Chapter Seven #3
“It’s mine.” Bailey picked up Gwen’s coat and held it out. “Are you coming or not?”
“I shouldn’t,” Gwen said, arms folded across her chest, mouth folded in a stubborn line. “This is a terrible idea.”
“If you don’t come, you won’t be able to say I told you so,” Bailey told her.
Gwen fumed for about five seconds, then snatched her coat out of Bailey’s hand. “Fine. But you’re buying dinner.”
“Chloe’s buying dinner,” Bailey corrected, following Chloe down the hall and out the front door.
“As long as it isn’t me,” Gwen muttered and slammed the door behind her.
* * * *
“This is their house?” Gwen asked, leaning forward in the back seat to peer through the windshield.
“It’s the right address,” Bailey said, pulling to a stop in the driveway.
Chloe sat in the passenger seat, staring. “It’s a church.”
It was old, two stories of aged brick, with the distinctive lancet windows common to Gothic churches.
There were three of them at the front of the building, two smaller ones flanking a larger one in the center, and more marching down the side.
Wide, double wooden doors marked the entry, bathed in the warm glow of a trio of iron lights, and more light spilled through the windows from within.
Stained glass windows, she realized, fascinated.
“This is cool,” Bailey decided.
“It really is,” Gwen agreed. “I wonder what it looks like inside.”
“Only one way to find out,” Bailey said and switched off the engine.
“Are we all going in?” Gwen asked.
“What? No.” Tearing her gaze away from the house, Chloe turned to her friends. “Talk about weird.”
“Fine.” Bailey turned the car back on. “Well? What are you waiting for?”
Chloe looked back at the house. Now that they were there, this didn’t seem like such a great idea. “I’m outlining my strategy.”
“What’s to outline?” Gwen wanted to know.
“Well, I can’t just walk in there and say, ‘Hey, remember that guy I was with the other night? Do you know him, and if so, did he tell you I was trying to hire him to have a threesome?’,” Chloe said, exasperated. “I have to be more, I don’t know, subtle.”
“Subtlety is overrated,” Bailey argued.
“That should be your motto,” Gwen said drily.
“Besides that, subtlety takes time, and in case you didn’t hear me the first time, I’m fucking hungry,” Bailey continued.
“And I have to pee,” Gwen put in.
“All right, I’m going.” Taking a deep breath, Chloe opened her car door.
“Remember, they might not know Sawyer’s a sex worker,” Bailey said, leaning over to peer at Chloe through the open door. “Don’t out him.”
“Right.” Chloe slammed the door behind her and started up the walk.
The house loomed in front of her, a gothic shadow against the snowy night, and under any other circumstances she would’ve been charmed.
Climbing the trio of steps to the front door with butterflies doing the rhumba in her belly, she lifted the heavy door knocker and banged it against wood.
She winced at the sound—loud in the snow-cushioned quiet—and stepped back, hands tucked in the pockets of her coat, and began to count.
If no one answered by the time she got to thirty, she’d go.
She was at seventeen when the door swung open and Jesse stood in the glowing circle of the porch light. He wore a Henley of soft blue nearly the same color as his jeans, and his feet were bare. The light gilded his hair, tipping the tousled curls in gold, and cast his face in shadow.
“Chloe?” he said, surprise and puzzlement in the tone.
She pulled a hand out of her pocket to wave like a dork. “Hi.”
He stepped to the threshold and the light struck his face. Concern darkened his eyes. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” Feeling awkward, and trying not to stare—he looked really good, and why were bare feet so sexy?—she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “You live in a church.”
“Yeah, converted. Are you sure everything’s okay?”
“Yeah, I just…” Suck it up, she ordered herself. “I wanted to talk to you and Knox about something, if you have a minute.”
“Sure,” he said to her and taking a step back, opened the door wide. “Come on in.”
With no graceful way to back out without looking like an even bigger dork—she couldn’t believe she’d waved—she stepped inside. She could see his eyes now, warm and soft and confused. “Thanks.”
Because looking at him made her nervous, she looked around. And promptly forgot about being nervous. “Whoa.”
They stood inside a small entryway. The walls were paneled in rich, dark wood, carved and polished so it glowed. There was a door to her left that echoed the shape of the lancet windows. And at the top, forming the peak of the lancet, were three panels of exquisite stained glass.
“This is beautiful.” She reached out a hand to stroke the paneling, running her fingers along the carving. “Is this wood original?”
Jesse nodded. “Most of it. We matched what we couldn’t save.”
“It’s stunning,” she said and, realizing she was stroking the wall like she would a lover, tucked her hand into her pocket again.
“It was a lot of work, but worth it.” He opened the inner door. “Come on in.”
They walked into what would have been the main area of the church, where pews would have once marched in rows, facing the altar.
