23. Libby
Libby
Spit Shake
J ust as Gunner said, it takes three hours to hit the edge of a tiny town not a lot different from the town I live in. Forest encroaches on the edges, as though the people that settled here stopped in the middle of the woods and decided it was a cool place to set up camp.
They took out only one tree to make room for their hut, and two hundred years later, they’ve now cleared out a couple thousand trees to make room for a few houses, a hospital, a dollar store, and at the top of what I figure is Main Street, a grocery store that looks a lot like Jonah’s.
We stop in there and start our first ever domestic act; we go shopping together.
I thought it would be frustrating to shop with Mr. Turkey-is-all-we-need, but when we pass the cookie aisle, he takes down one single sleeve of chocolate chip.
“All yours. It’s more than your macro count allows, but it’s not so much that you’ll leave this place in a week with a potbelly and self-loathing. ”
How can he know me this well? How can he know exactly what I need when we barely even know each other?
As he turns the cart and tries to move away, I grab his arm and pull him back with a jerk.
The top corner of the cart hits the shelving, but it’s completely forgotten as I grab onto his collar and pull him down.
His eyes light up with fun, his hands come to my hips.
But before his lips can touch mine, I stop him and stare into his eyes. “Thank you.”
“For the cookies?” He lips tug up into my favorite grin. “You’re welcome.”
“Yeah, for the cookies. But also, for this time away. For coming back for me.”
“I promised I would.” He leans in the rest of the way and slides his tongue along my bottom lip. “We spit shook on it. We can’t break that kind of promise.”
I laugh straight into his mouth as he continues to kiss me. “So maybe when we get married, instead of a regular ceremony, we can spit shake on it.”
He pulls back with a huff and throws his hands in the air. “There you go again with the marriage talk. Jesus, Elizabeth. We only just met!”
“I hate you.” I push away from him and steal the cart so I have something to do with my hands. On the way past the sleeves of cookies, I snatch up a second packet and flash my middle finger at a laughing Gunner. “We are not buying turkey. You can go fuck yourself.”
* * *
This ‘small’ cabin that Gunner speaks of is bigger than my apartment.
Not that that’s hard to achieve, but still, his attempt at humility irks me a little.
Twenty minutes after leaving the grocery store, Gunner turns the Range Rover on to a steep gravel driveway that stretches for a full mile or two.
Trees line both sides of the windy driveway, so we can’t see the house until the final bend and crest opens up to a small clearing and the cutest log cabin I’ve ever seen.
It’s massive, double-story, but the romance isn’t lost on me at all.
The two-story Victorian-esque home has a top level made of logs, and the bottom level, stones.
It stretches out so the front has the perfect grassed space with beautiful daisies circling the driveway, but the forest encroaches everywhere else.
Pine trees stretch high above the A-framed home so branches provide shade, and in place of logs or stones for the A in the in A-frame, a window that makes it impossible to see in, but I’d bet any amount of money, when inside, we get the most spectacular view of more forest.
It almost breaks my heart that he has these kinds of homes. In one day, I’ve been inside Griffin Plaza, a Range Rover, and now this. And the fact I’m holding his hand while here does weird things to my heart. My brain rejects the money, it rejects the idea of having access to something so… easy.
But we spit shook on it.
“Stop freaking out, Tate. It’s not as bad as it seems.”
“No?” I pull my bottom lip between my teeth in contemplation. “Because it seems like I fell in love with a Bishop. That Bishop has a metric ton of cash, and wow, look at that coincidence; a Bishop, a Tate, and lots of money. It looks fishy.”
“Not from where I sit.” He squeezes my hand when I try to pull away. “No one buys you. No one buys me. None of my money was made while hurting innocents. You need to relax and stop overthinking this.”
“Would you consider giving everything away and coming to live in my little apartment?” I stare up into his eyes and obnoxiously flutter my lashes. “You could be my station’s IT support, where you’ll earn a paltry forty-five thousand a year like the rest of us.”
He scrunches his nose and flashes a playful grin.
“Babe, I’ve already made more than forty-five-k…
today. I’m not giving that up after working so fuckin’ hard all my life.
But ! If it makes you feel better, when I buy you an engagement ring, it’ll be cheap and ugly.
Ya know, the opposite of gaudy and attention-seeking. ”
“Ugh.” I throw his hand away and push the car door open. “Engagement ring? We literally just met. Why are you going full clinger on me?”
