You Can Have Manhattan

by P. Dangelico

  “People are at their best when pitted against each other, Sydney. They either excel or break.” Frank’s exact words. I didn’t agree, but I wasn’t about to argue with a man that had already built a global empire by the time he hit fifty.

  Aside from my house being overrun with sweets and baked goods––baking was my favorite by far––there was very little downside.

  Scott walked in around early evening already freshly showered. Which, frankly, at first got some serous freaking side-eye. Then I figured it would make sense for him to have a shower in the office, right? Thinking about the odors he would pick up working cattle on a hot summer day made me nearly gag.

  His wet hair was swept back and as black as sin. His eyes a startling deep blue against a fresh spot of color on his strong cheekbones. His flat stare migrated to the small table pushed up against the wall. Over the two place settings of mismatched plates and cutlery. Sky blue asters I’d bought at the supermarket sprouted out of a glass Coke bottle in the center of the table. The snow had thawed enough for me to rummage out back and I’d found it amongst a pile of discards: a rusted red wheelbarrow, a weathered wood planter, shovels, and old chicken wire. I’d also discovered a relatively new four-wheeler in a small attached shed.

  My make-believe husband frowned. This was not looking good.

  “I made dinner. I hope you like risotto.” I’d taken special care to julienne the squash and zucchini angel hair thin. I’d even added a touch of nutmeg––something I’d freestyled. After all the years of following cookbooks, I’d finally started putting my own personal touches on my favorite recipes. What was inconsequential to most people was a big deal for someone as structured as this girl.

  Before he could speak, or more specifically decline, I filled one of the bowls with a chipped rim and held it out for him. Scott took one look at the zucchini risotto I’d lovingly slow-cooked, stabbed it with his fork, stuck it in his mouth, and said, “It’s missing something.” After which he marched into his bedroom and emerged ten minutes later dressed in dark jeans that hugged his ass like they were custom made for him and a white dress shirt that played up his tan––no doubt meant to make all the women in the county fall back with their legs spread apart. All with the exception of his wife.

  My stomach sank.

  “I’m going out,” he announced, avoiding eye contact.

  One day into the marriage and he was already ditching me. “Is that a good idea?” I asked, voice trained low in a desperate attempt to hide my rising anxiety. If the press caught wind of this, they would “out us” as frauds immediately. “I mean…technically we’re supposed to be in the honeymoon stage.”

  His indigo eyes met my brown ones without a shred of remorse in them. “Probably not.” He shrugged and jammed his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans. “Then again, I’m known for my bad ideas.” Grabbing the dusty blue pickup’s keys off the counter, he stalked to the door. But he wasn’t done. Nope. Right before he stepped over the threshold, he made sure to give me one last swift kick in the teeth. “Don’t wait up.”

  As the door shut behind him, I wondered if clowns were common in this neck of the woods.

  Sydney

  He’d told me not to wait up and I hadn’t. Not the first night, not the second, not the third, and so on and so on. Once again, sandwiched between his big hairy beasts, I’d slept like the dead and awoke early, ready to hold my daily video meetings with New York. The dogs stank to high heaven––a condition that was going to be remedied as soon as Amazon shipped the dry dog shampoo I’d ordered. The inflatable mattress was lopsided. The sheets scratchy. And yet I couldn’t remember getting a better night’s sleep. Despite the odors, particularly their feet which strangely smelled like Doritos, I even adored Romeo and Juliet. Partly because they were the only company I had, and partly because they were the sweetest goofballs.

  All in all, I was beginning to enjoy the quiet. The stillness. It wasn’t the forced kind I’d learned to use as a safeguard against the beatings, but rather the type the soul craves. Somehow, Jackson Hole had readjusted my axis. Here, I was an alternate version of myself, an unscripted one who could relax for more than sixty seconds.

  “Don’t let him get to you. He’s just a surly kinda guy.” Laurel’s tone was genuinely sympathetic. “He don’t mean nothin’ by it.”

