Chapter 2 Caleb
Caleb
I followed Emma down the noisy old stairs, each rickety step sounding like a ghost with a grudge. And since Emma’s ineffective flashlight was the same as trying to put out a fire with a drop of water, I held my Maglite above her, aiming it downward so she didn’t take a header.
“Thanks,” she said grudgingly, the hand at her side fisted, probably to hide the fact she was shaking.
On brand. Emma Sumner didn’t do vulnerable. At least not with the likes of me, someone she’d long ago decided was nothing more than a meathead jock. “Golden rule,” I said.
She glanced back with those dragon-slaying emerald eyes dialed to suspicion and mistrust. With her hand now on her hip, sass spilled from her every pore; she looked like the best thing that had never happened to me as eight years of my life vanished on a phantom wind.
She stood there, petite as hell, with her non-petite attitude and scrunched-up brow—no doubt caused by my presence. If I weren’t also feeling the same bad attitude about this blast from my past, I’d admit she was still smoking hot.
“Golden rule?” she queried, tapping an impatient foot.
“Always back your teammate, even if you hate them.”
“This isn’t hockey, and I’m not your teammate.”
Of course she didn’t dispute the hating-me thing. Whatever. I spread my hands. “Look, like it or not, we’ve once again been paired together. So I’m going to have your back, and in good faith, I assume you’ll do the same.”
“If you’re referring to our college co-projects, you didn’t have anyone’s back but your own.”
“Your hindsight needs a prescription.” Her presence was making me feel like I’d been shot out of a cannon—I knew a hard landing was coming.
Her and that laptop and those smarty-pants eyes and wildly wavy chestnut hair that made a man’s fingers itch to touch it.
Fuck. Why her? With her every impertinent, irreverent word, those old feelings of being known as nothing more than a puck chaser hit me all over again.
The old stairs creaked under our combined weight, and Emma gripped the banister like her life depended on it. “If you turn out to be a serial killer and I’ve just let you lure me down here to my dramatic death, I’m going to be really pissed off.”
“If I were going to kill you, I’d have done so on the ground level so I wouldn’t have to carry your body up these stairs.”
She snorted and nearly tripped. I didn’t dare say watch your step or anything else that might suggest she wasn’t up to the challenge, but these stairs were rickety as fuck. If she fell, she’d probably accuse me of pushing her.
Her phone buzzed in the silence, lighting up her back pocket before she pulled it out to look at the screen.
I inadvertently caught sight of her home screen, with text previews.
One from Verizon that said, Bill Overdue, and the other from Henderson and Hall.
She ignored the bill text and quickly thumbed a response to work, her face lit up in the ambient cell light.
She’d both changed a lot and not at all. At age eighteen, she’d known a hundred times more about architecture than I ever could.
In contrast, I’d been good on skates and could sink a puck into a net, and as a result, most people treated me like the crown prince of the campus.
Except Emma.
In the years since, she’d grown into herself, sharpened her edges even more, and I liked it. Liked, too, the way her body had filled out, all warm, sexy curves, but what I liked the most was the newfound confidence radiating from her. It looked good on her.
She slid her phone away. “Just the office, checking in.”
I wasn’t new to my job, but I understood the pressure more than she knew. “We’ve got this, you know.”
She craned her neck to look at me. “We?”
I flashed my most charming smile. “Sure. The Fixer and Exceptional Emma.”
Her expression said I’d lost my marbles, and I had to laugh.
Charming people was my superpower, except with Emma.
But this wasn’t college. This was real life, my life, and this project was critical to proving to Ryder that I had a place in Colburn Restoration at the very top. Right next to him—as partner.
I’d made mistakes in my stupid, wild, feral youth, way too many, and didn’t have the best track record. I’d disappointed him in the past, but I intended to remedy that. I needed to be of value, to lift some of the heavy weight off the brother who’d sacrificed so much for me.
All I had to do was make this project, Colburn Restoration’s biggest project ever, the sweetheart of our portfolio, and I’d have my life where I wanted it. But to do that, I needed a cohesive, strong team. Emma was now a part of that team, which meant I had to find a way in with her.
At the bottom of the stairs, Emma took in what she could, and her jaw dropped.
“Looks like it has a story to tell, doesn’t it?” I said quietly.
A huff of air escaped her as she turned in a slow circle. “Wow. It’s amazing.”
