Chapter 18
18
The dinner dishes were cleared away, and Rosie had delivered final orders to prepare for the next day’s work. Tom, Boyd, and Ximena were sitting around the great oaken table, which had been reserved for grown-ups during Tom’s previous visits to the inn.
“But why does she cook like a 1970s housewife from Minnesota with eight children,” the Great Puffin whined to Tom as she reviewed Rose’s detailed instructions for preparing the next day’s menu: bread pudding, glazed carrots, and baked ziti.
“You’re lucky to eat like one of Rosie’s eight hardy prairie children,” Tom said, because Rosie had several times planned the dinner menu around the palate of Seth’s toddler, only for her cousin to beg off at the last minute. If he didn’t come tomorrow, Tom was going to get him.
Tom was still not wild about the number of barely legal girls roaming around the inn, but as Boyd had been a model of restraint and they were certainly at no risk of exploitation by Tom, he had to admit they’d been surprisingly handy so far, and not just at eating the food Rosie had planned to serve her delinquent family. The whole place had been patched, primed, and painted; Boyd was prepared to start cleaning the gutters tomorrow; and the fangirls apparently knew how to sew, so the window treatments were being replaced and the linens repaired. Big progress! But it also brought into focus that Tom himself had not been getting anything done.
“Can we at least have something with seasoning?” the Great Puffin begged. “I can take a turn cooking.”
Tom looked at the kitchen. Rosie was in there baking sunbutter cookies. She’d been very quiet all through dinner, but in a way that was more thoughtful than hostile. Tom couldn’t tell if she’d noticed that he had nothing to show for his whole day’s effort.
“Okay, okay, fine,” Tom said, tearing a sheet of scrap paper from one of the notebooks. “I’ll write down some things Rosie isn’t allergic to. Don’t get anything else. First person who brings a tree nut or an avocado into this building gets fed to the turkeys.”
Boyd nodded at Tom’s warning, impressed, even though Rosie had prepared and served him a special dinner of two whole roast chickens and grilled zucchini, which was on the list of forbidden foods.
Tom would never have asked Rosie to cook him something she couldn’t eat, but Boyd had beamed at her and praised her cooking and made her smile and everyone else coo. The big dork.
After all the girls had cleared out, Tom looked back at his laptop, where he’d opened the budget spreadsheet Rosie had prepared before her arrival.
The amount allotted to the roof sounded like a big number, but as Tom had spent many hours on the phone with the insurance company and various roofers over the past couple of weeks, he’d learned that this number was deceptive. The inn’s roof was fifteen years old, and it needed to be replaced due to the storm damage. According to the claims adjuster, it had only ever been a “twenty-year roof.” Tom wasn’t sure what happened when roofs turned twenty: Did they pack their bags and move to the city, leaving the bunk room exposed to the heavens? Did they retire? Did they simply vanish? But per the insurance company’s calculus, they only owed Rosie a check for 25 percent of a roof.
Tom was having difficulty procuring 25 percent of a roof. Roofers did not want to install 25 percent of a roof. They were in the business of installing entire roofs. Tom had asked whether they might install 25 percent of the roof and allocate those new shingles to the portions of the roof that leaked. He had asked whether they might buy shingles for the entire roof, install some small portion of them, and teach Tom to lay the remainder. No luck so far.
He was from Florida. Roofing was in his blood. He would just have to figure it out, he thought gloomily, deciding to copy and paste the painting budget and add it to the roof budget, the concept moving through his resistant brain like a marshmallow through Jell-O salad.
“What color do you want to have the outdoor trim painted?” Ximena asked, sliding some paint chips across the table.
“Rosie said she wanted it to be pink. Pink like flamingos,” Boyd rumbled.
Oh, now she was Rosie to him, Tom thought with a glower.
“This is a classic Cape Cod–style building,” Ximena objected. “Pink trim’s for the Victorian gingerbread cottages up in Oak Bluffs. You can do white, eggshell, or ecru here. I’d go with ecru. It’ll wear best.”
