12. Chapter 12
Chapter 12
Steph
F or the first time in my life, I can’t think of a good cover story, and he sees it as plain as day. Normally, I wouldn’t have to have one for a man. Normally, he’d be out the door by now, or I would, and neither of us would be arguing over who got whom into bed. It wouldn’t matter. “I just...I had to know.”
“Why?” He asks again, as though deaf to my response.
“Malcolm, I don’t know. That’s what I’m telling you. I was losing sleep over it. And the crazy part is that now I don’t really give a shit. I’m not even sure what that means.”
“It means you’re nuts.” He snarls, forcing a hand through his hair in exasperation.
It suddenly occurs to me that maybe a small part of me is insane. It’s easier to believe that than the latter, and that is, that I’m falling for Malcolm. I don’t want to fall in love. I’ve never wanted to need someone. But I needed to know what happened at that lunch, between him and Clare. It’s as stupid as hell, and if I were him, I would have told me to go fuck myself and mind my own business, but all the same, he told me what happened. “Why did you tell me the truth, Malcolm? Why didn’t you tell me to fuckoff when I asked?”
He raises a hand, voice still laced with ire and frustration. “Because you risked your fucking life to come all the way over here in a storm to find out!”
“And if there wasn’t a storm?” I pause for emphasis. “Would you still have told me?”
He’s frustrated. “I don’t fucking know! Maybe!”
I feel like we’re getting somewhere. “And you consented to sex because you’re attracted to me or was it just for convenience?”
“We’ve already established that I’m attracted to you, Stephanie. Why the fuck do you think that I was jerking off in the first place.” He admits it but he’s none too pleased.
“What exactly turned you on, anyway?” I ask, but the words don’t match the cutting tone.
“Don’t be daft, Steph. You yourself apologized for your pants falling down.”
My neck cranes. “ That? That turned you on?”
“Don’t act so surprised, lass. You should have seen the look on your face when I grabbed the chair so you wouldn’t fall flat on your said ass. That’s why I had to leave, because I thought you were going to jump my fucking bones right there.”
I blink. He looks at me. It’s clear that we’re at a stalemate. “So, what do we do now, huh?” I level with him. “We’ve fucked and we still hate each other. Are you as confused as I am?”
He purses his lips into a smile. “Aye. And now we have to share a roof until this storm passes.” The way he says it, it’s like I’m not even here. Like he’s muttering to himself.
“How about I stay on one side of the house, and you stay on the other. That way we don’t kill each other or rip each other’s clothes off again.”
“What, do you want to treat me like a fucking animal in my own house?” He barks. “Do you think that I don’t have any fucking self-control? Just...stay out of my goddamn shower and we’ll be fine, lass!” With that, he rises and walks to the kitchen, angrily and loudly pulling pots and pans out of the stove drawer, looking like he’s making something for supper. I feel bad. The last thing I want is to have him prepare something for me, when it’s clear that I’m inconveniencing him. Even though he’s the one that insists I stay.
Regardless of how pissed he seems, I walk towards him in the kitchen, righting the pot that he’s all but thrown on the stovetop, opening the fridge, observing what it is that he’s making, so that I can help. He’s too angry to even speak to me. It’s like I’m not here. I’m not trying to dodge him, either. When I figure out that he’s making an omelet, I grab the vegetables out of the fridge and start chopping them, while he cracks the eggs into a bowl on the counter. We say nothing as we prepare the food. “I don’t eat a lot at home, so this will have to do.” He mutters, grouchily.
“Same here. It’s fine by me. I usually just eat a salad.”
“I’ve got some of that in there, too, but I figure you’re still probably chilled, so a cold meal isn’t ideal.”
Wow. He’s thinking of my needs? He can’t be all that angry at me. I suppose giving myself to him might have softened him some. “By the looks of you, you haven’t had a decent meal for a while.”
Never mind. I take that back. Asshole . “I eat just fine, thanks. And, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m always busy. You burn off a lot of calories when you work hard.”
“Are you saying that I don’t work hard? Are you saying that I’m fat?”
