The Dirty Secret (13 page)

Killian took her spot on the tailgate of the rattletrap truck, raising one eyebrow at the young man who stank of marijuana. Vessa’s hair had smelled of the stuff, but her mouth had tasted sweet when he’d kissed her. Tony shook his head—no, she hadn’t smoked with him.

“You met her here?” Killan asked.

Tony nodded. “How’s Bengt doing?”

“Fine. Up to his eyeballs in work, same as me.”

“Tell him to give me a call. I’ve got some good stuff curing right now. Medical grade Kush.”

“Yeah, okay.” Killian glanced over his shoulder in the direction Vessa had left. He should have been cooped up indoors at work crouched over his computer, plodding through zoning updates to some municipal building plans drawn long before he was born, and making devil’s deals with the clock to slow down so he could catch up, to speed up so he could see her.

Instead he was outside, next to his roommate’s weed dealer, swinging his feet in the summer sun, helping a girl he barely knew buy a car from a chauvinist dick by pretending to be engaged. He felt drugged, a contact buzz from her lips, her laughter—

“You’re not like him with girls, are you?” Tony asked.

“Who? Bengt? No! No, I’m not.” Killian clapped him on the shoulder. “He steal one of yours?”

“No, but I’ve seen him in action.” The boy scowled, and then cleared his throat. “So you need plants for your house?”

“Yeah, I do. Legal ones, preferably,” Killian said, giving up, relinquishing all control of his life, his house. No one else would take the job, so why not a teenage burnout with green fingernails and breath that smelled like mulch?

The red Mini returned, and Tony mumbled something about getting in touch and watering petunias, then sauntered off. Vessa hopped out, beaming, and handed Killian a banker’s envelope, fat with cash.

“You’re sure?” he asked. She nodded. He adjusted the seat, then drove back to the dealership. The salesman met him at the door, and within minutes they struck a deal two hundred dollars below book value with a one-year warranty, drive train and transmission only. The man’s fingers flew over his computer keys, and forms slid from the printer. Killian texted her to come sign the paperwork.

When Vessa walked in the door the dealer sighed and shook his head. “I should have known.”

“Excuse me?” Killian asked, keeping his voice bland. He stood, offering her the chair at the desk.

The salesman turned back to his computer. “I’ll need your driver’s license,” he grunted, without looking at her. She pulled her ID from her backpack, CALIFORNIA in big letters across the top. He raised a greasy eyebrow at it. “Is this your current residence?”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “It is still my legal address, yes.”

Killian couldn’t see her face, but her voice was chilly.

The man typed slowly with two fingers, and picked up the plastic card twice to examine it. He raised it, comparing the photo to the woman in front of him, while Vessa sat still as stone. He held the card out between two fingers, then when she reached for it, he flicked it just out of her reach. “What does the
J
stand for?”

She grabbed the license from his hand and glanced over her shoulder at Killian. Her face was pale, her eyes wide. A strange heat crawled up his neck, some protective instinct to shield her from the asshole’s insistence on personal information that he wouldn’t ask a male customer. He caught her gaze and shook his head, slightly.

“None of your business,” Vessa said, turning to the man. She dropped her ID into her bag with shaking hands.

“Don’t blame me if the city clerk denies the title transfer, young lady.” He indicated where she should sign, without offering his pen.

Killian handed her his own, unclenching his teeth as he stepped forward. “Are we done here?” he asked, leaning over the desk.

The dealer slid the finished paperwork and the keys two inches in Vessa’s direction. She snatched them up them and bolted from the office.

Killian picked up a business card from the holder. “When should we call the clerk to verify that the paperwork has been delivered?” he asked, veiling the threat with a pleasant tone.

“Monday.” The man leaned back in his chair. “She’s a spitfire, isn’t she? Good luck with that.”

Killian left without answering. Outside, Vessa tore the specs sheet from the window of the Mini.

“Thank you,” she said. Her spine was stiff with anger but her smile was triumphant, and she was glorious, pissed off and so fucking sexy. He was already half hard, imagining her draped over the hood of her new car, legs splayed, waiting for him.

“Back to the house?” he asked, and her eyes darkened when they met his. Her vehicle spun gravel as she left the lot. Killian followed her to the neighborhood, riding her bumper the whole way. Even his dirty old pickup wanted to fuck her hot little car, cherry red like her lips after she’d kissed him long and hard.