I agreed. A bar stretched out along one wall, dark oak now dulled with age; dust clung to beaten-up barstools, and various alcohol bottles lined up like silent sentries, some still holding murky liquids that looked like they’d bite if anyone dared take a sip.
Behind the bar, the shelves held chipped and broken shot glasses, tarnished brass drink shakers, and an old-timey cash register whose keys probably clicked to the beat of 1920s jazz.
The room had been set up for intimacy, a scattering of low tables and red velvet booths half-dissolved by years of neglect. Faded posters adorned the walls, their edges curling with age.
This wasn’t just a basement. It was a gateway to a time when people risked everything for a taste of the forbidden.
“This was a secret speakeasy,” Emma whispered, face in bold relief from the flashlight’s glow.
I nodded. “Even Henderson had no idea.”
She shook her head, awed. “I can almost still smell the tobacco and spilled whiskey, and hear all the secrets this room’s held for all these years.
What’s that?” Without waiting for a response, she crossed the room, taking her beam of light with her.
On the far side of the bar, she stopped in front of shelves built into the wall.
She blew away a bunch of dust, waved it out of her face, and then ran her fingers down the side of the time-swollen built-in.
“I’ve seen this before,” she said, and without concern for the dirt and dust, she got down on her hands and knees to eyeball the bottom part of the shelving unit up close with her pathetic penlight.
“What are you—”
“Shh a sec,” she said, then stunned me into amused silence as she knocked on the side panel. “Hear that?”
“Oh, am I allowed to talk now?”
She was tugging now, fingers gripping the side panel with a grunt of effort. “You gonna help me, or is that muscled bod just for show these days?”
With a snort, I dropped to my knees beside her, knowing she’d never once been impressed by me, muscled bod or no. “What are we doing?”
She knocked on the wood again, then turned her head and beamed at me. “It’s hollow. The secret speakeasy has a secret panel!”
I knew her bright smile wasn’t for me, but it was still a showstopper.
“Wait here a second,” I said, then jogged back up the stairs.
In the kitchen, I grabbed a portable construction light, plugged it into a long extension cord, and took it back down to the basement.
I flicked a switch and lit us up in a halogen glow.
Emma laughed in delight and gave the wood another tug. The shelving unit budged a fraction of an inch. Reaching in, my hands joined hers. “Ready?” I asked.
“Yes,” she breathed, the back of her head so close to my face that strands of her hair caught on my stubble. I gave a single tug, and the shelving unit pivoted 180 degrees, revealing a secret entrance.
We shined our lights in. The space was the size of a large walk-in safe. Two walls were all shelves, bare with the exception of one tattered canvas bag. On the other wall hung a very old-looking dartboard, all of it covered in layers and layers of dust and spiderwebs.
Emma, apparently not bothered by either, crawled in, waving a hand to clear a web near her face as I reached for the canvas bag.
“Wait,” she said.
I crawled in next to her, ignoring the bolt of fire that went through my leg. I eyed the dust smudged along one of Emma’s cheeks and in her hair, loving that she didn’t seem to give a shit about that or the state of her work clothes. “What?”
“Well, what if I want to be the one to look in the bag?”
We stared at each other. “Darts,” we said at the same time. My brothers and I had played darts our entire childhood. In college, my every spare second had been spent at the local bar hustling my friends. I wasn’t about to hustle poor Emma. She wanted this so badly, and I’d let her have it.
“First to hit the bull’s-eye,” I said.
“Too chicken to play Three-Oh-One?”
I laughed low in my throat at her taunt. “I was trying to be nice, but you’re on.”
The object of 301 was to land on the highest numbers, being the first player to bring their starting score of 301 down to zero. I could do this in a few moves—in my sleep.
“Ladies first,” I said, picking up one of the darts in the gutter beneath the board and handing it to her.
She concentrated on her stance, gripping the dart, brow furrowing in concentration as she threw the dart.
And hit the bull’s-eye. “That’s fifty points off for me.”
I looked into her smug face and shook my head. “You hustled me.”
“Who, me?” she asked innocently.
Ten minutes later, she’d wiped the floor with me. I was still standing there, staring at the dartboard, wondering what the fuck had just happened, when she carefully pulled the canvas bag off the shelf and opened it.
With a gasp, she pulled out a wad of hundred-dollar bills. “Oh my God.”