Handle with Care

by Hunting, Helena

I surreptitiously unfasten the top two buttons on my blouse, partly because it’s warm in here, and I get tired of always having to be ridiculously modest at work, thanks to Armstrong. Also, if Lincoln wants to flaunt his entire body, I think it’s only fair I flash a little retribution cleavage. I can’t decide if he’s fully aware of the impact his mostly naked body has on me, or the men in the room, who appreciate it as much as I do.

  “Where do you want me?” Lincoln asks once everyone is congregated in his bedroom.

  Unsure if he means for it to sound suggestive or not, I give him a dismissive wave. “Right where you are is fine for now.”

  “Ulrich, the master bath is through there, why don’t you set up for the trim? What do you think, tux first, hair second, or the other way around?” I give Lincoln a cursory glance. “Let’s do hair first, then I don’t have to worry about anyone getting trimmer happy.” I also like the idea of him having to hang out in his underwear longer than I’m sure he expected, for my own enjoyment.

  Lincoln stands in the middle of the room with his arms crossed while I help Ulrich set up his traveling barbershop. Ulrich obstructs my view of Lincoln’s chest when he covers him with the cape, but there’s still satisfaction in him wearing only a pair of briefs while he has his hair trimmed.

  As frustrated as I am with Lincoln, I can’t seem to resist the opportunity to get my hands on him. And not just to throttle him. I stand behind him and run my fingernail along the hairline at his neck and follow it to where it curves around the back of his ear.

  He sucks in a breath, and I bite back a smile as goose bumps rise along his skin. “Let’s clean all this up.” I move around to stand in front of Lincoln and tap my lip with my finger. “What do you think about a fade, Ulrich?” I bend at the waist, aware I’m giving Lincoln a peek down the front of my blouse. He can’t see much, a hint of cleavage, maybe a glimpse of the lace edge of my cami.

  I don’t know what’s gotten into me. Maybe it’s the way Lincoln reacted to the plus-one conversation and his double standard over me having a potential date. Or maybe I’m just tired of fighting my attraction to him. Not to mention his blatant disregard for the value of my personal time.

  Ulrich’s face lights up. “Oh! A fade would be fabulous. If anyone can pull that off, it’s Lincoln.”

  I run my hand through his hair at the crown; it’s thick and dark, the strands silky between my fingers. “What do you think, Lincoln?”

  He has to drag his eyes away from my chest. “What?”

  “How do you feel?” I run my fingers through his hair again. “About the fade?”

  He clears his throat. “Uh, I don’t even know what that is, so whatever you want is fine, I guess.”

  “Great. A fade it is.” I tug the hair at his crown. “But let’s keep the length on top.”

  I step back and clap my hands as if this excites me, which it definitely does, and take a seat on the vanity while Ulrich works his magic. Lincoln’s attention keeps drifting to my legs, and then up to the open buttons on my blouse before he focuses on his reflection in the mirror again, his brow furrowed in what I can only assume is aggravation.

  The haircut doesn’t take long. I snap a couple of pictures for his social media, appreciating the artistry of the style before I post them. Lincoln with a fade is damn well glorious. He asks for a minute before we move onto the tux fitting and ushers us out of the bathroom.

  Before I slip out the door, he grabs my elbow and bends until his lips brush my ear. “Stop taunting me or it’s going to get embarrassing.”

  I meet his hot gaze. “Taunting you? I’m not the one always parading around in my underwear. Don’t be long. Everyone would like at least part of their evening to revolve around something other than you.” I pull the door closed behind me.

  A minute later, he exits the bathroom still looking tense. I don’t know what happened this afternoon, but I plan to get some kind of explanation once everyone else leaves.

  Bradley helps Lincoln into his tux and begins making adjustments. I take a seat on the edge of Lincoln’s huge bed, the one he sleeps in naked.

