Chapter Twelve
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I shouldn’t hear boss music this early…
Azalea
I didn’t mess everything up. According to what I could decode from Junction’s awful text language when I checked my burner phone last night, something came up.
Something came up.
Junction made me go an hour away for two days with someone I hate and didn’t even try to accomplish a murder.
I’m pissed, but I do wonder if it’s refreshing to be angry at someone who isn’t Malcolm for a change.
There’s a lack of depth to this anger that allows me to keep breathing, which I appreciate.
This anger is background noise. A feeling I can feel without ruining my life.
It’s not pleasant, but it’s not all-consuming.
I can stand here in Malcolm’s office and let it simmer without being in physical pain.
“Cello,” Malcolm murmurs, thumb caressing his lip. “A single haunting cello.” His eyes cut off his computer, to me. “I think that’s what I’d like for Ivy’s Flag Day ball’s music.”
I take note. “Understood, sir.”
Malcolm’s brows dip, disapproval as rampant on his face as it might be on a neglected puppy’s. “Please call me crow, sweet dove. We’re a couple, aren’t we? In the budding stages of love?”
The shudder that rocks my core isn’t paying me any kindnesses, but I can’t exactly argue.
We are a couple. After what I did, and with the proof of it beneath the slim black scarf around Malcolm’s neck right this second, we need to be a couple.
A freaky, weird couple. The kind of couple others don’t understand.
We need to be the kind of couple that doesn’t make sense to normal people.
We need to be anything but normal to be believable.
Which you’d think would be easier for someone like me—but it isn’t.
Words constricting in my throat, I say, “My…apologies. Crow.”
He smiles, radiant and mildly evil. Setting his elbow on his desk, he rests his chin in his palm. “Which do you prefer—blue or gold?”
“Blue or gold for what?”
“Your dress.” He scans the dress I’m currently wearing—it’s a gossamer lace that billows around me, loose and gauzy and white. “I’d like to get it custom ordered while we have time.”
My heart stumbles at the very idea of wearing something other than white. Cleanliness aside, I’m convinced something bad will happen if I break the pattern now. In my brain, I know the anxiety can’t be grounded in reality, but it’s still there. It’s there, and…
A thought occurs to me.
I say, “No.”
Malcolm’s smile mellows as his brows rise. With a darkening undertone, he repeats, “…no?”
“No. If you insist that I go, I’ll wear one of my own dresses. A white one.” A bubble lodges itself in my esophagus. I speak around it. “And that’s final.”
Malcolm…blinks. Lifting his chin off his hand, he stares, lips parted, for many long, flesh-curdling moments. Finally, he regains himself. “Oh, darling.” His shoulders fall, as he melts, peering at me with some twisted illusion of adoring love. “You can’t.”
“Then I’m not going.”
“I’d really like for you to go.”
“Tough.” Notably, he hasn’t threatened to fire me, which I’m realizing now is what’s always made me conform to his commands before. If he’s not putting my job at risk, why in the world have I spent so long bothering to adhere to his insanity?
“You have to,” he says, as though he hasn’t got a single thing he could hang over my head to make me.
I cross my arms over my iPad full of ridiculous notes and plans for this Flag Day event. “No, I don’t. It’s on a weekend. I don’t work weekends.”
“You don’t regularly work weekends, but your employee agreement does, in no uncertain terms, say that I own you and am allowed your time at any hour on any day so long as there’s reasonable cause.”
“A Flag Day ball is not reasonable cause for anything.”
“First of all, how dare you.” The humor in his tone is positively unmistakable. “Second of all, I am coercing you as your lover, not as your employer.”
I puff. “All the more reason I can say no, then, isn’t there?”
“May I tell you a secret, dove?”
I do not wish to hear a secret, and I highly doubt I’m going to like it, but my infernal curiosity riles at the very notion there is a secret to tell—even when I doubt it’s actually a secret that holds any merit. Irritated with myself, I glare at Malcolm.
He hooks a finger, beckoning me closer.
Stomach churning, I take calculated steps across the dark floors toward the dark desk and make certain not to put my face anywhere close to his. “What?”
“It’s a wedding.”
The tension in my shoulders releases. “Huh?”
“It’s Ivy’s wedding, sweet dove. I’m inviting you as my plus one to my younger brother’s wedding. Does that make my request that you refrain this once from your signature color more palatable?”
It makes it more reasonable, sure. But it certainly doesn’t fix the nerves that revolt against the concept of wearing anything but pure white.
And, yet, assuming Junction doesn’t get his act together and murder this man in time, I cannot hope to skip out on an event like this.
Not now that our relationship would be unavoidably apparent once a detective gets involved in the investigation of Malcolm Swallow’s demise.
