Hard (11 page)

I walk out of the office, content to have something as
straightforward as numbers to focus on for the rest of the day.
That’s what I like about math. The rules don’t change.
You always know where things stand.

If only everything could be that simple.

CASSIE

That Monday evening just before I leave for the day, Ryder walks by
as Cash leans over my laptop next to me at the side of the bar,
verifying an invoice for one of our alcohol distributors. “Make
sure you get those numbers right, Cash,” Ryder says. “Cassie’s
got a mean right hook, and she’s not afraid to use it.”

“What’s he talking about?” Cash says when Ryder
disappears down the hallway into his office.

“He’s just being a jackass,” I say, rolling my
eyes.

“Am I sensing a lovers’ quarrel here?”

“Now what are
you
talking about?” I say, willing
the blush I can feel blooming on my face to abort.

“I’m just saying, Ryder never spends that long with me or
Jackson in the office,” Cash says. “Of course, all we do
is discuss business back there.”

“What are you suggesting Ryder and I did?”

“Whoa, Cass,” he says, throwing up his hands. “It’s
Monday. I like to start the week PG.”

“You are a child,” I say.

“I know you are,” he says, walking into the kitchen,
dimples dimpling, “but what am I?”

Between Ryder trying to talk to me and Cash teasing me about him like
we’re in junior high school, the rest of the work week is an
exercise in mitigating annoyance, except for Shelby’s visit on
Friday around lunch.

“Thought I’d stop in and say hi to my big brother,”
she says, sitting next to me, plopping down her black leather Marc
Jacobs tote on the bar. “I was meeting a client for lunch down
the street.”

Cash told me Shelby works in marketing for the Atlanta Falcons, and
at only twenty-four, she’s already been promoted from assistant
to manager. At twenty-four, I was closing down my family’s
lucrative auto shop to follow Sebastian to England when the London
branch of the investment bank he worked for suddenly decided to call
him back home. It’s funny how people can do the same age, the
same point in life, so completely differently.

“I haven’t seen Jackson today,” I say.

“Well, I guess I’ll say hi to you instead then.”
She smiles, and gives me a nudge with her shoulder. “Hi.”

“Hiya.”

“I’m into the new hair.”

“Thanks.”

“Looks like someone else is into it, too,” she says,
nodding over my shoulder at Ryder, who glances at us through the
kitchen window behind the bar. “He keeps looking over here.”

“I seriously doubt he’s looking at my hair.”

“He is a guy, isn’t he?” she says. “He’s
probably just trying to get a good look at your tits,” she
says. I laugh—something I realize I haven’t done all
week. “Although from what I hear,” she says, “he
may have seen them up close already?”

I take a long blink and shake my head. “No secrets in this
place, are there?”

“Not for very long anyway,” Shelby says. “So,
what’s going on with you two?”

I exhale. “Nothing anymore. Or ever, really,” I say. “I
guess there were a couple encounters. But the most recent one ended
with an indecent proposal and a slap across the face, so I’m
pretty sure that’s the last one for a while.”

Shelby smiles. “You smacked Ryder?”

I squinch my eyes shut. “He was just being so…” I
fumble for the right word. “Arrogant.”

“That sounds about right.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I shouldn’t
have hit him. And he said he was joking.”

“He might have been, but still, I know how these guys joke.
It’s annoying sometimes. And especially when you’re
vulnerable. I mean, there you are, he’s your boss, he’s
got his hands up your shirt.”

“Dress,” I say, clapping a hand over my face.

“Ooh, the truth is even better than the gossip,” Shelby
says, her eyes wide with anticipation for more juicy details.

From my other side, a plate appears in front of me, a burger with all
the fixins, cut in half to show its center, cooked perfectly pink. I
look up to see Ryder setting it down. “I didn’t order a
burger,” I say.

“I know. I made it for you,” he says. “Didn’t
think you’d taken a lunch break yet.”

“No thanks,” I say. “I’m not hungry.”

“Cassie,” he says, sitting at the barstool next to me.
“I’m sorry about what happened this week. I didn’t
mean to offend you.”

“Great,” I say. “Thanks.”

Ryder sighs. He combs his fingers through his thick hair, the sleeves
of his button-up shirt rolled at his elbows to reveal his tats—a
detailed bird, orange and red flowers that form a labyrinth all the
way around his forearm. I turn my head away, so as not to breathe in
how good he smells.

