The Dirty Secret (5 page)

Bergman mentioned something about technology that he missed and he mentally kicked himself awake. He didn’t have time to moon off about a girl.

Bengt caught his eye and flicked his gaze up at the clock over his mother’s head, then shifted his hand, a minute gesture, miming the toss of a shot glass.

Killian nodded, a tiny jerk of his chin. A pencil tapped the table. Starla fixed both of them with an evil eye that was meeting-speak for “don’t start drinking without me or I’ll gouge your throat with this pencil.”

“Did you have something to add, Starla?” Mara Bjorn’s voice and face were both bland, the same tone she’d used when Bengt and he got busted for smoking pot in the dorm their sophomore year.
Is there anything you’d like to tell me, boys?

“Yes, thank you, I do,” Star said. “I have the promo materials and a preliminary schedule for the open house. It’s coming up fast and I want to go over—”

Bergman cut her off. “Next week, Miss Jamison. August is a long way away, and I think everyone has had enough meetings for the day.”

Starla closed her laptop with a
snap
and an artificial smile and Bengt winced. The employees filed from the room, grateful and guilty, no one meeting her eyes. Killian’s phone rattled against the change in his pocket, a group text from Seth, saying he’d gotten them a table in the back.

He met Bengt in the lobby. “I’m in favor of getting out of staff meetings early,” his roommate said, “but that was a dick move on Bergman’s part.”

“He wouldn’t have done it if Starla was a guy.” They walked in uncomfortable silence until they reached Main Street.

“How did it go with the decorator Donna Edith hooked you up with?” Bengt slapped the crosswalk button. “Is she hot? How old is she?”

“I have no idea,” Killian said. Vessa was in her early twenties, he’d guess, a few years younger than he was. “She’s a professional. I didn’t ask personal questions.” And he sure as fuck wasn’t going to tell Bengt she was gorgeous as black butterflies and pure midnight sex and yeah, she was hot as hell. The bastard would be over there perving on her in seconds.

“Is she from here? Where did she go to school?”

“I don’t know.” He wanted to know. He wanted to know everything about her. The light turned green. “She’s good and she’s fast, and that’s all I care about.”

He didn’t care that she was like no one he’d met before, didn’t care that her mouth got redder after she smiled, and it didn’t matter that she was single.

The pub was packed. Killian stopped at the bar and ordered two Cosmopolitans. The bartender leered at him, flipping the bottle of triple sec. “Those are my favorite, too.”

Killian tipped him five bucks, escaping the caress on his wrist as he passed the money. He carried the drinks to Seth’s table, and set them at the fifth chair. Deb raised an eyebrow at the martini glasses.

“Bossman was an asshole to her today,” Bengt said, pouring beer into the two empty pints on the table. He slid one across the table to Killian.
“Skål!”

“
L’chaim
,” Seth said, and emptied his glass.

“
Sláinte
,” Killian said.

“Cheers.” Deb knocked pints with Bengt.

Bengt waved, and Starla crossed the back room of the pub. Her gait was stiff, her head held high, chin jutted forward, until she saw the drinks on the table. “Thank you,” she said, dropping into the chair with a slump.

“Did y’know, when Dad died, Bergman tried to have our name removed, even though mom was a full partner?” Bengt asked.

“He’s a misogynist troglodyte.” Starla swallowed one of her drinks almost whole, then rubbed the lime rind over her teeth. “It took me weeks to put that presentation together, and he deliberately dragged that pointless speech out so he could bump me off the agenda. ‘Oh, we’ve run late, Miss Jamison, next time, Miss Jamison.’” She picked up her second drink. “I fucking hate it when he calls me that.”

“But it’s your name, isn’t it?” Seth asked.

“No,” Deb said. “It’s defining her by her father, her anatomy and whether she has a domestic partner or not. It’s not her name.”

“Why does it matter whether I’m married or not? Would he treat me any differently because I had a husband? Which is none of his business, either way.”

“Oh. Right. Gotcha.” Seth looked at Killian with a what-do-I-say-now? face.

“Every time he speaks to me he only talks about my dad,” she said. “Never about the fact that I have the education or the skills to actually do the firm any good, or that I could pump out a dozen strategies that would pull the company out of the dark ages in minutes. It’s only, ‘What does your father think of the capitol building, Miss Jamison?’ and, ‘Looking forward to addressing his Christmas card to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, har, har, har.’ I’ve worked my ass off to get this all put together, for him, for his firm, and he just blows me off!”

“So what do you have lined up for the open house, Star?” Killian asked after she paused for a drink.

