by Natasha Deen
In the Helph household, the term “walk” was more than a four-letter word. It was taboo—like swearing in church, lying to a judge, or wearing white after Labour Day. No one spoke it—few dared spell it, for the simple reason that “walk” was the vocal version of doggy cocaine. One utterance, whispered or spoken, would send Caleb into sheltie frenzies of ecstasy, delight and excitement. He would bark, twirl—he was even known to do a mambo shuffle, complete with hip wiggles and arabesques.
Though Nessie had petted him throughout the conversation, and Caleb lay on his stomach, legs splayed in the air and a viscous line of drool leading from his jaw to the floor, the word “walk” had a Lazarus effect. He twisted, turned, exploded to his feet, and canine skull collided with human forehead.
The speed of a thirty-five-pound dog traveling at “Oh-My-God!-A-Walk!” velocity sent Nessie crashing back. Her head smashed into the drywall, the pain enough to make her forget the throbbing in her forehead. She blinked, bright multi-coloured lights dancing around her head as a conga band drummed a jungle beat at her temples.
Through the haze of pain and fog, she saw Nina rush to her side. The cool feel of her sister’s hand against her temple dispelled some of the ache, but Nessie still felt as though she’d been on the wrong end of a locomotive.
“Darling, go lie down. I’ll bring you up some aspirin and a cold wash cloth.” Nina hooked Nessie’s arms around her shoulders. With a strength that ensured the highest marks at the FBI agent physical testing and belied her fragile frame, Nina hauled her sister to her feet.
“What about Caleb?” Nessie’s voice sounded muffled, as though she spoke with a mouthful of cotton.
“I’ll take care of him.”
“Oh, okay.” Staggering around the dancing sheltie—who was in the middle of a rumba—Nessie stumbled up the stairs and to her room, where a queen bed held thick pillows, even thicker duvets, and no frantic dogs or evil supervisors.
****
At precisely six o’clock in the morning on the following day, Nessie entered the bathroom, flipped on the light, looked in the mirror, and screamed. It wasn’t the average scream, prompted by the sight of what fluorescent lighting and restless dreams could do to a person. This howl of desperation and disbelief, so high and keening that even banshees would flee in terror, was the result of seeing what a solid hit from a sheltie’s head could do to the blood vessels around the human eyes.
“I’ve got two black eyes!” Nessie wailed like an ambulance siren, though she needn’t have bothered with the emergency-level volume. Before she could finish the final hiss of “eyes” she felt Nina’s presence at her side. Through puffed, swollen eyes she discerned her sister staring back at her via the mirror’s reflection. Nina put a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide and full of horrified empathy.
“It’s…it’s not so bad,” she whispered, then fell silent at her sister’s disbelieving glare. “All right, so it’s bad. On the bright side—”
“Yes?” She drew the question out, turning a one-syllable word into five syllables’ worth of challenge.
“The purple and indigo colors really bring out the hazel flecks in your eyes.”
Nessie groaned, then tried to pry her eyes open further, but they remained resistant to silent pleas for cooperation.
She leaned in until she was mere inches from the mirror and stared at her reflection. The skin around her eyes had the mottled, puffy look of a cadaver left in the river for days, and it would take her entire bottle of foundation to hide the abstract of broken blood vessels and bloated flesh.
She took a deep, steadying breath, but her insides continued to dip and dive. “Okay, Plan A: avoid all contact with people. That shouldn’t be too hard, considering Grace’s outburst in the cafeteria. I’ll be persona non grata for the next few days.” She stared pensively at her eyes, hoping that some of the swelling had gone down in the last fifteen seconds. No such luck. “I don’t figure I’ll need a Plan B…although I should come up with a better story for this injury than that my dog decked me.”
“That’s the truth, though.”
“No way. It’ll put Caleb in a bad light. I don’t want people thinking my dog is a ne’er-do-well and violent.”
Nina’s wind-chime laugh tinkled off the tiled walls. “Only you would put your dog’s reputation ahead of your pride. Come on, hop in the shower, and I’ll make you some oatmeal. Then we’ll get you fixed up.”
