Most Eligible Bastard: an enemies-to-lovers romantic comedy

by Annika Martin

  I don’t care what’s real or not.

  I’m all-in.

  I drop to my knees, gazing up at him. I fit my hand over his bulge and give it a small squeeze.

  “Jesus.” He tunnels both hands into my hair, half ripping it out of the ponytail holder.

  With shaking hands I undo his belt. He takes over, quickly undoing it. “Leave it to the professionals,” he says.

  And then he touches my chin. I think he’s about to explode, but he touches my chin. Like he kind of can’t believe I’m in front of him.

  I love his eyes on me. I love the sunshine of his gaze. I usually prefer the shadows, but Henry’s breaking all the rules.

  I pull him out; he’s big, broad, and club-like, pink at the tip. Soft as silk.

  Watching him from underneath my lashes, I give him a lick.

  He stutters out a breath. “Do you know how hot that is?”

  So I do it again. I really will give him anything.

  I turn my attention to his cock in earnest. I take him into my mouth, squeezing him at the root. A pained sound escapes him. Fingers close over my head. He starts to thrust gently into me, guiding my head but not forcing it.

  A triangle of his belly is exposed and it pulses in and out, like he’s breathing double-time.

  I squeeze the warm, velvety base of him. I take him deep.

  His fingertips pulse and curl at my scalp with every thrust, like his excruciating pleasure is coming out his fingers. I sneak a look at him standing over me, broken and beautiful.

  And then I give him a little teeth, just a graze at the bottom. “Holy shit,” he says.

  He clamps his hand onto my head and takes over the motion, fucking my face, coming with a strangled cry.

  After he pulls out, he kneels in front of me. “Holy shit,” he whispers.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  He traces my lips with his finger. “It was more. How you were was more than I imagined. You’re always more.”

  I put my camisole’s bra cups back over my breasts. He starts buttoning up my buttons. Clumsily.

  “The professionals,” I say, taking over.

  He stands, tucking in his shirt. “Gotta get you cleaned up.” We get ourselves together and drift over to the elevator.

  Nineteen

  Vicky

  I stab the makeshift button, feeling dazed. Stab stab.

  “Hey,” he says.

  A grinding sound comes from below. Like the elevator didn’t get the message.

  Stab stab stab.

  “Don’t do that,” he catches my wrist. “You’ll burn out the winch starter.”

  “Somebody is quite the micromanager,” I say.

  He kisses my fingers.

  The little cage arrives with a strange whirring sound and I get in, and then he gets in and hits the down button. The elevator lurches and begins to lower. It sounds funny. Different than before.

  Just then, a motor below makes a grinding, screeching sound.

  “Shit,” he says.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “We’re okay,” he says, but the cage we’re in grinds to a stop. The motor falls silent. The light flickers out.

  We’re in the darkness. Deep in a well.

  “No!” I whisper, turning and clutching the cage side. “No…”

  “We’re okay. There’re safety cables all up and down this.” A light flashes on—Henry’s phone. He’s talking to somebody, trying to work out what floor we’re near.

  I slide to the cold, corrugated floor, arms around my legs, back against the chain-link cage. I’m in that well again, that well where I spent three lonely, terrified days.

  Breathe. Breathe.

  You’re not there.

  “Vicky?”

  Breathe. Breathe.

  He squats next to me. Gently, he settles his hardhat onto my head.

  “Okay, that just makes me think we’re going to crash headfirst,” I say. “Or something is going to crash on top of us.”

  “None of the above,” he says, adjusting it to fit my head. “I’m only putting it on you because I know I’d lose points off the manliness portion of the New York’s Most Eligible Bastard competition if people knew I was hogging the only hardhat in a situation like this.”

  “Fuck,” I say.

  “Here’s my thinking.” He settles in next to me. “We know I can win the swimsuit part of the Most Eligible Bastard competition. And I have the name memorization bit nailed. But as you can imagine, the manliness portion is extremely important to me.”

