Dirty Jock

by Sienna Valentine

  When we finally managed to compose ourselves, Elizabeth wiped the tears from her eyes and smiled at me. “I didn’t know you had a sense of humor that wasn’t just making dry observations about things.”

  Sometimes I forget that too.

  “I’m sure there are plenty of things I do that would surprise you,” I replied.

  The look Elizabeth gave me was so warm and kind that I immediately sprung up off the couch and walked over to inspect the antlers. They weren’t my favorite design choice, but I could see the appeal of them. And I actually loved the colors of the room. The sofas though? I could still do without those.

  “What are you thinking about?” Elizabeth asked. “Is it the room?”

  I glanced back over to her. She was sitting on the edge of the smaller couch, which looked like a dead cow somebody had attacked with a nail gun.

  “No,” I said. “I just have a lot on my mind.”

  She smiled hopefully and rose from the couch, joining me by the antlers. I turned to look at them again so I wouldn’t stare at how lively and bright her face looked in the wake of our laughter. My distorted reflection scowled at me.

  “Do you like the room?” she asked. “I can change it if you don’t.”

  My mouth opened, a negative comment already poised on the tip of my tongue. Except what came out instead was, “I think it will make a nice reception space.”

  “That’s lofty praise coming from you.”

  I turned on my heel and headed for the door. “I give credit where credit is due.”

  She trailed after me—as usual, disregarding the signs that I was done with the conversation. I couldn’t be having laughing fits and casual conversations with her. It was bad enough that I’d lied about the room. For what? To spare her feelings? Since when did I give a shit about her feelings?

  “Hey, I wanted to ask…” She cleared her throat. “Our little bet… You know? About the kitchen?”

  My lips pulled into a tight smile. “Yes. I remember.”

  “And you liked it, right?”

  I nodded.

  We passed a few workers in the hallway. They smiled and waved at us. Both of us. Normally they only ever acknowledged Elizabeth.

  “Does our truce mean I can’t collect on our bet?” she finally spat out.

  I considered it. Did our truce void the wager? It didn’t seem fair. Especially since I hadn’t even been lying in that instance. I really did like the kitchen. But here she was, giving me an out. I would be crazy not to take it.

  But I don’t know if I want to take it.

  “You can collect,” I replied simply, swinging into my study.

  She continued to follow me. I ignored her, placing myself back behind my desk and opening my laptop.

  After a minute, Elizabeth cleared her throat. I glanced up at her. “Oh.” I blinked. “You’re still here.”

  It was everything I could do not to smile at the look of irritation that flashed across her face.

  “Yes,” she said. “Our bet, remember? You said I could collect.”

  “I did,” I confirmed. “But I never said when.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed to thin slits. I could almost see the steam escaping her ears.

  “Are you serious?” she asked. “You’re going to play it like that?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not my fault that you didn’t specify when you could collect your winnings.”

  I half expected her to scream in frustration. Instead, she plastered on a fake smile. “Very well,” she said. “When may I collect my winnings?”

  I returned my gaze to the screen, wondering how she’d react if she knew it was just gaudy wedding photos that I was focusing on instead of her.

  “When I feel like it.”

  I’d never seen Elizabeth leave my study with such swiftness. Maybe I’d just sabotaged the truce by denying her the prize she’d earned, but what could I do?

  I didn’t want to lie, but I wasn’t ready to tell her the real reason. For some reason, admitting such a private thing to someone other than Damien or Todd seemed to make it permanent. And I hadn’t yet given up hope on finding a solution.

  An escape from my fate.

  As soon as I was alone again, I closed my laptop and rested my face in my hands atop it.

  Mistake. Mistake. Mistake.

  I couldn’t get the word out of my head. I couldn’t get her out of my head. I should not have spent any more time with her than was absolutely necessary. I should not have joked with her. I probably should have never hired her in the first place.

  But even thinking that, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop myself from making all of these mistakes again and again. The more time I spent with her, the more time I wanted to spend with her. It was the slipperiest damn slope I’d ever seen in my life.

  I was in big trouble.

  Chapter 20

  Oliver

  A week later, they started work on my study.

  I was forced to clear out, setting up a makeshift office in one of the spare bedrooms. It shouldn’t have felt quite so dire.

  It did.

  “It’s nice up here,” Liz commented, pointing to the rear facing window. The garden stretched out beyond it. The first blooms of spring had poked their heads above ground, and a perfumed breeze swirled in through the open window.

