The Dirty Secret (14 page)

The neighborhood was busy with trucks and cars. Killian parked in the empty driveway, but instead of going inside his house, he walked up the street to the next building, a stone and brick Cape Cod two-story with a second-level breakfast porch over the garage. The lot was landscaped: sculpted cedars and yew bushes between the windows, and beds of ground cover on the walkway. The house was charming and handsome, with more depth and substance than expected, much like its architect. A large truck with locked toolboxes and a ladder rigged to the side sat in the driveway.

Killian pounded on the door with his fist. It swung open immediately.

“Cripes, man!” Bengt said. “Can’t you ring the doorbell? You sound like the police.”

“Oh, yours works already?” Killian gave him a dirty look. “What is Seth working on?”

“Nothing. One of his guys is patching up a wall. Mom’s meeting me for lunch—come eat with us.” Bengt moved to leave, pulling the door closed behind him, but Killian slapped it open with his palm and stepped inside.

The house was furnished with modern Ethan Allen cherry furniture, tasteful, androgynous, with striped wallpaper and heavy drapes, wall-to-wall carpet and shelves with vases. Hammering rose up from the stairs leading to the cellar.

“Don’t you have to actually invite a vampire inside before he barges into your house?” Bengt followed him down the stairs, bumping into him when he stopped on the bottom step.

The basement had two leather couches, a pool table and a wet bar. At the far corner, Seth held a level against a wall, above the young man wielding the hammer. Killian walked around the table, dragging his fingers over the green felt. The bar had cabinets on both sides and three taps over a built-in jockey box. “This is nice,” he said, keeping his voice mild.

“Thanks,” Bengt said cautiously, still standing on the bottom step.

“Hey, Killian.” Seth didn’t meet his eyes. “How goes?”

“How goes?”
Killian’s patience snapped into shards. “What the fuck, Seth? Mara and Bergman are going to be touring the development any day now, and I’ve got a floor with a creak so bad it sounds like a freight train braking on a one-way track to Hell. The housing inspector won’t grant a permit to show the place, much less sell it, and you’re finishing Bengt’s basement with a fucking sports bar?”

“You know why, man,” the builder said, his voice low. His eyes didn’t move from Killian’s face.

“Hey guys, let’s get some lunch,” Bengt said. “Mexican? Mom’s buying—”

“The joists are going to need reinforcing,” Killian told Seth. “It’s not something that can be done with an Acme squeak-be-gone do-it-yourself kit.”

“I’ll get to it,” Seth said, tightening his jaw.

“It’s been over a month, Seth! If I submit a job ticket with
this
address, would it get done any faster? Would I at least get a working fucking doorbell?”

Footsteps stomped up the stairs, and the door at the top slammed shut.

“He didn’t deserve that,” Seth said. “He can’t help who his mother is.”

“And I don’t deserve to have all my work requests ignored! What do I have to do to be a priority for just once?” His voice rose, too loud for the room. The carpenter glared at him, then eyed his assistant, who turned away and fumbled with his tools. Killian punched himself in the mouth with a mental fist for acting like an asshole to Seth right in front of his own employee. “I’m sorry,” he said, reining in his ire. “I’m being a dick.”

“A little bit,” Seth said. “I’ll check it out, Killian,” he called over his shoulder as he walked away. “Monday. I promise.”

“I’d really appreciate it,” Killian said. He headed up to the main floor, embarrassed he’d lost his temper.

Bengt’s car wasn’t in the street anymore. Killian walked back to his house and drove to the cantina just off campus, sliding into the space next to the Jaguar as Bengt got out.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Killian said, leaning against his pickup.

“It’s not a thing, man. I know Ma tips the scales my way. In ten years she’ll retire, Bergman will croak, and then it will be your name on the door with mine.” He jerked his head toward the restaurant. “C’mon. Let’s grab a table.”

The waiter brought them chips and salsa and asked for their drink orders. Bengt ordered for his mother, too, then sampled the hot sauces next to the napkin holder.

“Whose name will be first on the door?” Killian asked.

Bengt’s head jerked up, his mouth open.

Killian shook salt on the chips. “I’m not the sidekick, man. I’m not the guy in the basement who makes the gadgets.”

The waiter set their drinks on the table, but they chose to wait for Mara before ordering food. When he left, Bengt eyed Killian, his blond brows knit together. “What are you talking about? You’re my partner, Killer. You’re the superhero genius detective, and I’m the dumb rich guy fronting your schemes.” He flicked the menu and it slid to the floor. “I’m illiterate. And everybody fucking knows it.”

