The Dirty Secret (2 page)

“Theater. She’s a scenic charge artist. That’s the set painter, in layman’s terms.”

Killian sat up straight. “Interesting.”

“Wait until you meet her. She’s fascinating. Has an eye for color that is just astounding.”

On the phone, without the distracting vision of Donna Edith—which had him as awkward as Dustin Hoffman gawking at Anne Bancroft in
The Graduate
—he was able to detect a hesitation in her voice.

“But?” he asked. “There’s more?”

“She’s extremely private, Mr. Fitzroy. Be careful not to pry.”

“I just need the work finished on time. I don’t need to know her life story.”

“You’ll want to know, Killian. In fact, you’ll have difficulty keeping your hands off her.”

He snorted. He didn’t have time to even look at girls, much less get to know one. “When can she start?”

“I told her to be at your house at two o’clock tomorrow.”

He stuck his finger through the venetian blinds of the boardroom window, peering at his desk and the calendar above it with red circles around the date. He hung his head. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Is that a problem?” Donna Edith asked.

“No, ma’am. Not at all.” He let go of the blinds. “What’s her name?”

“Vessa Ratham. And Killian? Let her surprise you.” She hung up.

He walked back to his workspace and sat at the small desk next to his drafting table. His computer beeped with an email, but he ignored it and entered the name into a search engine. All that turned up was a five-year-old announcement of a Vermont charity scholarship recipient, and a few crew photos from a theater production in California. No face stood out as particularly interesting.

His phone rang again. “Fitzroy.”

“Hey, Killer. Pad Thai?”

He hung up the phone. “You can’t just stick your fat head over the cubicle wall?”

A paper clip flew over the upholstered partition in response.

Killian caught it and flicked it back. “I better not take the time, man. I’m so behind, I’ll be here until midnight.” His empty stomach protested.

“You have to eat, dude. You’re a fucking skeleton.” Bengt leaned around the wall that divided their drafting spaces. “And I can’t flirt with the waitress if you don’t come with me.” He swiped a tissue from Killian’s desk and scrubbed at the pencil smudges on the side of his hand.

Killian handed him the paper from the accountant. “You’ll want to keep this. Those are your numbers.” The marketing director waved at him across the workroom, brandishing a flip calendar. He turned away before she could establish eye contact. “Okay,” he told his friend. “Let’s go. Before anyone schedules any more meetings I don’t have time for.”

They escaped out the side exit without talking to anyone. In the lobby, they initialed the sign-out log, pausing long enough for Bengt to tease the middle-aged receptionist. She clicked her tongue when he changed the time by fifteen minutes to give them a longer lunch, but she didn’t correct it. Bengt was Killian’s opposite: blond, muscle-bound and charming. Women rarely denied him anything.

“You don’t need me to hit on a waitress,” Killian grumbled as they walked the half block to Taste of Siam. “Why can’t you perv on girls on your own?”

“Because that would be creepy. And she might take me seriously. I don’t want to take her home, I just want extra peanut sauce.”

The waitress greeted them by name, and sat them at a booth. “Your usual?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Killian told her, and Bengt complimented her haircut. After she left their drinks at the table, Killian said, “I went to Donna Edith’s.”

“Holy shit!”

Heads turned their direction, with a clatter of forks and chopsticks.

“She’s incredible, isn’t she? Made me feel like I was thirteen again, stammering like a dork in front of the hot mom across the street. What kind of tea did you have?”

“Earl Grey,” Killian said. “My grandmother used to drink it.” It was the only kind he knew by name. “What about you?”

“I told her I’d have what she was having. Big mistake. Stuff tasted like I’d licked Santa’s chimney after he’d been up and down both ways. She told me it was called Lapsang Souchong, after a mountain. But I think it’s really Chinese for ‘tastes like smoked ass on a charred stick.’” He shuddered.

“What did you go to her for?” Killian pulled his disposable chopsticks from their paper and snapped them apart. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“The first time?” Bengt jiggled the ice cubes in his plastic glass. “Dad brought me in when I was eighteen. He’d overheard me mispronounce the word
clitoris
, so I got an anatomy lesson.”

