Chapter 6
After hours of serious deliberation—or, you know, a conversation that lasted all of two minutes—we decided that while Fling and OnlyFans were going to be our main platforms, we’d still create brand-new Duke of Harding profiles everywhere else, even if the only things we uploaded were teasers directing people to our other accounts.
And like sure, we didn’t strictly need to be in the same room to do it. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we didn’t even need to be on the same continent. But when Dash suggested getting together, who was I to say no?
And when it turned out that the suggestion involved coming over to his apartment so that we could get started on putting together the set, well…
Look, I was a proud member of the nosy brigade, okay?
I wanted to see Dash’s apartment. It was better than sitting around at home, dwelling over the almost kiss in Second Chance.
There was no hiding the fact that I was uncomfortably into Dash, and in my experience, there was nothing like seeing a boy’s gross bathroom and sink full of dishes to dampen the flames of a crush.
When he opened the door, he was in this crisp button down that made his tan look deeper, his smile brighter, and his eyes…
Well, the less said about Dash’s eyes, the better.
Mostly because they were currently twinkling at me as if he was so thrilled that I’d accepted his invitation to come poking around his apartment—excuse me, get some work done on our project—and it had been such a long time since anybody had looked at me like they were happy to see me and…
And we had too much to do for me to waste time standing there in the doorway, grinning foolishly back at him.
“Let’s get to it, Dashwood,” I told him as I made my way inside, wielding my phone like it was some kind of shield that could protect me from his charm.
Dash didn’t have a lot of furniture other than a dining table, a sunny yellow couch covered in printed throw pillows, and the bed—complete with a striped duvet and actual pillowcases—I could just about glimpse through the half-open door to his bedroom.
He did, however, have a Great Wall of China made out of stacked paperbacks, which made me suspect that he was single-handedly keeping Second Chance in business.
I headed toward the couch, then thought better of it and sat at his dining table instead, still holding on to my phone in what I hoped was a businesslike manner.
Stopping first by the fridge for a couple cans of something pink and orange, he came and sat across from me.
He placed the cans on a couple of coasters that were already on the table—not a good sign that Dash’s apartment was going to gross me out enough to make me stop liking him—and slid one of them toward me.
“I remembered that you’re not into coffee, so I got you sparkling water instead. ”
“To match my personality?” I batted my eyelashes at him as I pulled the tab.
“Did you get something in your eye?” he asked mildly.
“I’m being sparkling, Dashwood. I’m extremely disappointed at your failure to recognize sparkle.”
“I’ll try to do better next time,” he assured me, beaming so much earnestness at me from across the table that I could feel myself getting all shimmery and floaty.
Then I remembered that there were no felines here to interrupt another close call.
“Anyway,” I said loudly, “back to business. What should our passwords be?”
Since we hadn’t gotten his Duke of Harding costume yet and couldn’t take pictures for our profile, we settled on using the coat of arms as a placeholder. The whole thing took maybe ten minutes, which underscored how silly it had been to get together.
Then I remembered that we still had to upholster the armchair.
Both it and the fabric were in Dash’s spare room—if I’d needed anything to convince me that getting into OnlyFans was the right idea, the fact that he could afford a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan without a roommate would have done it in a second flat.
The room was nice and bright, with two windows that supplemented the professional-looking lamps he had set up behind his tripod.
“Whoa, this is a nice setup. I’d been picturing a ring light and a phone stand.”
“You were picturing me?”
There was only one possible response to Dash’s teasing grin, and it was to place my palm directly in the middle of his face.
“Not unless ring light is a euphemism for something. Did you get the staple gun and the pliers?”
The denim miniskirt I was wearing was extremely cute, with these little teddy bear charms sewn all over it, but it turned out to be not exactly comfortable for kneeling on the floor as we cut and ripped the old fabric away.
I was also hyperaware of my legs for some reason, and the goose bumps that rippled over them whenever Dash accidentally grazed them.
Okay, I admit it. Coming over to Dash’s apartment had not been the smartest move.
Once we’d stripped off all the old fabric, I got Dash to carefully go over the chair and remove any stray staples that had been left behind, while I used the pieces of fabric we’d removed as templates to start cutting into the cheerful pink velvet.
Then I showed Dash how to hold the fabric taut while I went at it with a staple gun.
Dash foolishly didn’t look the slightest bit worried about the proximity of the staple gun in relation to his hands.
“How do you know how to do all this?”
I shrugged. “We never had that much money growing up, but my mom and my aunt Nena never let that get in the way of having a stylish home. And wardrobes—you should’ve seen the outfits they put together with five dollars, a visit to the thrift store, and some needle and thread.”
It was mostly clothes, in the beginning. Then I spilled an entire bottle of grape juice on the couch and they figured out how to upholster fairly quickly after that.
“There were a couple of years when Yaz and I were in high school when we’d wake to find that they’d stayed up all night painting the kitchen chairs or putting wallpaper remnants on the ceiling. You’d think one of them would’ve ended up in interior design or something.”
“Right, you mentioned that you all lived together.”
I nodded, absolutely not checking out the way his forearm muscles tautened as he pulled a length of pink fabric over the armchair’s back.
“My mom and Tía Nena figured out it’d be easier, since they were both single.
They could split the bills and share the childcare duties.
Plus, Yaz and I became inseparable pretty much from the start. ”
“Sounds nice,” he said, “having all your family together under one roof.”