“No, they don’t. You cover it up really well. Star doesn’t have a clue. And you’re dyslexic. It’s not the same thing.”

“Might as well be. My
mommy
still writes my job tickets for me.”

“You speak five languages, dude. And you can freehand shit like Leonardo da Vinci. Who also wrote backward.”

He stood as Mara Bjorn walked into the restaurant, scanning faces. She joined them, asked after Killian’s grandmother, then grilled Bengt about their visit to the marble quarry. Their conversation slid in and out of Swedish as they argued. Killian ate his lunch and tuned them out, scrolling through email on his phone, until she tapped his hand.

“Will the company allow us to pick up our own product, or must we wait for them to ship it to us?”

“Mom. Killian’s not my assistant. Leave him alone,” Bengt said. “And Seth has enough on his plate right now. My kitchen looks fine.”

Mara raised one pale eyebrow. Bengt said a few more phrases in Swedish, glaring at his mother.

“Any piece bought through the showroom can be taken to the site by the buyer,” Killian told her. “Specially cut stones must be delivered by the company for the full warranties to be in effect.”

Mara thanked him, and Bengt glowered. The fight continued until Mara gave her son a sunny smile, raised her glass to both boys and polished off her sangria in three large swallows. Bengt slumped in defeat. She hugged him, patted Killian’s cheek and left after dropping a wad of cash on the table.

Bengt pulled a twenty from the stack of bills. “Twenty-five years in this country, and she still can’t figure out how to tip a server.”

“You could just leave it and make his day.”

“At over 75 percent of the bill? He should be making her day and leaving her his telephone number with that refill of ice water.”

“Ugh. That’s your mom, dude.”

Killian worked late, leaving on the heels of the custodian, the last one out of the building. A summer rain shower had left the evening air thick with steam. Lazy fireflies flicked between the trees edging the streets as he drove. He tuned the radio to the campus station with eclectic song sets, and wound through several neighborhoods, old and new. His house stood up to any he saw, even those on the south end of town, where Arts and Crafts–style homes had BMWs in the driveways, and VIP parking stickers.

Vessa’s little car was outside his house. In the foyer, instead of fresh paint fumes, he was assailed by the delicious aroma of baking. Music played from a small speaker on the dining room table, a rock song with a female vocalist, the same tune he was listening to in his pickup. Vessa was in the kitchen, adjusting something in the oven. She stood, then added more minutes to the timer.

“Hello,” Killian called, delighted with the sight of a woman—this woman—cooking in the finished kitchen. She spun around, the hot mitt still on her right hand. “What are you making?”

“Cookies.” She pointed to the speaker dock and he tapped the volume button down.

“This looks great,” he said. “It’s like an old-time candy shop. Or maybe a witch’s laboratory. Or both.”

The sky blue of the dining room was striped in the kitchen, ceiling to baseboard with two-inch ribbons of milky green edged with white, like a fancy box of creme centers. Vintage canning jars of various sizes lined a butcher block counter filled with unshelled hazelnuts, walnuts, almonds and pecans. A string of pomegranates hung from a hook on the wall, each fruit tied with twine. Inside the skylight shaft, clusters of herbs were tied to a string stretching diagonally across the corners.

Under the cupboards was a backsplash of green serpentine marble, the same dark evergreen as the stripes on the wall. Killian looked for a seam, a break in the natural meandering lines in the iconic Vermont stone, but found none. It was all one smooth piece.

“When did you order this? Did it come from Danby?” Accounting was going to audit him for the expense, but it was a perfect fit and added luxe and sophistication to the quaint kitchen. “Who did you get to install it?”

She smiled her secret smile, and said nothing. Her eyelids were frosted the color of mint ice cream, and lined with the same evergreen as the marble.

Killian ran his fingers over the surface of the backsplash, polished to such a shine that it looked wet. “Huh.”

She’d set the samples he’d brought back from the quarry on the countertop, trivets for hot pans. He touched one, but the stone surface was cold, not room temperature cool. He laid his hand on the wall again, and then rapped it with a knuckle. The stud wall rang hollow, and he looked closer at the marble. “It’s not real?”

Vessa shook her head. “Acrylic paint on Masonite. Fairly easy to put up all by myself.”

“I should have guessed.”

“The butcher block was a bit more difficult,” she said, leaning on a corner of the countertop. The wood shifted, like a chair with a short leg. “It’s not anchored down yet.”

“I can help with that,” he said. “Just needs a few shims to level it out.”

“There’s still more to do. The light fixtures need to be changed, and that corner by the fridge is bare.”

