Page 8

Three years later...
Four
Patrick
“Hey, boss,” the voicebelow me calls out, bouncing off me like I’m made of rubber, the word boss making it easy to ignore. That’s my cousin, Declan. He’s the boss. It’s his initials on the work trucks parked outside—DG Contracting—not mine.
I’m on the second floor of the six-thousand square foot custom home we’re building, standing in approximately the same place there’s supposed to be an upstairs laundry shoot. It isn’t there. Moving down the hall, I head toward the master suite where there’s space to spread out my blueprints and check before I find Jeff, the crew foreman.
I find my table—just a sheet of plywood balanced on the backs of a couple of paint splattered saw horses—and spread out my blueprints. The embossed seal pressed into the lower left-hand corner bares my name. My blueprints because I drew them up. I designed this house. And now, we’re building it. I’m an architect but I also act as the go-between between Declan and his crew because he’s not exactly what would be considered a people person. Left to deal with it on his own, he’d fire everyone and just build the house himself.
“Boss!” The bellow is directly below me now and I look down, weaving my gaze between the cracks in the yet to be finished sub-floor to find Jeff looking directly at me.
He’s talking to me.
“Something wrong?” I say, instantly concerned. Declan isn’t here—something about him and his fiancé going to register for wedding gifts at some pricey department store. When he left, Dec looked like he wanted to hang himself.
“Nah, nothin’ wrong, boss,” Jeff said, breaking out into a wide grin. “Your girlfriend’s here again.”
I don’t have a girlfriend. What I have is Cari. She’s not my girlfriend but trying to convince the crew of giant adolescents, masquerading as grown men that I work with is nearly impossible.
Letting the plans roll closed, I snatch them off the table on my way down the hall and to the stairs. Jeff is waiting for me at the foot of them, hardhat pushed back on his forehead, toolbelt dragging at his worn jeans. He’s a good guy, just a few years older than me. He dropped out of high school in the tenth grade and worked construction with his dad until he died a few years back. He’s a hard worker. Doesn’t have to be told more than once to get shit done and the rest of the guys respect him, which is why he’s foreman, as opposed to someone who is older or has more experience.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I say, casting what I hope looks like a casual glance past him at what will, at some point, be a limestone portico. She’s standing in the sun, leaning against my dusty work truck. Seeing her makes me want to say it again—she’s not my girlfriend—just so I can remind myself.
I had my chance a long time ago and I blew it.
A few days after I took her home all those years ago, Cari showed up at the fraternity. She wasn’t there for me. She was there for Rob, deciding to give him one more chance. One more chance turned into eight but over the course of the six months that it took him to really fuck everything up, Cari and I became friends. And that mind-blowing kiss she laid on me? three years and a seemingly endless parade of douchebags later—it was like it never happened.
“Why the fuck not, bro?” Jeff says, jerking my attention away from shit that happened a longtime ago. While more responsible and intelligent than most of his counterparts, he’s just as nosy and irritating.
Thanks, Patrick. You’re the best friend a girl could ask for.
That’s the text I got back after wishing her luck on her interview today.
Friend. That’s what I am to her and that’s all I’m ever going to be. Not that it’s any of Jeff’s business.
“Your boys forgot to install the hallway laundry shoot.” I slap my blue prints into his hand. “That’s gonna set the drywall crew back a day, easy,” I say, breezing past him, smiling when he hisses out a curse before stomping away, to round up his crew for a tongue lashing.
Tossing my hardhat on a work table by the front door, I run a hand through my hair and fix a friendly smile on my face before emerging from the dark mammoth of glass and wood and into the sun. “Hey,” I call out to her as I stride forward. She’s dressed in what she’s dubbed her interview costume—a tight, knee-length black shirt and a silky white top that dips just low enough in front to offer a hint of cleavage. The only difference is the low-heeled pumps she’d bought specifically for interviews were replaced with a pair of cherry red stilettos I’ve never seen her wear. They had to be at least five inches, lifting her from her usual 5’9 to something closer to my own 6’4. There was something strangely erotic about having her nearly tall enough to look me in the eye.
Tucking away my decisively unfriendly thoughts, I forced an easy-going smile onto my face. “How’d it go?”
“I got the job,” she squeals, throwing herself at me, and I steel myself against the feelings I’m about to be assaulted with. She wraps her arms around my neck, giving me no choice but to catch her, letting my hands land lightly against her waist. She smells like Cari—flowers that bloom in the dark and night falling rain. The scent of her, combined with the shoes that bring us hip to hip, goes straight to my cock and I have to set her away before she feels it stiffen against her belly. If I’m too abrupt, she doesn’t seem to notice.
“Told ya so,” I say, giving a lock of her long, caramel-colored hair a playful tug.
“I start Monday,” she crows, so proud and excited, the smile on her face threatens to split it wide open. “Want to know what sold her on hiring me?”
“The fact that you’re talented, brilliant and excited at the prospect of making her coffee every morning for the unforeseeable future?” I’m teasing her and she rewards me with a playful punch in my shoulder.
“No, jerk,” she shoots back, clear blue eyes narrowed down to slits. Despite the fierce look she’s giving me, I know she’s not really mad. She’s got a strawberry birthmark that goes from pale pink to fire engine red in about 2 seconds when she’s pissed or excited. It’s peeking out beneath the neck line of her blouse, the color of cotton candy. “This.” She shifts to the side to show off the ratty, paint-splattered canvas bag she carries everywhere. Before I can ask, she explains. “She said it was a painter’s bag. She could tell I was serious about art, not just some fresh out of college bimbo applying because I want to use the position to meet a rich man.”
“Speaking of rich men, is James taking you out to celebrate?” The second I say it, I want to punch myself in the face. She’s grown out of college bros, but she still dates assholes and James is her latest. He’s in his mid-thirties and just made junior partner at a law firm down town. He’s financially solvent, good-looking and treats her like shit. Which means he’s the perfect guy as far as Cari’s concerned.
The smile on her face starts to crumble but she gives it a boost, smoothing her hands down the front of her skirt. “It’s just a stupid receptionist job at an art gallery,” she says, immediately discounting herself. I can imagine it’s something she’s heard James say to her a hundred times. “It’s not a big deal… it’s just that you texted me this morning and I thought you’d want to know how it turned out.” She offers me a weakened version of her earlier smile.
I briefly entertain thoughts of kicking the shit out of James for making her feel like her accomplishments don’t mean anything.
“Look,” I say, noticing the whining screech of power saws and the thunk of nail guns have gone silent behind me. “First of all,” I start over, lowering my voice so the gaggle of hardhat-wearing gossips I know are watching us from the house can’t hear me. “You’re not a receptionist. You’re the personal assistant to Miranda McIntyre—the hottest, up and coming, art broker in Boston.” The last is a direct quote from our text conversation last night and it pulls another smile out of her. “Second of all, it’s dollar shots at Gilroy’s tonight. I’ll round up the crew and we’ll celebrate. Drinks are on me,” I say, just to make her smile again.
It works. She doesn’t just smile, she laughs. “Can I bring James,” she says, moving toward the ancient Carma Ghia she brought with her when she moved here for college.
The thought of spending all night watching her make eyes at James while he paws at her and scopes the bar for his next victim makes me want to vomit. I want to tell her no. That he’s an asshole and I want to kill him every time I have to watch him put his hands on her. But I don’t. I can’t. Instead, I just smile and say, “Of course.”