Ten Thousand Hours

by Ren Benton

  Her voice wobbled. He didn’t want to push her to full-fledged tears, so he accepted the change of subject. “There was a woman.”

  Her chest shook with laughter — weak, but laughter nonetheless. “Of course.”

  “She had the Wednesday Addams thing going on. She wanted to make out in a cemetery at night. I aim to please.”

  She traced the puckered starburst he had as a keepsake. “Did she try to sacrifice you?”

  “If only. As it turns out, cemeteries have security guards. I valiantly led them away so my ladylove could escape, and when I climbed over the iron fence with the spiked top, my foot slipped.”

  She hid her face against his chest so his skin muffled her words. “I swear, that’s the last time I’m asking. I’ve reached my limit on Griff’s-lucky-to-be-alive stories.”

  He had the sympathy of a beautiful woman, which was more than he deserved for his misdeeds. “My luck didn’t end there. The cemetery had let its liability insurance lapse, so they declined to press charges in exchange for not getting sued for my injury. My only punishment was six months of compensatory groundskeeping insisted upon by my father.”

  “Did you at least get the girl in the end?”

  “Nah. She went back the next night with another guy and got arrested.”

  She gave an offended grunt. “What a crappy way to reward your heroic delinquency.”

  “They’re married now.”

  She favored him with a squint. “You’re making that up to exploit my sympathy.”

  “Am not. She wore black. The groom wore eyeliner. Their first dance was to The Cure.”

  “Leaving you with scars on the inside, never to be seen, never to be healed.”

  He snickered. “That is perfect.”

  “Ever since, you’ve expressed your pain the only way you know how — by turning trees as dead as your soul into beautiful art you hope will someday find a home, though your cursed heart never will.”

  He rolled onto his side to face her, his cursed heart quite cozy right where it was. “Want to go to a cemetery and make out? I know a guy who’ll let us in and look the other way.”

  Her lips brushed across his with the negative movement of her head. “Finish telling me about your wood.”

  Her knack for making everything sound dirty was one of his favorite things about her. “I was working on a house, and the client wanted archways framed. I didn’t think it was possible to make a straight piece of lumber arch.” He applied slight pressure to the small of her back, and she curved into him — the kind of bending he instinctively understood. “One of the guys above my pay grade put that inflexible wood under a circular saw, made dozens of cuts not quite all the way through, and when he was done, damned if that board didn’t bend.”

  “Like a Hasselback potato. Except that’s a potato and you cut it with a knife and slather it with herb butter and bake it until it fans out and gets crispy edges. So... totally alike.” Her cheeks pinkened under his amused regard. “You could bend it if you want, but I usually just eat mine.”

  “I never would have thought of slicing a potato like that, either. Sounds almost as amazing as the revelation you can do more with wood than nail pieces together at right angles. That’s when it started coming together for me, the understanding that people were building things meant to last for generations, and there was skill and art in it. I wanted to do that.”

  “So you whipped out a pocketknife and whittled your first end table.”

  “So I did some work for a cabinetmaker and learned a little about types of wood. Joinery. Finishes. Style. Tools.”

  “And then you whipped out a pocketknife—”

  She was determined to fill in that blank extraordinarily badly. “And then I went to college for a year so my mother would stop crying. I hated it every bit as much as I thought I would, so I quit and went to work for a restoration company.”

  She recalled his earlier disdain. “Turpentine and a wire brush?”

  “Yeah, and I hated that every bit as much as I thought I would, too, but I got to study how craftsmen put things together to last forever and developed respect for the form. And then” — he let her anticipation build — “I served another year in college, and so forth. Took me five years to make an end table and eight to get a bachelor’s.”

  “Me too. The degree, I mean. I’ve never made an end table. Unless you count screwing together one that came out of a box, which you obviously wouldn’t.”

  “I approve of your assembly skills, if not your prefab furnishings.” Her furniture was ninety percent glue, but at least it didn’t lean because she couldn’t be bothered to square her corners. “Why did your degree take so long, Miss Rafferty Scholar Recipient?”

  “I couldn’t do a full course load because I had to work full time and take care of the kids. Only two back then, but a weekend of babysitting still took all weekend. Cut into my study time.”

  She put her life on pause for kids who didn’t belong to her. “Where is their father?”

  “I don’t meet them, much less keep track of them after they take off.” Her use of the plural validated his suspicion, based on the lack of resemblance between any two children. “I’m the only co-parent they have.”

  “Why don’t your parents take some of that weight off your shoulders?”

  “Holly doesn’t want them to.”

  At this point, he wasn’t surprised Holly dumped work on Ivy and turned down help on her behalf.

  “Why aren’t you making furniture for a living? And don’t pretend you suddenly care deeply about ancestral approval.”

  The change of subject wasn’t subtle. She was counting on him to be merciful and give her a few hours free of her excess of responsibility.

  He could give her that. “All my flophouse buddies grew up, and the youngsters think it’s creepy when an old guy asks to take a turn on the futon.”

  “You would not be the seventh minimum wage at the flophouse if you were making kitchens like yours.”

