The Boyfriend Contract

by Victoria James

  He walked into the fresh air, the heat of the early fall day searing him before he got into his even hotter truck. He pulled out of his parking spot, tires crunching on the gravel.

  His thoughts went back to Emily. Truth was he didn’t think she was cut out for this kind of town. People from the city thought it was charming, but it was a different kind of life, and after a while, he bet she’d be packing. People here were all friendly to visitors and tourists, but it was hard to actually break into social circles and be accepted. But it also wasn’t his business. He had enough experience with women to know you didn’t tell them what to do. Or, if you did, you’d never get lucky again.

  His late wife, Catherine, could hold a grudge for days. Luckily for him, she’d found him irresistible. Whenever she’d frozen him out after a disagreement, by the end of day one, he’d upped his charm, done all the usual things like flowers and extra smiles and compliments. By day two, he’d see some glimpses of her smile. On day three, he’d get a full-on smile, followed by a hug from him, followed by a kiss, followed by the evening in bed.

  Some days he woke up dreaming about her, forgetting she was gone, that she wasn’t still within reach. Those were the days he’d stay in bed a few minutes longer, thinking about their life together, and snapshots would flicker through his mind like slides from old family vacations his parents would make them sit through as kids. Just like the end of his parents’ crappy slide show, the last picture would be glaringly blank.

  …

  “As soon as all you guys clear out of here, I’m going to take a hot shower, order a giant pizza, pour a glass of wine, and watch Call the Midwife on Netflix,” Emily said from the hallway where she and Austin were standing while he finished up work in the bathroom. Cooper heard his brother’s stupid laugh and rolled his eyes.

  He was trying not to think about Emily in the shower, and knowing Austin, his brother was doing the same. Cooper also found himself smiling. Week one of the project had proven to be an exercise in patience and avoidance. Emily knew exactly what she wanted, and she had no trouble making clear and smart decisions. The only problem was that her timeline was driving everyone crazy.

  But she was charming. Every tradesman loved her and was willing to rush her order. His brothers were infatuated with her, and that fact shouldn’t bother him, but it did.

  “I don’t even know what that show is, but you deserve a break and the house to yourself.”

  Cooper rolled his eyes again at his brother’s response then finished adjusting the old faucets in the bathroom Emily was planning on using for her impromptu apartment.

  “So, do you think this bathroom will be working by tonight?” she asked, poking her head through the doorway.

  He tried not to notice how cute she was with her hair up high in a ponytail and paint streaks down the front of her jeans. She had no problem helping out here and there if it meant getting the job done faster. He admired that. He’d spent the whole week trying not to notice how attractive she was, and it was getting tiresome. In the last five years, there had been plenty of beautiful women he’d had to work with, and he’d never had issues with trying to focus. “It’s working now,” he said, turning the faucet on and off to demo his handiwork.

  “Yay! Thank you so much,” she said, giving a little clap and a gorgeous smile. He glanced at his brother, who had joined her in the doorway, and frowned because Austin was smiling at him.

  “It’s not a problem,” Cooper said. He hadn’t wanted to like Emily—but he did. She was always complimenting their work and thanking them when they did something extra. The week had gone smoothly, and so far there hadn’t been any big surprises. “I wouldn’t drink this water, but it’s fine for showering. Once the new pipes are in, you won’t have to worry about that. We’ll start the other bathrooms as planned and keep this one going until the end.”

  She kept smiling. “Perfect. Thank you.”

  He shrugged and said again, “No problem.”

  “Great, so um, I guess I’ll see everyone on Monday?” she said, glancing back and forth between him and Austin. His brother glanced back and forth between him and Emily, and Cooper caught the gleam in his eye. Austin looked like he wanted to say something stupid, but thankfully Emily’s phone rang. The Darth Vader theme ringtone echoed loudly in the large bathroom, stopping all conversation. Her face turned bright red, and her smile fell faster than the plaster wall in the parlor had.