But the only thing that marked it as a former house of worship now was the glow of stained glass and the scent of candlewax.
Now, it was one large, open living space, with a pool table at the front and at the center, a cozy living area with a pair of couches in rich brown leather and plush velvet chairs the color of spring grass.
On one wall, between stained-glass windows, hung a large-screen TV and on the other, a gas fireplace that flickered and glowed.
And along the back wall was a kitchen, outfitted with marble counters and gleaming appliances.
Candles in an iron stand that might have come from this very church stood on the island, reminding her of her childhood Sundays spent at morning Mass.
There was an archway next to the kitchen—lancet shaped, naturally—leading somewhere she couldn’t see, and the ceiling was the same old, polished wood as the paneling in the entryway.
A trio of light fixtures—though chandeliers was probably a better word—that looked like they cost more than her car hung over each area, further defining each space.
There were plush rugs over the wood floors, something bluesey played low on a speaker somewhere, and over the candle wax she could smell the spice of red sauce.
“Wow,” she said.
“Is that a good wow?” Jesse asked.
“That’s a wow, wow.” She turned in a circle, trying to take it all in. “Did you guys do all this work yourself?”
“Pretty much.” Looking pleased and proud, Jesse tucked his thumbs into his pockets. “We had to work it in between other projects, squeeze in time at night and on the weekends. We were living in a construction zone for a while.”
She eyed the ceiling. God, the wood just glowed. “How long is a while?”
“Almost two years.”
“Wow,” she said again, and dropped her gaze to look at him. “It’s amazing.”
“Thanks. Here, let me take your coat.”
“Oh, that’s okay.” She kept her hands tight in the pockets. “Um, is Knox around?”
“He’s in his office, going over some plans for a meeting tomorrow. Rehab on an office building downtown. He should be down soon, though.”
“He’s busy.” Grasping the excuse like a lifeline, Chloe edged toward the door. “Maybe we should do this another time.”
“Do what?” Knox asked from behind her, and she turned to see him coming down a narrow spiral staircase around the corner from the front door.
“Where…?” she began, looking up.
“Bell tower,” Jesse explained as Knox descended the last few steps. “We converted it to a small office.”
“Very small,” Knox put in drily. He wore a crew neck sweater in a heathery green, black jeans and an easy smile. “But it works. Hi, Chloe.”
“Hello,” Chloe managed. He looked just as good as Jesse, and it wasn’t helping her nerves situation.
“Chloe said she needed to talk to us about something,” Jesse offered.
Knox’s smile turned curious. “Okay. Do you want to sit down, have a glass of wine?”
“No, no, I’m fine. Bailey and Gwen are waiting for me in the car, and I don’t want to take up too much of your time.”
“Okay.”
They were watching her, concern in Jesse’s brown eyes, curiosity in Knox’s smokey hazel ones, though as the silence dragged on curiosity began to turn to worry.
“Chloe?”
“Okay,” she said, forcing the word out, bracing herself. “Remember last Thursday, when I saw you in the diner?”
Something flickered in Knox’s eyes. But it was gone so quickly she thought she might have imagined it, and his voice when he answered was easy. “Sure.”
“Um, the guy I was with. Sawyer?”
Jesse darted a glance at Knox, then looked back at her. “What about him?”
“Do you know him?”
“Why do you ask?” Knox answered, still easy, while Jesse, his poker face not as good, started with surprise.
“Because it was weird,” Chloe blurted out.
Jesse glanced at Knox again. “What do you mean, weird?”
“I mean weird,” Chloe said, impatient. “Strange. Nonsensical. You were angry.”
“I wasn’t angry,” Jesse protested.
“Not you,” Chloe clarified, her gaze shifting to Knox. “You. I wasn’t imagining that.”
Knox’s eyes were glittering, much as they had at the diner. “No, you weren’t.”
Chloe waited, but he didn’t say anything else. “So?”
“Yes,” Knox said. “We know Sawyer. He and his wife are good friends of ours.”
Chloe winced at the mention of the wife. If they didn’t know what he did for a living, she looked like a big cheating slut right now. “Do you, um…?”
“We know he’s a sex worker,” Knox said before she could figure out how to ask.
“Okay,” she said, nodding as relief flooded in. “Okay.”
“We’re not judging you, Chloe, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Jesse said quietly.
“No, it’s not that. Okay, it’s a little that,” she admitted, cheeks heating with the beginnings of a blush.
Knox’s eyes were gentle. “There’s no shame in hiring a sex worker.”
“I know that, but it’s personal, and I just…” Her stomach in knots, she knew she’d never get the question out if she didn’t do it right now. “Did he tell you?”
“Tell us what?” Jesse asked, confused.
“That I wanted to have a threesome with you.”