Deal-Breaker

by Siri Caldwell

  “Home‌-‌cooked meals?” She wasn’t a bad cook, and he’d mentioned that his off‌-‌campus apartment had a decent kitchen she was sure he rarely used. But she doubted he’d be interested. He was familiar with her cooking and she couldn’t remember him ever raving about it. His mother’s, yes, but not hers. What could he possibly be tempted by? Not water aerobics classes, that was for sure. He’d teased her about her choice of moonlighting occupations more than once. Easy for him to be critical‌—‌he didn’t have to hold down a part‌-‌time job. “Help writing your résumé?”

  “Maybe…‌” Axel frowned and rubbed the back of his neck.

  Jori perked up. “Maybe help writing your résumé?”

  “I have a better idea.”

  He didn’t look too happy about this so‌-‌called “better” idea of his. Which made her crazy. What could he possibly want? And how repulsive and damaging to their friendship was it going to be?

  “Spit it out. You tell Professor Walston I’m innocent and in return I do what?”

  “I need a date for Sunday dinners with my parents. Preferably someone good‌-‌looking who’s not an annoying ditz.” He looked her up and down like he was trying to decide if she qualified. “That could be you.”

  Sunday dinner? That was too easy. She’d admit she’d been lax about making sure Baylee spent time with her grandparents, but he didn’t have to force her to do it. “I already‌—‌”

  “Not this once‌-‌a‌-‌month thing you’re doing for Baylee’s sake. Every Sunday.”

  “Okay…‌” There had to be a catch.

  “I’m talking a real date.”

  “What does that mean? I have to dress up?”

  “It means you pretend to be my girlfriend.”

  Chapter Four

  Most people who emerged from the massage room on the ground floor of the lodge at the Mountain Laurel Center had the dazed look of having just woken from a good nap, but Rae was positive she wasn’t one of them. Getting a massage was more fun than killing herself with leg exercises, but it hurt just as much. She’d just spent her whole hour clenching her mouth shut so she wouldn’t curse out loud as the massage therapist broke down the scar tissue that would limit her ankle’s range of motion if left untreated. Excruciating, but she was making progress, and that made it more than worth it.

  Now she was alone in the massage room getting dressed and testing her ankle’s newfound flexibility. She strapped on her knee brace and her ankle brace and opened the door, and the massage therapist returned from wherever she’d been waiting, ready to see her off and set up the room for her next appointment.

  As Rae maneuvered her crutches through the doorway to leave, voices carried from across the expansive lobby. One of them was Jori’s voice. Rae paused and adjusted her grip on her crutches, unsure why she didn’t just continue on her way out. Her stomach grumbled, ready for dinner. And then she saw her. Jori was making her way through the building with a lumbering bear of a man, her hand in the crook of his elbow, laughing up at him like an adoring girlfriend.

  Because Jori was…‌straight?

  Rae’s heart sank. Not another one. How many times was she going to find herself attracted to someone who was fundamentally unavailable? Jori had been so charming when they met, so irresistible. Rae had been more attracted to her than she’d realized.

  “Ready for this?” the man was saying.

  Jori swatted him on the arm, still laughing. “This is the stupidest idea ever.”

  “You like it. You’re already enjoying yourself just thinking about it.”

  “If it weren’t so hilarious…‌”

  Rae couldn’t move.

  “Do you need help getting back to your room?” the massage therapist asked, misunderstanding the reason for Rae’s motionlessness, standing there blocking the door.

  “Gus is very grateful to you, by the way,” the man told Jori. “As am I.”

  “How grateful is he?” Jori gave a flirtatious hitch of her shoulders.

  “Hey, none of that sex talk before dinner. You’ll spoil my appetite. Save it for when it counts. You know, later.”

  “Rae?” the massage therapist said gently. “Do you need help?”

  “I’m…‌ No. Sorry.” Rae planted her crutches and propelled herself forward and out of the massage room.

