Chapter Five
Charlotte
“ W hat the fuck?” A loud voice bellowed through my sweet little coffee shop just as I was pulling a promising looking batch of muffins from the oven. I looked up to see my brother stomping in like a cranky storm cloud. I poured a dark roast into a large cup and put it on the counter.
“What’s up your ass, sunshine?” I asked.
He scowled at me, then at the coffee, but ultimately took it. He took a sip that likely burned his tongue, but he didn’t even flinch. “When were you going to tell me that the rental you moved into is in Nick fucking Perez’s house?”
Oh.
Shit.
This city is more like a small town, I swear. I pulled a muffin from the tin and placed it on the counter as a peace offering. “How’d you find out about that?”
“Not from you.” His voice was all snarly and annoying.
Point taken.
I let my shoulders drop. “I was going to tell you. I only just moved in. But seriously, why can you guys not just get over this whole thing?”
He opened his mouth to reply, but I cut him off.
“Scratch that, I don’t want to hear it again.
Yes, I am living there. The house is nice, the rent is reasonable and it’s close to work.
You forget that before you two decided to scrap like a couple of feral cats, I was friends with him, too.
So even though you guys hate each other, you have to admit it’s better than me living with a stranger. ”
He continued to glare.
“Stranger danger, you know?” I pushed the muffin closer to him and finally he picked it up and took an obnoxiously big bite.
“For the record, I don’t like this.” He chewed a few times then pointed to the muffin. “I do like this though, so I’m going to let it go. For now.” He stalked over to where he was installing booth seating along the windows.
“That could have gone worse,” Kim said, as she appeared at my shoulder. The girl loved drama so long as it wasn’t her own.
“Could have gone better, too.”
Over the next week life fell into a new routine. It was hard to complain about living with Nick when I barely saw the guy.
He worked late.
I went to bed early.
Generally, I left for work before he was up.
So, if my goal was to avoid conflict then I was acing this roommate thing.
If my goal was to ride the guy like a mechanical bull at a tacky western bar, well, I’d failed.
I had never had an issue with being single.
I had restarted my career so many times, I still felt like I was twenty years old in some ways.
Other ways, like how my knees cracked when I squatted down or the wiry gray hairs that randomly sprouted near my temple, I was a crumbling relic of the nineties.
Whether I liked being single or not, there was something about sharing a space with a man I’d crushed on since I was a teenager that turned the dial on my libido from warm to flaming.
I hadn’t seen him bring any women home. From what I had seen, he was too busy for a relationship.
Which made banging the roommate the perfect set up.
More than that though, I could relate to the exhaustion.
And I knew that someone could be surrounded by people and still be a little lonely.
Having people was one thing, having a person - your person - was something completely different.
If nothing else I could make the guy’s life a little less routine and hell, maybe even a little easier.
I had been leaving leftovers from my bakery experiments on the counter, and they’d been gone when I’d gotten home.
I was curious what he and his crew thought of my recipes.
I was also dying to know if he had spotted my little friend in the shower.
Hard to torture the guy when I didn’t see him.
Just as I finished that thought, the door opened and a harried looking Nick walked through it.
This was the earliest I’ve seen him home in the week I’d been here.
“I was starting to think you were a figment of my imagination.”
“Been missing me?” he said. It was meant as a joke, but it was hard to laugh when the circles under his eyes were so dark.
“Not as much as you’ve been missing sleep. You look like you’ve been hit by a bus.”
He ran a hand through his too-long dark hair and sawdust sprinkled onto his shirt. “I’m short a few guys, so I’ve been pulling double duty as boss and framer.”
I opened my mouth to suggest he ask Derek if he can spare anyone, but quickly shut it again.
I had no interest in getting in the middle of their dick measuring contest. Derek’s grudge wasn’t my grudge and vice versa.
If one of them had legitimately been wronged it would be one thing, but that wasn’t the case as far as I knew. They were just both stubborn.
Being in his kitchen with him, one on one, without the presence of my brother and their idiotic feud, I could see him as the guy I grew up with. And see that his usual easy smile was hard to find.
“I’ve got a casserole cooking, more than enough for two if you want to share.” I pulled the dish out of the oven, and he leaned over my shoulder to look. He smelled like pine and sweat. Not a great combination under normal circumstances but at the moment, it was working for me.
“It isn’t tuna casserole, is it? I have PTSD from my mom making that all the time when I was a kid.”
“No, it’s chicken. Give me some credit.” I bumped his shoulder with mine. “I ate that casserole at your place too, you know?”
He reached to the cupboard to grab plates, and my eyes snagged the way his shirt crept up the flat of his stomach.
I watched him move around the space long enough that I started to feel the heat of the casserole dish through the towel I was using to hold it.
I brought myself back to human form and put the dish on the table.
Nick sat next to me and passed over a knife and fork. The whole scene was weirdly domestic, almost intimate, and now was the first and best chance I’d had to get to know the guy again.
I dished a huge portion of chicken casserole onto our plates and grabbed two beers from the fridge.
“I thought I was out of beer.”
I shrugged. “I stopped at the liquor store on the way home.”
He took a long pull from the bottle and smacked his lips. “Best roommate ever. Thank you. This looks amazing.”
“No reason not to work together to get things done.”
He studied me for a second. “I think Derek might have a reason or two. I ran into him at the lumber depot the other day.”
I grimaced. “Shit, sorry. I should have told him about our living arrangement before you had to.”
“You cooked and got me beer, so all is forgiven.” He was already halfway through his plate. “I was surprised you didn’t tell him, though. Moving in with the enemy and all that.”
I speared a piece of broccoli. “I didn’t really want to hear it from him, to be honest. You and I have always gotten along.
Besides, I have a shit ton of debt to deal with and unless he wants to pay off the bill, I need cheaper rent.
Life is hard enough as it is without fighting battles that aren’t mine. ”
“Fair enough.” He pushed his now empty plate away from him. “Shit, that was good. Can’t tell you how much I needed that.” He stretched his long legs out under the table in his dirty work jeans and my eyes ran over the long line of him.
“Like I said, we can always take turns shopping or cooking or whatever. Help each other out and make each other’s lives easier,” I said.
“Like with your business budget?” He gestured to the spreadsheet open on my laptop screen. “I’ve been a business owner for a long time. I might be able to help.”
I swallowed hard. It was tempting to get a second set of eyes on my numbers. I could breathe a little easier thanks to my cheaper rent, but still, no matter how I turned my head or squinted my eyes, an extra hundred grand didn’t magically appear in the assets column.
Besides, that wasn’t what I’d meant. “My budget wasn’t what I had in mind.
” I twisted to face him in my chair and dropped my voice to what I hoped was a low, sexy tone.
“Lots of ways we can help each other out.” I wished I’d known he was going to be home so I could have put on a top that was more cleavage and less covered in flour.
“Help each other out?” he said, as he lolled his head to the side, resting it against the back of the chair. His eyes held mine.
I nodded and bit my lip. “Owning a business is stressful. Hell, being an adult in general is. I’m sure we can give each other a little relief .” I added enough emphasis to the last word that even the neighbour was thinking she wants to fuck you, you idiot.
His Adam’s apple bobbed and he swallowed. “Relief?”
I nodded and stood to take the dirty plates to the sink. “Yep. For when things get so hard that you need a helping hand.”