“From her?” Killian spluttered, blinking against images of Donna Edith on her couch, reclining on the cushions. He sucked at his Coke until his head hurt from the ice.

“No!” Bengt said.

The waitress stopped, holding his plate inches from the table.

“Not you,” he told her.

She set the plates down and left.

“She placed me with a girl who wanted her labia pierced, but didn’t want to go to the shop all alone.”

“What happened?” Killian shook red pepper flakes onto his chicken pad Thai.

“I got a whole lot of insight into female genitalia. And sixteen-gauge nipple rings.”

“I always wondered why you got those.” Killian fought with his chopsticks for a moment before giving up and stabbing a heap of noodles. He bit through the tangle.

Bengt drew a breath, pulling his shirt taut across his chest, and circled a nipple with a fingertip. “You want to touch them?”

“No!” Killian said through his food, then shook his head at the waitress again. “Not you.”

The woman gave Bengt a wide-eyed look as he toyed with his chest. She set the fresh Cokes down and backed away, while Killian laughed at his friend’s dismay. “You said ‘the first time.’ So what about the second?”

Bengt reached for the soy sauce bottle. “I was curious about something.”

“Your sexual orientation?”

“Not exactly.” Bengt stared off at some vision only he could see, but there was a glint in his eye, some savage satisfaction that made him more than the spoiled son of the boss, more than the big blond flirt who was good with girls. “So did she Sherlock you?”

“Right from the start.”

Last Tuesday, he’d been shown into her office by the receptionist. Donna Edith had glanced at him and told him to have a seat.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and she turned from her tea pantry to reappraise him. She was older, ten years and probably more, and so elegant he felt like a maladroit teenager staring back at her.

“Bengt Bjorn referred you to me, did he not?”

“Yes, ma’am. We went to college together. I work at his mother’s firm.”

“There’s more to you than just that, Mr. Fitzroy.” The woman sat at the other end of the couch, and crossed her magnificent legs. Her movements were smooth, her expressions deliberate, like all the actresses who had ever played Catwoman. “You’re from the South, but not very deep. Appalachia.” She pronounced it like a native, with each
A
short. “Eastern Kentucky?”

“Harlan County.” Three years in New England had not frozen his accent much, but no one had ever guessed so close to home.

“You’re not a wealthy man,” she continued. “Your shirt is more than seven years old, and fraying at the neck. You do not have a woman in your life who would buy you a new one, nor do you take the time to pay attention to such things yourself. You wear a tie, even though it makes you uncomfortable, perhaps because it gives you a certain white-collar status, above the roots from which you were raised. Are you the first in your family to go to college?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “The first to graduate high school.”

“You’ve worked hard for your education, then. You’re driven and clever. But you’re not arrogant—you’re here, which means you aren’t afraid to ask others for help. You say you work
at
Bergman and Bjorn, not
for
, which indicates you have some status there, and your calluses suggest you use a pencil as much as a keyboard. Mr. Bjorn referred you to me, so he sees you as much more than a fellow alum or a coworker.”

He didn’t bother nodding.

“You’re starved for sex,” she said with a knowing look in her dark eyes that went straight to his gut and groin, “but you’re not here to satisfy that hunger. Your desperation is professional, not personal. Now, what would a humble, talented, resourceful architect possibly need that he couldn’t ask his wealthy best friend to provide?”

“I have never asked Bengt for anything,” Killian said.

“I see. You’re looking for something that will set you apart—and even above—anything that the Bjorn’s money and connections can offer. You want obvious uniqueness. A display of your own creativity.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Exactly.”

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she’d asked, rising from the couch.

“It’s almost creepy, isn’t it?” Bengt asked, pulling Killian back to the present. “The way she can read you cold. What did she ask for as payment?”

“She had me draw up plans for an addition to her neighbor’s house. A foyer with wheelchair access. What did she ask from you?”

“I designed a tree house for her niece. It was awesome. Two rooms and a porch, with running water and electricity. So are you going to tell me what she’s helping you with?”

“She found me a decorator.” Killian didn’t meet his friend’s eyes. “I meet her tomorrow.”

Bengt coughed and grabbed his drink. “You went to her about work?” He wheezed. “You had the golden ticket, the genie in the lamp, and you asked for someone to pick out your curtain fabrics? I don’t even know you anymore.”