He hit the button on the garage door opener and waved her on in, and kissed her as the door slid closed, again and again, until she was grabbing at him, wrenching at her own clothes to give his mouth access. Her skin tasted like salt and sugar and girl, her nipples hard candy on his tongue. And lower he found saltier musk and lust and heaven, and pushed her underwear to the side, one leg over his shoulder as he knelt on the concrete.

She clutched at his hair, pulling him closer, rocking her hips into his mouth, gasping moans as he sucked and licked and filled her with his fingers. Her flesh swelled and bloomed under his lips, wetter and hotter, and then she cried out and pushed his face away, body jerking with spasms. Her sex clenched at his fingers, pulling them deeper as he panted for breath, imagining it was his cock inside her as she came, not his hand.

He held her as she went limp, helping her find her balance. She pulled his face up to hers and kissed him, mouth soft, eyes languid and dreamy, and reached for his belt buckle, but he caught her hands.

“I have to get back,” he said, tugging her clothes into place as best he could.

“But what about this?” she asked, squeezing his erection through his pants.

“Later,” he said, because he was an idiot, a martyr, a masochist. He kissed her cheek. She was still flushed from her orgasm. “Go drive your new car.”

He opened the garage door and watched her leave, his cock throbbing, still tasting her climax in his mouth. His chest was tight with pride that he had helped her buy the vehicle, had given her something back for all the magic she’d done on his house. And she’d asked him for help. She’d trusted him, she’d let him in enough to ask, and that made him feel like a fucking
prince
.

A prince who had skipped lunch and now sat at his desk with a grumbling empty belly. Work was slow dull torture, a punishment for some past life misdeed, punctuated by trips to the break room for caffeine. Bergman piled more plans on his drafting table, and every time Killian closed his eyes, he saw the girl with the naked smile reaching for him.

On Friday morning, with wet hair and his towel still wrapped around his hips, he pounded on Bengt’s bedroom door. “Wake up, man. You’re supposed to be in Danby by nine o’clock.”

The door opened, and the naked future of Bergman and Bjorn blinked at Killian while scratching his ass. “What?”

“You have a site tour of the marble quarry, and then you’re meeting with the company owner to discuss the feasibility of full cladding on the courthouse annex. He flew in from Tuscany just to meet with you.” Killian touched his chin. His skin was raw from a rushed shave. “You harassed Bergman for a month to let you rep the firm on this.” The boss had finally given in when Mara Bjorn had pointed out that her son was the only associate at the firm who spoke Italian.

“Shit.” Bengt’s yawn threatened to turn his face inside out. Behind him, a delicate foot with pink toenails stirred on the bed. “Must not have heard my phone go off. I’ll need a shower.”

“Well, you’ve got an hour and a half to make a two-hour drive,” he said. “Better get on it.”

Bengt mumbled another curse and shut the door. Killian got dressed, then opened his laptop and sent a folder of documents to the printer on Bengt’s desk. As the machine bleated and hummed, he made a pot of coffee and haphazardly rinsed two travel mugs. A girl, her hair in blatant disarray, crept past carrying her shoes. Killian pointed to the coffeepot, but she shook her head and slipped out the door without speaking.

He tried to picture Vessa sitting in the messy kitchen—broken barstools, dirty dishes, the walls covered with Bengt’s cartoon sketches of every person and building he’d met—and he couldn’t picture her there at all. Bengt strode into the kitchen, buttoning his dress shirt. “Think you’re funny, do you?”

“Hm?” Killian asked, pouring the coffee into a mug.

“You used up all the hot water, you bastard. How many times did you jerk off in there?”

Only once, but he could have at least twice more, thinking about Vessa’s mouth and the shape of her lips and how they felt when she—”Woke you up quick, didn’t it?”

“Fucker.” Bengt sat in a chair to put on his footwear. “I need you to come with me.”

“I don’t have time, man.”

“Dude, I need you. I don’t know anything about the numbers or what the firm needs. The quarry, the product, none of it. I go down there alone I’ll look like an utter tool who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“You
are
an utter tool, and I’m three days behind as it is. Bergman’s plans are so full of red lines they’re bloody, and the corrections are due Monday.”

“Killer, if you come with me, I swear to you I will be your indentured servant for the next ten years. I will give you my kidney. My liver. Anything.”

“I don’t need a kidney. I need all of the doors resized for wheelchair access, and every hallway widened to four feet.” He screwed lids onto the travel mugs, and took the sheaf of paper from the printer output tray.

“Fine. Saturday is all yours. I will widen every doorway in existence. On my honor, and my liver. Just come with me and tell me what I need to know.” Bengt took a mug and his car keys.