  “We’re done here, so if you need to answer that…” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the loud, never-ending music when she made no motion to answer the call.

  “No, that’s okay,” she said, standing there as though it was perfectly normal to have Darth Vader theme music programmed for someone and not answer it.

  Austin laughed. “That’s a great ringtone.”

  Cooper didn’t think there was anything funny about it, but Emily gave him a strained smile, relieved, maybe, that he was making light of it.

  “Thanks. It’s for a special individual. So um, I wanted to ask you guys about that barn before you leave,” she said when the music finally stopped.

  “Sure. You have something in mind?” Cooper asked.

  Her eyes sparkled. “Yes. I have some images I can send you. I think it would be a great place to rent out for weddings or personal or corporate functions. I have a ton of pictures I can show you. It would be great for the inn, I think. Maybe we’ll say the house is Phase One and then the barn is Phase Two?”

  He glanced out the window at the barn she was describing and could easily visualize what she was proposing. “Sounds good. The barn is protected under heritage, same as the house, but restoring it shouldn’t be a problem. Did you hear back from zoning?” Cooper asked.

  She nodded. “It goes to council in four weeks. I hope no one objects. I don’t really think I’ll get too much opposition. This land here is pretty isolated, and it’s not like I’m turning it into a large hotel or anything. We aren’t touching any of the designated historical parts of the house except to restore them.”

  He didn’t want to burst her bubble or deflate her optimism, but the old people in this town hated change, and they’d probably oppose an inn just because it was new. Her phone rang again, the Darth Vader theme echoing through the bathroom, and she shut her eyes briefly. It was the first time he’d ever seen anger flash across her face.

  “Sounds like Darth really needs to get a hold of you,” Austin said.

  Her face took on a greenish hue. “Worse.” She slowly pulled her phone out of her pocket and shook her head. “I guess I should answer this,” she said, shooting Cooper and Austin a wobbly, sorry attempt at a smile.

  Cooper tried to appear disinterested. It wasn’t his business to find out who had earned the dreaded Darth ring. It wasn’t his business that she had someone in her life she deemed worthy of that ringtone, someone who could completely destroy her light. He pretended to be absorbed in the faucet again as she walked out of the room, slightly concerned because the voice he was getting used to hearing—the one that was soft and polite and sometimes held a note of laughter—seemed almost monotone now.

  “You ready to leave?” Austin asked, leaning against the doorjamb. “Or did you want to stay and make sure she’s okay? Maybe you could keep pretending that faucet needs more work.”

  Cooper wanted to tell him to shut up. He also wanted to do exactly what his brother was suggesting, but they barely knew her. Emily was a client and nothing more. He closed the cabinet and walked out of the room, ready to leave. “It’s none of our business,” he said.

  Emily’s voice was getting louder and more agitated, so much so that it was impossible not to hear what she was saying. Austin didn’t look bothered at all by the fact that they could hear everything, and they both walked slowly down the hallway.

  “…I don’t answer to you,” she said. “Your opinion means nothing to me anymore. You can’t control me, what I do, where I live, or anything. You got what you wanted, so enjoy running
it. I’m just the stupid girl who doesn’t know anything, right? You’re the smart man who knows how to run the company? Maybe I should just concentrate on doing my hair and nails and not getting fat.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Austin said in a low voice.

  “Obviously,” Cooper muttered. “Let’s go.” But he slowed down further as they walked the long hallway that led to the main staircase. It didn’t sound like she was still speaking, and he wondered if she was crying or something.

  “Oh, wait!” Emily shouted when they reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Everything okay?” Cooper asked. It was pretty damn hard to look at a woman who was clearly upset after talking to some asshole and not ask if she was all right.

  She waved a hand. “Oh I’m fine,” she said, the red splotches on her face turning even redder.

  They waited, but she didn’t say anything else. “Did you need something?” Austin asked, using his nice voice.

