Chapter 7
MAN MOUNTAIN. My toilet-scrubbing makeout partner, he of the gray eyes and the compelling butt-grab, is here.
I caught him in profile before I froze up, but now he’s facing me, greeting Diego with a high five in the center of the room. He’s wearing a navy baseball cap with yellow stitching, and lifts it to run his fingers through his dark hair as Diego starts speaking.
The memories wash over me. Me, raking my nails over his scalp. He’d liked that. I’d liked the feel of his hair. Very soft. And I’d liked the growling sound my nails had pulled from him, and the way he’d cupped my butt immediately after…
I shake my head to clear it of the libidinous fog.
My brain is slow on the uptake, but two and two are easing together.
Man Mountain was the only house party attendee of an age at which one might reasonably own and operate a business, and if there’s anyone in my recent experience who I’d guess had spent time as a professional weight lifter, it’s Mr. T-Shirts Don’t Fit My Arms. Now, here he is, at the gym Grant’s brother owns.
Either this place’s clientele is casual drop-in for a hangout close with its staff, or…
“So, Grant.” My voice squeaks. “Just wondering, is Ian quite tall?”
Grant brays out his laugh, moving to where I’ve planted myself.
“Oh, yeah. He’s gigantic—oh!” The bright revelation in his tone has me bracing for the inevitable.
“You probably saw him last night! He hadn’t been able to come out with us, but he dropped by the house.
He was in a rough spot, like you. He doesn’t usually drink, like…
at all. He’s probably feeling shitty today, too,” he adds, elbowing me.
My smile is a grimace. “Yeah. We met while I was cleaning the bathroom. He, uh…” My booze-soaked brain offers a flashback: Ian’s hand sliding from my waist to cup my breast, me yelping—actually yelping, like a kicked Yorkie—at the resulting pull on my boob tape.
Really could have lived without that one, brain.
“He handled the toilet,” I finish. The memories continue to unspool.
His eyes had gone huge with worry, his big hand flying away from my chest as he apologized.
I’d been quick to reassure him that I was fine, and tried to explain the situation before opting to simply show him.
He was intrigued by the product, giving my boob an exploratory poke through the tape, but disappointed by how inaccessible it made my assets.
Not that it kept him from enjoying what he could partake in.
Heat blazes across my chest at the recall of teasing fingers outlining what the removal process confirmed was a very thorough and unflattering arrangement of tape and cleavage.
I fight to keep hold of the memory. He’d done a fine job with what he had to work with, running his knuckles along the outsides of my breasts, grazing the length of my cleavage with his fingertips. Taking his time, watching my face for a reaction, grinning when I gasped…
“Hey, Little Hammond!” a female voice hollers, yanking me back to the present.
Grant laughs, turning to face the turf. “Just a sec,” he tells me. “I gotta go get yelled at for missing the workout.” He trots off, abandoning me to my plight.
I will myself to focus. I don’t know how to play this.
Regular me would… well, regular me would never have been in this position to begin with.
Break from Reality Ellie is in charge now.
And between the unholy cocktail of revived horniness, the thrill of adrenaline that hit me out front, and the morning’s ever-present threat of vomiting, she has her work cut out for her.
Ian’s still talking to Diego. I watch as my name forms on Diego’s lips. Ian lists forward slightly, as though to better hear him, and repeats “Ellie?” just loudly enough for me to hear him over the din of the gym. Diego points in my direction, then waves at me. Ian’s gaze follows.
He blinks, otherwise immobilized, and we stare at one another over the felled athletes on the gym floor.
I’m pleased to find that he is as good-looking as my bleary memory had me believe.
And relieved for his sake that this T-shirt fits him better; no rings around his biceps, which, now that I’m seeing them without the cover of a sweater, are something to behold.
Lordy. His whole person is something to behold. The man’s pecs are as big as my head. Literally; I confirmed last night by pressing the side of my face to one and having him compare the two in the mirror.
I suppress a cringe. So smooth, Ellie.
I kissed this specimen of a man. Freshly single after five years, and I’m the one who made a move. Shame there are so many gaps in my memory, though. If that boob flashback is any indication, he is skilled. And I’m supposed to work for him?