  It was the day of our lunch date and I’d gotten a super early start that morning. Which was followed by yet another cold shower. The furnace hadn’t been fixed either. And as always, Scott was already gone when I woke up so I couldn’t ask him about it. And to add insult to injury, my texts usually went unanswered.

  Whatever good Wyoming had done me: slowed me down. It had done the exact opposite to Scott: it had lit a fire under his ass. His work ethic had improved tenfold. Secretly, this fascinated me. There was hardly a trace of the old Scott left…well, with the exception of his whoring around at night.

  I glanced over at the woman sitting in the driver’s seat of the fully loaded cherry red pickup. Her perfectly manicured, short mint green fingernails drummed on the steering wheel keeping beat with Lennon Stella’s Bitch. Laurel was a petite woman with a big bust and short spiky blonde hair. Her small sharp features were covered in distinct strawberry blonde freckles that gave her a girlish appearance even though I assumed she was in her early fifties, the fine web of lines near her eyes the only evidence of her age.

  My thoughts ran back to Scott, to what had happened the night before. What Laurel claimed wasn’t entirely true. First, he certainly did mean something by it. Second, Scott was not a “surly kinda guy.” He never had been. Not until he’d moved to Jackson Hole apparently.

  “He never used to be.”

  “He’s got his panties in a bunch over his father. You know male ego––” Looking over at me, she smirked. “It’s a delicate creature, meant to be handled with care. Look at it the wrong way and it goes soft.”

  “Are we talking about ego?”

  “Mostly.”

  An image of Scott walking into his parents wedding anniversary black-tie party at the Rainbow Room wearing a shit-eating grin and his arms dangling around the necks of two razor-thin models, his tuxedo shirt pulled out of his pants, and red lipstick smeared on the bottom of it flashed before my eyes. Laurel didn’t know her boss as well as she thought she did. His ego was more than healthy. Which naturally prompted me to wonder if Laurel knew about the orgies. Unlikely, judging by her expression.

  “How long have you two known each other?” she asked with a super sleuth twinkle in her round gray eyes. My ability to read even the smallest change in demeanor or facial expression was fine tuned in a house where you either learned and evolved or face the consequences at the end of a stick. So yeah, Laurel didn’t stand a chance.

  “Over ten years. I’ve been working for Frank––Mr. Blackstone––since I graduated from law school. Before that, I interned for him.”

  “And he wasn’t like this when you met him?” Laurel’s skepticism was all over her pixie face.

  “Nope. He used to be the life of the party.”

  This seemed to be news to Laurel. A foreign sense of loyalty kept my mouth from spilling any more secrets. If Scott wanted to keep his past in the past, who was I to upset his plans. I certainly wouldn’t take kindly to someone doing it to me.

  “Scott. Scott Blackstone––a party animal?” The bewildered doubt that colored her tone pulled a slow smile out of me.

  “Yep.”

  Sighing deeply, Laurel stopped drumming her fingernails on the steering wheel. “Real talk?”

  “Sure,” I said, but instinctually the guardrails went up. I didn’t have any close friendships outside of Miller. I’d spent most of my adult life competing, outsmarting, and generally seeing human nature for what it really was: selfish and self-serving. Which was why it was hard for me to trust anyone.

  “I know about your arrangement with Scott. He told me and Ryan.”

  I suspected as much, and if Scott truste
d them then I assumed I could too. “Then you know it’s important we keep this to ourselves.”

  “Scott’s been real good to me and Pete. The prior owner was a gigantic prick. He cut all our salaries and put the money in his pocket. Gambling habit. That’s why he was forced to sell, praise Jesus––” Laurel gestured with raised hands, briefly taking them off the steering wheel. “I’d never do anything to betray Scott.” Her gaze shifted back and forth between me and the road. “I pride myself as a good judge of character and I can tell you’re gonna be good for him. That boy is clueless when it comes to women. He thinks he’s smart, but he ain’t.”

  Boy? I tamped down the urge to smile at the memory of how Laurel had handled Scott in the office the other day.