  “Why don’t we go over your speech while you’re being fitted? I sent it to your email yesterday, so you could make any edits you saw fit. Did you have a chance to look at it?” I’m sure the answer to that is no, otherwise I would have received a response to that email. It’s already eight o’clock, but if we can finish up here in the next half hour or so, I might still be able to stop by Dani’s on the way home for a drink or something. Lord knows I deserve one.

  Lincoln eyes me through the reflection in the mirror. This vantage point is ideal since I get to see both the front and the back view. “We can do that after I’m done being prodded. No offense, Bradley.”

  “None taken, sir.” He carefully slips another pin in under Lincoln’s arm.

  “I can read it to you.”

  “I can’t concentrate on anything right now.” Lincoln nods at his reflection, but his eyes skim over my crossed legs.

  “Fine. I’ll wait.” Supervising Lincoln get fitted for a tux might be better than whatever movie Dani and I were going to watch anyway.

  Once Bradley is finished, I’m asked for my opinion. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I wasn’t extra thorough about my inspection. I take the opportunity to straighten and fiddle, particularly around the waistband of his dress pants. I only back off when Lincoln practically growls my name on a whisper and shoots laser beams at me out of his eyes.

  The tension between us appears to have ramped up since that almost-kiss in his office. It seems like it’s been forever since that happened, but it’s really only been a few days. The innuendo-laden comments are getting thicker, and if I’m honest, I’m less pissed off about having to change my plans tonight to include Lincoln than I am that he left work today and didn’t tell anyone why.

  My feelings are hurt, so I figure I’m within my rights to push him a little as he likes to do to me. However, this is starting to feel more like foreplay than it should, so I give Bradley the thumbs-up, and Lincoln, God bless all that hard labor, strips back down to his tighty-whities.

  Sadly, he throws on a pair of baggy gray jogging pants with holes in them and covers all that magic below the waist. One of his ridiculous T-shirts covers his defined chest, but like everything he seems to own, it’s two sizes too small, stretching tight across the expanse of cut muscle.

  Once Ulrich and Bradley leave, I suggest we look at the speech.

  “Are you ever off duty?” he grumbles.

  “We only have a day to make changes, and we were supposed to review everything this afternoon; however, you disappeared. I’m still on duty until I can check it off my list, so the sooner you stop bitching about it, the sooner I can get out of your hair and you can get back to moping.”

  Lincoln fires an aggravated glare my way, which I counter with a raised eyebrow.

  “I wasn’t moping.”

  “Is brooding manlier?”

  “Much, thanks. I didn’t bail on the tux fitting this afternoon on purpose, and if my phone hadn’t died, I would’ve called you. I wanted to call you.”

  “Is that your version of an apology?”

  He runs his tongue across his bottom lip. “I’m sorry I ruined your evening and whatever plans you had with whoever you had them with. I get that you probably can’t wait to get out of here, but I could really use a drink, and I think you should have one too, so I don’t end up consuming an entire bottle of scotch by myself again.”

  “You’re really selling that drink with your uplifting apology.” I cross my arms under my chest, which makes my blouse gape. Now that I’m no longer in the heat of the moment, I feel stupid for unbuttoning it in the first place. “What happened this afternoon?”

  He squeezes the back of his neck, like there’s a kink in it he can’t get rid of. “Can we deal with the speech for now?”

  “Sure, okay.” Now that I’m not focused on how infuriated I was to find him sitting on his couch like he di
dn’t have a care in the world, I notice he looks exhausted and even sad.

  He pours himself a very generous scotch and holds the bottle up. “You interested in this? I have a few bottles of white if that’s more your speed.”

  “White might be better if I want to be able to walk out of here.”

  “Okay.” He leaves the scotch on the bar and grabs a bottle of white wine from the bar fridge. His ridiculously tight shirt pulls in all the right places as he uncorks the bottle. Everything would be so much easier if he weren’t so nice to look at.

  I wonder what it would be like to have access to all that smooth skin. I wonder what it would feel like to have his hands on me, what his mouth tastes like, how soft his lips are, whether his kisses would be sensual or aggressive. I want to know if he’s the kind of man who devours or savors. Or maybe both. I could see both. I bet angry fucking him would be mind-blowing. Maybe I should make him angry again.