****
Leo Schumacher had many abilities, talents and actions. He could walk, stride, jog—hell, he could even skip and frolic, if the mood took him. But he never skulked, slithered or slunk. Nor did he engage in any of skulk, slither and slunk’s sister activities. So what prompted him, at seven fifty-five in the morning, to creep into the Ladies Casual Design Department with the mindset of a secret agent but none of his panache or grace?
Leo’s palms sweated, his heart raced, and his brain screamed, “You own this company—walk in here like a man, damn it! At least stop hunching over like Quasimodo with a backache!” Try as he might, however, he couldn’t do it. True, he did own the company and all the furniture, design ideas and office supplies in the building, but he wasn’t here for business reasons, and that truth prompted the overproduction of adrenaline and testosterone.
So what drew him into the bowels of the department, with its soul-sucking dark walls and dim lighting? A woman. The woman; the one who proved the Schumacher Love At First Sight Guide to Marriage to be more than a legend told at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Vanessa Helph.
She should come with a sign that said, “Warning. Deep curves ahead” or perhaps “Watch for falling inhibitions.” One look at her, and all the Schumacher indications of forever love hit: dry mouth, loss of appetite, nausea, sharp pains in the left side and chest, and blurred vision. Thank God he’d listened to all those stories told over turkey and stuffing, or else he would have checked himself into the nearest hospital for a thorough battery of tests.
He crept closer to her cubicle, cursing Grace’s labyrinthine setup of cubicles and potted plants. A creak, a snap, and Leo dived for cover—right into a cactus. To the utter relief of his appendages and exposed skin, the needles of the fake plant proved to be made from a hard but harmless type of rubber. Rather than impaling himself on the plant, he got a few hard jabs in the rib and face, as though the cactus, like his brain, questioned this impetuous, rash side of his personality. They weren’t the only ones wondering how he’d lost his mind.
In his thirty-three years of life, Leo had proven one thing to himself: he was incapable of spontaneous, impulsive action. He was a thinker, a planner. Leo didn’t just look before he leapt, he weighed, measured and brought in a survey team. Then, perhaps, he’d hop or jump. God forbid that he leap. Yet, here he was, his arms wrapped around a dusty, rubber cactus which hugged him back with the ferocity of an arduous suitor. And for what? The moment he could trespass into a cubicle because—dear God, he could hardly admit it—he missed the scent of Nessie’s perfume.
The hum of the furnace reached his ears as a draft of hot air ruffled his hair; its drone sounded too much like an indulgent chuckle. For the first time grateful for the dim light because it hid his reddened face, he channelled his usual confidence and strode to Nessie’s cubicle, where his bravado promptly deserted him at the doorway.
Photos covered the grey walls of her cubicle, though in the darkened room he couldn’t make out anything more than their white borders. On the sides of the computer monitor, sticky notes fanned out like paper wings, while filing shelves rested flush against the walls, patiently awaiting her return. He sat in her chair and, since it was set to her diminutive height, it drove his knees to his chest. Not that he cared. She sat here. Her body warmed this—what the hell did she sit on? He ran his hands over the nubbed, ripped fabric and made a mental note to look over the state of office equipment in Grace’s department. Leo suspected an inspection would find her desk and chair in pristine condition, her subordinates’ po
ssessions in desperate need of furniture euthanasia.
He took a deep breath, then another. No scent of orange blossoms, almonds or vanilla. In the dark, unfathomable recesses of his brain he knew he wouldn’t be able to smell her perfume. It was too light and delicate. And this acknowledgement forced another confession. He’d come to her office just to be in a place that she frequented. Maybe it wasn’t too late to get himself to a hospital—he’d just have to make sure it was the psych ward rather than the intensive care unit.