  Jori noticed her and waved as she passed, but didn’t stop to say hi. It was just as well, because Rae needed a minute to process this new information.

  Jori was straight. Well, why not? Just because she worked for lesbian employers who attracted hordes of lesbian guests didn’t mean she couldn’t be straight.

  Besides, Rae needed to get her leg functional as soon as possible and get out of here and rejoin the tour and start dancing again. She didn’t have time to waste dreaming about a sunburned nose and a blond, sun‌-‌bleached fauxhawk and a perky voice misunderstanding her name. It was better that Jori was straight.

  * * *

  If this place were all yoga, all the time, Jori would be stuck teaching underwater yoga, not water aerobics. Was underwater yoga even a thing? She didn’t mind learning new skills, but she’d put herself to sleep if she had to teach quiet stretching and wasn’t allowed to bounce around to loud music and yell.

  She did like the yoga barn, though. The spacious, free‌-‌standing studio was located in the woods a short walk from the lodge. It had once been a working barn and retained some of its rustic feel, but now had huge windows on three sides and a polished oak floor. Non‌-‌yoga events were held in the lodge’s multipurpose rooms, not the barn, which meant that what with all the watercolor painting and memoir‌-‌writing and whatnot offered between week‌-‌long yoga retreats, Jori often took advantage of the barn’s quiet space to study.

  But when she got there, the barn wasn’t empty. Rae, that constant presence in the pool, was already inside exercising. She was lying on her back in footless black tights, a black leotard, and a baggy gray sweatshirt and had her legs extended up a bare wall, weighted cuffs strapped around her ankles, toes pointed. Clearly there had been a few too many ballet classes in her past. Jori should have guessed that earlier when she’d seen her leave the pool, because no one moved with that kind of ethereal, athletic grace‌—‌limping on crutches, no less‌—‌without intensive dance training. As if to prove her point, Rae chose that moment to open into the splits, sliding her legs impossibly far apart against the wall. She drew them back together, out and in, ankle weights dragging against the wall with a rough whoosh of protest, again and again and again. It wasn’t the way bodybuilders did that exercise‌—‌they used weight machines and their knees weren’t obsessively straight. Had to be a dancer thing.

  “Come. On!” Rae ordered her legs.

  Even from across the room, standing in the doorway, Jori could see her legs were shaking. If she’d stop locking her knees she could cheat it a little. It wouldn’t look as crisp and perfect and svelte, but it would help her crank out another rep. Jori should know. She’d worked her way through undergrad as a personal trainer and by working the local gym’s front desk, keeping a textbook open on the lower ledge of the long counter where gym members couldn’t see. Trainers might talk about maintaining alignment and proper form, but hardly anyone paid attention. Straight legs? Please. Lifting the heaviest weight possible the most number of times was all anyone cared about. Making it look good no matter what, even if it meant making the exercise as difficult as possible and sacrificing bragging rights? Had to be another dancer thing.

  Rae’s ribcage heaved up and down and her legs came together once more, then dropped open, still perfectly straight, toes still pointed, like she was doing everything in her power to pretend she wasn’t on the verge of collapse. She let out a sound of pure frustration and smacked her thighs. “One. More!”

  Guess floating across a stage in gauzy fairy‌-‌wing crap might be more work than it looked.

  Hovering in the doorway, half in, half out, Jori could have left withou
t Rae ever knowing anyone had been here. Instead, she slipped into the room. Pushing hard was important in weightlifting, but this was more than physically pushing herself. This was anger. Which should have made her think twice before approaching. But something made her edge forward, some deeper part of her that couldn’t bear to watch Rae struggle and at the same time couldn’t look away.

  She knew better than to startle her and risk causing an injury, so she waited until she was sure Rae had sensed her presence before she spoke. “How many reps have you done?”

  Rae angled her head to look up at her, but didn’t move her legs out of the splits. “Not enough.”

  “Are you seeing a physical therapist? Did they recommend this?”

