Chapter 12
D exter could feel the tension in the air as soon as he arrived at work. He didn’t understand it at first. The Russians never worried about problems; that was why they paid him. Despite the mess they’d made, they wouldn’t normally be concerned over it, knowing he would somehow figure out how to solve it. And hopefully he had, if he and Lainey could come to some kind of arrangement. So it was odd and worrisome when none of them would make direct eye contact with him when he entered. And then he went to his office and realized why.
“Sonya.” Her name always came out like he was in the middle of choking on a fishbone, a combination of her over-the-top beauty and terror. There was no way to be hyperbolic enough about her beauty, it was the Helen-of-Troy variety, the kind that launched ships, started wars, reduced men to rubble. It was so potent that Dexter always froze a few beats, acclimating himself. So pretty. So, so pretty. His hand would almost reach out, wanting to touch. And then sudden remembrance would come. He imagined it was the same with anything both beautiful and deadly. The beauty was always a lure for coming pain. Today was no exception.
Sonya smiled. Her perfect teeth were still hidden, but Dexter could picture them, pearly white and supernaturally sharp. He didn’t know if that part was his imagination. He never let himself stare at her lush mouth long enough to learn if the teeth actually were sharper than others in her species, whatever that might be. Vampire? Perhaps. It was all too easy to picture her sucking the blood of some innocent dupe, himself included.
“So,” she purred. She was that type of person who purred, who sashayed when she walked, who oozed sex-appeal and self-confidence. He got it now, why bombshell stars of the fifties had been such a thing. It was one thing seeing a picture of Marilyn Monroe and thinking she was pretty and another to see someone like her in action, an actual man-eater. “My brothers tell me you are getting married.”
What exactly had they told her? That the marriage was a fake, for the sake of the company? Or merely that Dexter was engaged? Either way, the news wouldn’t go down well. Since his first day at the company, Sonya had been trying to conquer him, to break him and leave him weak-kneed and devastated in her wake. There had been a few close calls when she almost succeeded, because her allure was that potent. Only Dexter’s rigid self-control, combined with his solid work ethic, had kept her at bay.
“Yes.” It was always best to say as little as possible. Somehow Sonya used every snippet of information to her advantage.
Her head tipped, eyes narrowing, but the smile remained. It turned frostier somehow, in that female way Dexter didn’t understand. Women weren’t great at saying what they meant, and Dexter despised games. It was one of the reasons he dated so rarely. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“When do I get to meet her?”
“Uh, wow, I don’t know. Our schedule…” he glanced down at his watch, as if his calendar might be written there. In reality he needed a reprieve from Sonya’s unfathomable blue eyes. It was like trying to stare at two sapphires. Eventually you had to look away for your own sanity because otherwise you’d be left wondering how anything could be so perfect.
“Surely you can find time for an old friend, yes? We go back so many years, Dexter, yes? I think I should meet this girl of yours, make certain she gets the Sonya seal of approval. After all, you chose her over me.” There was no mistaking the way her words sharpened at the end.
“Sonya, you know that’s not true. As I’ve told you, repeatedly, I work for your family. It’s a conflict of interest for us to…”
She waved his words away with a dismissive hand. “Conflict of interest, bah. Everyone knows I run this ship. If I say I want to be with you, there is nothing they can do about it. Don’t use my family or this company as an excuse. What it comes down to is this: you do not want to be with me. Say it.”
“I have said it. Many times. You choose not to believe.”
Her beautiful eyes filled with tears. Dexter wasn’t moved much because she could turn the tears on and off like a faucet, according to her whims. But an angry or hurt Sonya was as dangerous as an angry or hurt wolverine. It would do to keep his distance and keep a wary eye. “Why don’t you love me? Am I not beautiful enough for you? Is your love so much more perfect, more worthy?”
Dexter thought of Lainey, her half-falling apart bun, makeup-free visage, and chocolate-covered fingers and had to suppress a laugh. “No one is as beautiful as you, Sonya, which you know. It’s not about beauty.”
“Then what’s it about?” she asked, stamping her foot.
Dexter wasn’t certain he could explain it to her in a way she understood—that the predatory way she hunted him made him feel exactly that: like prey. But he had to try because the look in her eyes promised retribution, something he did not want to deal with, now or ever. “You are beautiful and wanted by everyone. I guess when I’m with a woman, I want to know I’m the only one, not one of a number.”
“But you could be my only one. I have wanted you for years .”
“But for how long?” he asked gently. Sonya wanted what she couldn’t have. As soon as he gave in to her charms, she would win. She would break him and walk away, leaving him triumphantly in her dust. She didn’t love him; she loved herself. She didn’t want him; she wanted to destroy him for the sake of her vanity.
“I do not understand any of this. I do not understand why you push me away, time after time, why you will not love me. Maybe I am, as you say, a femme fatale, but I have feelings. And you don’t care if you trample them.”