“Did she really say flamingo pink?” Tom asked Boyd.
“Yeah. She said she wanted to do the same color as the interior of the little place you two are staying,” Boyd said. “Her vision is feminine but playful.”
“Then we’ll do flamingo,” Tom said.
Ximena made a noise of exasperation. “I thought you asked me to come out here to apply my good taste and sophistication,” she objected. “It’ll look weird with pink trim.”
“Do it how she wants,” Tom said, pulling back in his chair. “If her family doesn’t like it, I’ll just tell them I screwed that up too.”
Tom’s tone was perhaps sharper than he’d intended, and the other two fell silent.
Boyd was the first to move. He put one of his big paws on Tom’s knee. “You’re not screwing this up,” he said sincerely. “Everyone sees you working really hard.”
Which was all well and good, but Rosie probably planned to lodge her future dairy-fed children in an inn with a roof.
She came out of the kitchen just then carrying a tray of cookies and a wooden trivet. She set them down on the center of the table and waited for due expressions of admiration.
“I made them with honey instead of sugar, so they should be lower on the glycemic index,” she told Boyd, who gave her a doting expression and immediately shoved a cookie into his mouth, the first dessert Tom had ever seen him consume.
“Is the honey—?” Tom began to ask, putting his most appealing expression on.
“Yes, it’s local honey,” Rosie said.
Tom grinned at her and took a cookie for himself. She was coming around on his trash honey. The cookie was delicious, of course, because if Rosie decided to do a thing, she decided to do it perfectly.
Tom shut the laptop when he saw her leaning in to squint at his budget spreadsheet. Instead, he stuck out his arm, realizing only after he’d extended it that he couldn’t assume Rosie would let him put his arm around her, especially in front of Boyd and the others.
Please do not leave me hanging, I will feel like such an asshole , he thought, and thank God, she moved to stand next to his chair. Tom gratefully turned his cheek against the round swell of her stomach and took advantage of a brief moment of peace with Rosie in his arms where she belonged.
“Mm. What do you want to do tonight?” he asked.
She hesitated, and he tilted his head up to see her catch her lower lip between her teeth. Her body was pressed against him, but surprisingly tense.
“We’re done for the day, right?” he prompted her.
“Yes. It’s looking fantastic. Thank you,” she said, even though Tom couldn’t claim any credit for the work that had been done today.
“Do you want to have game night?” Tom threw out, and Rosie stilled, obviously interested. “I found the board game pile in the bunk room. Most of it survived the hurricane. Monopoly’s a loss”—this was a lie; Tom just hated Monopoly—“but we could do Scattergories? Cards Against Humanity? Apples to Apples?” Tom thought he was being very generous to offer to play party games in which there was no possibility of him singing.
“Um,” said Rosie. For some reason, her cheeks were bright pink. “I, um, I think I might just turn in early today?” She made this a question directed at him, even though she hadn’t run her schedule by him up to this point. And it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet.
“You don’t want to do anything?” Tom asked, surprised. Rosie wasn’t typically the first one to call it an evening.
“I…no.”
“Are you feeling okay?” he asked, because if Rosie was skipping game night, she probably had tuberculosis or something. The seductive rattle of plastic tiles against cardboard had been one of the few sounds he could use to lure Rosie out of a finals-season despair spiral. He leaned up to put a hand on her forehead, but she dodged. She met his gaze, eyes wide and nervous.
“No, no, I’m good. Just going to bed early.” Her throat moved as she swallowed. She gave tight smiles to Boyd and Ximena. “Good night.” She ran her fingers through the loose ends of Tom’s hair in a familiar way, then turned to go.
He sat back in such a funk of disappointment that for several minutes after Rosie left he didn’t notice that everyone else was looking at him.
“Jeez, no wonder you’re divorced,” Ximena said.
Boyd giggled, then covered it with a hand.
“What?” Tom demanded.