“Oh. Well.” She huffed. “It’ll be interactive rather than the usual static presentation pitch, where each home gets the awkward cramped tour. All the houses will be open at once, and you guys can just hang out and answer questions, and people can look at what they want. But I’m combining it with a wine tasting, with different food and drinks at the different houses, so everyone moves around to try everything at each one.”

“What kind of food?” Deb asked. “It’s not sit-down stuff, is it?”

“No. Canap
é
s and one-bite fare. Rabbit Moon Vineyard is on board and they work with some elite caterers. Their target customer is the same age and income bracket as our intended client. The NPR station is coming out to do a live broadcast, and I’m working with a few other vendors who want to put different product samples in each house, all high-end and locally crafted.”

“That’s really cool,” Bengt said, meaning it.

Killian carefully clicked her martini glass with his beer mug. She smiled, a real grin of satisfaction, like Vessa had when he’d told her he liked the work she’d done.

“Order some food for me,” Bengt said. “I gotta see a man about a horse.”

“What does that even mean?” Starla asked, taking his menu as he left.

“He’s going to go shake hands with his best friend,” Seth said.

“I thought Killian was his best friend,” she said.

“Er. We’re not
that
close,” Killian said. “He’s drawing the yellow line.”

“He’s gotta take a piss, Star,” Deb said, shaking her head. “Has anybody ordered another pitcher yet?”

“Oh. Well, he isn’t,” Starla said. “He’s talking to that girl. And now
I
need to go. Why aren’t there good euphemisms for girls peeing?”

“Don’t you powder your nose or something?” Seth asked.

Starla shuddered. “My mother says that.” She left the table, elbowing her way through the crowd.

“We’re gonna have to find a new place,” Seth said. “It’s getting too packed in here.”

“The sink job at your house checked out fine,” Deb told Killian. “Any reason why you didn’t call me?”

“Just a miscommunication.” He finished his glass. “Decorator is used to handling stuff on her own.”

“She’s pretty good. Girly as shit, but they’re really well done.”

“
They
are?”

“Yeah, both rooms. The lav and the library.”

“Library?”

“You haven’t seen it?” Deb smirked.

He shook his head.

“Looks like an opium den,” she said.

The waitress set Killian’s nachos down in front of him and took away the empty pitcher. The chips tasted like paper and graphite shavings, and sat in his belly like lead.

“Was she there?” he asked Deb.

“Who?”

“The decorator.”

She shook her head, eyeing Killian as he shoveled his food in his mouth. “In a hurry?”

He pushed the nachos away. “You want any of these?” he asked Seth.

“Are you okay?” Starla asked, sliding into her seat.

“I’ve got to call it an early night,” he said. He threw a twenty on the table. “Can someone give Thor a ride home?”

Starla pouted. “I wanted a dance.”

“Next week, okay?”

“Are you good to drive?” Seth asked.

“Yeah, I’ve only had two, on top of the food. I’m legal.”

His driving speed was less than law-abiding, and the yellow lights he ran were closer to orange. The house was unlit, and Vessa’s boring car wasn’t in front. When he called “Hello?” into the foyer—just in case—no one answered. He walked through the hallway and flipped on the light.

“Fuuck,” he said into the empty room.

She’d done the ceiling and walls red and hung silk Chinese lanterns painted with dragons. Over the window was a screen parchment covered with kanji characters and drawings of the moon phases, full to new and back again. Tall lawyer’s office bookcases lined the walls, their dark wood shelves empty and waiting. One held three teapots. But the focus of the room, what swallowed it whole—and Killian’s guts, too—was the bed.

Against the wall opposite the doorway lay a sleigh-bed carved of walnut wood, with ends that curled away, mounded with pillows. The whole thing was draped with a canopy of blue fabric printed with goldfish, reminding him of the jellyfish tank at Donna Edith’s. Vessa had wanted a bed made for drinking tea and reading romances, she’d said, but this was a bed for getting high and fucking.

He was hard, staring at that bed, aware that he was turned on by a piece of furniture, and he hadn’t even imagined her in it yet, wearing her pajama shirt and the tights with flowers. Or less than that, her hair a damp tangle on her head, and her naked mouth and—
fuck.
Donna Edith was right. He was starved for sex.

A low table sat in the center of the room, along with another teapot. Two armchairs rested on either side, and opposite was a folding screen blocking a bamboo shade on the wall. He pulled the string and the curtain rolled up, exposing a blank space and a piece of paper with
flat-screen TV here?
written on it in a curling scrawl, next to prices and dimensions from several stores. Another paper had a drawing—a pencil sketch that ran to watercolor—of a light fixture, a hanging sconce with a lantern, titled
Could something like this go over the bed? Already wired with outlet below
. Under that, tacked up with a sewing pin, was a list:

ASK KILLIAN:

Buy books for shelves?