  “My physical therapist,” Rae spat out, attempting to squeeze her legs together one more time, “assigns me exercises that would get a car accident victim into excellent shape to walk to the driveway and get back behind the wheel.”

  So Rae was designing her own rehab, apparently. There were probably lots of reasons that was a bad idea, but Jori couldn’t really blame her. A physical therapist who was great at patiently dealing with the average couch potato wouldn’t necessarily know what to do with someone this fit and this driven and this stubborn.

  “At least try my water aerobics class.” It would be good for her to relax a little instead of smacking her own legs. And her boss, Sierra, liked Jori to encourage the guests to participate. The classes were early enough that anyone who wanted to could join in, even if they were attending a workshop. “People see old ladies doing it and think it must be easy, but it’ll kick your butt.” People made stupid assumptions about age. “Promise.”

  Rae’s legs made it only part of the way up before they got stuck. Grimacing with disgust, she used her hands to force her legs all the way together. “I need to focus on my own training.”

  Yes, she was clearly focusing. Maybe a little too much.

  “Keep it in mind if you ever want a change of pace. Because I’m telling you, my class is a lot of fun.”

  It wasn’t until she had already cocked her head that Jori realized she was flashing her most flirtatious grin. She had a whole collection of them, but this particular one she hadn’t used in a long time. She saved it for special occasions, and special occasions rarely came up.

  And this was not one of them. What was she doing, using that grin on a guest?

  She opened her mouth to repair the damage, but no words came out because Rae’s answering smile was an unexpected blaze of mesmerizing sunshine. Jori forgot what she’d meant to say. Do. Think. Some distant part of her brain clamored that she was on the verge of being late to her study group, but for the first time she could remember, being on time seemed unimportant.

  Until Rae’s smile faded and she turned away and flung her arm across her forehead, using her sleeve to blot the sweat that rolled down her face. It was a great way to avoid eye contact, if that was her intent.

  Maybe Jori had come on too strong. Yes, definitely. Rae was a guest, for God’s sake. She probably assumed Jori was hitting on her. And why shouldn’t she? Jori had taken that smile much too far.

  “Gotta run.” Jori backed away, raising her hand in farewell, a gesture she’d been told more than once looked much sexier than waving. Damn, she needed to stop. Not that she did it on purpose. Flirting was something that happened naturally all on its own when she was around people who made her smile, and it seemed her ray of sunshine was one of those people. Even growling at her legs in frustration, Rae seemed like someone she could be friends with. It didn’t mean anything deeper than that.

  Not unless Rae was planning on flirting back.

  Rae’s arm remained flopped across her face as if she was too tired to open her eyes.

  Yeah. It wasn’t the first time Jori’s flirting had fallen flat, but she always took it in stride. Not everyone was going to flirt back, and that was okay. She couldn’t remember it ever bothering her. It didn’t bother her now. She just felt…‌even though she shouldn’t…‌disappointed.

  Chapter Five

  When Axel had struck his deal with Jori, he’d almost hesitated. He often had these moments when he knew he should do the right thing, but then his mind would move on to the next thing and he’d forget. And then she started saying things like If you tell him what you saw and clear my name, I’ll do anything you want. Short of having sex with you. Which got him thinking that yes, actually, there was something he wanted. And no, it was not sex. Not with her, anyway. Back when they were dating, her refusal to sleep with him had driven him insane. But not now. Now he knew that women had zero sex drive and men were what he secretly craved, and the idea of sex with a cold fish in bed like Jori no longer appealed. So no, he didn’t want sex from her. But he did want something else. He wouldn’t have come up with the idea if she hadn’t offered, but hey, if she was going to offer…‌

  She ought to hate him for forcing her into a deal. He didn’t know why she didn’t. Maybe she’d convinced herself that dinner with his parents was just a thank‌-‌you and that he would have spoken up and cleared her of cheating even without their deal, but the truth was, he didn’t know if he would have. Because as much as he believed what happened to Jori was unfair, he didn’t want to get personally involved. In the end, it was the promise of personal gain, not his sense of right and wrong, that made him agree to say something to Professor Walston. Meaning his mother was finally going to lay off pressuring him to bring home his imaginary long‌-‌distance girlfriend, whom he’d conveniently retroactively broken up with that very morning, to meet the family.