Ximena rolled her eyes. “For a decent actor, you’re sure missing a lot of cues.”
“What cues?” he said.
“I think she wanted you to go with her,” Boyd said from behind the hand he had clasped over his mouth.
Tom wheeled around as though the door through which Rosie had gone would tell him something.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
Ximena snorted in the way of smug married people, which was a lot less charming than when he’d been a smug married person himself. She made a shooing gesture with her hands.
“We’ll see you tomorrow. Go make your wife yell happy yells.”
She and Boyd were now widely grinning, marveling at Tom’s confusion. Tom hesitated, trying to imagine what he’d possibly done today that would make him seem sexually appealing.
“Do you want me to ask her if that’s what she meant?” Boyd offered, seeing Tom’s hesitation.
Do you want to do it with Tom? Yes/No (Circle one)
“I’ll just check on her,” Tom announced. He stood up, head spinning like he’d tossed back a shot of something high proof. Why was he always the last one to know what Rosie wanted? He stalked off with his ears burning.
The windows of the cottage were dark when Tom reached the front door. He rapped quietly, just in case Rosie had actually gone to bed, but it was unlocked, and he heard her voice inside. She’d only turned on the single overhead bathroom light, so she was a silhouette by the suitcase rack.
Even though she’d told him to come in, she straightened up as though startled. She pulled her hands back from the suitcase she was going through, one he hadn’t seen her unpack. When he drew closer, he recognized both the fabric at the top of the stack and the wide-eyed expression on Rosie’s face. The fabric was lace on satin, shimmering even in the low light, the top of a pile that also held black mesh, silk, and velvet. The expression—he knew that one from other nights he’d spent with her.
“Oh,” he said softly, putting two fingertips on something with tiny ruffles. “Were you going to put that on for me?”
Rosie’s lips pressed together, eyes big and uncertain. “Maybe?” she said.
Tom walked his fingers along the edge of the garment. He wasn’t sure what it was called. Rosie had always liked lingerie, in theory at least, but he understood that the stuff was expensive. She used to spend a few minutes looking at fantastic, lacy things online, add them to her shopping cart, and then quickly close her browser window.
“I’d like to see it on you,” he said in his mildest voice, proud of the way he enunciated without choking on the rush of desire that was drying his mouth out.
“…okay,” Rosie said, with just a tiny flash of pink as she licked her lips. She looked at the pink toile chaise, which faced away from the bathroom, and made a little gesture toward it. “Go sit down.”
Tom took direction well, and he went readily. He collapsed into his seat, mind unmoored at this sudden change of fortune, and leaned back with his eyes closed to savor the rustling noises behind him. Fabric sliding across skin. Little snaps being fixed over Rosie’s small, curvy form.
He spread his arms across the back of the seat when he heard Rosie’s bare feet on the floorboards tiptoeing around to stand between his spread knees.
“Tell me when,” he said, eyes still closed.
Her breath made a small shift in the air, in and out. “When.”
He opened his eyes and paused on his own inhale. He hadn’t been sure what he was looking at in the suitcase, but this was a whole outfit: a black net bustier that wrapped Rosie’s curves and supported her round breasts with velvet-covered wires, then a short skirt that traced her hips and clipped to thigh-high stockings edged with the same black lace that formed her skimpy underwear. He was going to have a hell of a time figuring out how to get it off her, which he both wanted to do immediately and wanted to avoid doing at all if there was any creative way of working around it.
She was just an arm’s length away, and he’d instinctively reached out for her, but he limited himself to resting fingertips on her hips and brushing his thumbs over the little satin ribbons that held everything together.
“Oh my God,” he said. “Jesus Christ. You look so fucking pretty, Rosie.”
Tom had been more eloquent in his life, but never as sincere, and his words moved a little of the uncertainty off her face. He put his knees together so that he could urge her onto his lap, the whole warm, soft weight of her.
“Mm,” he hummed, burying his face against a bare spot over her collarbone, then kissing his way up her honey-scented neck. “I could have worn something better if I’d known I’d see this on you.”