Killian picked at his food, thinking about the next day. How the hell was he going to manage being in three places at two o’clock tomorrow?

And what kind of girl would a woman like Donna Edith find
fascinating
?

Chapter Two

Killian’s House

Vessa rang the doorbell of the house again and counted to ten. She added another five seconds, then checked the time on her phone. Behind her, garden bricks were piled in the middle of what might one day be a front lawn. A green pickup and a sawhorse sat in the driveway.

She walked around to the back, craning her neck up at the tall arched windows. The sides of the house were a mix of brick and natural stone—red and ochre and sand—with the trim work painted ivory. The back of the house had a small patio sheltered by another room with a big bay window jutting into the yard, almost a greenhouse.

The second floor was a pleasant jumble of angles and dormer windows, shingles and copper and shiny solar panels butted together. The other side was simple brick straight up to the roof, with a section of glass block and a dormer window. The whole design was pretty but from another time, like a small chunk of a castle had been dropped into the new neighborhood.

The other three houses were made with the same stone, but were different in design and detail. One was squarish with porches, another had blue shutters and the last had a red tile roof.

She knocked one last time on the front door, counted to five, then turned away, carefully navigating the steps in her impractical ankle boots.

“Hey.” The man in the doorway had black hair that stuck out in all directions, a mangled tie skewed to the side and no shoes. “Are you Vessa?”

“Yes. Hi.” She walked back to the house. “Is the doorbell not working yet?”

“There’s a lot here that isn’t working yet.” His mouth pressed in a thin line. “Newest associate in the firm gets their job tickets shunted to the bottom of the pile.”

Vessa frowned, sorting through his words. His accent had extra-long vowels, Southern style, and his voice was deep, more bass than baritone, and unexpected in a man so lanky and angular.

“Never mind,” he muttered, opening the door. “Hi. Come on in.”

She hesitated on the threshold. “Are you Mr. Fitzroy?”

“Killian.” He had straight brows over wide, deep-set eyes.

She stepped into the foyer. The house smelled like paint and glue and sawdust, and her nerves were soothed by the familiar scents of backstage and scene shops. Blue masking tape lined the edge of the wall, and yellow protective paper covered the floor in wide strips, work boot treads marking the centers. She slid her boots off and set them next to the leather lace-ups at the door.

The man watched her, his hands in his pockets. He was over six feet tall, with long arms and slouching shoulders. “Did Donna Edith tell you what I need?”

“Not really. She said you needed a feminine perspective and someone who was used to working fast.”

“That’s a good way of putting it,” he said.

The foyer opened to a front room, the arched window still covered in plastic. Beyond that was a dining room with a card table and two folding chairs. The extra height in the ceiling made the small rooms seem bigger, lighter, like there was more oxygen inside.

“This is a clever house,” she said, turning in a slow circle.

“Thank you.”

“You own it?” The unfinished kitchen had a skylight. A stainless steel fridge nested inside cabinets without doors, and a dishwasher still sat in its cardboard box. Particle board made a temporary countertop.

“No.” His eyes were gray, and smiled even when his mouth didn’t. “I designed it.”

“You’re the architect?” She checked his hands for rings, his clothes for brand insignia, trying to guess how old he was. He looked her age, or maybe a little older.

“Yes. I’m at Bergman and Bjorn.” He spoke too casually, like a young society wife proud of her new name, but not wanting to put on airs. “Take a look around. I’ll go turn the breaker on.”

She wandered down a hall, where an angled doorway softened a corner junction. Doors led to a small spare bedroom–sized space, a utility room and a tiny restroom. At the other end of the hallway was a large bedroom with a sunken ceiling and a master bath with an oval tub. The lights clicked on, coiled bulbs growing bright, and she turned back.

“There’s a second floor.” He gestured for her to go up the carpeted stairs ahead of him. “No attic, but there’s a cellar that’s accessed through the garage. The developer isn’t advertising the basement as a finished room, so he isn’t interested in having anything done beyond storage.”

The upstairs was a single open room with a tiny closet and a small bathroom. The ceiling ran with the roofline on the sides, capped off at the top, with dormer windows in all four walls. The subdivision lay in a sprawl below, streets meandering around a few huge maple trees, unbuilt lots marked with surveyor’s flags.

