367 Days

by Jessica Gadziala

  "I think it's something like forty-percent of births worldwide are unplanned and or unwanted. And a lot of those kids grow up with shitty parents who never wanted to be parents in the first place. I really respect you making and sticking to your decision, babe. It says a lot about you to be able to do that."

  And right then and there, I had to press my lips together to keep the bottom one from trembling, a telltale sign that I was going to break down if I didn't keep it together.

  Sometimes, and it was truly rare, but sometimes you meet someone who just... understands.

  Sawyer understood.

  And there was something about that that really hit me somewhere deep.

  "Riya?" he asked, addressing the top of my head because my gaze was on the counter again. I shook my head, blinking hard a couple of times. "Hey," he said, lowering his arms down on the counter, getting an inch or so lower than me, and looking at my face. "What's with the hiding when you're having an emotion thing?"

  "Maybe my emotions just aren't your business."

  "Probably aren't, but here they are in front of me anyway."

  "I'll go to..." I said as I turned and tried to make an escape to my room.

  His arm snagged my bicep from behind, pulling, and turning me until I faced him again. His hand stayed on my arm; the other rose to cradle the side of my face, tipping it up, and pinning me with his intense gaze.

  We stood that way long enough for my heart to start slamming hard in my chest, knowing that that was the moment, it was when we stopped fighting it, it was when we gave in.

  "Thanks for taking Slim for a walk," he said instead, making me slow blink a good four times before the words fully registered.

  Thanks for taking Slim for a walk?

  "Also, work tomorrow. Be ready at seven so I can drop you and circle back to get some of my shit done."

  With that, he dropped both his hands and walked back to the kitchen.

  Thankfully his back was to me as he reached up in the cabinet to fix himself a drink, because, quite frankly, I stood frozen in that spot for a good long minute before I snapped out of it and walked back to my room.

  Then I spent the rest of the night actively trying to not think about how he had run his hand over my breast and rolled my nipple, about how sexually frustrated I was feeling almost nonstop, about how I was feeling an emotional connection with a man I had only known for a few days, about how irrational that was.

  But I thought about that.

  I also thought about how intuitive and considerate it was for him to get me a job. I wasn't stupid. I knew his brother's office had likely been a pig sty for years and could probably stay that way for years still. But he knew I needed a focus. He knew I was going to drive myself crazy with questions about my missing year if I didn't have something to do to occupy my time.

  It also worked in his favor.

  If I was out of his hair, occupied, not sitting in his apartment needing to be entertained, he could focus on work and maybe figure the mystery out once and for all so I could go back to my old life.

  And as I slowly drifted off to sleep, I ignored the small, niggling little feeling inside that felt just a bit like disappointment.

  ELEVEN

  Sawyer

  Several things needed to happen.

  First, I needed Riya occupied. Quite frankly, even just knowing she was sitting up in my place all day and night, touching my shit, naked in my shower, touching herself in my guest bed, yeah, it was problematic. I could barely focus on any cases for longer than ten minutes before an image of her would pop into my head.

  At least knowing she was over at Barrett's would make it less possible for me to say 'fuck it' to work, storm upstairs, and take her standing up against the kitchen counter, bent over the arm of the couch, bury deep in her throat in the bathroom, watch her fuck me hard and fast, her perfect tits bouncing as she rode me.

  "Fuck," I growled, taking off down the stairs, knowing she was a couple minutes behind me still.

  Barrett didn't particularly want a secretary or maid or whatever the fuck Riya would end up being over there. But I needed her safe and while Barrett hadn't had the extensive training that me or Brock had, he was sharp and had good reflexes.

  So she would be over at his tiny office, hip deep in spilt coffee, old files, and heaps of bullshit.

  And I would be able to get some shit done.

  Including looking into Michael Robinson.