  Hammers and voices ring up from below.

  “You can smell me if you want.”

  “I’m so not smelling you.”

  He checks his phone, then puts it down in a way that lights the area in front of us. That helps, too. “My guys are down there working on the machinery. It’s a simple winch starter issue…”

  “A winch starter issue,” I say. “Like what? Tell me.”

  “You want to hear about the winch issue?”

  “Did I burn it out like you said I would? Wait, don’t answer that. Just tell me about winches.” I hate how tiny and scared my voice is. I really just need him to be talking. “Start at the beginning. The history of winches.”

  “Are you being sarcastic?”

  I press my fingers to my forehead, feeling so messed up and hating the silence. “I’m being sarcastic, but also I want you to.”

  He seems thoughtful in the silence. He takes my hand, warm and cozy in his. “I have something better to tell. My secret.”

  “You have a secret?”

  “How I do the names.”

  I look up at the outline of his head in the dark. “How?”

  “I took a class in memorization techniques. You can’t say anything. I don’t ever want our employees to feel like a number.”

  “You took a class? That’s commitment.”

  “It means a lot to people, and as the company grew, it got harder and harder. So I took the class. I know it sounds a little intense, but people…they see me in a certain way, and I don’t like to let them down.”

  “Wow,” I say. “You make it look so easy. You make it look so easy to be you.”

  He huffs out a quiet little laugh. Shifts my hand in his. “Anyway, everybody gets a special visualization location. If somebody is named Mike, I imagine him on a stage singing with a microphone. Clarence is in an orchestra playing a clarinet. Dirk is in dirt.”

  “What about Fernando?”

  “Are you serious? ABBA.”

  “Like it’s so obvious.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “What did you use for me?”

  “I’m not telling.” I hear the smile in his voice.

  I widen my eyes. “Come on. No.”

  “Sorry.”

  Playfully, I shove at his shoulder. I kiss his cheek. I nip his earlobe. “Please,” I beg.

  “Nope.”

  “Hmmph. Well I’ve got one for you, Henry. For the name Henry. And you won’t like it.”

  He says nothing.

  “You won’t like it. Not. At. All,” I add. Then it hits me. “There are thousands of employees! You remember all their names?”

  “Only the local ones.”

  “That’s more than a thousand,” I say. “That’s…intense.”

  “Once I started it, I felt like I had to keep it up.” A thread of weariness winds through his words. He makes it look easy to be him. Doesn’t mean it is.

  More hammering from below. “How long until we’re out?”

  “I don’t know. Between ten minutes and an hour.”

  “Uh.” I pull into myself more tightly, my limbs finding the old familiar grooves with each other. I feel like I’m falling, falling, back into that well.

  “Are you claustrophobic?”

  I pull my legs tighter. I should answer, but I want him to talk, not me.

  “You seemed okay in the many elevators we’ve been traveling,” he says.

  “It’s b
ecause this shaft feels like a well. The unfinished sides, the light above.”

  “Oh.” A beat, then, “Do you have…history with a well?”

  “I fell in one,” I say. “When I was younger. They didn’t find me for a pretty long time, and I was just terrified out of my mind.”

  “How long?”

  I’m about to say three days, but that’s the kind of thing that gets reported in the news. “Long enough,” I say. “I felt like I’d fallen off the face of the earth. But most of all, it was terrifying. I was scared of the dark to start with. And you don’t know how dark the bottom of a well is—you have no idea. I thought I’d never get out. People couldn’t find me. And there are slugs, and it’s just…” I shudder. “It was a long time in there.”

  He slides his arm around my shoulders. “This isn’t a well.”

  “I know,” I say. “But I kind of don’t know.”

  He pulls me close. I find myself leaning into him.

  “It would be scary,” he says. “Alone. Not sure if you’d be found.”

  “Yeah,” I say. Not sure if you’d be found by the right people, anyway.

  He pulls his phone out and whips off a quick text, then clicks off. A few moments later, the shaft is flooded with light from the bottom.