“All right. Though your honor is suspect and your liver probably isn’t worth a damn, either.” Killian gathered his laptop and the men left the house.

“You want me to have Mom clear it with Bergman?” Bengt asked as he settled in behind the wheel of the Jaguar.

“Nope. He told her you weren’t allowed to go without me.”

“You mean you’re
supposed
to come with me?”

“Yeah.” He leafed through the printouts. “You should think twice before offering up your innards and your weekends.” Starla’s comment about him being Bengt’s secretary still rankled, and he took some perverse pleasure in needling his friend.

“You conniving rat bastard!”

“Don’t even think of reneging on the deal. Your ass is still mine this Saturday. You swore on your honor.”

“And you said my honor was suspect.”

They eased into the southbound early morning traffic on Route 7, and Killian began with the first page of his printouts, reading aloud the history of the quarry and the parent company in Carrara, Italy. Cars passed by in his periphery, and his heart jumped every time a red one sped past, but none were as small as Vessa’s.

Chapter Thirteen

Kitchen Sync

Vessa’s little car smelled a bit like swamp weeds when it sat too long in direct sunlight, but it had a big heart and nimble wheels. She took the long way to her grandparents’ house, Route 2 all the way, over the bridge to South Hero. The road was familiar, yet her blood ran the same RPMs as her car. She’d never made the trip on her own—her father had always sat in the driver’s seat, or her grandfather. Once she’d taken a taxi from the airport.

The driveway looked the same as it always did, and the ten-year-old Subaru sat in the same spot, the latest election sticker in the same corner of the back windshield. The screens were up on the side porch, the windows thrown open. Inside, her grandfather napped on a hammock stretched from bolts in the wall, a book facedown on his chest rising and falling with the gentle snores, like a boat on the lake. She eased the door closed behind her, and lifted the paperback from his belly. He snuffled, opening one eye.

“Hiya, Grampa,” she said, bending to kiss his cheek. His head was sunburned, and he smelled like freshly mown grass and the lake.

“Twinkle,” he said, raising his thumb to her eyebrow. It came away with silver glitter. The nursery rhyme hung from the wood rafters, whistling the tune and his other granddaughter’s nickname.
Twinkle, twinkle, little Star...
His pinky and ring finger curled into his palm, twisted by his stroke.

She swallowed the lump that rose in her throat. “No, it’s me. Vessa.”

His eyes drifted closed again.

In the house, a woman sat at a table piled with cookbooks, comparing two through glasses that sat low on her nose. She had gold and silver hair, and soft wrinkles that made her perpetually smile. Vessa couldn’t imagine her in a room painted any different color than the one she was in. She knocked on the doorjamb. “Hiya, Nana.”

“Sweetheart!” The woman hopped up from her chair and hugged her granddaughter, kissing both cheeks with a
mwah
sound.

“I’m a day early—it’s still June. Should I have called first?”

“Of course not.” Nana hugged her again. “You’re our grandbaby the entire year, not just in July. And that ridiculous arrangement ended the day you turned eighteen, as far as I am concerned.” She closed a cookbook with extra force. “Now, grab an apron, I’m about to make fudge.”

Her mouth watered. “Maple cream?”

“Yep.” Her grandmother pointed to the third drawer in a far cabinet.

Vessa pulled out a white chef’s apron and tugged it over her head. “How is Grampa doing?”

“Better every day. He goes to physical therapy three times a week, and he can hold a fishing pole just fine. But how are you, sweetie?”

“I bought a car,” she said. “With my own money.”
All
of her money. But Donna Edith had said her skills were an asset to her agency. She could seek other clients, or another arrangement.

Nana leaned out the window. “Ooh, don’t let your grandfather drive that. He’ll go too fast.” She pointed to a saucepan and a bag of sugar. “Two cups. And your dad says there’s a guy already, too.”

“There is a guy’s
house
,” Vessa said, not looking up from the ingredients, afraid her face would give her away. “I’m decorating his house.” Vessa didn’t want another client, or another arrangement. She wanted Killian.

She added the milk and the maple syrup, and clipped the candy thermometer on the side of the pan. Nana poured in more maple sugar and turned up the flame. When it rose to a bubble she stopped stirring, and watched the temperature until the mercury rose to the 240-degree line. Her grandmother dipped a spoon into the mixture and drizzled a bit into a bowl of cold water. It puddled in a lump at the bottom, and after pouring off the water, she rolled the bit of candy syrup in her fingers, forming a squishy ball.