  “Right, yes. So…I hear a lot of noises at night.” Her hands were tightly clenched together and her eyes were wide. It was a pretty damn big house for one woman to be in by herself.

  His muscles tightened. “What kind of noises?”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t know. Like, maybe…scurrying noises…in walls.”

  He relaxed his shoulders. At least there wasn’t someone creeping around outside or in the house. “Probably just mice.”

  “Mice?” she whispered, all the splotches on her face now gone, replaced by ghostly white.

  “An old place like this is probably filled with them,” Austin added.

  Her eyes went wider. “Filled? Like it might not be just one or two?”

  “Oh hell, no. Where there’s one there’re probably dozens. We can set out some traps,” Cooper said, hoping that would ease her worry. “But then again, it could be bats.”

  She inhaled sharply. “Shut. Up.”

  Maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned the bats. “They’ll leave you alone.”

  Austin coughed. “Unless they have rabies. Watch out for those ones.”

  He glared at his brother. “It’s not like they’ll be carrying a sign or something that says, ‘I have rabies.’” He turned back to Emily. “Stay away from all bats.”

  She rubbed her temples. “I don’t think I can deal with this right now.”

  “It’s not too big of a deal to take care of,” Cooper said, wanting to reassure her. “Do you have a fishing net? All you have to do if you see one flying by is catch it in the net and release it outside.”

  She threw her arms in the air. “There are so many things wrong with what you just said that I don’t even know where to begin.”

  He glanced at Austin, whose face was red with strangled laughter.

  She held up her thumb. “First off, why would I own a fishing net? Why on earth would I have a fishing net?”

  He nudged his chin in the direction of the river. “There’s freshwater trout in that river.”

  She shut her eyes briefly and then held up her index finger. “Second, if I see a bat, I’m not going to go chasing it with a net; I’m going to dial 911.”

  This time Austin burst out laughing, and Cooper almost smiled.

  “Do you guys have a wildlife company or rodent company you’d recommend?”

  He nodded, sensing she was taking this hard. “Sure. No problem. We see Leo all the time at the Sunshine Diner. I’ll have him call you to arrange a time to come over.”

  She had rolled her lips inward. “Great. But it might not be mice or bats, right? Like, maybe it was nothing.”

  He shook his head. “Nah, pretty sure it was something. You might have squirrels in those old chimneys. I’ll see if we can get the chimney guys out here sooner rather than later. They can clean those out and then cap the old things with mesh so no pests get in. We’ll get the bat possibility checked out, too. Have you been in the basement?”

  She winced. “I try to avoid it at all costs.”

  Austin let out a muffled laugh. “It’s not that bad, considering the age of the house.”

  She waved a hand. “The holes in places aren’t really my thing.”

  “Holes?” Cooper repeated.

  “You know, in the walls?”

  Cooper nodded, trying to follow her description. “Oh. The crawl spaces with the dirt floors?”

  “Yup. I would think if I were some kind of rodent, I’d like that to be my home.”

  He and Austin looked at each other. “Okay, well, we’ll get moving on the wildlife and rodent situation,” he finally said.

  They started walking to the front door, and she followed them. “I see a lot of cats near the barn. That’s probably a good thing for mice control, right?”

  Cooper nodded. “Sure is. You could always get a cat for the house, too.”

  She paused and he could tell she was actually thinking about it. “Is there a shelter around here?”

  “Not close by, but there are always people trying to get rid of kittens. A lot of people have barn cats and need to find new homes for some of them. Have a look on the Facebook page,” Cooper said at the door.

  She took a deep breath and smiled. “Okay, great. Thanks. I guess I’ll see you guys on Monday?”