The timer buzzed. Vessa pulled the cookies from the oven and slid them from the baking sheet directly onto the real marble boards on the counter. She held the last cookie out to him on the spatula. He took it, juggling it in his fingertips to cool it, and then took a huge bite. The chocolate chips were melted and gooey, and he closed his eyes and moaned his approval at their perfection. “Fuuck, that’s good.”

Vessa’s lips were parted, her eyes dark. She blinked and turned away, taking a cookie from the marble. She nibbled at it, licked the chocolate from her fingertips. “Nothing tastes better than fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies,” she said.

Killian could think of a few things, like her mouth, like her skin, like her—

She slid the cookies from the marble onto a paper plate and set them on the table, next to his backpack and pile of schematics.

“They’re for me?”

Vessa nodded and picked up her car keys and her bag and left, the way she always did, without saying goodbye.

His heart beat slow and hard. He felt drunk, post coital with the euphoria spiraling through his guts and his spine, all because a girl had made him cookies. His delight lasted until Monday morning, when it turned to complete horror.

Chapter Fourteen

Raising the Barre

Vessa checked her face in the visor mirror before getting out of the car. She’d painted her eyelids with pink shimmering shadow and lined them with black, coating her lashes until they felt heavy when she blinked. She looked ridiculously feminine this morning, girly even for her.

Killian’s long silhouette darkened in the upstairs window, his back to the street. She carried her groceries inside, but didn’t call a greeting when she heard him yelling.

“What do you mean, y’all didn’t send a crew over, Seth? I’m staring at plywood. Plywood that looks like y’all cut it with a Sawzall, and then dropped it back in upside down. In fact, yeah, that’s exactly what I’m looking at. And the carpet is trashed. Completely. Cut in ribbons.
Diagonal
ribbons. I’m fucked, Seth. Fucked as a tube of crickets.”

The kitchen smelled of the herbs she’d strung in the skylight: lavender and lemon thyme, fresh and green, summer scents from her grandmother’s garden. She set her bags on the counter and unpacked them, making as little noise as she could, self-conscious with her unintended eavesdropping.

“Then who the hell did? There are only four keys. Yours, mine and Ve—the decorator’s... No, there’s no way she would have done this—and the one on the master set in Mara Bjorn’s office. Oh. Oh, shit.”

The coffeepot had been set up, the little cartridge placed inside and a mug underneath, but it hadn’t been started. Vessa closed it and hit Play.

“No. Don’t. It’s not their fault, if they even got roped into it. They’d have had as much say as you going to the quarry today.” Killian’s voice was quieter, his Southern accent broad in his defeat. “I don’t know if there’s anything y’all
can
do. It looks like utter carnage in here. No, it was a remnant. We’ll have to rip out the stairs, too.”

The machine gurgled and whizzed into the cup. She stowed her perishables in the fridge and her dry goods in the pantry.

“I gotta go,” he said. “No. I can send you a picture, but there’s no point in rushing back. I’ll figure something out—there’s no way Bergman will let me get away with orange cones and hard-hat area tape, will he? Yeah, I’m fucked. Okay, talk to you later.” The coffeepot beeped. “Hello?” Killian called.

Vessa took the cup up the stairs with her. At the landing, she paused to look up. He stood at the top, his brows tortured in such despair his face was a Greek mask. When she reached the last step, she handed him the mug. He took it from her without looking at it, his eyes and face ashen.

The room full of light was now a room full of carpet fluff and sawdust, with a huge cut patch at one end of the room.

“Does it squeak still?” she asked.

“If it does I’m going to cut his hands off at the elbow and shove them so far down his throat he can grab his own balls.” Killian set the cup down on the nearest windowsill, and stepped on the bare wood. It didn’t make a sound, even when he jumped on it, stomping with both feet, yelling, “Dammit, Bengt, dammit, dammit, God. Fucking. Dammit.”

The coffee in the mug barely rippled. He leaned against the wall and slid down, until he sat on the floor.

Vessa sat down, too, at the edge of the ragged cut in the rug. She picked up a scrap, and the pile fluffed from the webbing into her hands.

“It’s my own fault. I ragged on him pretty hard the other day.” Killian gripped his hair with both fists. “He’s always trying to solve things for other people, to make up for the privileges that no one gets. But he can’t help it that his dad was a million-dollar architect any more than I can help it that my dad is a car mechanic. I guess I should just be glad he didn’t cut into the ceiling.”

“There’s no way the carpet can be replaced?” she asked. An area rug would not cover the damage—the cuts ran to the walls in three directions.

