I reached for him, instinctively, watching to touch him, my hand rising to capture his. My heart was full and I saw admiration there, a genuine, deep affection for me.
But he dropped his hand before I could clasp him. “So priceless in fact, I don’t think I can afford you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I whispered, disappointed.
“Hold out for that good guy, Tiff.” He squatted down and fished a handful of bullets out of the box. He loaded his rifle with sharp, angry movements. “That’s all it means. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
He didn’t think he was good enough for me.
The very thought stunned me. Made me incapable of speech.
It was laughable, insane, ludicrous. I wanted to step forward, to tell him that he needed to know his own worth, too. That he wasn’t a bad guy, or selfish, or greedy. That he was generous and thoughtful. Surly, yes. Bad, no.
But before I could gather my thoughts, he said, “Stand back.”
I did.
He aimed and fired.
The shot shattered the quiet of the afternoon.
I winced instinctively.
And that was the end of our conversation.
When he paused, it was clear he’d hit the target dead center.
When it was my turn, my aim was high.
Chapter Eight
Come upstairs. I want you to hear something.
I paused in the middle of chopping vegetables for a salad as I read the text from Devin. He was in his studio again, like he had been every day for the last few weeks since he’d arrived at Richfield. The days had settled into a pattern. I would wake up and he’d already be in the kitchen, drinking coffee and working, sometimes on his computer, sometimes on conference calls. He would wave me over and he would set everything aside while we sipped coffee and talked for twenty minutes or so. Then he would go upstairs to his studio, emerging only for lunch. By dinnertime, he was done and we would go for a driving lesson, then I would cook for him, with him acting as sous chef. At night we talked, played chess, made a fire.
I waited for him to get bored with me and go back to New York or at least start going out in town, eschewing my company for random strangers in restaurants or bars. But he didn’t.
He sought me out, repeatedly. I hung back and waited and every day, he inserted his presence into my day. He dominated and demanded my attention and I craved it. He made me feel like I mattered to his day. That I brought him some sort of pleasure with my conversation, my cooking, my existence. His moods became darker as the days went by, and I knew that he had made his mind up that he couldn’t be more than a friend to me. That he had decided I needed to wait for a guy my own age, with some ten page laundry list of virtues that I was pretty sure didn’t exist in one man outside of Jesus.
But I was willing to wait. To bide my time until Devin either returned to the city or he realized that more than friendship was brewing between us. We finished each other’s sentences. We sparred and discussed and challenged each other. We were deeply and undeniably attracted to each other, our casual touches too lengthy, too charged, to be fully innocent.
We were living together, yet we weren’t together. We had a nebulous unexplainable relationship that wasn’t a relationship, exactly. We weren’t boss-employee. We crossed too many lines for that. We weren’t romantically involved, technically. Yet we said things you didn’t and shouldn’t say to someone when your relationship was purely platonic. We were friends, as much as you can be when someone is paying you and they waffle between treating you like a little buddy and someone they wanted to devour with their mouth. I knew Devin saw me as an equal but then he would call me his “ma petite amie” or explain something utterly stupid to me, like where Budapest was in Europe, and I would be forced to admit that he wasn’t going to stop, no matter how times I called him out on it. He needed to use my age as a shield between us, otherwise he’d have me up against a wall kissing me witless.
I was tore between gratitude that despite his questionable methods he was keeping that barrier intact between us and frustration that he didn’t just f**king go for it. Would I really regret it if we blurred that line between friendship and love?
Whatever you wanted to call it, whatever we were doing, it made me wake up every day eager to see him. Our conversations were exciting, stimulating. I laughed more than I could ever remember laughing.
And if I was falling in love with him, that was my problem. My mistake. I would get over it when he left. But for now, I wanted to enjoy it. We were edging closer and closer to the point when we wouldn’t be able to stop, and with each day that went by my fear of the consequences grew smaller and my desire grew larger.
I went upstairs and found him in his studio, headphones on, computer in front of him. He had mixers and soundboards and other things that lit up and looked intimidating as hell all turned on. He looked up when I went in and smiled at me. It did me in every time. It made me as ridiculous and inane as every girl I’d ever made fun of for going gushy over a guy.
“Hey, how is the writing going?” he asked.
I was attempting a full-length novel and was about thirty pages into it. It was a horror story about zombies. How they craved and took and sought and begged for everything you had, and were never satisfied. Like so many people I’d met in my life. “I just wrote a couple of pages. I’m not feeling it today. I keep thinking about Christmas.” Five days out. I’d never decorated for Christmas but I was itching to go back to Cat and Heath’s and crash there for a few days and do the holiday up right for a change. With food, and a present or two. I’d never done that.
“Christmas?” Devin looked at me blankly. “What about it?”
“I was thinking I would go to Cat’s house. But I should stop in town first and buy some presents and food. Can you drop me off at the ferry?”
Now he was frowning. “Are you saying you’re leaving for Christmas?”
Perching on the edge of his desk, I frowned at him. “Well, yes. I mean, you’re going to New York, right? It’s okay if the house is empty for twenty-four hours, isn’t it?” I had pictured him either going to his parents’ house or doing some sort of friends’ celebration at his apartment. He’d been gone for weeks and the phone calls had gotten more frequent, his tone with his team more impatient as they clearly pressed for his return.
“I’m not going to New York.”
“Oh.” That surprised me.
“And if you’re there…” he flicked his hand in the general direction of the ocean. “Then I’m here alone. So no, you do not have my permission to go to Cat’s house.”