Ten Thousand Hours

by Ren Benton

He stepped into the alley. “For the record, this isn’t for me.”

  “Of course it isn’t.”

  “It’s for my mother.”

  “For the record, that may not be an appropriate thing to give to your mother.”

  “And who were you going to give it to?”

  She inclined her head to let that jab sail past. “I withdraw my objection.”

  The street offered less protection from the midday sun than the narrow alley. Ivy paused to retrieve sunglasses from her bag.

  Her date volunteered, “My mother collects inappropriate items to give her enemies on special occasions.”

  Ivy’s mother displayed them in a curio cabinet in the dining room, but she liked his mom’s style. “I’m stealing that idea for the next gift exchange at work when I’m not thrilled with the name I draw.”

  The ladies at the shop got along well, in general, but occasionally someone butted into an appointment without being asked and stole half a commission, resulting in petty vendettas a driftwood dildo might go a long way toward avenging.

  He fell behind, and she looked over her shoulder to find him holding open the door to a restaurant.

  “By ‘lunch,’ I meant a sandwich.” She pointed her thumb toward a stall near the market square.

  He didn’t spare that venue a passing glance. “I don’t even eat street food at home, where I can see the certificate from the health inspector.”

  Coward. Ivy could recite the menu of every food cart within a mile of her job. “I like to live dangerously.”

  His eyes crinkled again, shielding his vision from either the glaring sun or her glaring lie. “Do you have a name, dangerous lady?”

  He was a stranger. She was a woman, alone, far from home. The physical threat to her well-being was low in a public place, but the risk remained of a mailbox full of brand new, maxed out credit cards if she volunteered too much identifying information.

  Sensible might be boring, but it was also often smart.

  She raised her chin a defiant degree and lied even more extravagantly. “Livinia Dangereuse.”

  The lift of his lips increased correspondingly. “May I call you Liv?”

  She liked the ring of it, as a directive if not a name. “You may. And you are?”

  “Griffin Dunleavy, at your service.”

  Fair enough. They would both use farfetched fictitious names like a couple of conspiracy theorists.

  “Liv, after you’ve employed a phallic object to extort a meal from a strange man, you can safeguard your gastric health without damaging your daredevil status.” When that assurance failed to lure her into the restaurant, he added, “If your heart is set on a sandwich, I’m sure you can cram meat into bread here.”

  She had a deadline to make a decision about her future. Before her stood a reminder of what an ordeal meeting and dating new men could be.

  For the sake of research, she accepted his invitation.

  Ivy knew all the dieting guidelines for eating out. Low-fat protein, grilled or baked. Steamed vegetables. Minimal starch. Above all, never eat the whole jumbo portion.

  But for now, she wasn’t Ivy. She was Livinia Dangereuse, blackmailer of attractive strangers, who never allowed boring old consequences to interfere with her enjoyment of the moment.

  This moment called for the most decadent thing on the menu. So her companion wouldn’t feel neglected during her quest for the maximum oral satisfaction permissible in a public setting, she inquired, “What brings you to the island, Mr. Dunleavy?”

  “Griff,” he corrected. “I’m here for a friend’s wedding.”

  A fellow victim of the inescapable specter of matrimony. That explained her sense of kinship better than their mothers’ perverse taste in knickknacks. “Shouldn’t you be consoling him?”

  Too late, she remembered openly admitting disdain for the proceedings just wasn’t done. “I mean, helping him celebrate this joyous occasion.”

  She peeked over the top of her menu to assess whether he’d noticed her lapse. He leaned against the back of his chair. One arm stretched forward so his hand rested on the table. His fingers were long and callused, and a pale scar slashed across the second knuckle of the one flicking at the edge of his menu. She wasn’t sure he’d even looked at it. Was he waiting for her to order so he could throw money on the table, fulfill his end of the bargain, and then flee the wedding-hating clown? “Do you know what you want?”

  His gaze didn’t waver from hers. “Yes.”

  A clear path to the exit, probably. Oh, well. As long as he didn’t stick her with the check, she couldn’t call him a cheater.

  A different waiter passed by the table carrying a white dish with cheese dripping and browned on the sides. Ivy turned in her chair to watch it pass. “What is that?”

  “Probably the mac and cheese.”

  She raked her menu with accusing eyes. “How did I miss that?”

  “You didn’t look at the appetizer menu.”

  Of course not. Appetizers and desserts were never sensible nutritional decisions.

  Their waiter returned, and Ivy snapped her menu shut. “I’ll have the mac and cheese.”

  “And for your entrée?”

  At her house, the dish that had paraded past would feed four kids after she’d sampled a dozen spoonfuls to test for seasoning she’d gotten right the first time. “Just that, please.”

  Griff ordered the sandwich she would have settled for before temptation beckoned. After the waiter’s departure, he picked up the conversational thread she’d cast off to follow strings of bubbling cheese. “We’re friendly enough that I warrant an invitation, but not so friendly I’m obliged to aid or hinder his escape if he decides to bolt.”

  So she wasn’t the only one who expected one half of every happy couple to succumb to cold feet, change of heart, or vented spleen before completing the deed. “Do you think he will?”