Even assuming the authorities don’t track back to the footage at the hotel, no doubt Malcolm’s had to explain the strangulation marks around his neck to his brother.
And his brother will be one of the first people police talk to when Malcolm winds up dead.
I’m on thin ice above dangerous waters.
“Gold…then….I guess,” I whisper. Every word leaves my mouth sharply, slicing my tongue on their way out.
“Deep azure?” Malcolm’s smile stretches, and he fixes his gaze on his monitor, typing something in. “With a low back, so my fingers can graze the bare skin of your spine?”
I flinch. “Please. No.”
“A ravishing cerulean, then?”
“Gold. As pale as possible.”
“With a scandalous cut?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Ah.” He covers his infuriating smile. “I see. You intend to make me suffer until our wedding day.”
My eye twitches. “Suffer what exactly?”
“A modest lover.”
My attention hooks firmly on the scarf circling his throat. Modest is not the first thing that comes to mind when I consider what I’ve already done to him in this “relationship.”
And it surely can’t be what comes to mind for him either as his hand lowers from his stubble to his Adam’s apple, tugging fabric out of the way so his thumbnail can skate across the angry marks on his neck.
He lifts his chin, baring the bruises. Eyes heavy-lidded, he watches me.
Once I’m uncertain whether or not I can bear it any longer, he says, “Pale gold.” His hand falls to his keyboard.
“I appreciate your sacrifice. I’ll send you a few design options soon, and you can pick whichever is the most tolerable. ”
I force air into my body. And desperately change the subject. “So your brother’s getting married?”
“He is.” Malcolm keeps his focus on his computer screen. “It’s a secret, though, so please don’t go around telling anyone. Be certain the invitations reflect its discreet nature.”
“Understood.” Not telling secrets is part of my job description as the Swallow brothers’ executive assistant anyway. “Congratulations to him. Whoever he’s marrying is a very lucky woman.”
Malcolm freezes. Agonizingly slow, he turns his focus to me. “What?”
I stare at him. “Did I say something wrong?” I’m nearly positive my comment was classic and tired, a tried-and-true script for after having heard about someone’s impending nuptials.
“You believe that the woman ending up with my brother is lucky?”
Threads of confusion weave into the air around me. “Is she…not?”
“She is. Of course she is.” Malcolm plants his palms on his desk and rises, leaning toward me. “Ivy’s wonderful. I know that. She knows that. You aren’t supposed to know that.”
I have no idea what’s going on. “Am I not supposed to know that because he’s a little bit grumpy?”
“Little bit?” Malcolm whispers. “Where, pray tell, do you go about deciding he’s only a little bit grumpy?”
I deflate. I dunno, man. He doesn’t smile much, but he also doesn’t make me jump through hoops for him. He’s the definition of professional with me. I appreciate that. “Maybe I’m confusing grumpy with professional.”
Malcolm’s eye twitches.
For my own safety, I take half a step back. “What…?”
“The man I cannot get to wear appropriate business attire to the office ever is…professional to you?” He falls into his chair, leans back, and cages his mouth in his fingers. “Quick question.”
I shift my weight, bracing for his quick question.
“Do you like Ivy?”
“He’s a tolerable boss.”
Malcolm mouths the word tolerable, then says, “Am…I also a tolerable boss?”
I deadpan. “No.”
He sags. “What a relief.”
My lips pinch. “You don’t want to be tolerable?”
“Of course not.” He drops his hand from his face. “Tolerable is practically indifferent. I’d loathe to be a point of indifference to you.”
Uh-huh… Interesting. Considering my singular goal in life is to maintain nothing less.
Indifferently, I check my notes. “Is there anything else for right now, sir?”
“Now you’re just being mean.”
“Sorry. Is there anything else for right now, crow?” I comment, drily.
His cold attention heats. “Very mean.” He waves a flippant hand. “No, dearest dove. I’ve no other games to play with you at the moment. A pity, I’m sure.”
Holding my tone on a taut leash, I drawl, “Massive shame.” I start heading back to my desk. “I’ll begin researching cello musicians and finalize the invitations with Iverson, then.”
“Wait.”
I stop, feet from the exit.
“Turn around.”
Despite the new dynamics sprouting between us, old habits die hard, and I face him.
Head cocked against the backrest of his chair, he takes me in, a certain despicable high wafting off him. “Go out with me this weekend. Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow, I can’t.”
“Truly? What are you doing?”
“I shop and meal prep on Saturdays. It’s an all-day event.”
He perks.
Before he can speak, I say, “No, you can absolutely not be anywhere near me or my food while I’m preparing it.”
Sad puppy returns, a mournful edge to his voice as he mutters, “Sunday, then?”
Unfortunately, I am free. “What do you want to do?”
He refuses to tell me, or let me leave, until I agree to let him pick me up at two.