  “Wren?”

  I blink and find Lincoln standing in front of me with the glass of wine. “Thank you,” I croak.

  “Are you okay? You’re flushed all of a sudden.” He strokes along my cheek with a single knuckle, and I shiver. “Where’d you go in that head of yours?”

  I’m thrown by his sudden shift from combative to concerned, so I brush it off. “Nowhere important. I’m distracted, and it’s been a long day. We should go over the speech.”

  His expression shifts from concern to something like disappointment. “Sure.”

  I follow Lincoln back to the living room, and he pulls up the email with the speech. I also brought a hard copy, which I retrieve from my bag. Lincoln quietly sips his scotch while he reads it over.

  It’s about the importance of family and his role in carrying out his father’s legacy by stepping in as CEO of Moorehead. It also highlights his family’s contribution to the hospital’s charity foundation, which is the focus of the night’s event. He rubs his forehead and sighs heavily, tipping back his glass and nearly draining the contents in one gulp.

  “It’s very straightforward. Only about five minutes, which I know will seem like a long time, but it’ll be over before you know it. We need you to get used to speaking more formally at events, and this is the perfect opportunity. Do you want to practice it for me? Sometimes it helps if you say it in front of someone else, or maybe you’d be better practicing in front of a mirror.” I don’t know why I’m rambling, other than I’d like to erase the distress from Lincoln’s face, if at all possible.

  Lincoln runs his hand down his face. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you believe any of this?”

  I set my wineglass on the table and run my hands over my thighs. “I can’t pretend I understand what your relationship with your father was like—”

  “I didn’t have a relationship with my family, not with any of them except G-mom, really. My father worked long hours when I was a kid, and my parents’ relationship was … difficult. Transactional? I don’t know how to explain it. There was no love in that house. Mostly I remember Armstrong getting into trouble, and my parents fighting about what to do with him because he was a nightmare even then.” He closes his eyes for a second, exhaling slowly before he focuses on me again.

  “You probably knew Fredrick better than I did for all the time I spent with him growing up. He was never there, and he never tried to be. I spent my summers at camps, or I stayed with G-mom at her summer place so I didn’t have to be in the middle of my parents’ loveless marriage or deal with my brother. I went to college out of state, and when I was finished, my father figured I would come work at Moorehead. For whatever reason, he thought I would want to work with him when I didn’t even know a damn thing about him. Anyway, I got out of the country. I don’t even know these people, Wren, let alone like them, so this family legacy angle is a load of BS. The only reason I’m here doing this, is because I don’t want to give G-mom a heart attack, and my brother is mess.”

  “I’m sorry this situation is so difficult—”

  “My dad had a penthouse in Lower Manhattan. Did you know that?”

  I’m taken off guard by the sudden shift in conversation, so I stumble for a moment before I respond. “Uh, no. I was unaware.”

  “I found the deed today, and I figured I should check it out, so that’s where I was this afternoon. I thought I’d be gone for an hour or two tops, but uh … it wasn’t just some apartment. It’s where he took his mistress or mistresses.”

  I don’t know how to take all of this. The only version of Fredrick that I know is the one who protected his son from the media backlash when he got into trouble. “What if it was an alternate work location? Or maybe it was a place he used for out-of-town clients?” I suggest, trying to find a reasonable explanation. Everything Lincoln’s told me shines a very different, unpleasant light on Fredrick. If what Lincoln suspects is true, it makes me wonder if he was condoning Armstrong’s behavior with all his cover-ups because he’d been doing the same thing all this time. No wonder Lincoln hates his family so much.

  “The location wouldn’t be convenient; it’s too far from the office. Besides, based on the contents of the place, it’s pretty clear it was his sex pad. It’s just so in-your-face blatant. I can’t get my head around the whole thing.” His expression reflects his anger and disappointment.

