CHAPTER 4
REID
“So, do you have a name—or do I just cal you boss?” Introductions: Basic Etiquette 101. The tips of her ears turn bright pink, but she otherwise doesn’t blush.
“I’m sorry.” She steps towards me, offering her hand. “I’m Dori.”
I take her hand and give her one firm shake, annoyed that the combination of her pitch-perfect voice and the touch of her hand are like a tiny electric shock. “Cal me Reid. Only my subordinates cal me Mr. Alexander.” Comprehending me instantly, she blinks and her ears turn an even darker shade of pink, and I decide that this month may prove more entertaining than I’d thought. Any direct hits wil come with a visible signal. I’l bet she wears her hair pul ed back every day, too.
She clears her throat and indicates the pile of stuff in the middle of the room, clustered around a ladder. “Okay, then, Reid, here’s the paint we’l be using, and the rol ers, brushes, etcetera. Have you painted before?” Is she serious? “Not rooms.”
She doesn’t miss a beat. “Then I guess you’l be learning a new skil .” Pul ing a smal metal instrument from her pocket, she squats next to the paint cans. I’m trying not to focus on the line of muscle flexing from the top of her boot to where it disappears at the hem of her shorts.
“I doubt I’l feel the need to paint the wal s at my place any time soon,” I say, scoffing at the notion of wasting my time doing any form of manual labor when I could pay some il egal immigrant almost nothing to do it.
She pries the lid off of a paint can, ignoring my comment and smiling at the sky blue inside. Without glancing up, she sets the lid aside. “What if you accept a film role where you need to act like you can paint, but you don’t know how? I can make you look like an expert by the end of the week.” My estimation of her ability to manipulate goes up several notches. She’s downright dangerous.
So she’s going to make me an “expert” at painting? How hard can it be?
***
I’m rol ing paint on the final bit of the last wal , biceps and delts burning (at least I won’t have to worry about deteriorating muscle tone while I’m here), while Dori is on the ladder “cutting in” with a brush—painting the wal space between the ceiling and the spot where the rol er can’t go without hitting the ceiling. Which I learned the hard way.
The windows are open to save us from being asphyxiated by paint fumes, but there’s no breeze to speak of and summer is gearing up to be a bitch. This would be a perfect day to be at the beach. Or alternatively, pretty much anywhere else.
“It’s f*cking hot in here.” I set the rol er in the tray and examining my hands, which are splattered in blue. There’s blue on my nails, under my nails, speckling my forearms and the yel ow Prada t-shirt that, luckily, isn’t a favorite.
Since the shirt’s already streaked and spattered with blue paint, a few more smears from my fingers won’t matter.
I pul the shirt over my head and toss it next to a pile of drop-cloths after mopping my face with it. Dori is on her ladder, motionless and staring at me while a line of paint runs from the upturned brush down the handle and continues along her arm. When I cock an eyebrow at her and she snaps her attention back to the paintbrush in her hand, dropping it into the shal ow paint tray hooked to the ladder.
Grabbing a cloth, I climb onto the ladder behind her, take her wrist in my hand and stop the drip of paint with the cloth.
This seems to unsettle the shit out of her.
“This ladder is only built to hold one,” she says, taking the cloth from me.
Shrugging, I hop down. “You’re welcome.” Her legs, smooth and unblemished, are eye-level when my boots hit the ground. I resist the urge to run a finger over the soft spot behind her knee. She’d probably fal off the ladder… at which point I’d catch her… And then she’d start screaming.
Holy shit, man, cut it out.
“Thank you.” Ears pink, she unhooks the tray and avoids looking at me.
I’ve been here half a day and I’ve schooled her in manners twice. That’s gotta sting. She’s backing down the ladder with the paintbrush and tray when I ask if we’re done with this room. Cocking her head to the side like she’s trying to figure out if I’m serious, she looks at me. “No…
we’re just taking a lunch break to give it time to dry so we can apply the second coat.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say. “We have to paint this entire room again? ”
She clenches her jaw, but resettles herself with one breath. “Yes. You’l see why when we come back after lunch.” Her voice is al patience and fortitude.
I possess neither of those traits. “Fine. Whatever. I’ve got to be here for a month. Doesn’t matter if I paint the same damned wal fifty times.”