  Quite frankly, he was the shadiest of the bunch. None of the others were any kind of threat, but the fact that he had done some shit like lying to his wife about some conference and then stayed with Riya for a couple weeks, yeah, that wasn't shit normal guys did. It was high risk. He was bound to be found out by one or both women. Sane guys didn't risk two good women.

  But first, I wanted to drag my ass back to the clinic and talk to some of the other employees. The way Maryanne acted didn't sit right with me. And it just so happened that it was her day off.

  I drove over and parked, getting out, and greeting Ginny again, asking if anyone else was around to talk to.

  "Ah, sure. Tammy and Jake are here."

  "And Tammy and Jake are..."

  "Oh, Dr. Tammy Watson and Jake Shelton. Jake is a tech. Just let me see if they're free," she offered, going down the hall.

  "Hey," I said, nodding my head at the middle-aged, scraggly-haired janitor as he passed, making a mental note to talk to him if I got nothing out the doctor and the tech. Sometimes if the professionals were of no help, the blue collar guys were where to go. People didn't think to watch what they said in front of the maids or janitors or delivery guys. They were a wealth of inside secrets.

  "Mr. Anderson," Ginny's sweet voice called and I turned and followed her down the hall. "Dr. Watson is free," she said, holding an arm out.

  Dr. Watson was a relatively young, attractive, blonde woman with sharp, catlike features and piercing light gray eyes. She had her hands tucked into her white doctor jacket, making her look almost nervous. "Mr. Anderson," she said, taking my hand and shaking it hard. "I hear you have some questions for me."

  "Yes," I said, taking the steel rolling stool she gestured toward as she took one stationary one. "About Riya Sweeney."

  "Oh," she said, looking almost a little disappointed. "Well, I don't know how much help I will be about that."

  "Why not?"

  "She seemed really sweet and competent. Everyone raved about her. But I was brought in, oh, I don't know... a week before she, ah, left. I was Dr. Robinson's replacement."

  Bing-fucking-o.

  Riya left out a pretty huge key detail in that story. And it was too important, too prominent a factor in the relationship for it to have simply slipped her mind. She deliberately left it out.

  I didn't like that shit.

  And we would be having words about it.

  "Oh, really? Where did the other doctor go?"

  "Oh, um..." she said, squinting a little like she was trying to remember.

  "Pennsylvania," the janitor said, taking the bag out of one of the waste baskets. "To work things out with his wife."

  "Oh, that's right," Dr. Watson said, nodding. "Sorry, I told you I wouldn't be much help. If you want to wait for Jake, he's just in with a client..."

  "Actually, Dr. Watson, you've given me all I need. Thank you," I said, shaking her hand. "You too," I said to the janitor who nodded at me.

  It didn't exactly narrow it down a whole fuckuva lot. If we had a bunch of Michael Robinsons in New Jersey, then there was bound to be a bunch of them in Pennsylvania as well. But that being said, knowing he was a doctor and that he had worked at the clinic, it was plenty for Barrett to use to dig. He would break into their records if need be, find his social, track him down through the DMV and give me an address.

  On that note, I shot a text to Barrett about the new job for him and reminded him to not be a dick to Riya, that she was dealing with some shit. Besides, I didn't need her already icy when I got home to confr
ont her about the massive omission in her story.

  Maybe, in her defense, she thought this Mike guy wasn't capable of doing something to her. But if she thought that, she grossly underestimated how shitty jilted men could be. Fact of the matter was, a third of all women who are murdered in the United States are murdered by their partners or ex-partners. That was a huge number of innocent women who did nothing but love someone. And it was an equal number of seemingly normal men who blew their fucking tops over small shit.

  You could never play down what angry or upset men were capable of.

  "She's touching everything," he answered the phone on a frustrated growl.

  "Yeah, that's her job," I said, smiling at the fact that she was driving him a little nuts.

  "And she told me to quit my bitching and let her shred my research notes."

  "You mean the completely useless research notes that have already made it into the permanent files and are actually just garbage."