  He twirled a lock of her hair around his finger. She wasn’t the only one wrapped up in family duty. “My dad had a heart attack a few years ago and had to cut back at work. Dan couldn’t replace him alone without giving himself a heart attack. Considering all they put up with from me over the years, it would have been inexcusably selfish not to pitch in.” He arrived at that conclusion independently, but his brother never missed an opportunity to state the obvious. “I barely have time for the occasional hobby project now.”

  “This is where I’m supposed to tell you if you really want to do something, you make the time.”

  His lips quirked at her phrasing. “But you’re not going to.”

  “As someone who has been recently reminded that if I have the gall to clear my schedule to do something for myself, others will view it as a free space in which to insert their needs, I know what bullshit ‘make the time’ is.”

  “Should I apologize for inserting my needs into your free space?”

  “You are what I do for myself.” Her fingers slipped into the elastic waistband of his boxer briefs. “If you get anything out of it, good for you, but I don’t really care.”

  He clutched his chest. “Damn, my cursed heart!”

  She rolled on top of him. “You’re the only person who lets me do whatever I want.”

  Her chest rested against his. Her thighs bracketed his hips like a saddle. “It helps that what you want to do dovetails nicely with what I want you to do.”

  “Exactly.” She sat up, clutching the sheet to her breasts. “I’m the perfect candidate for this position.”

  “And that position, and that other position.”

  “Mm. That one’s my favorite.” Her wicked little smile made putting her in that one again, soon, a priority. “While I may have to exert myself in several of them, it’s never to avoid disappointing you.”

  “Because you don’t care at all if I’m satisfied.”

  “Exactly again.” She patted his cheek in appr
oval of his grasp of the concept. “Was that your dryer beeping?”

  “No. Your clothes were very, very wet. They won’t be dry for an hour, at least.” He hooked his fingers behind her knees and hitched her forward to a better seat for riding. “Plenty of time for you to callously do whatever you want to me with no regard for my feelings.”

  She tossed the sheet over his head. By the time he swatted it away, she’d bounced out of bed and covered herself with his T-shirt.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To get the lemon meringue pie I didn’t have room for after that burger. Because what I want to do” — she let his anticipation build — “is eat it off of you.”

  He bent his arm behind his head and settled in for a long ordeal. “The suffering I endure to keep you happy.”

  “I’m not entirely unappreciative.”

  As she sashayed out of the bedroom, she showed her appreciation by lifting the shirt and flashing him a glimpse of her glorious ass.

  He could get used to that kind of suffering.

  10

  Wednesday afternoon, when it became clear getting away from the office for lunch wasn’t going to happen, Griff perused the options in the vending machine in the break room. Would Ivy go for chips or chocolate?

  Neither. Ivy was responsible and prepared and surely had an apple and a bag of almonds in her bag for those occasions when she couldn’t get away from the mortuary.

  What he wanted for lunch was an hour with Ivy and another piece of pie. Throwing sticky sheets in the washer was a small price to pay for the privilege of tasting sweet and tart melting on warm, supple skin.

  What he could have was a Snickers or Cheetos.

  He pulled the wallet from his pocket while he debated. A corner of white paper peeked out of the condom compartment and brought a smile to his lips. A dirty IOU from Ivy would brighten the rest of the afternoon.

  He extracted the note. His smile faded as quickly as his memory of the bartender had.

  There was no chance Ivy hadn’t seen the other woman’s number, thanks to his delegation of condom procurement, but the discovery hadn’t interfered with her enthusiasm for either part of her usual double header. She had said — repeatedly — that she expected him to see other women.

  So why did he feel like a scumbag despite not even thinking about other women, much less having sex with one?

  Dan materialized in the doorway like an evil spirit sensing trouble. “I’ve been looking all over for you. You don’t carry your phone now?”

  Griff had strayed twenty feet from the room they’d been in together for most of the day. “If I can see you, it’s not necessary to pick up the phone.”

  “We’re having a conference about Rafferty. Let’s go.”

  “I need to make a call.”

  “It can wait.”

  “No, it can’t.” He balled up the paper and tossed it in the trash. “Damage control.”

  Dan’s lip curled. “Figures. Join us when you’ve finished cleaning up your latest mess.”

  Griff closed himself in his office. The outgoing message of Ivy’s voicemail sounded as sweet and welcoming as ever. She hadn’t yet added unless you’re Griffin Dunleavy, in which case, go fuck yourself.

  He waited for the beep. “Call me. It’s urgent.”

  He regretted the urgent as soon as it passed through his lips. His guilty conscience wasn’t an emergency. Urgent was a word her sister would fling out to make her jump.

  Before he could call back to retract the urgency, his phone rang.

  “Hi. It’s Ivy. What can I do?”

  He scrubbed the top of his head. She always identified herself when she called, as if he wouldn’t be able to distinguish her voice from the hordes of other women, and yet the next words from her mouth offered aid. He wasn’t worthy of her generous nature, but he was counting on it. “If you could find it in your heart to forgive me, that would help.”

  “Forgive you for what?”

  A fuckup of this magnitude called for confession and admission of wrongdoing. “She gave me her number. I shouldn’t have taken it, but I immediately forgot about her. Five minutes later, I was ordering a pizza so I’d have an excuse to see you.”

