Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Marcus
I ’m on my laptop working at the kitchen counter when Hallie walks into the room wearing one of my bath towels, her clothes left abandoned on my living room floor.
Our car ride home from Broughton House had led to me having her spread out as a snack on my dining table, but while we might’ve entered the bathroom together, she’d deftly kicked me out, citing her need to get clean, apparently impossible to do within my filthy presence.
Personally, I didn’t take it as anything other than a compliment.
In the time provided, I’d been able to get dry and dressed, had put the leftovers from last night in the oven, and had started to reply to work emails.
Hallie’s skin is still a dark rose from the heat of the water, making me hesitate for just a moment in my intention to offer her something to wear. I’m completely enthralled by the flex of her calves as she pads barefoot over to the oven, bending and opening the glass door to see what’s inside. White noise enters my headspace as her towel creeps up the back of her thighs.
I shake my head to try and clear it. Skin I’d so recently touched and devoured shouldn’t hold such power.
The tranquility of the moment doesn’t last long. She turns on me, annoyance written all over her features.
“Marcus, what the hell? We said we’d share.” She’s all types of aghast after promising Erica we’d be on our best behavior with one another last night.
I duck my head down to my screen. “ You said we’d share,” I can’t help but point out, even with my focus back on the work before me.
“You didn’t disagree,” Hallie reminds me as she comes to stand on the opposite side of my kitchen counter.
I’ve yet to look up, but I can see in my peripheral vision the press of the cotton towel against my countertop. Her fingertips don’t touch the marble, giving me hope that her arms are crossed in frustration, her breasts unintentionally made even more delectable by the way the posture pushes them in and up.
“I also didn’t agree , but feel free to stay and eat,” I offer, as I’d intended all along; there’s easily enough for two.
“I don’t have any clothes to put on,” she replies, as if being in a towel in front of me is somehow inappropriate compared to how we spent the last hour.
I roll my eyes, still refusing to look up from my screen again. Nothing with Hallie comes easy. Other than her. I smile. “I just ate you with no clothes on.”
I don’t need to look at her to know she’s blushing. “That’s different.”
“If you would’ve given me a single second before jumping down my throat…” I reach over, pulling the chair out beside me so she can see the gray sweatpants and navy T-shirt folded neatly on the seat. “Help yourself.”
When she doesn’t move toward me, I finally glance up, only to find Hal staring down at my folded clothes like they might bite. Her teeth press down onto her lush bottom lip.
“Something wrong?” I ask, curious about her hesitance. Or, more accurately, curious about the answer she might give me, as I can more or less assume the reason.
We might’ve put a ban on talking about our past, on finally clearing things up, but I haven’t forgotten the last time she’d worn my clothes, and I highly doubt she has either.
Wherever her mind’s at, she snaps out of it quickly. “Worried about catching cooties,” she replies easily but still doesn’t move to pick them up.
I push my chair back, standing and heading toward the food. Whatever internal battle Hallie’s waging, it turns out I’m not up for witnessing it play out on her face. “You can eat with pants, or you can eat without them. It doesn’t bother me.”
“No shoes, no shirt, no service doesn’t apply here, then?”
I grab two plates from my cupboard.
Avoiding the issue at hand? Check.
“It’s not that fancy of an establishment. Now, cover your ass before I forget which round of seconds I’m looking to eat,” I reply sternly, taking what I hope is the difficulty out of the situation.
She rolls her eyes and complies.
I bite back a smirk at the thought of her seeing Scott Construction inscribed along the back of the T-shirt and then underneath in a smaller font: My Toolbox Is Bigger Than Yours.
A gift and potential marketing ploy from Erica I’d finally found a use for.
“What were you working on?” Hallie asks, tilting her head to my now-abandoned laptop, a forkful of schnitzel poised before her lips. “New T-shirt designs, I hope?” She pulls at the fabric draped over her full breasts.
I had been emailing potential new funders for my charity. While I had the costs covered for my own apprentices, the charity was set up to help fund the learning and development of young people in other local businesses—some of their life expenses, too, if they really needed the assistance. In the last year, I’ve been able to support over a dozen young people into employment, a fact I’m more than proud of. With the continued offer of funding from Johnathan Cairns, I’d upped our KPIs and given the okay for further referrals. With young people having already started the process, it wasn’t something I wanted to have to rescind on. The money, up until recently, hadn’t seemed like a big deal. It’d seemed like something my future self would deal with. However, after the last two weeks and the most recent bouts of phenomenal sex, I’m reconsidering the potential fallout if I can’t get Hallie on board.
