The Harder We Fall
Page 10
She remembered that the dress she was wearing was a sexy crimson halter if she shrugged out of her brown knit sweater. So she did that. She caught her reflection yet again on a car window, and almost smacked the self-satisfied look on her face with her hand.
What for? Why are you doing this?
You have Victor. Maybe.
And he is not your Jake.
They (she and Jake) might not even be as friendly now as she thought they were. The last time she saw him was April, over a year ago, and it wasn’t the best time for either of them. He skipped that year’s August happy hour, and missed Christmas, and she didn’t hear from him the following April.
Or any other time in between.
Sometimes she wondered if she should be more worried about him, but the news didn’t report anything serious enough to get her attention. She’d find out along with everyone else if anything happened to the fifth sexiest guy on TV “under 30” yes? So she assumed the distance was deliberate on his part.
And then this, having her walk five blocks to see him, on an assistant’s errand. A contract for him to sign. She’d find out that he was in New York this way? Because he probably flew in this morning. He liked doing that, flying into places early. Being up early. Doing things at dawn. She wouldn’t have met him, in fact, if on that day her sister Cordelia didn’t take the first flight out, and Lindsay woke up at five a.m. to help her with something.
And saw him jogging past the house she shared with her sister, her sister’s husband, and their two kids.
He ran by twice, probably circling the neighborhood, and then that was it.
Lindsay woke up early every day to check if he would pass by again. For two days there was no Hot Guy sighting, and then on the third day…
But no. She should be angry. Annoyed. Incensed. She should have put her foot down right there on the carpet and made Marnie do the welcoming herself.
It didn’t matter if he was successful Jacob Berkeley now who got to act on TV, be on magazine covers, and take all-expense paid trips to be an environment poster boy. She was important too, damn it. Not in ways that he’d know unless he read the copyright page of policy papers (and who did really), but damn it.
***
I have something to tell you.
You’re gorgeous.
I’m sorry.
I was a grade-A dick.
I give you permission to kick me wherever you want.
Jake Berkeley had never seen Lindsay angry at him. There was one time when she probably might have been, but the greater concern was making sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit, so she didn’t let it show. He was certain though that she was mad as hell right now, might have been for a year at least. If he opened with the line about allowing her to assault him, she might actually do it.
Stop getting turned on by that. By what exactly? Lindsay’s smooth, supple leg, that perfectly-shaped calf? Would she be wearing boots, running shoes, pointy heels when she kicked him? But the idea of her bare foot interrupted that thought, and it made him blink and shift. He adjusted his pants and threw a distracted smile at the hotel staff hovering around him, the way they did for VIP guests. Jake had already refused three attempts to make him feel more at home.
“Later,” he had said, with a bright smile. “Just waiting for somebody.”
He saw her before she saw him. He liked it when that happened. When they first met she was just as beautiful but not as aware of what that meant, the power she had over him if she used that same smile and paired it with a simple request. He spent the first few months of their friendship wondering if he should tell her about it, but that meant she might use it on someone else. And yes he was a selfish bastard about a lot of things, including this, most of all this.
So he didn’t tell her.
Their eyes met. He held back on the smile, let it instead creep up his forehead, his eyebrows, before it pulled at his mouth. He saw the same thing, the same relieved, comforted, happy smile, creep up her face but refuse to show on her lips.
Lindsay bit down on that lush lower lip, to keep it from betraying her.
He had this.
“You can kill me later,” Jake said, as he stood to welcome her. “But you know what that means if you kill me.”
The heels made her taller, made her rise up so that the top of her head came right under his nose. He pulled her into a hug but she remained stiff. Already smiling, but not quite ready to let him in.
“One less mouth to split the rations with,” she muttered.
It was an inside joke. A personal reference. Lindsay was mad, but she was going to forgive him. He could do this.
He left a kiss on her head and pulled away reluctantly, but there was work to be done. “You say that now, but you’ll need to sleep. Who’s going to take the midnight watch and protect you from the zombies while you sleep?”
Lindsay sank into the velvet sofa beside him, at a distance of approximately two small children away. She placed an envelope onto the glass tabletop in front of them and slid it toward him. “Your contract. You should sign it before my bosses get here.”
“Of course.” One of her hands fished for something in her bag, a pen, but he pulled one out of his jacket pocket, and relished the surprise that came to her face. It was beginning to be worth it, all of this. If he could collect those faces of hers, he would.
He had seen this contract already. The three copies in the envelope, for him to sign, were a formality, but he skimmed through the relevant pages anyway, parts he had specifically commented on. Things seemed to be in order. He uncapped his pen and began to sign, every page.
She watched him, foot tapping, until she couldn’t help it.
“So, what the hell, Jake?”
He had several pages to go and smiled as she seethed. “What?”
“You can’t call to tell me that you’re doing this? What are you trying to prove? If you wanted to work in environment, any agency with more money than God would be knocking over themselves to sign you, and you go with us, behind my back—”
“I don’t need to work with people who have more money than God.”
“—we could have talked about this. I’m pushing an important project at the conference and if you really wanted to help me you could have told me—”
Last page. Jake happened to like his real signature, the one he used for contracts, and out of habit would lean back to admire it after signing something. There was also a finality to the signature, because it only got used when he committed to something. A job. A location. This piece of paper, and signature, meant three weeks doing work he thought he had already left behind. Beside someone he thought he had already lost.
“Lindsay,” he said, when he was finally done. “I’m here. Officially your colleague, if that’s what it means. If you need my help with anything then you have me for three weeks, let’s do this.”
“Why didn’t you call?” she asked him.
“My flight got in before seven, and I know you don’t—”
“Not just today.” Lindsay’s voice was tight. “Why didn’t you call at all? After I went to Vancouver to see you?”
Of course she wasn’t going to let him go that easily.
He raised both hands. “Officer,” he said. “You’ve got me. I’ll explain everything later.”
“Stop making jokes.”
“Pay attention. This next one I’m dead serious about. Are you ready?”
Then, in front of the hovering hotel staff and everyone else having coffee at the Waldorf Astoria, he made his move. He first leaned into her, mouth capturing hers, and then pulled the rest of her toward him, through the arm he had hooked around her waist. She gasped and instinctively raised a palm to smash his trachea, exactly what they talked about by the way so he was still proud of her, but then her fingers instead curled gently around his throat.
Lindsay kissed him back.
Copyright
The Harder We Fall
Mina V. Esguerra
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Mina V. Esguerra
All rights reserved.
Cover designed by Tania Arpa