I love that instead of copping an attitude, he only slides out of his side and meets me at the back of the car. Gunner sent no one ahead of us – sorry, Marianne – so there are no lights on, no welcoming party, no candles or a meal in the oven.
Which is perfectly okay with me.
I don’t ever want to meet his personal care team.
I don’t want anyone except him serving me a meal or washing my clothes.
I get the theory behind why he has them; if he’s earned forty-five thousand dollars and it’s not even four in the afternoon yet, then his time is better spent doing whatever it is that he does with computers, and not cleaning his home.
By focusing his efforts where they’re most valuable, he also provides employment for people who have families to feed.
But that doesn’t mean I’ll ever be okay with someone else washing my panties.
It’s a hard line.
Gunner and I packed light for this week; one small suitcase each, my handbag that comes with a phone and my weapons, and his laptop bag that comes with enough technology to run an empire from afar.
Grabbing them all but my handbag, Gunner closes the trunk and still manages to free up a hand to take mine and lead me toward the house.
“It annoys me a lot to say this…”
He chuckles. “Okay.”
“But your house is really pretty. I love how secluded it is. Your closest neighbor is, what, five miles away?”
He nods. “About that. No one will hear you scream.”
I roll my eyes as we make our way up the dozen or so steps at the front of the wooden porch surrounded by stone. “Funny guy. I like being alone. I like the quiet and seclusion, so I suppose, if I must live in luxury for a week…”
“This’ll do?” He stops at the front door, sets our bags down and, digging his hands into his pockets, pulls out a set of keys and pushes them into the lock. “It’s not quite Griffin Plaza. But it’s not an alleyway.”
“Something between, then?”
“Yeah.” His lips pull up on one side. Throwing one arm over my shoulder and pulling me in close, he pushes the door open to reveal a massive room that is open on both levels.
Wood logs everywhere, every wall, every staircase banister, every doorway.
A long island counter made of the same wood as the rest of the house takes up a massive portion of one end of the room, stainless steel appliances behind it.
A circular staircase leads up to the next floor, and a mezzanine-type balcony spreads around so sleeping spaces surround the living room.
I turn at the A-shaped window I saw outside and, just as predicted, draw in a deep breath at the sight of the driveway, a rainbow of daisies, the car, and beyond that? Nothing but trees. The road is a full mile almost straight down, so we don’t see any cars through the trees, we don’t hear them.
When inside this home, it’s as though we could be the only people on the planet.
“Jesus, Gunner. Compensating for a small dick, or what?” I walk away from the window when he comes back through the door with our bags, drops them, and closes up behind himself.
It’s March, so the snow is gone, but the mountain air is still chilly.
This weather is kind of exactly the same as it was when we met. Cool, windy, but when a man takes you in his arms as Gunner does now, it’s not so bad.
“Are you tired?” He presses a kiss to the side of my neck and squeezes me tight. “Wanna sit, or take a tour?”
“We’ve been sitting for hours.” I turn in his arms. “Let’s tour.”
“Okay.” He smacks a noisy kiss on my cheek, then pulls me toward the kitchen. “This is the space allocated for women. It’s often where they prepare meals for the men in their life. The women are usually required to be sans footwear.”
“Absolutely not.”
He laughs and passes through the state-of-the-art space. “No to the cooking, or no to the bare feet?”
“All of it. You can go fuck yourself.”
“But I’d rather fuck you.” His hand slides around my hips and up to cup my left boob. “Come on, copper . I have heaps more to show you.”
He leads me out of the space between the oven and the counter, only to stop again when we clear the tiniest gap in the wooden floorboard.
Reaching to his right, he flips a switch that I would have assumed was for the garbage disposal, but it makes a rectangle of floor about six feet long and four feet wide lift, lift, and then reverse to reveal another wooden staircase that leads into pitch blackness.
My heart races when the unknown opens up right in front of me. “I never once agreed to being murdered in this home, Gunner. Suddenly I’m reminded that we really did only just meet. Perhaps you’ve become a psycho in the last twenty years.”
“Nah.” He flips a light switch that illuminates the staircase and leads me down. “I was a psycho long ago. Pretty sure I was born with it.”
“Like a Maybelline model?”
His brows furrow. “Huh?”
“Nothing.”