He shook his head. “Even if we could locate a match to the dye lot and schedule a last-minute installation, it takes weeks for the rug fumes to fade. There’s no way it would be ready for the open house.”

He tilted his head back and closed his eyes, then opened them again. He didn’t meet her gaze, and she could see the shine in his eyes, too wet, as his jaw worked back and forth, his hands in tight fists.

She stood up. “Caffeine would do me good, too.” She walked back down the stairs, giving him privacy, and added water to the coffeemaker. She slid her coffee cup with the
V
—the one he’d given her—under the spout, and when the light came on she hit the button. A shadow blocked the light from the doorway, and she turned.

Killian leaned against the entrance. His mouth was down-turned, tragic, but his eyes were now dry. He stared at the gurgling coffee machine, and then looked out the back door window, his shoulders slumped in defeat. His shirt pulled tight across his back, and she smoothed it with her palm. He faced her, and she kissed him, a chaste brush of her lips over his.

“Hey,” she said, stroking the hair at his temple. His glance slid all over her face, avoiding her eyes, falling to her mouth. She wrapped her arms around him, hugging his waist. He pulled her closer, forcing her up on her toes, his hands on her back, pressing her to his chest.

“Hey,” Vessa said again. His face fell to her hair, and he clutched her tighter. Just when she was about to squirm for breath, his hands slid to her hips and he pushed her away, but not before she felt his physical reaction to the embrace.

She stepped to the kitchen counter, catching her breath as she poured half-and-half into her cup. Killian stood where she had left him, dull eyes and a sizable tent in the front of his slacks.

“I left mine upstairs.” He turned, an automaton with stiff limbs on the steps.

Vessa followed him up after a quick stop in the hallway lavatory. He stood at the window that looked down over the subdivision, his back to the wounded room. She stepped over the butchered carpet and fetched his forgotten coffee mug, set hers next to his on the sill and slid an arm around his waist.

“Thank you for all that you’ve done,” he said, voice deep with too much finality.

His hand was limp in hers when she brought it to her lips, kissing his palm, but when she flicked her tongue over the inside of his wrist, he made a low noise in his throat, and pulled her to him again.

He kissed her mouth heavy and hard, an onslaught of need, and she welcomed it, absorbing his angst and his frustration. He pressed her to the wall, pulling one thigh up to fit his erection between her legs, pushing at the softness as if there were no clothes between them.

One hand moved under her ass, cradling her hips, lifting, and the other was in her hair, bending her neck to access the tender skin under her jaw. He was silent, his eyes closed as he kissed her. One of Vessa’s arms was around his shoulders, clinging to him for balance. She slid her other hand into the hair at the base of his neck, and gave it a sharp twist.

He jerked his head up, finally meeting her gaze, his eyes wild and confused.

“We’re not done,” she said. He gaped at her, his chest heaving, her sentence hanging in the air, full of double meaning. She smiled into his eyes and dropped her hand to his belt buckle, pulling at his pants.

His erection stood at full attention, and she stroked the length of it twice before rolling on the condom she’d brought up with her. She took Killian’s hands in each of hers and drew them under her dress, along her hips to the sides of her underwear. He slid them down past her thighs, dropping to his knees, kissing her low on her belly as he helped her step out of them. She sank to the floor, pulling him onto her.

“I should—” He raised on one elbow, his other hand cupping between her legs. “You need—”

“Shh,” she said, drawing him inside, already slippery, caught up in his desperate desire. He sighed, letting her pull him closer, letting her take his whole length and his weight, body heavy on hers in all the right places. She took his thrusts, hands on his shoulders, his back, reaching up to kiss him as he swelled inside her. His breathing grew ragged.

He tried to slow down but she didn’t let him, pressing at his lower back, hips angling up to slide over him, taking him at the same driving pace, until he gave in. He pushed deep into her and groaned, shuddering with his orgasm until he collapsed on top of her. She held him, stroking the muscles along his spine.

“You didn’t come,” he said, face buried in her hair. She shook her head, turning to kiss his cheek. He pushed up on his forearms. “I’m sorry. I’m always a short fuse in the morning.”

Vessa pushed at his chest to untangle her body from his. “There is nothing
short
about you, Killian.”

The silver light was back in his eyes, his cheeks red from the sex. He staggered to the bathroom, one hand on the spent condom, the other holding up his pants. Vessa stepped back into her panties, body still unsatisfied but her mind strangely sated, pleased that she had given him this, that she had derailed him from his misery.

She handed him his coffee mug, and before he could brood about the ruined floor again, she pointed to the stairs. “You’re late for work.”