Dimmer switch?

What does he like on pizza?

He rubbed his thumb over his name and his breathing grew ragged. He left the den like he was drugged, staggering to the bathroom she’d painted, and wrenched the button on his pants that chafed at his cock. His underwear was already wet with pre-come. He was sixteen again, out of control with thoughts of a girl. He grabbed his cock with both hands, one pumping the shaft, the other palming the tip, and in seconds he was almost there, aching balls tight.

Blind to everything except his vision of her on that bed, he remembered the way she smiled at him. Her eyes glittery, lashes everywhere. Her ass in the air, draped by the dress, so, so
round
, all the curves defined by the fabric. Her mouth, forming the words
spontaneous fuck
.

His release surged through him, and he shook with the spasms, gasping into the empty house. He caught the mess in his hand, panting, the guilty reflex making him look over his shoulder. The bathroom door wasn’t even shut. Killian rinsed his fingers off, refusing to meet his own gaze in the mirror, still unsatisfied.

Chapter Five

Vine Dining

Vessa pushed the door open, calling, “Hello?” but there was no answer. She propped the door and unloaded the disassembled table—first the legs, then the extension leaves and the plastic bag of bolts that went with it all.

A light glowed from the hallway, and the door to the library room was open. Vessa stepped inside. The soft lighting came from a wall fixture very similar to what she’d drawn, and exactly where she’d wanted, above the daybed. The bamboo curtain was rolled up, the blank spot on the wall filled with a flat-screen television.

Her notes lay in a neat pile on top of the coffee table. In the center was her list of questions for Killian, and in blue pen, after each, he’d written:
YES. YES. ANYTHING EXCEPT ANCHOVIES.
His handwriting was square, perfect capital letters like typewriting. Underneath was written:

ASK VESSA:

DINING ROOM NEXT?

BEER OR WINE WITH PIZZA?

She brought in the chairs that matched the table, leaving them against the dining room wall. On the note from the library, she wrote
Yes
and
Rum and Coke
and beneath that,
Sunday evening?
She tacked it to the wall above the table parts and the chairs and left again, stopping at a gas station to top off the tank of Manny’s van, the promised payment for borrowing it. She hadn’t meant to ask Killian out for dinner—she was just going to bring him a spare pie from work—but beer or wine made it an occasion, a dinner for two.

Vessa had no idea if this was a date or a design meeting over some food. He hadn’t seemed interested in her the other night.

Well played, Killian Fitzroy, Architect of Clever Houses.

“Do you have books?” she asked her landlord ten minutes later, reluctantly handing over the keys. His van was as marvelous as he was, with multicolored sparkling paint and plush seat covers. It had personality, too, complaining in reverse and impatient at stop signs. Her car—not truly hers—was boring to drive.

“What kind of books?” He picked up the ringing phone. “Brass and Bones.”

“Not the fancy ones,” she said, and he jerked his thumb to the back, through the double doors with the Employees Only sign.

Vessa turned on the lights to the warehouse, breathing the scent of antique wood and lemon polish and paint, similar to that smell all museums had, a perfume that could be bottled and simply called Age, or Things Loved. The books were in the back, separated into first editions, complete sets of outdated encyclopedias, and boxes and boxes marked Clearance. Vessa dug through them, balancing anything related to art and architecture in a tall stack.

She measured her book tower and added a collection of
Popular Mechanics
magazine, the whole run through the fifties, with advertisements for cars featuring “Hydra-Matic” designs and “Dynaflow” performance enhancement, and advice for women—all drawn with aprons and impossible waists—about the best clothing dryer for her household needs.

“Five dollars a foot,” Manny said.

She jumped and spun around. “No way,” she said, balancing a swaying stack. “These are all ones that didn’t sell during your twenty-five-cent sale.” She pointed to the price scribbled on the box. “Two dollars a foot.”

He mimed a knife through his heart. “Done. And I’ll give you a discount on the boxes to carry them in.”

She stuck out her tongue and blew a noisy, wet raspberry at him. He backed away, muttering, “
Chica loca
!” but he returned with a hand truck and helped her load the books.

“Ooh, those are new,” she said, enthralled by the collection of stage jewelry in the case under the register. Rhinestones backed with silver leaf had tarnished, turning iridescent like nacre on pearls, old rainbows that couldn’t be replicated new. She picked out two pairs of earrings, the clip-on kind, crusted with yellowed seed pearls and improbable emeralds, and added them to the tally of books.