  “It’s only business…We’ll eventually get divorced.”

  “He thought it was casual with Misty, but I saw the way she looked at him––” Laurel continued right over me as if she hadn’t heard a word. I, on the other hand, had heard Laurel perfectly.

  “Misty?” It’s not like I was jealous, of course I wasn’t, we didn’t have that kind of relationship. Still, the news that Scott had someone needled me regardless.

  “Someone he was datin’ a while back.” Laurel sneaked another glance. “Like I said, nothing serious.”

  On Monday, Miller arrived. We were to meet in front of the office of the Lazy S. The cabin was impossible to find unless you knew your way around the property, and I wasn’t about to lose the best assistant I’d ever had and the closest thing to a best friend to wildlife. Though I shouldn’t have worried on that front. In his usual brutal efficiency, Miller arrived at the ranch safe and sound in a rented fully loaded pickup truck.

  The sun was out full blast that day, the weather remarkably warm for December. I was leaning against the powder blue Ford, sipping my coffee, when he pulled up with his arm hanging out of the open window of a silver pickup, his angular features arranged in a wicked smirk.

  “Do I look mega-butch or what?”

  Miller was hardly a bruiser. More on the refined side of handsome, with wavy chestnut hair and hazel eyes. He had a preppy frat boy quality to him despite his twenty-nine years on the planet.

  “Very macho,” I remarked with a wry grin. “Even in your Burberry collection tartan puffer jacket.”

  When Miller began working for me, I caught him on more than one occasion flirting his ass off with my secretary. And two accountants. And a paralegal. All women. So it never occurred to me that he was gay. Not until Miller––in typical Miller fashion––started openly gabbing about his love life, or lack thereof. He’d said it was a product of having grown up gay in a particularly tough section of Pittsburgh where you could attract a world of trouble if you didn’t stay hidden in plain sight and grow eyes in the back of your head.

  The hiding in plain sight had struck a chord. Some hid behind beauty, some behind humor, some outrageous behavior. I hid behind the tight control I exerted over myself, a product of my childhood, and Miller behind his all-American-guy routine. Maybe Scott was hiding too.

  Hopping out of the vehicle, Miller scanned the parking lot and the stables off to the side. It was lunchtime and a bunch of the ranch hands were sitting at a picnic table stuffing their faces, their interest fixed on the new Mrs. Blackstone and her guest.

  Arms crossed, he leaned against the Ford next to me. “I’m getting a serious I wish I knew how to quitchu vibe.”

  I smiled around the rim of my travel mug watching a large figure on horseback approach while Miller threw a coy look at the men watching us.

  “I hate to break hearts but I’m a happily married man.”

  “How is Paul?”

  “Enjoying the hot tub in our room with a Brokeback mountain view.” His attention turned on a dime. “Okay, where is he?”

  I knew exactly where he was. My attention had been split between my assistant and my husband since Scott had trotted up to the barn. I motioned with my head at the man on the buckskin horse across the parking lot. “The tall one getting off the pale horse.”

  Scott was obviously a skilled horseman, handling the animal as if it was second nature, and something about that both surprised and impressed me.

  Where the heck was the man I’d once known? The one who never got out of bed before noon. The one whose idea of being outdoors meant hanging out on the Blackstone yacht sunbathing. Which made me wonder if the drunken wedding debacle had been an anomaly.

  “You should let him go down on you,” Miller said, studying my husband.

  Grimacing, I took another sip of my coffee. “We’re not sleeping together.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I’m married to him.”

  “Sometimes you’re so heteronormative.”

  Snickering, I told him, “It’s probably all hype anyway. He probably sucks in bed.”

  He gave me a look that said yeah, right––get real. “That mouth could suck a watermelon through a straw. I’d bet my balls it’s not hype.”

  I nearly choked on my French roast. “Miller…”

  He patted my back until the coughing fit slowly subsided. “Trust me, I’m an expert on the subject.”