But since he was already here and still had an hour before employees arrived…
He adjusted the chair so his knees no longer knocked against his shoulders, then flipped on the desk lamp. White light, pure and brilliant, momentarily blinded him. Daylight having been captured by the geniuses at the utility company and now illuminating his environment, Leo—to his great disgust—descended further into rash madness and began to look around the cubicle, hoping to discern a nugget of her true personality, a shared commonality that he could mine and from it smith a relationship.
Why couldn’t he just talk to her like a human being? Oh, right. Because the very sight of her turned his mind into a desert, stripped and barren of any intelligent thought, and sent his heart skittering across the dusty moors.
Relegated to a D-rated Sherlock Holmes, he stared at the photos and sticky notes and gleaned the following: she had a close relationship with her sister, liked organization, and—judging from the contents in the wastebasket—was either extraordinarily fond of brownies or sought to be the cause of their annihilation from earth. He chuffed with irritation. Such paltry clues. Holmes would not only smack him but take away his pipe and cape, then beat him with said accessories.
Leo sighed, the deep, desolate exhalation of a man who knew love had turned him into a lunatic. He turned his attention back to the notes and discovered that Nessie dotted her “i”s with circles. Leo found this oddly endearing and, coupled with her jaunty “y”s, he added this to his list of why he had to marry Vanessa Helph. He felt a prickle along the back of his neck. The phantom scent of orange blossoms tickled past his nose.
Then he heard Nessie clear her throat.
Faced with a situation he had never before encountered, Leo did the only thing possible. He took a page from Nessie’s book and imitated a statue. Then he urged his heart to stop racing and intelligent thought to rain down and quench his parched mind.
“Sir? Can I help you?”
Oh, that he could voice all the ways she could help him. He saw the rough reflection of her in the black screen of the computer and, when he could no longer keep his back to her, he turned and saw that she wore dark sunglasses. The urge to ask, “Why are you wearing sunglasses in a room with dark purple walls and amorous cacti?” was superseded by the question, “How did you manage to navigate through the maze while wearing sunglasses?” Leo, however, held his tongue, because past experience told him that to question Vanessa was both delirious and dangerous. He could no more predict what would emerge from those bee-stung pink lips than he could guarantee a life with her next to him.
“Good morning, Nessie.”
“Did you need something from me?”
“What would you like to give me?” Damn. Hell. He’d leapt and landed in asphalt. His voice had dropped two octaves with the question, and he would bet it was because of the Vanessa fantasies which kept him awake at night.
Her head tilted down and though he couldn’t see her eyes for the dark lenses covering them, he knew she wasn’t staring at his face…or his chest. Necessity dictated that he stand. Right now. His gaze was level with her luscious, kissable, lickable, suckable—and therein lay the second reason to stand. His penis didn’t seem to understand that while it was all right to dream and fantasize about her, it wasn’t all right to show that he was thinking about her. Even if she was delectable. And delicious. And—he pulled to mind the unfortunate time when he was thirteen and had walked in on his sister and her boyfriend in flagrante delicto. His blood temperature receding from lava-esque levels, he said, “Nessie, I asked you a question.”
“What do you want me to give you?”
He leaned against the desk because his legs had given out at her open-ended question, and he crossed his arms in front of his chest before his booming heart crashed through his ribs. “I’m afraid we’re repeating ourselves. I hate to think we’ve run out of things to say to each other so early in our relationship.”
She froze. “What relationship?”
See? his brain goaded him, this is why you bring in the survey team before leaping. “Don’t we have a business relationship?” he asked, hoping she would argue that their kiss had put them on an entirely different level.
To his utter disappointment, her shoulders dropped with relief. As soon as they descended, however, they hiked themselves back to her earlobes. “How long will this relationship last?”
Dangerous. Delirious. He saw the flashing hazards, knew he should detour, but talking to Nessie gave him a delicious, bubbly feeling—even though, most of the time, he felt positive that the effervescence would float him into oblivion.
“How long do you want it to last?”
“Why are you answering all my questions with questions?”
“Why are you?”
“Because I don’t have the courage to ask the question most in need of asking.”
“And what question would that be?”
A sigh of exasperation greeted his question.
“Ah, of course, you lack the fortitude to ask it.”