  Cooper nodded, a wave of guilt catching him by surprise. It wasn’t guilt. Maybe it was pity. She was standing there in the grand entrance of this amazing old house, and she was all by herself. She obviously wasn’t even thirty yet, and she was trying to take on a monster of a project. She had upsetting people whom she was trying to get away from. But she was all alone. That was one thing he never was. With three siblings and two doting parents, he was always surrounded by family. Even after Catherine died, he was never by himself, despite pleading to be left alone; no one in his family had listened to him. “If, uh, you need anything over the weekend, you have my number.”

  A hint of pink lined her cheekbones, and she nodded but didn’t smile. “Okay. Thanks for everything.”

  He and Austin walked out onto the porch, the last of the sun disappearing behind the barn as they walked to their trucks. “Uh, I think I forgot something. I’ll be right back,” Cooper said.

  “What’d you forget?” Austin asked, his voice laced with humor.

  “You don’t need to wait for me,” he said over his shoulder.

  “I’ll be right here,” his brother said.

  Cooper gave him the finger and walked up the porch steps, trying not to let Austin’s laughter irritate him. He knocked on the door and waited.

  Emily opened it a second later. “Oh, hi. Forget something?”

  He held onto the screen door handle and searched for the words that had been on the tip of his tongue just a minute ago. Wisps of hair fell gently around her face, and not for the first time today he found himself taken by how pretty she was. “Right. No, I just wanted to mention that you should be careful about leaving any food or crumbs around until we figure out the mouse situation.”

  She waved a hand. “I barely eat here since I don’t have a kitchen.”

  He tried to put it delicately. “Well, I saw an open bag of Cheetos, and it being cheese and stuff…”

  Her face turned a few more shades of pink. “Oh. The Cheetos. Right. They will now be burned and forever stripped from any food craving I ever have.”

  He laughed and backed up a step. “Well, that’s good. Uh, have a good weekend again.”

  A flicker of something passed over her eyes, and he cursed himself for his abrupt ending and for even coming back here in the first place. “You, too,” she said as he walked back down the porch. His reward was seeing his brother still leaning against his truck and texting.

  “If you need anything over the weekend, you have my number?” Austin said, doing a poor job of mimicking his voice as he put his phone in his pocket.

  Cooper scowled at him. “What? We are her contractors. If something goes wrong, I wanted to remind her she can contact us, even though it’s the weekend.”<
br />
  Austin grinned. “That’s not what it sounded like to me.”

  He put his hand on the door handle when they reached his truck. “Well, you’re a moron. Clearly you have difficulty understanding basic English.”

  Austin leaned against his truck, folding his arms across his chest. “What was it that you forgot?”

  “To tell her something.”

  “I think you just wanted to go back to talk to her because you like our new client.”

  “I’m not in the seventh grade. And she’s nice and pleasant.”

  Austin scoffed. “Hot.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Anyone with eyes noticed.”

  “I know where this is going, so I’ll save you the trouble. I’m not interested.” He opened the door, and Austin shut it.

  “Get your hands off my truck, Tinhead,” he said, using their childhood nickname for him because he knew his brother hated it.

  Austin ignored him. “I think you need to get a damn life. She’s perfect for you, especially since she’s not from around here.”

  He shoved Austin away from his truck. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  The minute he asked the question he knew exactly what his brother had meant. And now it was stamped across his dumb face—pity.

  “Never mind. Don’t answer. You mean she wouldn’t know about Catherine. That doesn’t even make a difference, anyway. You going to baseball practice tomorrow night?” he asked, hoping to change the subject.

  He hated talking about Catherine with his family because they remembered her and they remembered him. They remembered him at his best, and they remembered him at his worst. They had saved him from his misery, but it made him uncomfortable to think about a time in his life when he hadn’t even been able to get out of bed in the morning. He didn’t like thinking about the tears he’d cried in front of them. He didn’t like thinking about the sleepless nights with one if not both of his brothers in the house he’d shared with his wife. But they’d been there for him on his darkest nights, passing whiskey and drinking and crying with him, always making sure he wouldn’t go over the edge.