  Despite my own difficult family situation, I can’t imagine what it would be like to stumble on something like that, mere weeks after losing his father, regardless of how tumultuous their relationship was.

  “You’re sure it was his? Could it have been Armstrong’s?”

  “I might believe that, but I took him with me, and he was just as shocked.”

  “Could it have been somewhere he took your mother?” I want to give him some kind of explanation that makes sense. It’s my job, after all, to fix things. Smooth things over and make them better if I can.

  “Uh, definitely not. There were women’s clothes in the bedroom that wouldn’t fit Gwendolyn.” He gives me an imploring look. “I don’t even know if it was one woman or more than one. You’d tell me if you knew anything about this, wouldn’t you?”

  I want to comfort him, but I’m not sure how. “If I knew and you wanted to know, I would tell you, Lincoln. Your parents’ relationship always seemed more like a business relationship than one built on love, but I don’t know anything else.” I cover his hand with mine. “I promise I’d tell you if I knew anything important. And if you want me to look into it, I can.”

  Lincoln runs his free hands through his freshly styled hair, sending it into disarray. “It was different when I just suspected, but actually seeing it … I don’t even know who my father was. He had a whole different life, Wren, and he was into some pretty weird stuff that might explain why my parents haven’t slept in the same room since I was a kid.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There was a room with a lot of props and costumes.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think I understand.”

  He shakes his head. “He had a fetish room.”

  “Oh.” I have no idea what I’m supposed to say to that. Sorry doesn’t seem right. How exactly does someone deal with finding that out about their deceased parent?

  I feel awful for putting him through a tux fitting and a haircut after the afternoon he’s had. I know exactly what it’s like to be disappointed by a parent in a way that crushes the soul and shakes the foundation of trust. Lincoln is almost better off for not having had any trust to break in the first place.

  “I don’t even know who I am. I don’t want these people to be my family. How is this the legacy I’m supposed to uphold?”

  My hand is still covering his. Lincoln flips his so we’re palm to palm and threads our fingers together. “You’re the only person I feel like I can trust. I don’t think even my grandmother will be straight with me. Please, be someone I can count on, Wren. I need you to be that for me.” His thumb brushes along my knuckles, and
his voice drops to a whisper. “Just please.”

  I fight the flutter in my chest, because he doesn’t mean that the way my stupid body is interpreting his declaration. “You can trust me.” I squeeze his hand. “I’ll always be straight with you, and I’m sorry you have questions about your father that I can’t answer, and if you want help finding answers to them, I can do that.”

  He nods, gaze shifting back to his laptop. “How am I going to get up in front of all of those people and give that speech with conviction? They’ll see right through me, and I’ll be a total fraud. That’s not who I am.”

  I move closer and cup his cheek in my palm, trying to get him to look at me. His skin is warm and rough with a day’s worth of stubble. For the most part, I avoid making prolonged eye contact with Lincoln because my panties feel like they’re going to explode when I do.

  It’s no different now, which borders on inappropriate because Lincoln is vulnerable and distressed, and no parts of my body should feel excited about our current closeness. But that’s the thing about physical responses; they don’t always take into consideration what’s going on in the brain when they happen.

  “Listen to me. You’re a good man, who genuinely wants to do good things. I know this is hard for you, and I wish I could tell you something that will make it better, but your family’s choices aren’t yours to own. You don’t have to uphold a legacy you don’t feel good about, Lincoln. You can create your own.”

  “This whole thing is such a mess.”

  “I know. But I’m here to help you figure out how to manage it, whatever that looks like.” I’m still touching his face. I should move my hand. But I’m having a hard time getting the command in my head to make its way down my arm.

  Lincoln shifts, his knee knocking against mine, creating another point of physical contact. “I don’t think I can do this without you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Because it’s one of your duties as assigned.” Something like hurt colors the statement.

  I shake my head. “This is me, offering to be here for you, however you need me. Not because it’s my job, but because I care and I understand better than you know what it’s like to be in your shoes.”