  She laughed a little. “Griff, if it was an issue, do you think I would have let you rip off my underwear? Well, actually, I had my heart set on that, but I would have flounced off right after the ripping and told you to call what’s-her-face to finish you off, and I would have taken the pie with me.”

  He could not believe she was letting him out of the noose he’d knotted around his own neck. He deserved to hang for at least a little while. “You’re incredible.”

  “Look, I’m a big girl. You were up front about the arrangement. We’re playing while it’s fun. What you do outside the couple of hours a week you’re with me is none of my business.”

  He led a charmed life, filled with women who didn’t give a damn what he did when he wasn’t fucking them, relieving him of all responsibility for another person’s happiness and well-being.

  But something he would have done without a qualm a month ago now felt sleazy — not because he’d been caught and had to face repercussions but because if Ivy had chosen to levy repercussions, the appropriate one would have been losing her. He wasn’t ready for that. She was more than a playmate. He cared, dammit.

  He wanted what he did when he wasn’t with her to be her business.

  If she was playing by rules he’d laid out at the beginning of their relationship — a relationship she considered to be fuck buddies because she took what he offered at face value — he’d just have to amend the rules to become more to her. “Are you available tonight?”

  “Sorry. I’m in charge of a client party at work.”

  He stared out the window at the fountain in the courtyard. “A client party. At the mortuary.”

  “Sure. Haven’t you ever wanted to try on a casket for size before you actually need one?”

  “No. People do that?”

  “Sometimes they try on hundreds.”

  “Morbid.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. I have to try them, too, so I have intimate knowledge of the fit, feel, and features of the product I’m selling.”

  “Do you embrace the role by pretending to be the bride of Dracula?”

  That soft laugh again. “I try not to linger. I get claustrophobic.”

  She did not sell coffins, but he believed everything else she said about her job. That patter came naturally, whereas she had to pause to invent stories of duchessing and diabolical seduction. He never would have pegged her in sales, the purview of cons and charlatans — his purview.

  Then again, she had him convinced of her sincerity while perpetrating a known ruse, so she might very well be the queen of cons. He knew better than to underestimate her.

  She countered his invitation. “How about tomorrow? I still owe you takeout and a back rub.”

  His shoulders knotted in anticipation of her soothing hands. “You don’t owe me. Just bring yourself, and we’ll see whose what gets rubbed.”

  Ivy saw her last regularly scheduled bride of the day and rushed home. Jen had packed the finger sandwiches she and the kids had cut and assembled while Ivy was at work and the pristine white meringue drops that had been drying in the oven since the night before, making for a speedy pit stop.

  On the drive back to the shop, she stopped at her favorite bakery and deli to supplement the party food, then the liquor store to pick up two bottles of champagne that were already on ice.

  It was a beautiful thing when plans marched along as ordered and on schedule.

  In deference to her full arms, she took the elevator up to the bridal floor rather than trotting up the stairs. Martina and her crew were setting up across the showroom. She smiled and received a cheery wave in return. She and her food headed toward one of the tables that had been set up and covered with a white tablecloth in her absence.

  Rita grabbed he
r elbow and pulled her behind a mannequin. “You have a problem.”

  “Okay.” There was bound to be a hiccup, even if things had gotten off to a smooth start. When waiting didn’t bring the hiccup to light, Ivy prompted, “I can’t fix it if I don’t know what it is, Rita.”

  “Your bride is a no-show.”

  That was a little more than a hiccup — and she couldn’t help but notice how both the problem and the bride were her exclusive property all of a sudden. “She’s probably stuck in traffic. I’ll call her.”

  “I tried that and got her voicemail.”

  Rita wasn’t known for her sunny disposition in times of stress. She probably hadn’t left a message crafted to elicit a positive response. “I’ll try again.”

  Ivy left setting up the refreshments to Katie, who had volunteered to back her up for the evening and promised to display the food and booze in a fashion worthy of the grandest reception.

  She locked herself in her dressing room and called the runaway bride. Her call also went to voicemail. “Hi, Kim. It’s Ivy. I just want to be sure you weren’t in an accident or something. Please call me to let me know you’re okay.”

  Her phone chirped seconds later. Kim whined in her ear. “Ivy, I have my period. My uterus is hemorrhaging. I’m bloated. I have a face full of zits. I can’t be on TV like this.”

  You couldn’t have let me know at any point before the film crew arrived?

  She pressed a fist to her stomach to settle the writhing maggots of anxiety that had taken up residence. Kim was still her bride. Her commission remained on the line — if she still had a job after this debacle. “Okay, sweetie. Give me a call when you feel better, and we’ll reschedule your party. No cameras.”

  Kim’s protracted sniffling had Ivy reflexively reaching for a box of tissues. “Do you forgive me?”

  She’d been asked for forgiveness twice that day. It wasn’t as if Griff or Kim had deliberately, maliciously hurt her, so there was no point bearing ill will toward either of them. She had engineered her own downfall with unrealistic expectations. “You’re under enough stress without worrying about that. Take care of yourself — or better yet, get somebody else to take care of you. I’ll talk to you when you’re feeling better.”