He went, but then paused on the landing. She shook her head at him. “Let me brainstorm a bit. Come back this evening, and we’ll look at some solutions.” She lowered her voice and her lashes, coy and flirting. “And you can finish what you started.”

His eyes flashed with a promise, and his spine was straight as he walked down the stairs. At the bottom, he kissed her while she stood on the last step, their height even. “Thank you,” he said.

“Is your dad a good mechanic?” she asked.

“Best in the county.”

Something was different between them, in the invisible space that pushed and pulled and shimmered when they were in the same room, like the air after a brass bell was struck, or the way two complementary colors vibrated at the edges. That intimate thing, growing bigger every time she saw him, that made her nervous and unable to concentrate on anything but him.

“I came this morning to warn you that Seth was going to be here today,” he said. “But Mara sent him down to the quarry to pick up materials. And Bengt must have felt crappy, because it’s for his kitchen. That’s probably what they were arguing about yesterday.” He pulled his keys from his pocket. “I’ll have to figure out a way to keep from twisting his head off his shoulders.”

His tie was askew but she didn’t fix it, fighting the domestic clichés that floated in the air, cloying and sweet, swirling with the morning sunlight and the scent of the coffee. She’d even bought cinnamon rolls at the grocery store.

Vessa pointed to the front door. “Go.”

He left. She took measurements of the second floor, tidying up the shredded carpet and chunks of rug padding, and drove to the hardware store, entering through the garden gates.

“You look like a dancer,” Tony called across the flowers. Killian had been too occupied with his ravaged floor to notice her dress.

Vessa offered the boy the cinnamon roll she’d brought. His jaw dropped in awe, and he took it with reverent hands. He stuffed half of it in his mouth.

“You should meet someone,” he said through the food. He held out his arm. She curled her hand into his elbow and they strolled into the indoor greenhouse. “This is Anastasia.”

“Ooh, she
is
a princess, isn’t she?”

“She’s a ballet slipper orchid.” The flower did look like a girl’s dance shoe, with a hot pink toe and paler ribbons, but also suggestive, the way orchids were, of a woman’s sex. Ideas danced in the back of her brain and spun into place.

“How long will she last?” Vessa asked.

“Months.” Tony leaned in and whispered, “And she’s very hard to overwater.” His clothes smelled like weed and spearmint leaves in what should have been a pleasant combination, but wasn’t. She reached for the plant, but he shook his head.

“Pick her up on the way out. She’s fragile.” He touched the petal with his middle finger. “And I need to say goodbye.”

Vessa backed away, embarrassed, as if she’d flipped the channel to a porno movie by accident. But both the flower and the gardener were fully clothed when she returned with a pallet cart of materials—Tony had packed Anastasia up in a little cellophane greenhouse bag. He helped Vessa load her car, loaning her a bungee from his truck to tie the hatch down over the long pieces that hung out the back.

She unloaded the flower first, unwrapping her carefully and misting the petals with the sprayer Tony insisted she buy. The orchid was gorgeous, even scandalous, but Vessa felt sorry for her, that she had labia and a clitoris but no fingers to play with them.

* * *

Killian spent his day on hold with every carpet company in the state, half his brain contemplating how much coffee to pour on Bengt’s keyboard and counting thumbtacks to leave in his chair. His roommate had not shown up to the office. A wise choice. The other half of his mind was fixated to a point five miles away, the highest room in his house, where he imagined “finishing what he’d started,” as she put it, bringing her to orgasm after orgasm with his hands and his mouth and his cock, giving her back everything she had given him this morning.

At three o’clock he gave up, hanging up on the company from Boston, who could do the job in a week at five times the usual cost. He tore up the sheet of paper with the impossible estimates. The date of the open house screamed at him from his wall calendar, with neon-yellow highlighter.

“Hey, why are you still here?” Starla asked.

Killian swiveled in his chair. The design room was empty.

“You should be at your house, shouldn’t you? The Ice Queen and the Berg are touring the development.”

Killian gawked at her in dismay, and spent an uncomfortable moment conquering the urge to throw up on her shoes. Then he was out the door. At a stoplight he called Vessa’s number, but she didn’t answer.

Bergman’s company car sat in the driveway of his house, next to the Mini Cooper. He jumped out of his pickup and sprinted up the sidewalk as the front door opened.

Mara Bjorn stepped outside. “Your house! It is lovely, dear,” she said, reaching up to pat his cheek. Then she said, her voice low, “So is she. Don’t let my son anywhere her.” She strode up the street, toward Bengt’s house.