She piled the boxes into her car and drove to the new development. The table had been set up while she was gone, all the leaves expanding it to full size. On top was the note she’d left, with
YES
neatly lettered at the bottom.

Vessa placed the books on the shelves in the library and mentally unpacked her clothes, trying to decide what to wear on Sunday. She forbade herself to think of it as a date. He wasn’t interested in her. He hadn’t even looked at her as she’d left the other night.

A few of the books were quite old. Her favorite was a gilt-edged hardbound with stamped etchings called
Growing Ceropegia woodii: the Rosary Vine
, printed in 1938.

She went to the hardware store to get paint mixed—two buckets of September Sky in satin, and a gallon of flat ceiling latex called Forest Mood. When they told her they’d page her when her colors were fully homogenized, she told them her name was Jane. She wandered through the hardware store while the paint machine shook. After reading the instructions on the boxes of do-it-yourself paneling, she decided on light oak beadboard. She added a rug to her cart—rustic shaggy wool—and crown molding with the fancy connecting corners.

In the putty and caulk section, her phone buzzed with the number from the Pizza Piazza.

“I need you on the schedule this Sunday,” her boss said without a greeting.

“The lunch shift?” she asked, calculating the time it would take to get home to shower and change, assuming “evening” started at five-thirty. “Eleven to four?”

“Sunday after-church crowd runs eleven to six. Wear comfortable shoes.” The call ended and Vessa sighed, but she was grateful for the hours after sleeping through her shift last week.

She wandered the aisles, running her fingers over tile and opening kitchen cabinet doors. In the greenhouse, as she rounded a table of African violets, a hanging plant caught her hair. She laughed when she made it worse, trying to untangle herself from the vine with heart-shaped leaves.

“Jack likes you,” a voice behind her said. The skinny blond boy in the green vest pulled the plant from her hair.

“Jack?” Vessa asked.

“Jack of Hearts,” he said. He smelled like he grew plants at home, too, ones that weren’t legal in all fifty states yet.

“He should come with me, then,” she said, reaching for the plant. “It’s a rosary vine, isn’t it? I found a book about these today.” The same perfect heart-shaped leaves were embossed on the cover.

“You don’t need a book.” The young man lifted it by the hanger. “All the houseplants are on the store website, with instructions on how to take care of them. This guy is one of the easiest.”

“Do you think there have been a lot of changes to basic horticulture in the last eight decades?” she asked.

“Definitely,” he said. “Hydroponics are the future.” A woman squawked outside as a pallet of geraniums threatened to overturn on her. He sprinted forward to rescue her as Vessa’s fake name was called to the paint station.

At customer service, the cashier blew a bubble of yellow gum as she scanned the items, but lost her slouch when Vessa presented the blue credit card with the firm’s name. “Would you like these delivered, miss?” she asked.

Vessa shook her head and signed the receipt box, printing Killian’s name beneath hers, feeling like a schoolgirl writing her crush on her notebooks. “It’s not a date,” she told the plant. “I’m not ready to date—I just moved here. It’s dinner with a colleague, that’s all.”

Jack didn’t contradict. Did Killian think it was a date? A small knot coiled in her belly. Dating meant talking and conversation and questions she couldn’t answer.

At five forty-five Sunday evening, she placed an order for a large no-anchovy Florenza and ducked into the bathroom to change. She shed the kerchief she’d tucked around her hair and sniffed at a strand, but the headscarf had protected it from the yeast and garlic. She changed out of her sour-smelling work uniform and into clean jeans and a clingy T-shirt. A long string of pearls through the belt loops completed her outfit, along with another layer of mascara. She looked good, casual enough for a design consultation. Or dressy enough for a date.

Her boss cashed her out with a glare. “You’d have made more tips if you’d looked like that.”

When she got to the house, she carried the pizza with both hands, chastising herself. “It’s a business meeting over some food, not a date.”

The front door was ajar. Killian knelt on the floor, hammering a beadboard to the wall. He wore jeans and a henley shirt, relaxed and informal.

“Someone ordered a large, no little fish?” she asked.

He dropped the hammer and sprang to his feet. “Hey.” He took the pizza from her and pointed to the two-liter of Coke and the bottle of spiced rum on the counter. “You want to do the honors? I’ll finish the board I’m on.”

She nodded, stupidly, because Killian in jeans took a moment to absorb. His feet were bare, and he wasn’t wearing a belt, too casually dressed for a date. He set the pizza down and picked up the thin plank of wood, then squirted a line of glue on it before fitting it to the wall. Vessa grabbed the bottle of rum and splashed an equal amount into each of the plastic cups, then topped them off with ice and Coke. She spun around with the drinks to find Killian watching her. “Thank you for putting the wainscoting up,” she said. “Did you get the TV and the light, too?”