  “I don’t have that kind of insight into the inner workings of Ezra’s mind, but it would give me a better story to tell than ‘I went to another wedding.’”

  She gasped in mock outrage. “The happy couple spent months and thousands of dollars orchestrating a memorable experience for you.”

  “Unless ninjas drop from the rafters in the middle of the ceremony, it will be indistinguishable from the last hundred weddings I’ve attended.”

  The poor man had her beat several times over, if he wasn’t exaggerating. “That’s a lot of weddings.”

  “I’m everybody’s friend.”

  He hadn’t turned on the charm for her, after all — his default setting was let’s hang out. She was enjoying airing her matrimonial grievances too much to mind that she wasn’t special enough to be an exception to his paralyzing introversion. “What I remember most clearly about each wedding is the degree of awfulness of the food.”

  He nodded as if that were perfectly sane. “The best I ever had was takeout pizza.”

  Even the worst pizza beat rubbery chicken. “I always thought the ultimate reception venue would be a sports bar. The theme is prefab, nobody has to dance, and anything breaded and deep fried tastes good.”

  Jared would never agree to that, of course. He would have to impress his business associates with something elegant. Therefore, if she married him, she would have to sacrifice her childish preference in the name of being sensible.

  “If I had a basket of breaded and deep fried anything to look forward to, I would try harder to stay awake during the ceremony.”

  She could easily envision Griff feeding his new wife the first bite of the ceremonial nuptial nachos with those big, rough hands. “You should remain vigilant for the ever-present threat of ninjas. Just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there.”

  The smile that never quite left his lips grew. “Who are you?”

  They had met outside the context of her everyday life. He had no idea she was sensible, responsible, inoffensive.

  Boring.

  She would never see th
is man again. She could pretend to be anything she wanted and not be tripped up by the lie.

  She wanted to be anything but boring. “I’m the duchess of a small central European nation.”

  His lips twitched. “Which one?”

  “Dangereusia.”

  He nodded once. “I’ve seen it on the news. It sounds like a treacherous place.”

  In her mind, her homeland took the shape of Westeros. “Few survive from one season to the next, but for those who do, the lifestyle builds character and quick reflexes.”

  He leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “You’re really not going to tell me anything, are you?”

  She mimicked his posture, lowering her voice as if to confide a deep, dark secret. “I bore myself. I didn’t travel a vast, unspecified distance to this tropical paradise to be bored.”

  In twenty-nine years, he was the first handsome stranger to give her more than a moment’s notice. The odds of finding a second before the end of the day were vanishingly small. Her one shot of escaping the prison of others’ expectations depended on his cooperation.

  Please play along.

  “I came expecting to be bored.”

  His words stabbed a hole into the balloon holding her spirits aloft.

  “You, Duchess, are the first serious setback.”

  And those words breathed into the hole to fill her back up and send her soaring. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  All she had to do to hear it was be someone else.

  3

  After regaling Griff with increasingly absurd tales of duchessing, trading some of her mac and cheese for some of the duck fat pomme frites that accompanied his sandwich, and wishing she could turn back time to a point before she knew how amazing duck fat made French fries so she wouldn’t crave them for the rest of her life, they ended up standing in the street once more.

  The sun had shifted from directly overhead while they ate. The buildings now provided shallow puddles of cooling shade. She stopped in one to say goodbye to her accomplice in flamboyance.

  He raked a hand through his hair. The dark mass immediately fell back into calculated disarray. “What are your dangerous plans for the rest of the day?”

  She ought to brag about skydiving into a hidden grotto and battling pirates for the treasure therein or some equally ridiculous story, but playtime had to end sometime. “More shopping. I’m still lacking a tasteless gift for my mother.”

  “I feel responsible.”

  “So you should.” She might, eventually, have resigned herself to exorbitantly priced penis had he not finagled it from her hands.

  “Let me make amends by assisting in your search. I’ve already made the rounds and can direct you to the finest obscene gifts this port has to offer.”

  Now that she was too weighed down with pasta, cheese, and duck fat to give chase, was this where his partner in crime snatched her bag and ran off with her ID, credit card, and gifts? She glanced over her shoulder and groped the tote to make sure it was as full as it had been before lunch.

  He watched this display of paranoia with obvious amusement. “Your people’s inherent suspicion is thwarting my efforts to ingratiate myself before asking you to do something unthinkable.”

  She knew it. Why did her first handsome stranger have to turn out to be the villain of a Lifetime movie? “I’m not smuggling heroin back to the mainland in my colon.”

  People close enough to overhear dodged from her path as she headed back toward the shops she had yet to explore in search of the second most dickish souvenir on the island.

  “If only my request was that appealing.”

  She stopped short and turned wide eyes upon him. He could do worse? “I’d run away screaming if I hadn’t stuffed myself, but since I already fell prey to that phase of your diabolical scheme, I might as well hear the rest.”

  He remained standing where she’d left him, three yards away, well out of reach should his proposition prove worthy of a slap. “What would it take to persuade you to accompany me to a wedding?”

  She turned her back on him and kept walking. “You’re right. Being a mule is the lesser of those evils.”