“How do you know I was working? I could’ve been watching porn.”
Her laugh is easy; I would go as far as to say it sounds relaxed. “I shudder to think about the type of porn you’d need to watch in order to put concentration frown lines between your brows.” Her finger points toward my forehead and the frown lines that routinely take up residence there.
“Really high- brow porn, obviously,” I reply with a nonchalant shrug, my mind too full to be worried about the appalling dad joke.
I might pride myself on working hard, but I’d never wanted to advertise the struggles that come with it.
“Obviously.”
We eat in comfortable silence, and I try not to think too hard about just how easy it feels to share a meal together. More accurately, how easy it’s been to spend the day together, spend time with family together, and then come home together. Because that’s really what we’ve done—a bizarre social experiment of what our lives could’ve been like. It would be intimate, honest, and real if not for the undercurrent of things currently unsaid and the truces, both ours and Julian’s, holding this shamble of a thing together. However, none of that makes it any less enjoyable in the moment.
“You never ended up telling me what you do now for work, other than not answering questions to men you don’t want to give your time to, that is.” I repeat the scathing phrase she had thrown at me just a few short weeks ago.
“You care?” she asks good-naturedly.
I try not to read too much into my own curiosity. “Well, we could keep talking porn preferences, if you want. The semantics of the industry, the rights of the workers involved. Personally, I think the women could be making more money, and intimacy directors should be standard practice, but that’s just me.”
My tone might be droll, but my opinion is the absolute truth.
“For such an ass, your opinions aren’t horrible.” She takes a moment, eyes on mine, as if wondering how much more of her life she could possibly want to share with me, considering she’s already made her body fair game. “I work in user experience design.”
This is not actually news to me, but I’m not one to admit to web searches of my ex’s LinkedIn. “Do you like it?”
“I do. It’s people focused without, you know, having to deal with people all that often.”
“Perfect for you, then.”
“Exactly. I can also do the work from basically anywhere, which is handy.”
“So that’s the plan, then, to keep working and traveling?”
She nods. “For now, at least. I love Edinburgh, and when I get sick of the sideways rain, I can go somewhere warmer for a little while.”
“You still have walls to see, then?” I ask, ever so gently, crossing the line into our past, regardless of the rules.
It doesn’t feel like all that long ago on a hot summer afternoon when I’d snapped my fingers in front of Hallie’s face to get her attention as she’d been staring at the wall. When I’d asked her what she was thinking about, she’d simply said, “Seeing the world,” and when I’d laughed and asked what she would see, she’d deadpanned, “Walls. I’d see all the famous walls. China, Berlin, and Jerusalem, I’d see them all.”
“Berlin is currently at the top of the list.” She puts her utensils down on her plate.
I stand, stacking her dish on top of my own as I head for the kitchen. “I thought Berlin would’ve been one of the first you visited.”
“No, Hadrian’s was the first, followed by Troy.” She says this with a knowing smile, following behind me with our glasses.
I rinse our plates, and she opens the dishwasher. We work in tandem to get the few items put away. Thankfully, neither of us is fussy enough to have a system for how it needs to be done.
“Your interest in Troy had nothing to do with the wall and everything to do with Brad Pitt.”
“Still jealous?” she asks with a smirk. She points the fork she’s holding in my direction.
“Of course. I don’t think I could rock the leather armor the way he does.”
Although, from the way Hallie’s eyeing me up, I’d probably be willing to give it a shot.
“I’m happy to hear you admit it. That film was formative.” This was not news to me; she’d made me watch it more times than I cared to admit.
“Should I be worried you might try and kill me in my sleep, then?” I wonder aloud as I wipe down the kitchen counter.
Hallie pops her ass up and onto it. “Hmm, I like the idea of keeping you on your toes, but I think I’d personally go for a pillow over the knife.”
“Less mess?”
“Exactly.”
“Tea?” I ask, moving to turn on the kettle.
She looks out the window toward the pool house, where we both know she should be, but then turns back. “Yeah. Thanks.”
As I’m grabbing two mugs, she calls my name and, throwing me a sneaky smile, asks, “Wanna watch Troy ?”
I groan. “Fucking fine.”