“I help Seth—he’s our head carpenter—with little stuff when I can. He’s foreman on the next house, as well, so he’s got his hands full. Sometimes it’s nice to do something besides plotting lines.” He turned away and pounded the three remaining nails into the glued board—lean muscles flexing under his shirt—then took the drink. “That’s good.”

She sucked the caramel and spice from her tongue and grabbed the roll of paper towels. “Wine is too fancy for pizza. And beer is like having a side of bread with your sandwich.”

Killian took the box to the table and sat at the end. He ate half a slice in one mouthful, mumbling compliments around the hot food. It was brick oven baked and loaded with spicy toppings, but three bites in Vessa stopped, too tense to eat.

The dining room was unfinished, and she was anxious to complete the job, unable to fully enjoy the food and the drink and the man with the messy hair and the eyes that met hers whenever she looked up.

“Have you done this a long time?” he asked, gesturing with his plastic cup to the detailing at the ceiling. “Like when you were a kid?”

It was a safe enough question. “My mom is a rolling stone. We moved a lot, but she always let me paint my room some fun color scheme. And then in my teens, local theaters were a great place to meet people and get involved. But doing a whole room isn’t the same as a scenery flat,” she said, looking up at the light fixture.

“How so?” he asked.

“Sets aren’t this deep. And they never have ceilings. The ambient light bounces so differently. Usually there’s a light grid in a black void, and everything gets bleached from above. Working with natural sunlight and normal lighting is a different beast altogether.”

Killian set down his food. “It’s all a little strange for me. To have drawn something on paper, just an idea of a dining room, and then to actually be eating pizza in it.” The ice in his drink rattled in the cup as he drank. “When I was a kid my grandmother always gave me Legos for Christmas. I’d build really tall houses and imagine being inside, and now here I am.”

Vessa tried to picture him as a child, short-limbed and playing with building blocks, and her heart swelled. “That’s really cute.”

“Er.” He looked away, and toasted the wall with his plastic cup, his cheeks flushed pink. “It’s great, what you did in here.” His Southern lilt grew broad. “Raising the wainscoting above the normal chair rail height really works with the high ceiling. Will the beadboard match up to the color on the floor, though? Looks kind of orange-ish.”

“It will.” She licked a dab of sauce from her thumb, relieved that the conversation had moved from personal to professional. “Want to see?”

“Yeah,” he said, eyes lit up.

“Were there any boards left over?” she asked.

“In the garage. I had to cut a foot off each piece.”

Vessa hopped out of her chair. In the garage, a neat stack of scraps sat next to a sawhorse. The sawdust had already been swept. She grabbed three short pieces of beadboard and headed to the kitchen, laid them on the plywood countertop then snagged a half-empty can of satin latex from the utility room. Killian joined her in the kitchen, carrying her drink, stepping close to look over her shoulder.

She scooped some of the dining room wall paint into a plastic cup and added a heavy squirt of white glue. From the fridge, she took the box of baking soda, the top pulled off to absorb the new appliance smell, and dumped a small mound into her palm. She was showing off, but exact measurements weren’t necessary. She crumbled the powder lumps into her paint and mixed it with a plastic spoon. When she was done, she washed her hands and reclaimed her drink from Killian.

He slouched over the counter as he peered at the mixture in the plastic cup. “What does that stuff do to the paint?”

Vessa swallowed down her rum and Coke, and grinned up at him. There were questions lurking in his curious eyes that dropped and lingered on her lips.

Vessa’s breath caught. He
was
interested. “Watch,” she said.

* * *

Killian watched, rapt, like she was a mythical bird on his windowsill—one too-quick movement and she would vanish. With a trim brush, she stroked on a layer of her paint mix. It soaked into the wood against the grain, lying smooth with it, raising the natural pattern of the wood.

“It’s a distemper paint,” she said. “Like whitewash. Resists a smooth surface, but settles into porous ones. Really good for highlighting wood grain.” She set the board against the wall. “And blue neutralizes cherry tones.”

The color was perfect, pulling the warm tones of the flooring and the cool wall together. He was stuffed, the pizza heavy on top of his usual Sunday dinner with Bengt and Mara Bjorn. He’d eaten light at the restaurant, unwilling to break with tradition—though the weekly family occasion was usually spent ignoring the other two while they bickered in Swedish. But he couldn’t suggest a different time than the one Vessa had proposed, and risk her turning him down.