  And now here he was with Jori, having dinner with his parents around the big formal dining room table and pretending to be reconciled and dating each other again with their kid at their side, while his brother, who was either older and braver or older and approaching senility, sat across from them with his own boyfriend, a living example of why coming out to your parents‌—‌when your parents were his parents‌—‌was not a good idea.

  They tolerated Murray. They hadn’t disowned him or barred him from their home. They even invited him to dinner.

  And never failed to remind him there was no need to drag Hadad along. They didn’t like having to buy extra food for his guests and they didn’t understand what Murray saw in that young man anyway and would it kill him to consider his parents’feelings? Murray seemed to think that if he wore them down, they’d eventually get used to it, but Axel didn’t know why he bothered. Being tolerated wasn’t the same as being embraced.

  Even Jori did more than tolerate him. Or maybe she did hate him and was just really good at hiding it. He didn’t think so, though. He didn’t appreciate her refusal to wear anything nicer to dinner than her fitness geek uniform of shorts, sneakers, and a tank top‌—‌she claimed she didn’t own anything aside from the weirdly feminine business suit she kept for job interviews, and he wouldn’t be surprised if that were actually true‌—‌but otherwise, everything was great. Jori seemed to genuinely enjoy spending time with him and his dysfunctional family, and the best part was his mother got to fawn over her granddaughter every Sunday instead of once every month or two, which was all Jori had made the effort to do since Baylee’s birth, even though he’d told her often enough that his parents didn’t mean the anti‌-‌single‌-‌mother slurs. Jori had pointed out for years that there was no reason he couldn’t borrow the kid and take her to see her grandparents himself, but he’d done it a few times when Baylee was a baby, and his mother had hassled him about how he was doing everything wrong, so he’d stopped trying. Baylee wasn’t a baby anymore, but he had no doubt his mother would still find plenty to criticize, no matter what age the kid was. It was easier to just pay child support and let Jori be in charge. Jori was a good mom.

  A good person, too. She was easy to like. Hell, he wouldn’t have dated her for so long if he didn’t like her. Which was a good thing, because it would be hard to pretend to reconcile with a woman he couldn’t stand. Not as believable,
either. Or would that make it more believable? He and Jori had debated that, with Jori arguing that couples in romantic comedies always hated each other and him arguing that he didn’t need to give his parents yet another reason to suspect he had zero interest in the female sex. Gender. Whatever he was supposed to call it.

  He also would rather she stopped poking him with her pointy elbow. She seemed to be enjoying it a little too much.

  Poke. Jori passed him a platter of his mother’s fantastic roasted asparagus drizzled with butter and balsamic vinegar.

  “Can’t you tap me on the shoulder, instead?” he hissed.

  “I’m holding this dish with both hands,” she said loudly, not even trying to whisper. “I need a free hand if I’m going to tap. Poking is easier.”

  Everyone looked at them to see what was going on. Jori chose that exact moment to demonstrate her point with a jab to his ribs. It didn’t hurt‌—‌he was a man, and something as insignificant as a woman’s elbow, even if that woman could bench press more than a real woman should, did not hurt‌—‌but it was annoying. When she’d said she thought they should fight, he’d assumed she meant fight with words, not limbs.

  “How about you just say ‘Axel, heads up. Food’s coming.’”

  “How about,” Jori countered, “you stop daydreaming about all your other girlfriends and pay attention to what’s going on at the table?”

  His mother beamed at her.

  Axel blinked. Mom was happy? How did Jori do that? Wow. Jori was brilliant at this faux girlfriend shit. Next his mother was going to compliment her on her dykey fauxhawk‌—‌excuse me, her unusual hairstyle‌—‌as a sensible choice for a young mother who didn’t have time to devote to shampooing long hair.