“I’m not saying any of that. And my skinny ass didn’t seem to bother you when you were fucking me.”
“Look, can we just not...can we not talk about that?” He says, folding the eggs in the pan a little too aggressively.
I’m chopping peppers, listening to him intently. “Why does it bother you so much? We had sex. We both wanted it. It’s over. Let’s move on. Unless you wish you could take it back.”
“It was a mistake.”
“Haven’t you made mistakes before? I do believe you saw one of your mistakes for lunch.” I point out. That seems to anger him more. And I wish I could take it back.
He turns his head at me, almost snarling. “As long as we're pointing out mistakes, lass, how about the one where you walk in on me in the shower.”
“Like I said before, I thought your house was about to burn down or something.”
“What about the part where you realize that it's not, yet you still made a move on me.”
Point for him.
“I rest my case.”
“Fine. But what happened after that was consensual. Therefore, we both made a mistake.”
I start tossing the vegetables in the pan as he pours the rest of the egg batter in simultaneously. “Are we going to continue to argue about this? When you know damn well that it's your fault.”
I bark. “ My fault? I didn't rape you, Malcolm!”
“No, but you're the one that traipsed over here in the middle of a storm, just because you wanted to know, for no reason that you can think of, whether or not I slept with my ex. If you hadn't have come over here, we wouldn't be having this conversation.”
Another point for him. “Fine. I take responsibility. Are you happy?”
“No. For the record, I'm not happy. I still made the mistake. And it's your fault that I did. I never make mistakes.”
“Well, you did, Malcolm. You went out for lunch with Clare, didn't you.”
He starts to turn the eggs over with a spatula. Eyes not meeting mine, instead, they’re in the pan. “That wasn't a mistake. That was a business meeting that's going to turn into a contract. And I made no mistakes when I was with her, by the way. I broke up with her, didn't I?”
“Then there is your flaw, right there. Don't you know that half of learning comes from making mistakes?”
I can't help but feel that maybe he's just not good at being vulnerable. We had sex, and clearly, he didn't want to have done that, and now I’m pointing out his flaws. It's probably not the best approach, considering that I’m about to spend the next however many days with him. Then he rounds on me. “What about all the mistakes that you've made, lass? The evidence that you've kept from the police, for one. You showing up here unannounced, for two. And you, being a total bitch, after I made you come three times today, whether I wanted to or not.”
His voice isn't raised, but the tone is cutting. And, once again, he refuses to look at me when he speaks to me, which is a telltale sign of disrespect. As I grab two plates out of the cupboard above, I decide to take a different approach. “I can tell you about at least a hundred and fifty different mistakes that I've made since starting my business, Malcolm. Every time I make a mistake, I learn something from it.”
As he scoops the eggs onto the plates, while I hold them, his tone is facetious. “Well, la-di-fucking-da for you, lass. Let me get out my noisemakers and we'll celebrate.”
As I roll my eyes and take my plate from him, I walk to the table. I decide that he's just being an asshole and it's best to just shut up for a while. We sit at the table, eating in silence, while the wind and rain smack up against the windows, and we're both almost completely oblivious to it. Both of our phones beep with notifications simultaneously, and we look at each other. “I bet you it's the storm warning, letting us know when it's expected to make landfall.” Malcolm suggests.
As he's about to rise to go get his phone, I stop him. “Mine is closer. I'll get it.” I can feel his gaze watching me as I walk away. I'm not sure what to make of that. He's a very difficult man to read. He wants me but he doesn't. He hates me but he cares. He's attracted to me, but he hates that he is. Then I realize that we both have the same problem. Sure enough, the notification on my phone says that the storm is going to hit landfall by morning. Less than twelve hours away.
“They say it's going to be a category four, maybe more, if the winds don't dissipate.”
“What do they say the wind speed is at? It's gotta be at least eighty mph by now judging by the sound.”
“Aye, around eighty to ninety.” I confirm.
“Any evacuation orders?”
“In Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, but not North Carolina...yet.” I clarify.