“You want this?” he says, gesturing to the burger. But it
feels like that
this
could mean a thousand things: this job,
this deal to pay back the debt, this apology. Ryder himself.

“I don’t care,” I say, still engrossed in the
spreadsheet in front of me on the laptop. Or trying to seem like I am
anyway.

“Ryde, I know you don’t hear it a lot,” Shelby
says, “but learn to take no for an answer.”

“She didn’t say no,” he says.

“What do you think ‘I don’t care’ means?”
she says.

Ryder takes the plate and leaves. I turn my head to watch him go back
to the kitchen.

An especially annoying part of the week: the way Ryder’s ass
looks in his jeans. Small and firm and round. Also, his shirts—fitted
enough to let an observer appreciate his muscular back, but not
tight. And the way he walks, his long legs stretching with an
athlete’s stride, strong and sure of his body, every step
purposeful, confident, sexy.

Relentlessly irritating.

“Other than moving Ryder down on the masturbation priority
list,” Shelby says, “what are you doing tomorrow?”

I chuckle. “Oh, things that are even lower masturbation
priority. Laundry.

The
grocery store. And I think I’m out of bathtub cleaner.”

“Well, if you can tear yourself away from that very promising
agenda of excitement, Avery and Ruby and I are doing a little girls’
day shopping excursion, if you’d want to join?”

The
idea of crisscrossing Lenox Square with Shelby and Avery and Ruby
makes me immediately regretful I didn’t just take the cash from
Ryder the other day. But I still have a little bit in the bank
account I set up before I left England, and what goes better with a
new haircut than new clothes? “I would love to.”

“Good.
Here’s my card. My cell’s on there. Text me so I’ll
have your number and then I’ll call you in the morning to meet
up.” She slides off the stool, putting her bag over her
shoulder. “But don’t worry, it won’t be too early.
I have a rule about Saturday mornings,” she says. “I skip
them til they’re Saturday afternoons.”

***

True
to her word, it’s after twelve when Shelby calls me the next
day, and by two o’clock I’m strolling along the sidewalks
of Virginia Highland with her and Avery and Ruby, meandering in and
out of the neat little clothing boutiques with their local, handmade
jewelry and silk-screen printed t-shirts and billowy spaghetti strap
maxi dresses. I love shopping at Lenox, but it’s such a
beautiful summer day—warm but not too humid, sunny but not
blinding—that I’m glad we’re getting to spend it
outside.

We
sip the lemonades that Avery bought us all while we browse shoes.
Ruby holds up a pair of stilettos, shiny and red, like they’ve
been lacquered in nail polish. “Thoughts?” she says.

“Like,”
says Avery.

“Like,”
says Shelby.

“Love,”
I say.

Ruby
hands them to me. “You should try them on then,” she
says. “I can’t deny someone something they love.”

Avery
and Shelby laugh. “What?” Ruby says.

“At
Nordstrom last week, you practically punched the woman who took the
only size seven in those Tory Burch sandals you liked,” Avery
says.

Ruby tosses her head, her copper ponytail landing over her shoulder.
“That woman was wearing Birkenstocks with socks. There’s
no way she’s appreciating those sandals as much as I would
have,” she says.

Shelby rolls her eyes. “You sound like Jackson when he sees
someone driving a Maserati,” she says. “One time we got
behind one in Buckhead and, totally seriously, he actually said he
thought the car would prefer him at the wheel.”

“He knows
Cars
is not a documentary, right?” Ruby
says. “And anyway, Jackson drives a Porsche. What’s he
jealous of?”

“That’s the deal with all three of those boys,”
Shelby says.

Avery inspects a pair of leopard-print slingbacks on the shelf. “They
always want what they don’t have.”

“Or what they can’t get,” Shelby says.

“Which, let’s face it, isn’t most things,”
Ruby says. “I mean, how many times have you ever seen anyone
withhold something from any of those guys?”

Shelby slides into a pair of black snakeskin heels and examines them
in front of a full-length mirror. “Jackson’s been like
that since we were kids,” she says, turning to the side,
looking at her reflection over her shoulder. “He’d get
into trouble, but when the smile came out and the charm turned on
with the teacher or our mom or the baby-sitter, it was like their
short-term memory was erased or something.”