Her lips set in a line, she huffs a breath and glances at me and away. “Could you put your shirt back on, please?” I have to grin. “Why? Does it bother you that I’m shirtless?”
She rol s her eyes in a big exaggerated gesture, and I struggle not to laugh. “I don’t care if you want to strip naked.
But we have retired people helping out today… and some of them are of the ‘no-hats-indoors’ variety, so I doubt they’d be thril ed to see you at lunch sans shirt. But suit yourself.”
I grab the shirt off the floor and pul it on, fol owing her out of the room. “Strip naked, huh? I don’t know about that, Dori. We just met.” She doesn’t reply, but her ears go pink.
Score.
*** *** ***
Dori
I can’t believe I just invited Reid Alexander to be naked in my presence. As if I didn’t know he wouldn’t take that sort of remark silently.
I was expecting to find him difficult to motivate and just as difficult to teach, but he listened (though he seemed bored out of his mind), and for the most part he fol owed my instructions. I had to let him try it his way first, because apparently he’s a learn-the-hard-way type. (Shocking.) He didn’t trust me about not getting too much paint on the rol er. Or rol ing in arches instead of straight lines on the first pass. Or not rol ing too near the ceiling.
In front of the first wal he painted, there are splotches of paint al over the floor. I had to point out several drippy globs he needed to back up and fix before they dried that way. And of course, he hit the white ceiling in two places and the baseboard in two more, trying to rol al the way to the crease. By the second wal , he’d improved, more so the third, and the last was nearly perfect. I was starting to relax until he took off his shirt.
I’ve managed to remain unaffected by male torsos for eighteen years, but good gol y, I’ve never been confronted with a torso like his. He’s like an ad for cologne or beachwear or gym equipment—al perfect skin stretched over flawlessly-toned muscle. Luckily, his arrogance is such a turnoff that I didn’t have any problem asking him to put his shirt back on.
Like the walk through the house this morning, conversations break off when Reid and I emerge into what wil be the back yard, once we lay sod. Twenty or so people sit on upturned buckets and folding lawn chairs scattered about the concrete patio, paper plates of tamales and tacos on their laps. Some workers wil be here every day—
notably the crew leaders like Roberta. Others vary day to day—col ege students, church groups, garden clubs or employees from area companies that support community service projects by giving them time off to volunteer.
I walk to the water spigot to wash my hands and Reid does the same, and then splashes water over his face and runs his wet hands through his hair as though everyone out here wasn’t watching him do it. Fol owing me to the card table where the food is laid out, he acts as though there’s nothing odd about a Hol ywood celebrity being handed a paper plate and pointed to the plastic utensils and the cooler holding bottled water.
I sit on a step, balancing my plate on my knees, and he sits next to me. Everyone is stil staring, though whispered conversations are resuming.
“So why are you here?” he asks. “I’m guessing you haven’t been arrested for drunken driving or gotten caught with a joint in your gym locker.”
“ Um , no,” I say, once I’ve finished chewing. “I’m a regular.”
He peers at me, and I can’t decide if he’s puzzled or amused. “So you do this al the time. Hmm.”
“What?”
While he’s studying the other volunteers, appraising each one without any alteration in expression, I’m gazing at his profile, waiting for him to continue. He has the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen on a guy, and his now-damp hair, darker blond when wet, curls at the ends over his ear and at the nape, grazing the neck of his paint-smeared t-shirt.
“Nothing.” He shrugs. “I just wonder what else you have time to do, if you’re doing this al the time,” he adds, biting off half a taco. People like him never understand people like me. It’s like we come from different species.
“Wel , since I don’t make a habit of getting drunk, smoking pot, clubbing and sleeping with everything that moves, I have plenty of time for other activities.” Ohmygosh. I did not just say that.
He laughs softly, turning to face me as I scowl. His blue eyes are striking, framed by thick, dark lashes. “Let me guess—Monday is book club, Tuesday is family game night… Wednesday is Bible study, and Thursday you meet up with the sewing circle to make quilts for the elderly… Am I close?”
Without answering, I get up to go back inside. This isn’t the first time I’ve been ridiculed for what I am, but for some reason—maybe because it feels so incompatible with where we are—it’s more disheartening.
“Wait,” he says, and for some stupid reason I stop, expecting him to apologize. “When do you have time for the soup kitchen?”
He’s chuckling when I go inside without looking back.