Danger, danger, danger. Dexter began to feel muddled, and that was always bad. He didn’t want to give in to Sonya’s ploys, but what if it wasn’t a ploy? What if Sonya genuinely cared for him and therefore felt genuinely rejected? He thought of Lainey, looking so pale and sad at breakfast that morning over some man’s rejection. Did Sonya feel that way about him? He would feel terrible, if so.
“Sonya,” he began in a softer tone than he usually used for her.
Seizing on the moment, Sonya stepped forward and kissed him, pressing him against the wall and running her hands over his flank like he was the hapless cheerleader and she was the over-eager high school quarterback.
After a stunned second he gave her shoulders a little shove. Being strong like her brothers, it did nothing to deter her. She only stepped back when she finished the kiss, with a triumphant little gleam in her eyes. “There. I bet it will not make your fiancée so happy to know you’ve been kissing your boss.”
“Sonya,” he said again, with renewed sternness this time. “Please go away.”
Once again her face took on an irate gleam. “No one treats me this way, Dexter. No one. If I were your girl, I’d watch my back.”
With that, she swished out of his office. He waited until she was fully gone before allowing himself to wipe his mouth and pop a mint. Sonya may look like a breath of fresh air, but she didn’t taste like it. The times she accosted him with unwanted kisses always left him feeling a bit ill, a combined sour and bitter taste in his mouth that made him queasy.
When he finally sat and turned on his computer, one of those unsolicited pop-up ads jumped to the forefront, requesting questions for an online advice column. For a moment he let himself imagine he would send one in.
Dear Edith Jones, my boss is sexually harassing me. Please help!
But as always he pushed the thought away. Anyone with eyes would take one look at Sonya, one look at him, and call him the world’s biggest liar.
A fter her breakfast with Dexter, Lainey felt numb. It wasn’t like her to not feel anything, but she reasoned that she had expended all of her emotions and then some the day before. Just because she’d agreed to marry a stranger was no reason her feelings might have put themselves on autopilot. Because as much as she knew she should be appalled by the decision she’d made, she wasn’t. Whatever he was, Dexter was a good guy. She knew it, she could feel it all the way to her bones. And in the end, despite the fact that she was lonely and needed money, it was that certainty that caused her to say yes. Dexter was in a pickle, and she had the means to provide a rescue. For once. There was something uplifting about that. Her life might be a moving dumpster fire, but she was offering someone else a hand up, a way out.
Maybe someday I’ll get it together enough to always be that person, she thought. She hoped so. It was more cheerful to believe she might someday get herself together than to always believe she would be the total loser she currently was.
In order to further the myth that she was a functioning adult, she made her candy deliveries, went to the bank, and used the last of her savings to pay some of the bills she’d fallen behind on. And then she cleaned her house. It wasn’t that she was a slob, rather she became easily overwhelmed by life. And when she was overwhelmed, she put the things that took the most energy at the bottom of her list. Cleaning and paying bills took the sort of mental energy she’d lacked since she became her own boss. Her mind was too occupied with trying to stay alive to worry about how long it had been since she scrubbed the toilet.
But on this day, the day after she once again took a wrecking ball to her life, she decided cleaning would help not hinder. And it did. After everything was put back in its place and scrubbed, she felt more settled, less scattered, a little bit more in control of the chaos.
When Dexter arrived with supper, it was the first thing he noticed, naturally.
“Hey, you have a table,” he said, setting the bag of good-smelling food on top of it.
“Ha, ha, Lainey’s life is a catastrophe. Let’s all laugh at the freak,” she said, doing a slow clap for his lame humor.
“Okay, but first let’s eat. I’m starving.” He began opening bags and setting things out. “I asked for plates and cutlery because I didn’t know it was cleaning day and I thought maybe I’d have to fight a rat for a fork here.”
“For your information, I have never had ra… Oh, wait. I forgot about college. But in my defense, it was a really cheap apartment and I’m pretty sure they predated me, if the way they eyeballed me like I was invading their territory was any indication. I think I moved out in the nick of time before they started challenging me to duels with tiny swords.”
“I would pay money to see that,” Dexter said.
“I’ll remember that, if funds get tight again,” she said and he had to press a napkin to his lips to avoid spewing his food at her when he laughed.
“That’s going to be first on the list,” Lainey told him, finger jutted. “I need me a husband with impeccable table manners, like an Edwardian gentleman. You’d better know how to wield your oyster fork and on which side of you the duchess should sit. Also I require entertaining and thought provoking mealtime conversation.”
“There’s a company that turns dead bodies into ocean reefs,” Dexter returned.
“That’ll do nicely,” Lainey said, nodding her approval. “Better save it for the duchess, though.”
“Hmm,” Dexter agreed, not pausing from his meal again until the edge was gone from his hunger. And then he said, “What is on your contractual requirements, really?”
“I jotted some ideas between cleaning tasks today,” Lainey said. She withdrew a giant tome from her bookshelf and sat it on the table between them. “Chapter one, Section A, line one.”