  "You're loving this," he accused and he knew he was right.

  "Yeah, I am."

  "You could have put her to work for you."

  "Marg would fill her head with shit she doesn't need to know and you know it. Besides, you can't keep meeting clients in that hellhole. Did you get my text?"

  "Yeah, I'm on it. No. No. Not that," he said and I could hear him grabbing for papers which made one of his endless used coffee cups fall and shatter.

  "Oh, for God's sake!" Riya's frustrated voice groaned. "I thought your brother was impossible. But you take the freaking cake."

  I smiled at that, liking that I maybe tried her nerves.

  "I'm on it, Sawyer. But I am sending her home at five on the dot so I can focus."

  "Whatever you got to do," I agreed, knowing I would be there waiting for her.

  We had some shit to discuss.

  TWELVE

  Riya- 3 days

  I thought Sawyer was exaggerating.

  I should have known better; he really wasn't the type to.

  But I had figured no one could truly conduct business in a pig sty.

  I was wrong.

  Barrett Anderson could and did.

  Sawyer also wasn't exaggerating about the size. It was a tiny place with a dark desk, shelves to one wall, and about a hundred different sheets of paper pinned to the other wall. Then, of course, there was the mess. And I did mean mess. There was disorder too, piles of paperwork everywhere. But I was really more concerned with he endless coffee cups and the to-go containers and the awful possibility that I might find rats or roaches or maggots somewhere because of them.

  Barrett, while having a similar face as his brother, was nothing like him. Where Sawyer had mostly neat hair, his brother's looked like he perpetually ran his hands through it. There was forgetful stubble on his face and big, hipster-esque glasses on his nose. Where Sawyer generally seemed to prefer jeans and tees, his brother had on some giant old man sweater with elbow patches. Yes, elbow patches.

  There was a similar detachment with Barrett too, but I got the impression that Sawyer's was from a dark past in both the military and his private practice; I felt that Barrett's came from a superior intelligence.

  "Not that," he demanded for about the tenth time when I picked up what I was sure was a random piece of paper stuffed in a forgotten corner.

  "This is not going to work if you don't let me actually do any cleaning," I said, rolling my eyes as I looked down at it. Sawyer was being honest about the Polish thing too, but he had either purposely left out or forgotten to tell me that not only was it all in Polish, it was in code. I had a piece of paper in my pocket that I needed to use to decipher the ten or so words of Polish I had picked up that day.

  "You can clean the coffee cups," he offered, not looking up from whatever he was writing.

  "All seventeen coffee cups are soaking on the counter in the bathroom."

  Yes, seventeen.

  I got the distinct impression that when he ran out of clean cups, he simply bought more instead of washing them.

  "Then maybe you can file..."

  "Yes, but to do filing, the actual paperwork has to make its way into a file," I informed him in a somewhat strained voice I had heard parents use on their children.

  He looked up at that, lips twitching, a look that was becoming very familiar to me and I suddenly wanted to see Sawyer do it again.

  "Careful," he offered, eyes light. "This will be going in your employee evaluation."

  I laughed at that, like I was sure he intended.

  We had come a long way in a matter of hours. Earlier, we had almost gotten to yelling over some stupid jotted notes that were so old the print was half-gone that he didn't want me to shred for some reason or another. A coffee cup had been broken. He had bitched about me to, I assumed, his brother and threatened to send me home at five on the dot.

  But then five-thirty rolled around and suddenly a delivery man was standing there. When I looked over at Barrett, he shrugged, getting up and going to hand the man money and take the food. "We have to eat. Plus, it gives you something else to clean up," he added, putting the food down on his newly mostly-clean desk. "I know how much you love that."

  "Oh, yes, I live for taking leftover takeaway boxes to the dumpster. So what'd you get?" I asked, moving across the room, my stomach grumbling over the fact that Barrett seemed to forego lunch and, therefore, so had I.