Rosie tilted her face to look at his ratty T-shirt and lifted the hem with one fingertip. “You look pretty good in nothing though,” she suggested.
“I can pull off nothing,” Tom agreed, leaning back to peel his shirt off and toss it away. Rosie sighed and put her palms against his chest when it was bare, and the expression of admiration on her face was worth at least half the hours he’d spent on the goddamn medieval torture device to get into this shape.
He leaned up to kiss her again, which had the side effect of pulling her flush against his lap, her warm, lace-wrapped body rolling directly over his hardening cock. His lips were already open when they pressed against hers, but she was sweet about kissing him back, giving him just the corners and edges of her mouth before she finally opened to him. His tongue slid along hers while his hands pulled her closer against him.
The feel of her under his hands left him giddy and intoxicated. He didn’t know how this had happened to him, but he wasn’t wasting this opportunity to kiss her as much as he wanted to.
“Should we take this upstairs?” he asked breathlessly, when his lips started to feel swollen and bruised. He had no objection to the chaise or any other piece of furniture that caught Rosie’s fancy, but he’d have more room to maneuver around various strips of lace on the bed. Reacquaint his hands and mouth with every precious inch of her.
Rosie’s eyes were glittering over flushed cheeks, and she hesitated before she answered.
“I thought maybe we could play a game,” she said.
He thought she was teasing him.
“I don’t think I can do enough math for Yahtzee right now,” he said. “Even naked Twister would be pushing it.” He kissed the tops of her breasts where they were pushed close to his face. Yeah, this thing should stay on.
Rosie shook her head, black curls brushing bare shoulders.
“I meant a game like—um. Bad secretary and the horny billionaire who never got HR training.” Her cheeks flamed even brighter as she spoke in a rush.
“Oh,” Tom said, surprised. “I…guess I’ve heard of that one?” He didn’t know which role he was supposed to play; it wasn’t like he’d never heard of gender norms, but if Rosie ever decided to be a secretary, she’d be a really good secretary, and who’d ever imagine Tom as the rich asshole?
He looked around the room, trying to imagine what she meant. “Am I supposed to make you coffee or spank you over the desk?”
He couldn’t spank her, actually—Rosie bruised like a peach. If he spanked her, by tomorrow she’d look like she’d been in a car accident. Did she mean she wanted him to put on cologne and a nicer shirt?
“Maybe later,” Rosie said, seeming to gather a little more courage. “I thought that—well, I thought I could start like this?” She rolled off his lap, then slid down to the floor, positioning herself on her knees and leaning up against his. Tom now had an idea of where things were going, but it was so close to a number of very unlikely fantasies he’d entertained over the past couple of weeks that he didn’t do anything to assist beyond sucking in his stomach when Rosie unbuttoned the fly of his loose, tattered jeans.
He barely breathed, already dizzy with expectation and unable to think of a single thing he could say that wouldn’t wrongly suggest he thought he deserved this. Where had this come from? What did he do?
Rosie pulled his cock out of his boxers with careful hands and propped her elbows on his thighs as though making herself comfortable. Tom caught himself about to close his eyes again and forced them open, because this was the very best sight in the world.
No matter how Rosie filled his arms, she was built on a base of delicate little bird bones, and she had small, delicate hands and a round, delicate mouth. The contrast of either one wrapped around the taut head of his cock was the hottest fucking view imaginable, one that always made him feel like a demigod.
The back of his head hit the back of the chaise at the first warm brush of her tongue. He was going to lose it in about thirty seconds. Time to think about baseball. The national debt. The missing insulation at the southwest corner of the roof.
When he lifted his head, Rosie was looking at him expectantly, and he remembered that he was supposed to be playing a role.
“Um, you’re a bad secretary,” he said, because he hadn’t practiced his lines. “And you’re going to have to work late collating things. Overtime.”
The curve of Rosie’s lips where they were wrapped around him convinced him he was going to have to dig deeper into his improv abilities.
