“Yes.”
“You’re fucking with me.”
“No,” I said, my heart on my sleeve. Actually, forget the sleeve, my chest felt like it had been ripped wide open. I stood there completely exposed, everything on display. Quite gross really. But it didn’t mean I had to like it. “Well?”
He just stared at me.
“Say something!”
The bastard burst out laughing.
Great big belly laughs filled the room, the sound circling me, battering at my head. I couldn’t get away from it. There were knives on a rack on the kitchen wall, many shiny bright knives all in a row. It would be so easy just to throw the odd one at him and see what I could hit. I might not be in any physical danger from him, but him being in danger from me was a distinct possibility. I imagined him bloody and beaten, bleeding on the floor. It kept me from immediate violence, despite my clenched fists.
“You see now the wisdom of my not wanting to tell you,” I said, mostly for my own benefit. No way could he hear me over his insane cackling. The man stood hunched over, actually wiping tears from his eyes. I prayed fervently for god to strike him dead but nothing happened, Jimmy just kept on laughing.
“And the strongest feeling I have for you right now is hate,” I said. “Just in case you were wondering.”
Ever so gradually (about a century later) his laughing slowed and then eventually ceased. It wasn’t an easy battle for him. He’d look at me, at the floor, out the window, the strain lining his face. All I could do was wait.
And make snarky comments.
“Okay, that’s great,” I said. “Glad you could get that out of your system.”
“Sorry.” He rubbed a hand across his mouth. It didn’t hide the grin at all. “Christ, I just figured all those times you were looking at me funny, you either had some kind of attention disorder or you needed to get laid or something. I had no idea …”
“Excellent.” I clapped my hands together, pasting on a smile. “So, back to our discussion. Clearly this crosses a professional line. Therefore, I’ll be leaving.”
“No, you’re not. Don’t be dumb, Lena.”
“Are you happy there, Jimmy, living in denial? Is the weather nice this time of year?” I stared up at him. “You see I’ve had my heart broken by assorted asshats in the past and I swore never again. So I’m not doing the unrequited love thing with you. That just doesn’t sound like my idea of a good time, sorry.”
My smile might have been a touch brittle, but his was brilliant. That smile, it could move mountains. It could also break hearts. I could feel the organ fading away inside my chest. Rejection stung, not that I wanted him to throw his arms wide open to me, I wasn’t any more impressed with my misplaced feelings than he was. But did he have to dissolve into hysterics?
Fancy falling for someone you didn’t even particularly like half the damn time. Who did something so stupid?
I mean apart from me, obviously.
“What’ll happen is this,” he said, voice absolute and a bit bored, even. “You’ll get over this dumb crush you’ve got on me and I’ll do us both the immense favor of forgetting this ever happened, okay?”
“You’re an idiot.” God, he was. He truly was. I gave him a look that hopefully conveyed this fact tenfold. “Don’t you think if I could just switch it off I would have done so by now? Do you think I want to feel this way about you?”
“It’s not about me, Lena. It’s the whole fame thing. Once you realize that, you can just get past it and move on.”
“That’s the problem. It is about you. And that’s why I can’t move on,” I said, pointing in the general direction of my bosoms which were, incidentally, heaving on account of my being worked up.
Jimmy’s gaze dropped to said cleavage before darting back to my face. His lips thinned in anger, like I’d tricked him into checking me out. As if.
“I happen to like this job,” I said. “It paid well even before you started throwing more money at me. I get to live in your palace rent free and for the most part, the work is easy. It’s all good. But the thing is, sometimes, when you’re not being a jerk, I like you so much it hurts. I like the way your true self comes out when you think no one else is looking.”
“Lena …”
“But it’s the little things, really. Like the way you pretend not to remember whose turn it is to pick what we watch on TV so I get more turns than you. And the way you sit up with me sometimes when I can’t sleep.”
He grabbed at the back of his neck. “God, Lena. C’mon, that’s crazy. That stuff’s nothing.”
“You’re wrong. It’s something. I know you don’t take praise well, but you’re not half as horrible as you make yourself out to be.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’m a real misunderstood sweetheart. Shit.”
“I’m not saying you’re perfect. We both know you’re a long way from that, and hey, so am I. I’m just saying …” I searched for the words and frustratingly came up empty. Hell, what a conversation. “Gah! Again.”
“So, what? You’re worried your …” He made quotation marks with his fingers. “… feelings, for me are going interfere with you doing your job?”
“What if for some reason you flip out again and I can’t go all hard-assed and say no to you because I’m too busy feeling bad for you? What if I give in? It’s too big a risk.”
“That’s not going to happen.” He wandered around the counter and past me, grabbing a glass out of a cupboard and filling it with water. Without pause he downed the entire glassful, his Adam’s apple working overtime. The scent of his sweaty, buff self filled the air. Had I not needed to speak, I’d have been tempted to hold my breath. I didn’t need the smell of him intoxicating me, things were difficult enough as is.
“It could,” I said. “You’re not taking this seriously. Also, you should go shower.”
“This is my point.”
“What?”
“You shouldn’t make any rash choices until you figure out what you want. In the past five minutes you’ve admitted to having feelings for me, then said you hated me. You’ve told me I’m an idiot and now you say that I stink.”
“Of course you stink. You’re dripping sweat.”
Amused gaze never leaving me, he leaned back against the counter. “Yeah, and if you were so overwhelmed by these supposed feelings of yours for me, you wouldn’t care. You’d still want me all over you. In fact, most women would want me more.”
My mind basically exploded, trying to encompass what having him all over me might entail. No, no, no, bad thoughts, horrible, wrong carnal thoughts. “That so?”
“Yeah. Women that are into me, they don’t mind a bit of sweat. What do you think happens after we’ve been in bed for hours? Sweat, that’s what. And those other women, they don’t make all those sarcastic comments like you do either. They sure as fuck don’t insult me every two minutes.” He gave me a slow looking over. It wasn’t appreciative. “I mean, I thought all the weird looks were about what happened in Idaho. Always kind of figured you were into *. Thought it was a damn shame, frankly, so there you go.”
How many years would I get for throttling him? That was the question. “Wait. Are you actually suggesting that any woman who doesn’t kiss your ass must therefore be gay?”
He shrugged.
“And you wonder why I must insult you.”
“You doing what needs to be done isn’t a problem, Lena. You’re not going to have any issues telling me no.”
Oblivious to my incredulity, the man cracked his neck, giving me another bored look. “Whatever the real deal is here, sort it out. I get that you’re embarrassed, but you’ll just have to get over it. Okay?”
I made no promises. But then again, I couldn’t do much of anything just then. If I opened my mouth to speak, I highly doubted I’d be able to form words.
“Okay. We’re done,” Jimmy said, strolling from the room like he didn’t have a care in the world.
CHAPTER SIX