  "Pepperoni pizza, hot wings, fries, and mozz sticks." When my lips turned up and my brow raised, he smiled back. "Cheese and grease are pretty much my main food groups."

  You wouldn't know that by looking at him. While he didn't appear to have the same tight, ex-military build to him, he seemed fit enough under his old man sweater.

  "Your heart must love that," I said, taking the top from the wings container he handed me to use as a plate and putting a little bit of everything on. While, unlike him, I couldn't eat like that on the regular and expect to not get a giant ass, flabby arms, and a rounded belly, I could indulge every now and then.

  "Eh, if my heart is going to give out for anything, it's going to be all the caffeine I put in my system. Oh, look who it is..." he said and I didn't know what he meant for a long second because when I looked to the door, no one was there. But then Sawyer was pulling the door open and stepping in.

  "How did you..." I started to ask, mouth agape.

  "This weird fuck knows the sound of my car," Sawyer answered for him, walking in, his stupidly perfect body doing so with a kind of easy confidence.

  The term "sight for sore eyes" came to mind and I had to squish it immediately, embarrassed that I had even thought it for a second.

  He walked right over, standing beside where I had a hip planted on the edge of Barrett's desk, picking up a mozzarella stick from my tray and biting into it.

  "Place looks good," he said, nodding as he looked around. I felt a strange surge of warmth flood my chest at the praise and was somewhat off-put by how much it seemed to mean to me. "Only one coffee cup even. Fuck," he said, smiling at his brother, "remember the endless shit Marg used to give you when she had to clean up your cups at the end of each day?"

  "She thought the disposable cups would help," Barrett said, nodding.

  "Except that just meant they would sit there and get stuck to the papers you were working on. Or, on occasion, you would have some fun with it and start stacking them like a beer can pyramid."

  "She was fun to rile."

  Sawyer shook his head, taking my piece of pizza and biting into it. "That was mine, you know," I said with a brow raise. To that, he shrugged, and held the pizza up to my lips. And, if I wasn't mistaken, there was a challenge in his eyes. Like he was daring me to turn it down. And, well, I leaned forward slightly, opened my mouth, and took a healthy bite. His eyes seemed to light up at that.

  "Did you get anything for me?" he asked his brother.

  "Sent it over. It's not what you were expecting though."

  To that, Sawyer nodded, grabbing some fries and load
ing them onto our plate. He continued to eat while grabbing for his phone to, I imagine, look at the file Barrett sent over.

  He let out a sigh a minute or so later to which Barrett nodded at. "Yeah."

  "Alright," he said, piling a small handful of all the food onto my plate and taking it from my hands. "Let's go," he said, suddenly in a rush.

  "Why can't we finish..."

  "We got some shit to discuss and I don't think it's a conversation you want to have in front of your new boss."

  I resisted the urge to tell him that, seeing as Barrett obviously did work on the project, that he already knew, and moved to stand. It was one thing for him to know some of the details of my life. It was a complete other for him to drag them out of their hiding places, air them out, then demand to know every detail about them.

  "I'll see you tomorrow, Barrett," I said, giving him a tight-lipped smile.

  "I would say I am looking forward to it..." he said, giving me a smile back.

  "But you don't want to lie," I said as I turned and walked out the door.

  "You take rudeness to a new level," I informed him as I took the plate from his hand and climbed in the door he was holding open for me.

  He slammed the door and went around the car, got in, and closed the door. Where I expected him to turn the car over and start driving, he simply reached for the plate and tossed it up on the dash, then turned to me fully.

  "Care to tell me why you left one very vital detail about Michael Robinson out of your explanation of events?"

  I felt my stomach twist at that.

  I should have known it would come out eventually. I guess I maybe got a false sense of security when he never dug up information on Mike and my work before.

  "Riya," he said, his voice just a tad softer. When I didn't turn to face him, his thumb and forefinger snagged my chin and forced me to. "Why leave that out? You already told me all the ugly details."