“The roads will be loaded already. Nobody is going anywhere, and it doesn’t matter, anyway, since this house is built for hurricanes, tornadoes, whatever. I’ve never left even if there was an evacuation order. It’s safer than goddamn DisneyWorld in this place.” The look he gives me is resentment. He hates it that I'm here. I want to reason with him that I can leave, before I really do get stuck here, so I break it to him gently.
“Malcolm, it’s not too late for me to leave, okay? Before they place the evacuation order and close the roads.”
He raises a hand. “Look, lass. As much as I hate it that this is happening, I don’t hate it enough that I’d rather see you hurt or dead. We can manage this. This is a big house.”
“Are you sure? I’m a big girl, Malcolm.”
He points towards the door. His voice and his face are warning. “You try to leave and see what happens.”
“Oh, are you threatening me now?” I blurt. “No man has ever told me what to do and it’s not time I let them start.”
He nods, face set like stone, lips pursed. “Fine. Go ahead and fucking leave then. Be a fool. See if I fucking care.” He hisses he’s so pissed off. Next thing I know, he storms out of the room, heads to his office and slams the door shut. Mature. Very mature. Looking around, I see that the kitchen needs to be cleaned and me being a neat freak, I can’t stand it. After I wash the dishes and tidy up the countertops and kitchen table, I put the clean dishes away and decide that I need to check my emails. With no laptop, I’m reduced to my phone. With that, I do manage to knock off a few messages to my staff, and to my development team. I even make a phone call to Colton, who was inquiring about my safety.
Because I keep most of my work on cloud, I’m able to get a bunch of notes and things, and aside from the distraction of the wild wind outside, I get lots done. I hear Malcolm walking around in his office, and then he approaches me in the living room, still huddled up in front of the fireplace.
“Here.” He says, handing me a laptop computer. “It’s a spare. My brothers use it sometimes, but it’s cleaned. Use it.”
“Thanks. I’m managing just fine with my phone, but thanks all the same.”
He looks at the kitchen, hesitating, likely noticing that I cleaned up. “You can sleep in any of the spare rooms or the suite. Clean linens are on the beds and in the closet if you like. I have more clothes that might fit you, too.”
“Thanks. I’m okay for now.”
“I’m heading up to bed. I like to read from my phone there.”
I hesitate, looking at him. He’s no longer upset, but he’s resigned. “I promise you won’t even know that I’m here, Malcolm.”
He purses his lips and nods his acknowledgment before walking away.
But I end up keeping him up half the night...
Malcolm
At first, I think it’s just the wind battering the trees, or debris smacking up against the house, but then, in a quick moment of silence, I hear it again. It’s a violent cough. I dart up out of bed, thinking that somebody is outside, some vagrant or some insane idiot that’s stupid enough to risk getting drowned, or worse, sucked up into the tornadoes that surround the hurricanes. But then I get up out of bed and walk to the center of the landing, trying to figure out where the sound is coming from. When I hear it again, I know for sure that it’s coming from the spare room.
Steph is groaning in her sleep, tossing and turning, and I can feel the heat off her the second that I walk into the room. “Fuck.” I mutter, walking towards her. As soon as I sit down on the bed, she starts coughing again. I put my hand on her forehead and confirm that she's burning up with fever. She shivers at my touch and lifts her head. The night light from the hallway illuminates just enough for her to see that it's me. And the fact that my emergency lights haven't come on, proves that we haven't lost power yet.
“I'll go get you something for the fever, lass.”
She nods and lays her head back down on the pillow, seemingly defeated. I have a humidifier and some vapor rub in the basement, from when I had a flu bug last year, after the last hurricane hit. It seems that the weather brings on these viruses just to make things a little bit more interesting. I grab those items, plus some cold compresses I have in the freezer, and I bring them to her. I place the cold compresses under her arms and I pull her legs apart to tuck them in her groin area, as my mama instructed me to do when I was a child.
She takes the Advil tablets and I also feed her a spoonful of honey for the cough, knowing that that may just be the thing, and if not, I do have some cough syrup somewhere. Whether it's expired or not is another question. Once I have her outfitted with everything, I sit in the rocker recliner next to the bed, and pull out my phone. The cough is dry, which is somewhat of a relief. “Did you get vaccinated this year, lass?”