  He jogged to catch up and fell into step beside her. “I know how much I’m asking.”

  “I don’t think you fully appreciate the burden of being the Wedding Date. As perhaps the sole unknown quantity in attendance, I’ll be the subject of hours of interrogation by the gossips who already know everyone else’s business.”

  There were better ways to spend an evening than being asked by strangers why she wasn’t married at her ripe old age and being assessed like diseased livestock to determine if she still had any value on the market. In fact, all ways were better ways.

  Her dilemma couldn’t resist butting in. All you have to do is get married, and you’ll never have to answer those questions again.

  “That’s nothing compared to the burden of solo attendance,” Griff insisted because society applied no pressure to him to settle down and make babies if he wasn’t so inclined. “I’ve done the reconnaissance. The single women will outnumber me five to one.”

  She’d accuse him of flattering himself if she weren’t confident he had experience being swarmed, but saving him from his irresistibility wasn’t her job. “Pick the prettiest one and use her to fend off the rest.”

  “If I so much as smile too long at the groom’s sister, I’ll be hearing about how I led her on for the rest of my life.”

  She’d tell him to pick the runner up, but no one would believe he’d settle for second best. Likewise, under no circumstances would anyone believe he’d settle for a chunky girl with a bad dye job. “You’ll hear about if you bring a stray to the wedding, too.”

  She could hear it now. What bet did you lose to get stuck with her?

  She picked up her pace, her only destination the end of this morale-destroying conversation.

  Dammit, the Duchess had been floating a couple of minutes ago.

  “I’m touched that you’re concerned about my suffering, but I can handle that kind of badgering.”

  His big hand closed gently around her wrist. When she jerked, electrified, he released her instantly.

  Had it been so long since a man touched her that casual contact jangled her entire nervous system, or was it only this particular man who should worry about her grabbing his hands and placing them at random coordinates on her body to see what effect they had elsewhere?

  “You can be a foreign dignitary who speaks no English. I’ll translate for you. You won’t have to answer a single question.” His fingertips brushed her palm, slipping some of his assurance to her like a bribe. “Three months from now, when someone asks what happened to that duchess I was so smitten with, I’ll tell them you used me for purposes I can’t discuss due to an ongoing national security investigation.”

  She looked up at him through her lashes. He was casting her as a femme fatale. How could she save him from his irresistibility if proximity to it made her soft in the knees?

  “As a result of your treachery, my trust and heart will be too damaged to withstand being set up with any unattached women of their acquaintance.” His eyes focused on a far distant point, somewhere in his loveless future. “Perhaps ever again.”

  She was a sucker for an imaginarily wounded soul. “So this ruse will have long-range benefits for you beyond the garter toss?”

  That vision of the near future made him shudder. “I’ll also have to be abducted by Dangereusia’s equivalent of the Secret Service before I witness Ezra sticking his head under his wife’s skirt.”

  The strap of her tote twisted through her fingers. Wedding guests. Wedding food. Wedding music. Her sacrifice, if she chose to make it, would be great.

  Griff bent his head so his breath caressed her ear. “Did I mention I will owe you a debt of indescribable magnitude?”

  Her dirty mind stirred from hibernation, scenting mating potential. He smelled good — not cologne, but
soap and shampoo, clean, warmed by the sun and the heat of his body. She felt dainty in his tall, broad-shouldered shadow, which was a pleasant change from her typical sense of being an ungainly ox. The chest almost close enough to lean against tapered to narrow hips she could easily wrap her legs around.

  Best of all, he didn’t know she was too sensible to have hot, sweaty sex with a stranger who owed her a debt of indescribable magnitude.

  She lowered her head with a defeated sigh. Extorting lunch was one thing — extorting sex was a criminal thing.

  Moral fiber was such a killjoy.

  She stole a wistful look at the face she wouldn’t be kissing as a reward for her suffering. “Find a gift for my mother of equal or greater absurdity than the one yours is getting, and we’ll call it even.”

  Pity softened his expression. “That’s not going to be nearly enough compensation for what you’ll have to endure.”

  A dress code.

  It wasn’t enough for this bride to inflict ugly dresses on her bridesmaids. No-o-o-o. Even the guests had to don a costume and play a part in her control-freak fantasy.

  Ivy stared at the reflective wall of a small dressing room in the hotel’s boutique, mesmerized by the prescribed floral-printed sack enveloping her from halter neck to knee. Fashion magazines claimed coral was a universally flattering color on all skin tones. Either they lied, or something other than the predominant shade in the print caused her complexion to look as if she’d drowned two weeks ago.

  The fabric had the drape of a shower curtain, made a zipping noise when it rubbed against itself, and gave her the same shape as a bean bag chair.

  Only a sadist would force another woman to bare her upper arms. Ivy’s workout rotation included weight training. She was proud of the little groove carved between her biceps and triceps. However, after she lost sixty pounds, no one airbrushed her to disguise the skin that was never going to tighten like shrinkwrap. No matter what exercise she did or what lotion of empty promises she rubbed on herself, she was stuck with floppy bits, such as the backs of her arms, where she was convinced all eyes would land after being repelled by the retina-searing print.