“What a great space,” she said, spreading her arms and spinning in a slow circle. She stepped to a window. “The view is fantastic.”

Killian stood at the top of the steps with his back to the wall, watching her, and the room seemed to shrink around them both. A gust of wind tore around the roof, warning of a storm.

“So what exactly do you want from me?” she asked him.

His lips parted, but no sound came out. He dropped his gaze and cleared his throat. “Let’s go downstairs.” She followed him down and sat in the folding chair he offered. He took the other, flipping it around to sit in it backward, legs and arms around the backrest. “There’s an unexplored niche in the housing development market right now for the single professional woman who isn’t interested in having a family. Or she may have already raised her kids and wants a house she can work out of, entertain and live in, but not necessarily share.”

“A bachelorette pad?” Vessa asked.

“Without the connotations that she’s waiting for a husband, yeah. The developer is seeking the buyer who’s interested in being on her own. Smaller houses but with more detail and amenities than your average starter home. This is where you come in. In two months, there’s an open house for realtors and their clients, showing four model homes. I need this place painted and decorated in a way that would appeal to a woman with very feminine taste.”

She eyed the walls, estimating the square feet. There was a lot of internal surface space in his little house, and not a lot of time. “Don’t you have designers that do that? Like professional interior stylists?”

“We do. And they’re very good at what they do, which is a gender-neutral design with a dated and masculine style biased to make the husband—the presumed buyer—comfortable in the space. I need a secret weapon, something unexpected, fresh. Even sexy—the sensual side of a woman’s personality.”

Vessa tried to keep her face still, the phrase
secret weapon
making her heart race. She’d been a secret all her life, but never a weapon. The thought of that was almost exciting.

Killian shifted in the chair, knocking his knee against the flimsy table. “Can you do it?”

Could she? It was a big job, on top of four shifts a week waiting tables. It was also an incredible opportunity to use the skills she’d been taught.

The primer white walls called her name, their vast expanses begging for color and life, and her hands itched for her lily bristles and her best boar brushes. She met his eyes, gray as the inclement weather but full of curiosity and hope. He wasn’t asking her if she was able to do the work—he was offering her the job, portfolio unseen. Donna Edith hadn’t sent him anyone else.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

“What if we started small?” she asked. “With one of the little rooms, and if you like the treatment, then we move on to another.”

“That would be perfect. Where do you want to start?”

“Which has the least square feet?”

“The hallway lavatory is four-and-a-half by seven-and-a-half, but do you really want to start that tiny?” he asked, unfolding his limbs from the back of the chair.

Vessa walked down the hall, peering into the tiny restroom. “This’ll be great.”

“The sink is just a spare from another job. It can go.” He dug in the pockets of his pants and unhooked a key from a ring with a blue and white metal flag. “At some point we’ll put in an alarm system, but come and go as you please. And here’s my company expense card, if you need to buy design materials and stuff. It’s only got a five hundred dollar limit, so I’ll get you the designer’s packet from our accountant. It’ll have hardware store purchasing cards and receipt forms and crap like that. When would you want to meet again?”

“Um...” She eyed the ugly fiberglass cabinet sink that no self-respecting set dresser would allow onstage, mismatched with the white commode and tile floor. It took up half the space of the whole room. “Friday?”

“Same time?”

She nodded and stuck her hand out. He shook it, sealing the deal. His hands were warmer than she expected, and the quick clasp, palm to palm, startled her.

“I’m sorry to do this,” he said, “but I need to go. I’m late for two other meetings.” He made a face, eyebrows scrunched up. “Do you ever wish there were two of you?”

Vessa imagined two of him side by side, both looking at her with that bewildered boy’s expression on a man’s face, and heat rose up her neck. She shook her head. “She would be the prettier one and get invited to all the parties.”

He laughed, his head thrown back, Adam’s apple moving in his loose collar under the crooked tie. “Stay as long as you like.” He walked toward the foyer as he spoke, and shoved his feet into his shoes at the front door. “Let me know if you have any questions.”

The wind rattled the plastic in the window as if to say farewell. The house was empty without him, like he’d taken the heart of it with him.