“I did. I never get sick.”
“It’s something about the storm, all that. I got something like this last year, too.”
“You should go, Malcolm. You could get sick, too, and then we’ll both be useless.”
“I think after this afternoon, if I'm going to get it, I'm going to get it.”
“Aye. But we didn’t kiss. That might have helped.”
I wanted to. I wanted to taste her lips so bad, but I've always learned that once you kiss a woman, that makes it personal. And the way that I took her…there was nothing personal about that. Even though what we had together was hot, there was so much more that I wanted to do. “Doesn’t matter, lass. There's nothing we can do about it now. I just hope that that fever of yours comes down, because there's a slim chance in hell that an ambulance is going to come out this way, or that I'm going to get anywhere near the highway to take you to the hospital.”
“I'll be fine. When I do get sick, which is never, it's gone fairly quickly.”
“Let’s hope you're right. But if that fever doesn't come down soon, I'm going to have to put you in an ice bath.” I tell her, touching her forehead again. Still just as warm, although it's only been minutes since we applied the ice packs. “I'll be right back. I've got to put more ice packs in the freezer.”
I can hear her coughing again, and it sounds more barky than before. I decide it's time to find that cough syrup. Luckily, it's only about a month past its expiry date. After I toss the extra ice packs into the freezer and bring up the cough medicine, she's fallen asleep. Deciding that it's best to let her rest for now, until the coughing starts up again, I push out the recliner on the chair and have a rest myself.
It's about thirty minutes later that she wakes up, coughing again, So I give her the medicine, and check her forehead again. She seems slightly cooler, thank God. “I’m freezing. My hands and feet are like icicles.”
“It’s because of the fever, lass. That will go away once it breaks.”
She is shivering, so I take her hands in mine and warm them. Her eyes are closed, she’s so exhausted, and my heart goes out to her. It’s miserable being that sick, especially in someone else’s home, when it’s not your own bed, and even more especially when we’re in the middle of a hurricane. It worries me that her hands are burning hot but yet she says that she’s freezing. Once she falls back to sleep, I find an online medical service outside of the state, and I pay the premium for help at this hour. But, ultimately, they say that she’s going to be fine as long as her fever doesn’t get too high.
After I hunt for my thermometer, I confirm that she is not in the danger zone, fever-wise, so I go back in the room and sit with her. It’s a couple of hours later when she wakes up, but it’s not because she’s coughing, it’s the wind still battering the windows. She jolts in bed, startled. “It’s okay, lass. It’s just the wind. Go back to sleep.” I tell her, taking her hands in mine again.
“I had a...terrible dream.” She says groggily. “Some dinosaur tried to kidnap me from a gang of wolves in the forest.”
“Fevers make you delirious, lass. It’s okay. Just relax.” I rub her hand, looking at her face, which is pale yet flushed with sick. Yet she’s not complaining or whining, or otherwise driving me nuts. I’m guessing that if it were up to her, she’d just make do and lay here, untreated, miserable, and sick. She’s a survivor, that’s for sure. I respect that. Nothing worse than anyone, male or female, bellyaching.
“You must be exhausted.” She says, voice barely there, and what is there is all nasally.
“I’m fine. I’ve gone many nights without sleep. It’s not like I was going to get any rest, anyway, what with this hurricane. It’s no mind to me, lass. Just rest and feel better.”
She manages a smile. “You know you really are sweet when you want to be. You’re a lot like my granny. She was tough as nails but sweet when it came down to it.”
“I’m nice when people are nice back to me. If you’re an asshole, you can expect the same treatment.”
“Same here.” She sniffs and a cough escapes, but she recovers quickly. “I’m no doormat. And I believe in karma.”
“I like to help karma out some, personally.” I scoff.
She turns on her side and points at me. “I like your way better.”