“Off the heat,” Nana said, grabbing a quilted mitten from a hook without looking. She took the pan off the gas flame and set it on a marble slab to cool, a two foot by three foot white stone board with pale green streaks running through it. “He’s really glad you are here,” she said. “Your father is. We are, too.” She stacked the cookbooks and then offered her a soda, ginger ale in a returnable bottle.

When the caramel soup had cooled enough, she poured it on the marble slab, and Vessa caught the spreading edges with a scraper, folded it back in on itself and caught it again and again. She switched hands when her arms began to tire.

“How do you know when the seed crystals form?” She was a little kid again, enveloped in candy vapors she could taste in the air, begging, “Is it ready yet?”

“Soon. You’ll see it. It’ll lose its shine.” Nana pulled another marble board from the freezer, a black and green one with white veins. Condensation rose on it and frosted over. “Ready?”

When her grandmother said “Go,” she scooped all the thickening syrup into the center and lifted the board. Nana slid the cold board underneath, and laid a wet towel on top. “Down,” she said, and Vessa set the board down, catching the now slow-moving liquid before it oozed over the far edge. She continued to work the fudge, pleased she remembered the cadence of the candy-making lessons of so many years before.

“So tell me about this boy,” Nana said, pinching her side.

“I’m painting his house, Nan. It’s business. I hardly see him.” Oh, but when she
did
see him...

Vessa’s grandmother set three small square pans down on the counter. “Fine. Don’t tell me. How is your mother?”

“Good.” Vessa switched hands again as the frozen slab cooled the one on top, and the fudge and her wrist began to stiffen. “The water project is doing well.”

“She settle down in one place, yet?”

“Not yet.”

Nana clicked her tongue. “A young woman needs family around her. Your mother shouldn’t have gone off and left you like—”

“That’s why I’m here, Nana. To be close to my family. My
entire
family.”

Her dad’s mother gave her a long side eye. “And damn the consequences?”

“None of this is my fault, and I’m sick of hiding.” Vessa raised her chin. “They can clean up their own mess. I didn’t make it.”

“Atta girl.” Nan set a pan in the sink with a loud thump. “Good for you.”

A sleepy grunt came from the porch, and the hammock creaked. Vessa’s grandfather shuffled into the kitchen. “Hiya, Vess.”

“Hiya, Grampa.” She hugged him, gently, careful not to get her sticky apron on his clothes. He squished her tight with his good arm.

Nana took the scraper and cut three equal portions of the candy, and maneuvered each into a small square pan. She set them on a cutting board, and then handed it to Vessa. “Take this to the cellar to cool. Away from my garlics, so it doesn’t pick up flavors.”

Grampa opened the door for her and flipped the light switch with his thumb. “Careful on the stairs.”

She’d been afraid of the basement when she was little. The stones and mortar rising from the cut bedrock was the dungeon from every fairy tale, and the onion braids hanging from the ceiling and shelves of jars of pickled vegetables were spell components in a sorceress’s cave. Now she loved the earthy smells and the oldness of it, and the riches of food preserved with treasured recipes. She set the board of fudge down on a counter next to a giant Hubbard squash, the same shape and winter gray as the boulders forming the walls.

Nana made lunch, pan-fried sunfish Grampa had caught that morning off the dock, and baby red potato salad seasoned with herbs straight from the garden. They ate on the porch, as always in the summer, and afterward they picked wild strawberries from the patch behind the house, smaller than Vessa’s thumbnail and sweeter than honey.

She sat on the porch, plucking the green leafy tops from the berries, wishing Killian were there with her. Nana would love him, and pinch his side and say things that would make his face turn red. Grampa would show off his boat and his tomatoes, and tell Vessa to take him to the rocky point where the fishing was not so good, but the view of the lake was the best on the entire Eastern Shore.

When the fudge was cool enough she brought it back upstairs, and her grandmother cut it into squares. Vessa packed the candy into tins lined with parchment. The phone on the kitchen wall rang, a quaint sound she’d heard only in movies and her grandparents’ house. Nana answered the phone, and then spun around to look at Vessa. “Hello, Celeste.”

Vessa froze, locking eyes with her grandmother. She shook her head. Nana turned away again. “Five o’clock would be just fine, dear.”

The last few pieces of fudge wouldn’t fit into the box. She cut them into smaller one-bite pieces and arranged them on a saucer, trying to ignore the one-sided conversation about the family dinner that evening.