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Is that better? Less well-like?”

  “Thanks. It is better.”

  “You got out of that well, Vicky.”

  “I got out. And grew up to be a dog whisperer slash captain of industry,” I add. He says nothing. It’s a stupid joke. “I’m sorry. I’m just messed up right now.”

  Bangs and drills sound from below.

  “It’s hard to be powerless like that.”

  “It’s more about the fear,” I say. “Did you ever have that fear of footsteps in the dark? And then you get to the warmth and light of safety and it’s such a relief. But in the well, it was like the footsteps never stopped. Hour after hour, the terror kept grinding on. It took everything out of me. Fear is exhausting. Little-known fact.”

  “How long were you in it?”

  “Can we talk about something else?”

  “I'm sorry that happened to you,” he says.

  “Something. Else.”

  He sighs. “You know that model we fixed together? With the trees? And I wouldn’t tell you why it was important to fix it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, well, now I’m telling you. There’s this guy, Renaldo, he’s the one who made it. He eighty-five, one of the oldest guys in all of Locke. He helped my grandfather and father build the company, and he definitely has enough money to retire, but building is his life. Those models take him forever to make, but Brett and I feel like it keeps him alive. And if he saw the thing destroyed…he’d be crushed.”

  “You seemed mad.”

  “Well, who’s leaving their bevs all over the model? Right? Anyway, he was kind of an uncle to Brett and me. As my dad got too busy to deal with us, Renaldo was the one who’d take us around, make us learn the ropes with the trades. Brett and I would go and do our homework at that place, and if we finished in time, Renaldo would give us little assignments. Make a five-inch bridge out of ten toothpicks and a piece of string, stuff like that. And there would be a test, like the bridge would have to extend between blocks spaced five inches apart and be able to support a stack of ten quarters.”

  “A bridge made out of just a piece of string and toothpicks? How is that possible?”

  “You’d be surprised what you can make from a piece of string and toothpicks. It’s excellent building material.”

  “Maybe this is the part where you reassure me that even though it’s excellent building material, you went on to use more durable materials in the construction of things like freight elevators in boutique hotels.”

  He turns to me there in the strangely lit shaft. “This thing’s solid steel, baby.”

  I suppress a smile, because of course it sounds slightly sexy. “So you keep Renaldo on staff. That’s sweet.”

  “He gave us an amazing education. He’s a master builder—literally.”

  It comes to me that he didn’t mention his mother. As if she wasn’t in the picture. “Did you mom help out with the company?”

  “No.” He pulls out his phone. I don’t press him on it. I’m not exactly the mother relationship queen myself.

  “I want to tell you something and have you hear me on it. Trust me on it.” I need to tell him without violating my pact with Carly.

  “Yeah?” He slides his hand along mine.

  “Your mother handed over the company to Smuckers.” That’s not violating our pact, right? It’s a true fact. Light beams up from below, peeking through slits in the metal. “Things…tend to work themselves out. When something belongs to somebody, it tends to find them.”

  “What does that mean?” He watches my face with intense interest. “Is Smuckers giving back the company? Is there something in the will that reverts it?”

  I shake my head. “Things work out, don’t you find?”

  “You can’t say more?”

  “I can swear to you that I never had my sights on Locke. I know you have no reason to trust me,” I say. “I know what the evidence makes it look like. What it makes me look like. I'm not that terrible person. It’s not what everyone thinks.”

  My throat feels thick. It’s like the emotion of the last eight years is rushing up all at once, choking me.

  “I want you to believe.” The words rush out of me. “I need you to believe in spite of the evidence.”

  “Hey.” He pulls me onto his lap, holds me tightly. “I believe you.”

  Emotion lurches through me. I’m stunned. Reeling. His arms pull tight around me. “I believe you. I trust you.” He kisses my cheek. “I see you.”

  I swallow. I close my fingers around his arm. His breath warms my cheek.

  And he believes me.