  I surveyed my new “home”. Since I told Elizabeth there was no way in hell I’d allow her to touch my desk or chair, she’d had them sent up here with me while the rest of the study was eviscerated. They did not suit the modern sleigh bed, with its ivory sheets.

  “You sound surprised,” I said.

  Liz turned from the window. “This is my first time seeing this room complete,” she said. “The furniture only just got put back in yesterday. Molly was kind enough to put all the sheets on and do the finishing touches for me.”

  “Now you’re getting my maid to do the dirty work?”

  Elizabeth scowled. “Let’s not start this argument.”

  We hadn’t started any arguments in the past two weeks. We hadn’t done much else, either. It was like we didn’t know how to be around each other when one of us wasn’t pissing the other off. I kept finding myself itching to pick fights in the silence. Liz, on the other hand, was being about as testy as a brick wall.

  “So how are things going downstairs?” I asked, rolling back from my desk. The plastic carpet protector and the old wheels of the chair did not get along. It was like pushing through sludge.

  “Oh, you know,” she said. “They’re going.”

  In the distance, crickets.

  “I heard the chandelier’s being removed next week.”

  Liz crossed the room and sank down onto the foot of the bed. She hunched over, resting her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. “We’ll be installing the new one almost right away. You don’t have to worry,” she said.

  I cocked my eyebrow, studying her. “I’m not worried, I was just making conversation.”

  She let out an amused snort. I failed to see what was so funny, but I didn’t feel like I could ask. She was closed off, lately. Not that she’d ever particularly been an open book.

  I never used to care though.

  So why do I now?

  “If you didn’t come for my sterling conversational skills, what are you here for?” I finally asked.

  She sat up straighter, letting her hands fall away from her face. “I thought I’d come see if you had any questions or concerns about how things are going. I know that your office means a lot to you.”

  I’d chosen not to hover over the contractors while they did their work. Elizabeth had, at some point, decided that meant I couldn’t bear to see it changed.

  “For the last time,” I said. “If I didn’t want it renovated I wouldn’t have let you in there.”

  She opened her mouth as if to say something and stopped. The smile that was still on her face dropped away before she finally spoke. “I noticed that there are some carvings on the side
of one of the bookcases. They’re pretty low down, so you might not have seen them. It looks like a kid did them.”

  I perked up. I’d forgotten about those.

  “So you do know about them,” Elizabeth observed. “Do you want me to get rid of them? I’m not sure if I’d be able to sand it down and refinish it to make it fit in with the rest of the bookcase, but I can always get a new bookcase if need be.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not necessary.”

  When I didn’t elaborate, she asked who did them.

  “I did,” I admitted. “And you’re right, I was a child at the time.”

  Her mouth grew into a wide grin. I had no idea how much I’d missed that smile lately, so I elaborated in the hopes of keeping it from disappearing.

  “My grandfather worked long hours. Some nights he would stay in there until morning. He never trusted anyone to run his business but him, so he did twice the work he needed to. I didn’t have many friends, so I spent much of my childhood in there. You’ll notice that the carvings are only on one side. That’s the side that he couldn’t see from his desk. His hearing wasn’t great, and it only got worse as he aged. It seemed like the perfect plan.”

  “He must have seen them at some point though,” she said. “They’re not small.”

  “He did find out,” I confirmed. “Our maid told him. He brought me over to the bookcase and he asked me to tell him what I saw.”

  “That’s a trap if I’ve ever heard one,” she laughed.

  I ran a thumb across the smooth edge of the desk. “That was what I thought. He had to coax it out of me before I told him.”

  “Was he really mad?”

  This time I laughed as I shook my head. “He asked me not to carve the furniture anymore, but praised my creativity. The next day he came home with a bunch of books on wood carving. Said he’d get lessons for me and everything if I wanted.”

  “Since I don’t see wood sculptures or ornate doors all over the house, I take it the whittling career didn’t pan out?”

  She seemed more relaxed now, judging by the soft lines of her face and the way she seemed to speak without thinking. Like she was when we first met. Until I wore her down.

  “You’ve seen the carvings,” I replied. “I think you know the answer to that question.”

  Elizabeth giggled. “They’re pretty bad.” She put a hand over her mouth to try and keep it together. “What are they supposed to be, anyway? Aliens?”

  I smiled back at her. “Jungle animals,” I said. “I used to love reading my grandfather’s National Geographic magazines. For a few years, I dreamed of being a jungle explorer.”

  “That is so cute!” Elizabeth cooed. “What happened, then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, did you become a jungle explorer? Did you ruin anymore of the furniture?” she asked. “You sound like you were such a sweet little kid.”