It’s strange how she’s naked, and her breast just popped out from under the sheets, yet, because she’s sick, it has no effect on me. It’s like she’s put me in touch with my paternal side or something. Earlier, God, she bent down and showed me a square of her ass, and that sent me to the shower to jerk the effect off. Crazy. “How’s those ice packs doing, lass?” I ask, reaching in to the one that’s under her arm. It’s as warm as piss. “Here. We need to change these.”
She exposes herself, removing the packs, but then she tucks herself right back under the blankets, shivering. “I’ll be right back.”
I trot down the stairs and replace the ice packs, and when I return, she’s laying on her side, all bundled up. “Come on, lass. Let’s get these back where they belong.” I tell her gently, tucking them in as she turns for me. I check her temperature, and it’s reduced even more. “That’s the stuff. It’s just a low-grade fever now. Good work.”
“I told you I bounce back quickly.”
“No lie there. How do you feel?”
She frowns. “Not too bad. It’s better than puking my guts out. The worst is the chills. But they’ve calmed down.”
“Aye, can’t say I’ll argue with you there.” I yawn. “That’s one of the reasons why I don’t drink nearly as much as the average Scot. I hate puking.”
“When was the last time you enjoyed a nip, lad?”
“I had a beer with lunch yesterday, but that was just to take the edge off. My Uncle Dougall likes to get us tanked, but it’s been a while since then.”
“In her day, my granny could drink all of us under the table.”
“You drink much, lass?” I ask through another yawn.
She opens up the blankets and pats the bed, noticing me yawning. “If you don’t mind the cooties, that is.” She frowns.
“I think I’ve already got all the cooties I’m going to get.” I tell her, relenting, crawling in next to her. I rest my head on the pillow, completely oblivious to the fact that she’s naked and lying next to me. God, I hope I don’t start feeling like she’s my sister. Then her knee touches me and I feel a twinge in my belly. Nope...not my sister. Phew !
“That’s the one thing I’ll admit to.” She says and then sniffs.
“What’s that.” I ask, and then yawn.
“I hate sleeping alone. When I was little, I always slept with my mama, my granny, or my baby brother.”
“Which one’s the baby?”
“Fergus. He’s five years younger than me.”
“And where is he?”
“In Scotland. He’s a pilot.”
“Aye, I figured, with you being an airline engineer. Are you close with him, lass?”
“Aye. I talk to him at least once a week. I just don’t mention him much because of Moira.”
“Is that because her kin are all troublemakers?”
“Aye. I know that she wouldn’t be jealous. But I don’t want to hurt her. She’s such a good soul and she doesn’t deserve all the shit that she’s been dealt.”
“How come Fergus wasn’t at granny’s funeral?”
“He was out of town. On a flight from Italy. Plus, he’d do anything to avoid our mama.”
“Why’s that?”
“She won’t leave him alone because he’s not married.”
“You’re not married.” I point out.
“Aye, I know. Mama always thought Fergus was meant to marry, but not me. Don’t ask me to explain that one, because I can’t.”
“Mamas are strange creatures sometimes.” I say, snuggling in tighter. The hail slaps on the windows as the glass vibrates from the pressure of the wind. “I can’t explain my own, for that matter.”
“Your mama doesn’t mind that you work for your uncle?”
“Not at all.” I chuckle. “She was afraid that I’d become a ruffian if I didn’t. It was either that or join the military.”
“Really? So, it was your mama that pushed you to do that?”
“Aye, and she did me a favor. I always loved the numbers, but I didn’t have the ambition when I was a wee lad to do anything with it. Once Dougall figured out that that was my strength, he started grooming me with his boys. I didn’t know it at the time, but all the baseball games and beebee gun tournaments we had were all us learning about investments. Dougall was a genius in his teachings. When I went to school for it, it was like a goddamn walk in the park.”
“You’re very smart, lad. And you work hard. There’s no denying that. I love your passion.”
“Yours, too, lass. Look at you. I’ve never known a woman more successful, except for my Auntie, that is.”
“I’d love to meet her. Anyone that stands up to Dougall is a unicorn in my book.”
I scoff. Then we do something crazy.
...We fall asleep.