Ian recovers first. He saunters toward me, a half smile hitching the corner of his mouth as he weaves between the bodies on the ground. He’s trying so, so hard not to laugh, his face is twitching with the effort. “Good morning.” He looms so large, I might as well be sitting down.
“Hi,” I say.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again so soon. Or… ever, actually.” I catch a hint of cinnamon on his breath. Had there been cinnamon last night? I have a weakness for cinnamon.
He looks me over, more of a wellness scan than an appraisal. “How are you?”
“A little worse for wear, but I at least woke up in a bed.”
“Good for you.” He nods toward the corner of the gym. “I came to on the floor of the pro shop.”
“Oof,” I say, navigating a torrent of disappointment that he hadn’t even started in bed with me, relief at the same fact, and curiosity about how he got here. Given the state he’d been in, if he drove, I’m writing him off as both potential employer and subject of recovered lust.
He finally loses the fight against his smile. “Diego,” he turns and calls over his shoulder, “you mind wrapping up this class for me? I’ll pay you for the full hour—”
“Absolutamente!” Diego replies, and jogs past us to position himself in an open garage doorway.
He claps his hands to get the attention of everyone inside and on the turf.
“Good morning, friends! I will lead your cooldown while Ian talks to Ellie! We met her last night! She’s going to live with us and work here! ”
The floor squeaks with the sound of sweaty heads turning to take me in. It’s unsettling, like someone’s given the command to an army of undead.
“Everyone say Welcome, Ellie!” Diego instructs.
The room echoes with a chorus of “Welcome, Ellie!” that’s both hospitable and reenforces the legion of the damned thing. I wave.
“Ellie is very good at flip cup and has beautiful handwriting,” Diego continues. “She also taught us that you never use water to put out a grease fire! That makes it worse!”
“Oh, girlie,” says an older woman propped up on her elbows a few yards away. She’s wearing the most violently pink lipstick I’ve ever seen away from a drag show. “You’re either very brave or very desperate.”
“Both,” I concede, which gets some laughs from the fallen.
Diego redirects the crowd’s attention, saying something about scorpion pose, and Ian motions for me to follow him. We head toward an arrangement of couches and chairs between the pro shop and the front desk, which is conspicuously devoid of an attendant.
“Have you been hydrating?” he asks. I shrug, and he moves to a mini-fridge on the counter. Pushing past the cans I recognize from Diego’s room and Grant’s car, he produces a pair of large, squarish bottles of purple liquid. He hands one to me with a “Try this.”
“Electrolit?” I ask, reading the label aloud. It’s all in Spanish.
He unscrews the cap of the one he holds. “More effective than Gatorade, but when buying it by the armload, it’s less shameful than the stuff meant for toddlers with diarrhea.”
“Thank you.” I unscrew the cap and lift my bottle toward his. “Cheers.” The containers connect with a thud, and we drink. It’s not bad. The grape flavor is strong, with a hint of salt.
Ian watches me as he drinks. When he lowers the bottle, he’s half smiling again, setting off a fluttering sensation in my chest. We each take a seat, me on the couch, him on one of the boxy armchairs opposite it. “What do you remember about last night?” He’s not needling me, just curious.
I appreciate that he’s not making a big deal about this. “Not a lot. We had—” My face ignites. “Fun?”
“I’m glad you think so, too.” He cocks his head. “I can’t remember much, either. We, uh…” He holds his hands up, palms together, fingers entwined, then pulls his hands apart.
“Disengaged?”
“Sure. And then you fled the scene.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“Did I at least thank you?”
He laughs. “No idea. I ended up outside, and then woke up around seven on the floor with no memory how I got there. The Lyft receipt helped. I tipped two hundred percent,” he muses. “Then I coached. After I showered. Where I also threw up.”
“Gotcha.” So, that’s that. Glad he took a rideshare. “Sorry about bailing. I—” I’m not sure what to say or what I detailed last night. “I’m in a weird spot right now. As far as”—I raise my hands, forming an arc above my head to encompass me—“all of my life.”
“So, that includes the breakup, subsequent homelessness, moving in with the guys, and wanting the front desk position here for supplemental income?”
I blink. “How did—”
“Diego can get a lot of information out at once. He doesn’t breathe much. It’s caused problems with his lifts.” He tugs on the rim of his cap. “You get the lowdown on the job?”