“I think my first one is going to be ‘no stupid humor,’” Dexter said.
“I’ll be a mute,” she argued.
“Then it’s definitely going on the list,” he said, mimicking zipping his lips.
She opened the book and pulled out her actual list. “You are no fun.”
“That was coincidentally my nickname all through school,” Dexter said. But he was curious about her list. Exactly how demanding was she? It was probably something he should find out before he tied himself to her legally.
“No sex,” she announced with no preamble and he choked on air.
“Oh, geez, warn a guy, would you?” He sipped water a few beats while she held her list aloft, waiting him out.
“How would I warn you? Hey, guy, I’m about to say ‘no sex.’ Prepare yourself for abstinence.”
“I don’t know. I thought you were going to start with something smaller, like nuclear war or something.” He took another sip and set his empty glass down with a clatter. “Never start with sex, Lainey. Too much, too soon. Pick something else and we’ll come back to it.”
Her eyes widened. “Because you plan to negotiate?”
“No, because I’d like to get through the conversation with my brain intact and now it exploded out my ears.” He pressed his palms over his ears. “Pick something else.”
“Fine. No smoking.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“But I take it so seriously I’m adding smoked meats in there. Eat a smoked salmon, and it’s over,” she warned.
“Is there anything that’s not nonsensical on your list?” he asked.
She glanced down. “Affection.”
“Excuse me?”
“I demand affection.”
“You demand affection? How does one demand affection?”
“I require one affectionate gesture per day,” she said.
He stared at her, squinting a little. “Doesn’t that seem wrong to you? Shouldn’t someone give affection freely? Don’t you feel bad about taking it by force?”
“Would you give it if I didn’t demand it?” she asked.
He snorted. “No.”
“Well, there you go.”
“But it’s so…debasing,” he said.
She waved her hand up and down, encompassing her body. “Look at me. I’m on my last leg here. Literally the last thing left that hasn’t been torn down irreparably is the freckles on the tops of my toes. And you think asking for a hug is going to humiliate me? I told a man I want to have his babies. I am starved for human touch and I have nothing left. If the least I can get out of this is a few pity hugs, I’ll take them.”
“You have freckles on your toes?” he said.
“You’ll never know because of rule number one on my list.”
“You have to be at that level of intimacy with a man to let him see your toe freckles?”
“I’m extremely protective of my foot freckles. Moving on, what’s on your list?” she asked.
“It’s hard to say because the list revised itself in my head so many times while you were talking,” he said.
She made a “hurry up” gesture with her hand.
“You’re not going to like it,” he warned.
“I’m peering up at you from rock bottom, and you seem far away. Carry on,” she urged.
“Okay. First off I wanted to be clear about what this isn’t. We aren’t dating. I’m not your boyfriend. This is a business arrangement.”
“Emotionally unavailable and terrified of commitment. Got it. Anything else?”
He took a breath. “This is the part that’s going to sting. I put out fires for a living, sometimes literally. I don’t want to do that in my personal life.”
“What are you saying?” she asked.
“I am not a fixer, and certainly not your fixer. I might occasionally drop by to roll some more cherries into balls or do your dishes, but I won’t be that guy who swoops in and manages things and rescues you.”
She barked a harsh laugh. “Let me set your mind at ease: I gave up on being rescued a long time ago. Yes, my life is a calamity much of the time, but it’s my calamity, and I manage. Anything else?”
“Not that I can think of,” he said. He jutted his hand over the table. She stared at it.
“What’s that for?”
“To shake on it.”
“Shake on it? What is this, the Treaty of Versailles? You don’t shake on something like this.”
“What do you think we’re supposed to do?” he asked with more than a bit of apprehension.
“Hug, obviously. Affection, remember?”
“We’re not married yet,” he argued.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m about to jump off the marital cliff for you. I’m going to need preemptive affection.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Stand up.” She stood, waiting impatiently while he rose as slowly as possible. “Put your arms out.” He did so, curling them around her slightly when she walked into them.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said. “This feels unnatural and uncomfortable.”
“That’s because it’s the first time. After awhile you’ll form a Lainey addiction. You need to loosen up. Nestle a little.”
“Nestle? You make me sound like a bird arranging plumage in its home.”
“Yes, that’s what you should be. A boy bird trying to attract a female with his soft and cozy plumage pad.” She poked him. “Nestle.”
He twisted his head a little, burrowing. She barked another laugh and collapsed her neck, bonking him hard on the temple.
“Yow,” he exclaimed, letting her go to press his hand against his throbbing head.
“Sorry,” she said, rubbing her own head while still laughing. “I forgot to warn you I’m ticklish. That was pretty good for a first time.”
“Should I expect all of them to end with pain and a throbbing headache?”
She looked skyward, thinking. “Probably, Robert.”
“It’s Dexter.”
“Where?” she said, eyes skimming the room. When he closed his eyes and sighed again, she covered her mouth and stuffed back a laugh.