  Contrary to all evidence, he believes me. The world seems full of possibility. Like what’s happening between us could be real. Like maybe things work out for Vonda, too. Like string and toothpicks can make a bridge.

  Clanks and voices ring out from below.

  “Show me one of those bridges,” I say. “I want to see.”

  He’s got his phone and he’s swiping the screen. “Brett sent me this last year. This is before.” He shows me a picture of a tiny bridge with string running as tension wires under the arch of toothpicks. He swipes. “After.” It’s a sad little pile of quarters and toothpick bits.

  “Awwww,” I say.

  “Wait, I might have one of the old successful ones.” He’s flipping through his photo cloud when the elevator lurches back to life.

  I grab onto his arm as it begins an excruciatingly slow descent.

  “Hold up,” he says. “Don’t think I’m letting you out before finding a successful one.” He finally gets it, hands me the phone.

  It’s the bridge—string and toothpicks supporting quarters, but the shot gets his face, and that’s what I love. He’s maybe eleven, crouching behind the table with a shit-eating grin on his face and those dimples in full force. Happy. Proud.

  Eventually, we reach the bottom and the cage door opens to a group of guys in hardhats. They help me out first, all apologies. Henry goes to inspect the motor with them.

  I wander over to the reclaimed junk he wants to incorporate into furniture like it’s something I super need to check out.

  I’m afraid to think it’s real, but I do. My heart pounds like a happy drum. I smile. I shove at the pile with my foot and smile like a madwoman.

  I feel him near. I don’t know why I always feel him.

  I say, “They used to make everything so ornate. Even the most lowly electrical thing was ornately designed. Buildings had pretty flourishes they didn’t need. Why don’t they do it anymore?”

  “We still do,” he says. “Just in a different way.”

  I pick up a piece of grate with a vine pattern.

&
nbsp; “How cool would it be incorporated into a table or seating?” he says.

  I kneel and pick up a metal circle the size of a dinner plate with elaborate edge pattern, trying to get my head straight. It has numbers and a bird logo pounded into it. A patina of scuffs from across the ages.

  I toss it onto the pile and pick up a block of weathered timber with old nails in it and a shiny metal plate the size of a playing card stuck to the side. “I know how to get this made into furniture. More awesome than you can imagine.”

  It’s Latrisha I’m thinking of. This is her jam.

  “Tell me.”

  His eyes lock onto mine and I’m back on that roof, breath coming in shaky tremors, awash in the goodness of him. Still holding my gaze, he tosses it back into the pile. It’s a sexy, confident, fuck-it-all move that I love.

  It’s the kind of thing Vonda would love even more. It’s weird to imagine that, against all odds, he senses that fun, wild Vonda part of me. He trusts her.

  He doesn’t know the most important details of my life or even my real name or hair color, but he knows my Vonda side. And he knows my maker’s heart.

  “You got a truck?”

  He comes to me—slowly. My blood races as he nears. Is he going to kiss me? I would let him kiss me.

  But instead of kissing me, he stops.

  I look up at his gorgeous lips and sparkly golden-brown cheek stubble and enchantingly uneven dimples.

  “Did you just ask Henry fucking Locke if he has a truck?”

  An hour later, we’re rumbling over the Brooklyn Bridge in a heavy-duty diesel pick-up truck with the Locke Worldwide logo on the side.

  It’s loaded with the best stuff from the site, courtesy of the crew that Henry called over. He told me to point out the best bits, then he disappeared.

  He was on the verge of losing the Most Eligible Bachelor’s manliness competition at that point for not helping to load…but then he came back in work clothes—a long-sleeved green T-shirt and jeans and boots and gloves—and he started loading with the guys.

  He went for the heavy stuff, like the hunks of concrete. He sometimes grunted, muscles bulging like melons under the light fabric of the shirt. I tried not to stare too hard as he worked. Or when he’d wipe the dripping sweat off his forehead with his big fucking glove, sometimes leaving smears of dust.