Vessa drove through downtown Burlington to the antique store with the moon-shaped sign above the door. The shop windows overflowed onto the sidewalk with eccentric chairs and decorated watering cans, folk art mobiles and a baby carriage full of rotary phones. Inside was a wonderland of old things. Children’s bicycles and musical instruments of varied shapes and colors lined one wall, barstools and ottomans sat in a corner like a blight of mushrooms, sixties-era starburst clocks and African masks peered from the ceiling. The eclectic collection spanned centuries, a props master’s wet dream.

She itched to paint the grubby walls museum white with glazes of warm age and patina, encouraging the urge to touch, to rub the dust off treasures to see the secret value underneath.

“Mr. Luna?” she called.

“Vessa!” Her landlord pushed through the double doors sectioning off the back room. He was a gentleman of a more fashionable time, with a marvelous Salvador Dali mustache. His silk shirt collar lay open an extra button, showing off a gold medallion of the Lady of Guadalupe, the moon at her feet, surrounded by sunrays.

“Did you get moved in? Do you need anything?” His voice hooted like a dented trombone.

“Everything is wonderful, thank you,” she said. “The little sink in the window, the one full of rubber ducks—is that for sale?”

“Everything in my store is for sale,
chica
. Even me, if the price is right. But what do you need a barber’s sink for?”

“It’s for a job, not for the loft.”

“The pizza place needs a sink?”

“Mr. Luna, we both know waiting tables won’t cover the rent of your—
my
—marvelous apartment. The sink is for a painting gig. Well, decorating. A house, not a set, but it’s a great way to get a pro credit on my resume, and hopefully bulk up my portfolio, and your little sink would be perfect.”

“Call me Manny. And if you promise to bring me a sausage and mushroom Sicilian, I’ll give you a discount.” He handed her a ceramic bedpan with Elvis Presley’s signature on the side. “For the ducks.”

She dusted the rubber bath toys off on the skirt of her dress before setting them in the chamber pot. She was giddy, caught up in the designer’s headspace of color and atmosphere and possibility, mentally sampling color schemes on the wall of the unpainted bathroom. The tiny lavatory was tucked up under the stairs, and had a high slanted ceiling, drawing the eye upward. The entire house was the same, with long windows and the fairy-tale roof, much like the architect, tower tall with his enigmatic eyes and distraught hair.

She’d paint him in vertical stripes the width of his tie, black and white with a wash of blue, royal and slightly sad. He’d stood so stiff in his clothes, as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands, ill at ease until he spoke about his house and the type of woman he’d built it for. He hadn’t asked her any questions, professional or personal, and Vessa had been relieved at his lack of interest. She didn’t need anyone’s curiosity, not yet.

He wanted a room with a feminine personality, even sensual, he’d said. She wiped a cobweb off the mirror of an antique medicine chest. What would a man like Killian find sexy?

* * *

Killian made his way to the back of the bar. A single couple swayed on the twenty-by-twenty-foot dance floor to an old rock song his father liked. The mirror ball scattered silver light, reminding him of the sparkle stuff on Vessa Ratham’s eyelids.

She’d looked like she stepped out of one of those intellectual art magazines from Europe, disheveled and remote, ultra-feminine, her dark tousled hair streaked with violet and light blue. He’d stood on the doorstep, dumbstruck, no time to put his shoes on. She’d taken her shoes off, too, like it was natural, a courteous thing to do.

Donna Edith had been right—she was fascinating, but also private. The way she tilted her head when she listened, her eyes hidden in the makeup and her hair...it was all body language saying it would be rude to ask her to reveal too much. He’d not asked her anything personal, like how old she was or where she was from, where she’d gone to college or if she had a boyfriend.

He’d seen into her once, in that moment upstairs, when she’d spun around in the sun with her arms out. She had been every woman he’d designed that room for, the princess in the tower, the witch at an altar, the widow in solitude. She’d caught him gaping, and he’d been embarrassed, like he’d intruded on the privacy she wore like perfume.

A chorus shouted his name over the blues beat. Killian found the table where Bengt sat next to a heavy-boned woman with a bleached buzz cut. Across from them, a man with black curly hair and massive forearms waved a pint glass.