  “I’m not sleeping with my fake husband.” I’d explained the ruse to my friend because there was no way Miller was going to buy the lie. Knowing me as well as he did, he’d never believe that I’d fallen in love with a stranger and done something as rash as get married within a week––or ten for that matter. It would be so out of character for me as to be inconceivable. “That would be the absolute dumbest thing to do.”

  An image of Scott’s hard body moving over mine flashed in my mind’s eye and I swallowed, my hand automatically going to my throat. “Worse than marrying him to begin with.”

  While Scott took the saddle off his horse, I checked him out. I studied the way the soft fabric of his jeans hugged the swell of hard muscle beneath. The way the thermal shirt pulled against his traps and shoulders. It wasn’t the first time I’d caught myself enjoying his body from afar. The man shed pheromones like fleas off a junkyard dog. Was it any wonder I was catching an inconvenient case of lust for my husband? I was only human after all.

  Last night was a particularly embarrassing example. My face flashed with heat just thinking about it. I’d been working late on a contract revision and, needing to stay awake, I decided to take a cold shower around midnight. Not that there was any choice with the water heater still on the fritz.

  I’d opened the bathroom door to find Scott––who looked to have recently come in from his nightly tomcatting––in the hallway naked, save for his underwear. At first, both of us stood there frozen, unsure what to do. Then his gaze slowly lowered, and his eyes claimed every square inch of exposed skin my bath towel couldn’t hide as if it were his right…as if he wanted to touch me. And I hadn’t fared much better. While he was busy doing his thing, I practically pulled an eye muscle trying to keep my gaze above his waist.

  This unwelcome sexual tension between us had all the subtlety of a one-ton Angus bull, and as such, I was sure it was going to start breaking shit soon.

  “Besides…” I watched the network of his back muscles flex. “He likes me as much he likes…” My voice faded to silence when Scott turned and spotted us leaning against the parked blue pickup––and he didn’t look at all happy about it.

  His flinty gaze moved from my face to the red running tights I was wearing in a slow deliberate manner. The heated examination was no doubt meant to intimidate me. It failed in that regard (I mean, really?) but it did, unfortunately, have the unintended consequence of setting my body on slow burn.

  “Hello, daddy,” I heard Miller mutter under his breath. I heard it despite the incessant drumbeat of need throbbing between my legs and the blood rushing in my ears. He wasn’t even my type, for heaven’s sake! I’d always kept men like him––the ones driven by emotion and instinct––at a safe distance. They tended to be volatile and unpredictable and I had no room for that BS
in my life. My childhood was one unpredictable moment after another. Which was why I had always been attracted to mellow guys, the ones ruled by reason and intellect. Ones you could talk to. Guys like Josh who were sweet and kind and humble. None of which described the man who was presently glowering at me.

  Scott said something to the ranch hands that I couldn’t make out. They all suddenly found something else to gawk at, so it wasn’t too difficult to surmise what that could be. Then he set off across the parking lot heading straight for us. His loose-gaited stride ate up the ground like he owned the stuff beneath his feet, and in Scott’s case, that was true most of the time, which made it a wholly eye roll-worthy experience for the rest of us who didn’t.

  “Didn’t we have a discussion about your clothing?”

  He glared at my leggings as if I’d worn them to personally offend him. I was going to do it one of these days, pin a murder on him, maybe even a heist. Why did every exchange between us feel like a challenge to a duel?

  “If you could take a breather from being a royal pain in the ass for two whole minutes”––I gestured with a hand––“this is Miller, my assistant.”

  “Yeah, nice to meet you.” He jerked his chin, barely spared Miller a passing glance before his disapproving expression returned to me. A shaft of sunlight hit his face, highlighting the hard angles of his face, his eyelashes casting shadows. A handsome royal pain in the ass. There was no denying it.

  “Pleasure’s all mine,” Miller returned, and I bit the inside of my cheek because I knew what that tone meant. The sarcasm got Scott’s attention too––and Miller closer scrutiny. Scott turned on him again, openly assessing my friend. This time with an expression meant to put Miller on notice.