A nod answered him. With the sunglasses still perched on her pert nose and her arms folded in front of her, she looked like a cross between a fairy princess and an FBI agent for the President.
“Nessie. At eight in the morning on a fall day, has the sun already proven itself too bright for unprotected eyes?”
Nessie fumbled with the sunglasses, taking them from off her eyes and tucking them in a drawer furthest from Leo, and keeping her face averted from him. Her furtiveness stoked his curiosity.
“I’m going to put my lunch in the fridge,” she said. Nessie turned, her plaid skirt flowing in an arc around her legs.
“Look at me.” He spoke with soft tones, but the command in his voice, unbidden and borne from years of management, reverberated through the words. Her shoulders slumped and with a sigh heavier than a two-ton truck, she did as commanded.
He gripped the edge of the desk to prevent himself from rushing to her side. Anxiety plucked a staccato rhythm on the strings of his heart. “Ah, I see the necessity for the sunglasses now.” Worry made his voice into an emotionless monotone.
Silence.
“Vanessa, why do you have two black eyes?”
“Broken blood vessels and other fluids pool around the eye area, giving it the dark discoloration.”
He swallowed a sharp retort. “Let me be more specific. What incident caused your injury?”
She said nothing and so he did the only thing possible.
He rose and went to her.
****
Though she had thought she would be the only one at V & V this early in the morning, the man uncurling from his seated position with a panther’s grace, and advancing towards her with the stalking sleekness of the dark cat, proved her wrong. The urge to run flashed across her consciousness, but it came and went as fast as a lightning bolt. Pouring steel into her spine, forcing her shoulders back, she adopted an expression of casual disregard.
If Nessie had steel keeping her back straight, then Leo had titanium. He came at her, erect, rigid, his hands curled into tight fists at his side. His eyes glittered like freshly fallen snow; the hunter’s look in them gave the irises a shine that frozen water never could.
“Who did this to you?”
“I—” She sighed. “My dog—but it was an accident! He’s a sweet dog, I promise.”
An arched eyebrow spoke his surprise, and the hunter’s look in his eyes dimmed but didn’t extinguish.
�
��I’m telling the truth. Our heads collided last night when I mentioned the word ‘walk.’”
His fingers threaded into her hair; gentle force tilted her head back. She slid along the precipice of nonchalance and seduction, then dived over the edge and into the glowing warmth of his eyes, their endless, deep pools pulling her under with the force of a riptide.
“Promise me that this was an accident,” he rumbled, “that no one laid their hands on you.”
“I promise.” Still swimming in the heated ocean of his gaze, her words came out in a husky gasp.
“Does it hurt?”
Rendered mute by his proximity, she could only shake her head.
He took her hand and led her out of the cubicle, into the elevator, and into his private bathroom. Scooping her up as though she was lighter than air, he set her on the marble sink countertop. Then he took a slate grey towel and wet it.
“Your foundation is too dark for your skin tone,” he told her as he used the fluffy hand cloth to wipe away the makeup with soft, gentle strokes. “It brings more attention to your injury.”
“That’s what Nina said.”
“Smart woman.”
The feel of his hands against her skin touched her soul with soft, silken threads. He epitomized smooth, warm and strong. She closed her eyes, and each gentle swipe of the thick towel, temperate from the hot water, erased the headache that hammered against her temples. The heat from Leo’s body left her feeling languid. Her limbs grew heavy, as though she’d drunk warm brandy and now the golden notes of the drink relaxed every molecule in her body. Too soon, his ministrations ceased. The cold air stole her dreams and brought her back to reality.
She opened her eyes and saw that he watched her. Leo nodded towards the mirror. “I think I got most of it off.”
She turned, looked and agreed, though she said, “Now I have no cover, and I’ll be pestered with questions.”
“I’ll make sure you’re left alone.”
“How?”
“Leave it to me. As for the foundation—” He knelt by her feet and opened the bottom drawer. Pulling out a small glass container, he said, “I think you’ll find this shade better suits you.”
