but this is different. You were light with everyone else, joking, smiling. You're wound like a clock now. Every minute of the day."
"It's nerve-racking," she admitted, sinking back into her seat.
The tension left her like a wave, washing through her from the tip of her head down to her feet, every inch of her body softening.
"What is?"
"Lying," she admitted, shaking her head as she looked at me. "I can fake pleasantries. I have trained for that. But I am not, by nature, a liar. I am terrified every moment of every day of slipping up, of doing or saying the wrong thing, of not seeming into you."
Because she wasn't.
Oddly, there was an unexpected gut-punch sensation at that realization.
Fix It Up Page 8