“Checking people in, routine cleaning, social posts…” I say, recalling the list of duties the guys mentioned, and he nods along.
His eyes really are the most incredible color.
And did I miss the cleft in his chin? Because it is pronounced.
It would be very much in keeping with Drunk Ellie to have run a finger along that space, maybe make a sawing noise.
Nope; that’s a memory. I did do that. Jesus.
I meet Ian’s eyes again and realize that I’ve let the silence go on long enough to develop a charge. It seems smart to ask, “Where are we, exactly, as far as last night?”
“Like you said. We had fun.”
“And that’s… all?”
“Why?” That smile hitches at the corner of his mouth. I want to lick it. Hell, I may have last night. Stupid, brined brain.
“Because we’ll be working together.”
His brows draw together, but the smile is still teasing his lips. It’s adorable. “I haven’t hired you yet.”
“You’re going to hire me. I’m a competent adult with an intense commitment to cleanliness, as you well know. Just because we—”
“Just because we what?” Ian grins. “Your majesty.”
“You’ve been wanting to say that since I came in, haven’t you?”
“It’s been killing me.”
I glare at him on principle. His grin only spreads wider, if that’s possible. It shows his canines, which are more pronounced than on most people, giving his grin a feral appeal. I’ll just assume that I mentioned that last night.
“Are you looking for an out from the job you’re trying to convince me to give you, or would you rather itemize what each of us did in that bathroom?”
I manage to lift my chin, but God help me, I could really go for some itemization.
“We were drunk. We have established that it was fun.” He tips his head, considering, and that lick-tempting half smile hooks the corner of his mouth again.
“I think I remember it being fun, anyway. Pretty hazy, overall. But you need a job, and I need someone who can use the computer without getting distracted by their own reflection in the monitor.” He nods, and I follow his eyes to spot Alistair in his preferred state of shirtlessness, inspecting himself in the full-length mirror in the pro shop.
His immaculate form is almost enough to distract me from the general disarray of the shirt display beside him, which is an eyesore.
Alistair flexes, every muscle on his right side achieving anatomy book?level definition, then nods approvingly. “Looking cut,” he determines… to himself.
I wrinkle my nose, turning back to Ian. “No promises there. I fluff my hair a lot.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“What?” One hand flies to my scalp, fingers tousling my roots.
“You’ve done that three times since we’ve been talking. Not a problem. You’ve already strung more sentences together than I’ve ever heard from Alistair, and you’ve yet to pull up a cat video on your phone while I’m talking to you, so you’re an improvement on Diego, too.”
“Good to know the bar is so easy to meet.”
“The bar is underground.”
“So we agree that having witnessed one another in a compromised state will not impact our professional relationship. And the fact that I’m going to be sleeping in your bed?
Old bed. Old bedroom!” I say, stumbling over every noun with increasing volume, like I might drown out the one that came before.
I wait to crumble into dust, but Ian just laughs.
He shrugs. “It is pretty weird that you’re moving in with them.”
“Very brave and very desperate,” I remind him, though he hadn’t sounded judgmental, just… accurate.
“For what it’s worth, I never used that mattress.
It wasn’t deep enough for my bed frame,” he adds, and gestures upward.
Confused, I look at the ceiling, finding only exposed ductwork and I-beams. “There’s an apartment on the second floor,” he explains.
“I lived with the guys while it was being renovated.”
Ah. That explains why he ended up here in the wee hours. “And yet, you passed out on the ground floor?”
“I couldn’t even make it onto a couch, so, no. Stairs were not in the cards.”
I smile. Most people wouldn’t own up to something like that. It’s disarming. And hot. Accountability is deeply appealing.
But I’m not here to be seduced by compelling character traits. This is me, in defiance of everything “me,” agreeing to be employed by a man whose tongue has been in my mouth. “Then I will be professional and acknowledge your role as owner-operator with all the respect it deserves.”
“Outstanding. Welcome aboard.” He scoots to the edge of his seat, hand extended, and we shake. His palm is warm and dry, with calluses that have just enough scrape that I now know what caused the roughed-up snags along the fabric backing of the boob tape.
Ian releases my hand, expression going thoughtful. He sniffs the air. “Do you smell coconut?”