  I liked that she thought so. I chose to continue letting her think so.

  “I didn’t become a jungle explorer. Nor did I become a carver, a chef, a trapeze artist, or a famous guitar player. But my grandfather stood by me with every passion project I took up, and encouraged me to keep working at it when things got tough.” I chuckled softly at the memory of how I’d tossed my guitar at the wall when I was twelve. “But I guess I never found that one thing that I loved enough to not give up on.”

  “Still?” Elizabeth asked, voice barely above a whisper. Her wide eyes seemed ready to flood with tears at any moment. I wrinkled my nose.

  “Don’t get like that,” I said. “You’re not allowed to feel sorry for me. I’m incredibly wealthy and have all the time, money, and good looks in the world to find my passion.”

  I could tell she wanted to dig in deeper, but she didn’t. Instead she rose from the bed, smiling gently at me. “Your grandfather sounds like he was a great man.”

  I nodded. “He was.”

  “I’ll make sure nobody so much as thinks about touching that bookcase,” she said, walking from the room.

  “I appreciate it.”

  I watched Elizabeth’s lean form disappear into the hallway, feeling oddly light. I’d never told anybody about the carvings. Nobody except Elizabeth and my grandfather had ever asked.

  But I didn’t tell them everything.

  I carved those pictures during those first tense few months with my grandfather. I’d barely known him before coming to live with him. He’d always been much too busy. But suddenly it was just him and me, alone together in a great big house that I imagined being full of ghosts and monsters.

  Because he was quiet and had no idea what to do with a young boy, I’d thought him stern and strict. But I was lonely—so fucking lonely in those first few months. And, of course, the house was a dangerous supernatural minefield. So I stayed with him in his study while he worked. I wanted to draw the animals, but I’d been too afraid to ask for a pen and paper from him. I was too afraid to talk to him at all.

  The day he discovered what I’d done was the day I realized I wasn’t just a burden to him. He wanted me to be there—he just didn’t know how to show it.

  And that’s when I knew I would be okay.

  I’d never told anyone that. I had the strangest feeling that if Elizabeth had dug a little deeper, I might have told her.

  I kind of wished she had.

  She’d been holding back on me lately. I couldn’t tell whether it was because there was unresolved tension from before our truce, or whether she just felt like she couldn’t be herself anymore. Either way, I didn’t like it. I missed the constant bickering. I missed her spark.

  But how to get it back?

  Chapter 21

  Elizabeth

  I watched them lower the chandelier with gritted teeth, imagining the kind of damage a fixture like that could do if even one little thing went wrong. We were one malevolent opera ghost away from a huge worker’s comp suit.

  “Easy there,” Rodney said. “We’ve got all day.”

  Someone walked up to the bannister on the second floor. I could just see the form of a person through the quivering crystals, but couldn’t make out who it was. A shiver ran through me.

  “Elizabeth, can I talk to you for a minute?” Oliver voice called down.

  Of course it was Oliver. Apparently I’d watched one too many broadway musicals.

  “Coming!” I turned to Rodney. “You got this?”

  “Yep. And I’ll probably do better without you watching me like hawk.”

  “Fair enough.” I turned toward the stairs and headed up to where Oliver was still waiting at the top. “Everything okay?”

  “Just come with me to my office for a minute.” Something mysterious lurked in those big green eyes. He was up to something.

  I followed him anyway, waiting awkwardly by his desk as he closed the door. He approached me, stopping a few feet away. I hadn’t been this close to him since before the truce. My body began to light up and tingle, completely involuntarily.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. “Am I in trouble?”

  He smirked. “Not exactly, but we do have something we need to work out.”

  I scanned him up and down. T-shirt, gray sweatpants, socks. Wait—sweatpants?

  “I never see you in sweats,” I remarked. “What gives?”

  “It’s in case there’s any blood,” he said nonchalantly.

  My eyes bugged out of my head and I took an instinctive step back. “Blood? What the hell?”

  “Relax,” he said, raising a placating hand. “Just hear me out. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Things have been tense between us. I’ve noticed you’ve been acting a little strange.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but he gestured for me to let him finish.

  Sure, I’d been avoiding him a little bit, maybe a tad unsure how to act—but I thought he’d appreciate that. He always seemed to be annoyed by my presence, so keeping my distance had been me doing my part at keeping the peace.<
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  It was like when we made that truce, we drew a line in the sand. I just wasn’t sure exactly where the line was, and wanted to make sure I stayed clear of it for risk of stepping over and having everything blow up and return to how it was.