“Keep going,” she encouraged him, pulling off only long enough to press him against smiling lips before wrapping one fist around his base and leaning back in. This was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
“I’m an evil billionaire,” Tom declared. “I spend all my time doing white-collar crimes and staring at your ass. But that’s okay, because I work out.”
Rosie’s mouth felt like magic, like every good and sweet thing he’d ever wanted. This was going to be over very soon, and then he just had to hope Rosie understood that he wasn’t eighteen anymore and he’d need a union-length break before he was ready to bend her over any imaginary copy machines.
“Dictation,” he muttered. “Imagine I just made a really good dictation pun.”
He couldn’t concentrate enough to keep up the game. The tight, wet slide of Rosie’s mouth wiped all conscious thought from the surface of his mind. He kept speaking anyway. He’d heard from more than one lover that he was a talker. Rosie had never minded, because the only things that he ever managed to say were compliments ( Your tits are so hot, the best in the entire world ), blasphemy ( Oh God, oh fuck, Rosie, please ), and forward-looking statements ( I’m going to come in your mouth ).
Rosie stopped abruptly and sat back. The shock of the cool air on his wet cock had Tom sitting straight up in discomfort, wondering what the hell he’d done wrong now.
“Are you still playing?” Rosie whispered, eyes worried.
What had he said? It had all been pure stream of consciousness. Rosie, nobody does this like you, please, Rosie, I love you—
That wasn’t the line she’d been looking for?
Tom pressed a palm to his muddled head. He should have volunteered for Bad Secretary and gotten on his knees. His body throbbed with thwarted desire. “You can not expect me to stay in character while—Jesus, Rosie, Sir Kenneth Branagh himself couldn’t stay in character with your mouth on his cock.”
“I didn’t mean—” she said, shoulders tensing. “I just meant you didn’t have to say that.”
Tom groaned and yanked his jeans and underwear back up over his hips. Served him right for sitting back on the couch to get his dick sucked like a king when he’d been begging her for weeks just to let him sleep upstairs with her. And, scene. Let’s take that from the top. Put in a little effort this time, Tomasz.
“You’re in a position that allows for too much heavy thinking,” he told her. “Let’s go upstairs. I have some better ideas.”
He’d never thought the act where they got back together would start with Rosie on her knees in front of him, dressed like a wrapped present.
She sucked her lower lip into her mouth, obviously still wondering if she should shut things down. Tom stood up and hauled her up to her feet too, hoping to intercept any more thinky thoughts. He kissed her swollen mouth and swept her hair out of her face with his palms. “Okay?” he prompted her.
“Your ideas. Right,” she said, seeming to calm down. “I thought that maybe this could be—an opportunity. To try some new stuff. So that’s good.”
“Uh?” Tom said. He thought he and Rosie had done it just about every way two people with their anatomy could do it, in the spirit of mutual discovery, and he’d also thought he’d gotten a pretty good handle on which ways she liked.
She put her hands back on his chest, smoothing the line of dark hair down his stomach in an appreciative way. “If there was ever anything you felt like you couldn’t do—let’s try it now. You know. Get it out of our systems.”
Tom left his hands framing her face as he tried to pry instructions out of that. “Out of our systems?”
“I mean, we can see how it goes,” she said, apparently under the impression she was being encouraging, even though he didn’t like the sound of that at all. “Maybe it’ll be fun. To stretch some boundaries. But if it’s not, at least we’ll know, right?”
Tom now had no idea what she was talking about. He hadn’t ever thought there was a problem with the sex they’d had, only the sex they hadn’t had. Her soft blue eyes searched his, and he wished he knew what she was looking for.
Tom put his most charming expression on his face. Jesus Christ, no pressure, right? Just go upstairs and rail her so good that she decides it’s worth ever doing again. And make it new. And different. With zero specifics.
He swatted Rosie lightly on the rear and urged her toward the ladder. “Whatever you say, babe.”