Her grandmother hung up the phone. “You don’t have to leave, sweetheart.” She raised her chin with an obstinacy Vessa recognized from the mirror, the rebellious streak her mother found so alarming. “You are always welcome in our house, anytime.”

Apprehension and adrenaline skittered down Vessa’s spine. She was not going to ruin this gorgeous summer day—or upset and confuse her grandfather—with a family apocalypse. Even with another check from Donna Edith coming in two weeks.

“Actually, I need to get back to work,” she said, not a complete lie. Her need had nothing to do with paint, but with the tall man and his hot mouth and impossibly long fingers, the best excuse to leave with her head held high, and not running scared with her tail between her legs.

“Come back soon,” Grampa told her. “Take me for a spin in your new race car.”

Nana tsked at him and passed her a tin of the homemade candy through the passenger window. Vessa slid a pair of sunglasses over her eyes—cheap, plastic and dark—before she pulled out of the driveway.

Her nerves were tangled and raw, and she fought the instinct to duck, to hide with every car that passed hers. She forced herself to drive the speed limit, and even stopped at the overlook in the middle of Lake Champlain. Two boys, their bicycles wedged between the giant chunks of uncut granite that blocked the water, threw skipping stones at the surface of the lake, but there was too much wind, and their pebbles wouldn’t bounce on the choppy little waves. An ice cream truck rolled by, tinkling a hurdy-gurdy remix about milkshakes that had nothing to do with the cows painted on the side. The boys flagged it down, but Vessa drove on.

She turned in to the new subdivision, longing for the private oasis of Killian’s house. His pickup was in the driveway, and another kind of tension spiraled up her spine: pleasant and provocative, but no less unnerving.

He sat on the floor in the kitchen surrounded by sheets of packing material, foam and bubble wrap and cardboard. “Hey,” he said, standing. “What’s wrong?”

If Killian had been at her grandparents’ house with her, she would have stayed.

She took a deep breath and let it out. “Nothing,” she said. And it was true, the complications of her life were all walled off by the cute little house and dispelled by his eyes that said
hello
, and
I want you
, and something more—something soft, tantalizing and dangerous.

He kissed her, a gentle peck that lingered, and she gasped as warmth spread through her, a shimmering lightness, delicious like spun sugar. She pulled away before the sweetness overwhelmed her ability to think.

“What is all this?” she asked, as he said, “How’s the car?”

“The car, my car—” she savored the words again “—
my
car, is fantastic, thank you.” She pulled a piece of packing away from the cardboard. Killian held up a thin slab of green-gray marble, smaller than her grandmother’s candy-making boards, polished only on one side. The bottom was rough cut, the patterns of the saw blades like bite marks in the stone.

“They’re samples,” he said. “Not enough to do the countertop, unfortunately, or even a backsplash. I didn’t know if you could use them for anything.” He opened another, chalk white with thin lines the color of lichen running through, and propped it up next to the first. The next was dark, pine green with streaks of black and white.

“You smell like maple syrup,” he said, leaning close.

He looked like pure sex, in his white shirt and blue jeans, and she stepped into his arms. A loud
pop
shot through the kitchen and Vessa jumped, startled, landing on more bubble wrap, firing off another
pop
,
pop
,
pop
. Killian laughed with his head thrown back as she kicked at the packing material, swearing, and then silence fell in the kitchen, delicious with tension and desire and something deeper, aching and dangerous.

“Tell me something,” he said, brushing his lips over her cheek.

“What do you want to know?” she asked, for once not guarded. She leaned into him, and his arm slid down around her waist.

“Anything. Everything. What made you decide to move here?”

“My father’s family is here,” she said, wondering what he would think if—when—he found out which family. He pulled her against his chest, and the warmth from his body was comforting. “My mother is an aid worker. She goes where there’s the most need. We moved so much, here’s really the only place that feels like home. That’s why color comes so easy to me—my entire life has been spent painting new walls.”

“Set painting must have been an easy career choice.”

“You would think so, yes. But the difficult thing about theater is that after the show, the sets are struck down.”

“You want permanent walls,” he said against her temple.

She nodded, reaching for him, and he kissed her, lips soft, the intimate kiss that left her too naked, too willing to give him anything he asked for, ready to spill her secrets at his feet. Family secrets that had been kept for more than two decades. She’d known Killian for six weeks.

She pulled away. He caught her eyes and stepped down on the bubble wrap. Vessa squawked as noise ricocheted around the kitchen, and then she laughed, shoving at him. She tugged on the flap of the last cardboard box, revealing the marble, her heart light as air.

* * *