I folded a piece of fabric and asked him to hold it in place while I secured it to the backing. “I take it you don’t see your parents as often as your grandmothers?”
Dash shook his head. “Not really. My dad got remarried like ten years ago and they have two kids. I visit maybe once or twice a year. My mom and her husband are always asking me to their beach house, but I don’t make it there as often as I’d like.”
He hesitated, like he wanted to say more, then thought better of it, probably scared I would flail again.
It was probably for the best, but I had to admit to being the teensiest bit disappointed.
Just out of plain curiosity, you know? Growing up in such a nontraditional family unit meant that I always perked up whenever I met someone in a similarly uncommon situation.
“Here, let me.” Shifting on his knees, he smoothed the fabric over the chair’s rolled arms and waited for me to staple it down.
I couldn’t quite reach the spot, though, so I ended up having to Twister my way inside Dash’s arms and…
and yeah. I squeezed the staple gun a few times, trying to pretend for both Dash’s and my own benefit that I wasn’t putting in way more staples than were strictly required.
That I wasn’t lingering because being enclosed by a pair of muscular arms was making my entire midsection feel all floaty and shimmery and really, that wasn’t exactly what you wanted to feel while holding a power tool.
“That was some quality stapling,” Dash said after a moment.
He had released the fabric, but he hadn’t moved, so our bodies were still touching lightly from shoulder to knee.
I could have perished right then and there from the zings of electricity working their way through my body.
Then I felt his breath caressing the side of my neck and it was like something shorted out in my brain—slowly, deliberately, I leaned against him so that we weren’t just touching, we were pressing against each other.
His hand landed on my hip, his thumb grazing the half an inch of exposed skin above the waistband of my skirt. “Mariel…”
What were we doing? There was flirting, and then there was… this. This suspension, not of disbelief, but of the reality of our situation. Which was that we were working together. And that I couldn’t afford any more mistakes. And that Kitty Marlowe wasn’t around to save me from myself.
I guess I should count myself lucky that his phone rang just then. Definitely lucky and not disappointed. As he reached into his pocket, I scooted away from him and began fiddling with the pink piping we’d bought to use as trimming.
“Hey, Dad,” Dash was saying. He’d tucked the phone into the crook of his shoulder and was idly stroking the velvet with his fingertip. “What’s up?”
Through the window of the laundromat, I’d noticed that he had this way of growing brighter and more animated when he spoke with his grandmothers.
Talking with his dad, the difference was subtle but I couldn’t help noticing it—how his voice changed to project extra excitement and how his gestures grew a little more expansive and he turned the act of upholstering a chair into a whole event.
Like he felt like he had to put on this performance for his dad’s benefit.
It made me ache for him a little bit. I could just about see him as a little kid, trying his hardest to distract his parents from their trying to one-up each other.
“Sorry about that,” Dash told me as he hung up a couple of minutes later. I watched him take in all the space I had put between us—though he didn’t comment on it, he did stay in his side of the room. “We don’t talk all that often, so I always try to be there when he calls.”
“Don’t sweat it. It’s nice that you have a relationship with your dad.” I myself had a blurry photo and a nose whose provenance was unaccounted for, so a phone call, however occasional, sounded like something out of a 1950s sitcom.
“You don’t?”
I shrugged. “Never met the guy. Never wanted to, either.” Pulling a glue gun out of my tote, I held it up in one hand and the pink edging in the other. “Ready to attach the trim?”
I made sure to keep my distance this time—at least, as much distance as could be kept when we were working on the same chair.
But I guess it wasn’t enough, because the tingles had, if anything, intensified.
And they were distracting enough that the glue gun got away from me a little and I came this close to hot gluing my finger to the chair.
The next thing I knew, bright, searing pain was shooting through me.
I jerked my hand away, yelping. Dash was at my side a half second later, carefully setting the glue gun on a low table and inspecting my reddening fingertip.
“That’s my typing finger. I mean, they’re all my typing fingers, but that one’s my favorite.”
“Don’t worry, I think the chances of you losing it are pretty slim.” The slight curl at the corners of his lips went straight to the softest parts of me. “Come on, let’s get you an ice pack.”
He got some burn ointment, too, which he applied with a delicate touch as we stood in his kitchen. I gotta say, the old being nursed back to health after a terrible accident had never been my favorite romance novel trope, but I was starting to see the appeal.
“Here I was, hoping to dazzle you with my upholstery skills, but all I’ve done is make you pull out the first aid kit.” I gave an exaggerated sigh, which was followed by a very real wince.
“Honestly, I’d been expecting to need it from the moment you pulled out the staple gun.”
I shoved him with my good hand. “Why would you doubt my competence with power tools?”
“I would never doubt your competence at anything,” he protested, raising his hands. “But you have to admit, some of those staples came pretty close to my fingertips. I have trauma now.”
“Hey, if the only damage I’ve inflicted on you is emotional, I’d say you got off easy.” I held up my finger in illustration. The sharp pain had turned into a dull throb, but the redness was already beginning to fade.
Dash’s laugh wafted over me. “I don’t know if I could take any more damage, emotional or otherwise. What do you say we go get some dinner instead?”
“Make it a burger and I won’t sue you for workplace injury compensation.”
There it was again, the smile that was full of unbridled delight. “Well then, I’d better add some ice cream, too.”
And I knew I hadn’t done anything to deserve that smile, and that he probably wouldn’t be directing it at me if he knew how affected I was by it, but all I could do was smile back.