“Remember how Cash was seeing that one girl a while back and
then he decided he kind of liked her roommate, too?” Avery
says.

“Oh, yeah,” Ruby says, shaking her head. She leans toward
me to dish, a smirk playing across her lips. “So one night he
makes out with the roommate in a booth at Altitude, like, not even
trying to hide it, and that’s when the first girl walks into
the bar.”

“Oh wow,” I say. “So…totally busted?”

“Not even,” Ruby sighs.

“A flash of dimples later and he goes home with both of them!”
Avery says.

“Just another average night at Altitude,” Shelby says,
teetering in the snakeskin heels to rifle through a nearby rack of
dresses. “Where the sky’s the limit on good martinis and
bangable chicks.”

“They should call that place Sexy Bastards,” I say. “More
accurate.”

The girls laugh. “Well, I don’t think they’ve
picked a name for the new club yet,” Shelby says.

Ruby sits to pull on a pair of tall gladiator sandals over her
tanned, curved calves. “It’s like they’ve got some
Jedi mind power over women.”
“I think it’s
called being hot,” Avery says.

“Whatever it is, it works,” Ruby says. “I’ve
even seen Ryder do it with a lady cop, when he first started running
fight night. She’s demanding to know what’s going on in
the warehouse, he’s trying to keep her out of there, so they’re
standing outside and she’s all business, ready to toss him in
the backseat of her car and read him his rights.” She zips up
the back of the sandals. “But by the end of the conversation, I
think she was hoping he’d handcuff her.”

“Which, knowing Ryder,” says Avery, “he probably
did later that night.”

I slip on the red heels, modeling them in the mirror, hands on my
hips, looking casual, or at least trying to, as I say, “When
did Ryder start running fight night?”

“About two years ago, when he quit fighting,” Avery says.

“Ryder used to fight?” I say. Though of course it makes
perfect sense. His attitude, that body, the way he always has to win
at everything.

Shelby crosses to me, carrying three dresses. She alternates holding
one up to herself then me. “He didn’t just fight. He
dominated,” she says. “He was undefeated.”

“Why’d he stop fighting then?” I say.

“The same reason guys do anything,” Ruby says. “A
woman.”

“Ryder Cole gave up fighting for a woman?” I say. I can’t
imagine Ryder doing anything for someone that isn’t ultimately
for himself, and how much influence could one woman have when he’s
going home the champion every night with his pick of groupies?

“His girlfriend,” Shelby says. “Ex-girlfriend by
the time he quit.”

“They broke up, she moved out, so he took over running the
ring, trying to get over her,” Ruby says. “It keeps him
busy and less banged up.”

Ryder Cole in a relationship. Ryder Cole in a we-live-together level
relationship. Ryder Cole in a relationship that affected him so much
he walked away from fighting. I feel like Ruby just pointed out a
puzzle I thought I’d finished has a piece in the wrong place.

I knit my brows, trying to envision the expression on Ryder’s
chiseled face looking anything other than in control, his stride
anything other than self-assured. The idea of him vulnerable—it
just doesn’t compute.

“Was it serious?” I say. “The girlfriend?”

“Ryder thought it was,” Shelby says. “But the guys
she fucked on the side probably didn’t.”

Ryder Cole cheated on.

If a second ago I thought one puzzle piece was out of place, now I
realize: the whole thing has to be reassembled.

Maybe that explains his bossiness, why he always has to be right, in
control, which can be sexy as hell, except when he can’t help
being smug.

And then you just want to slap him.

Shelby surveys the dresses in her hands. “This one,” she
says, handing one to me. “I think you should try on this one.”
It’s black, short, sleeveless, with a gold zipper from the very
bottom of the hem all the way to the neckline, the kind of dress made
for one thing: to take off.

“It’s cute,” I say. “But I don’t think
I have anywhere to wear this.” Since coming home from England,
my days have mostly consisted of keeping Altitude’s books in
jean cutoffs and t-shirts, and my nights, with the exception of last
weekend’s waitressing, lazy lounge pants and old tank tops and
Netflix. The dress is probably overdoing it for sending out invoices
or catching up on
Homeland
alone in my bedroom.