On the Ropes (17 page)

She was both relieved and terrified. She didn’t want him to get in trouble.

“At least call them and tell them that,” Meg said.

“Why should I be so courteous when they’ve gone to such measures to drop the work on my lap? There was no permission. No consent. They didn’t ask me if they could send it, and I’ve been letting their calls go straight to voice mail for two days. That should have been a big enough hint that I wasn’t trying to be reached. You know what they did?” He ran his fingers through his hair, and tugged.

Jan grabbed his wrists, looked him square in the eyes, and whispered, “Let go.”

This might have been one of those times he would have put himself in front of a punching bag, but she wasn’t going to let him leave—not with the storm moving in and threatening to dump a foot of rain on them.

His fingers loosened, and he let her pull his hands down to his sides.

“You know what they did?” he continued. “They knew I wouldn’t respond to e-mails or phone calls, so they farmed out the delivery to a smaller local firm knowing that if it got here, I probably wouldn’t ignore it.”

“But you’re going to this time?” Meg asked.

“Yeah. I am. I didn’t bring Jan here so she could stare at my back while I bent over a hundred pages of merger and acquisition bullshit.”

“Stephen, I’ll understand if you have work to do. I can entertain myself. Your job’s important. Don’t get yourself in hot water because of me.”

“Jan, I can’t think of any fucking better reason to get myself in hot water.”

Her grin was fleeting. Yes, she’d wanted someone to have that kind of passion for her, but not with stakes like these. She wasn’t worth his job, and knew that if he had to choose between the two things, which would win.

“Uncle Stephen, you’re cranky,” Toby said. “Do you need a nap?”

Stephen closed his eyes, and groaned. “Yes, I probably could use a nap. A week of naps.”

“Everything’s locked down for the storm.” Meg canted her head in the direction of the guest room. “I’ll wake you up for dinner.”

He blew out a ragged breath, squeezed Jan’s shoulder, and whispered, “Sorry,” before walking away.

She stood there for a while, staring at the cookie bag on the counter, and shifting her weight.

She wasn’t a cold person. She didn’t want people to be upset or hurt, but she’d gotten so used to not responding as her nature would have had her, because she’d been trained that doing so made her weak. That
sentiment
made her weak.

She was sick of having people who didn’t even care about her define her behavior. Sick of being a robot.

Stephen moved his arm away from his eyes when she closed the bedroom door.

She locked it and stuffed her hands into her pockets. Instinct and propriety waged a battle in her head, but her heart was the final judge. She crawled onto the bed and curled up next to him.

He pulled her close. “You probably think I’m being childish,” he said.

“I don’t. People have hard lines about what they’ll accept and what they won’t. Sometimes that line moves. Over time, it may become more rigid.”

“I’m tired, Jan. I’m sick of this being my life—where I always feel like I’m being chased in all directions by work. I went to law school because I’m fascinated by law. Now, more and more with each passing day, I wonder if that was enough for me to make it a career.”

“Do you like anything about your job?”

“Lately? No. I guess I feel a lot like Derrick at The Sandbar. Disenchanted. I felt more fulfilled during the short time I worked in family law, but that might just be the do-gooder in me.”

“Why didn’t you stay in family law?”

His torso moved in what she guessed was a shrug.

“I guess it was expected of a guy like me to go where the money was. I got recruited pretty hard. My father is well known in his industry. For his son to be listed on any firm’s roster would be a feather in its cap. That’s all it started as. Just a shiny blue blood nameplate for them. I got tossed a lot of throwaway jobs early on and I didn’t care because I was getting paid a damned good salary to do them. This was before my trust fund kicked in.”

“Oh.”

He made it easy for her to forget that he had one. He’d proven he wasn’t the kind of man who shied away from hard work.

“Eventually, my bosses at the time figured out that I was actually competent. I didn’t buy my law school ranking, you know?”

“Where were you ranked?”

He didn’t respond, and perhaps that was telling enough. She’d always held a geek archetype in her mind that halted her from seeking one out. They were socially awkward, romantically inexperienced, and often misguided as far as fashion was concerned. And then there was Stephen.

She wasn’t sure what was most attractive—his intelligence, his looks, or his undeniable sex appeal.

No, she decided. More so than that was how he connected to people. She’d misjudged him. Assumed his relationships were superficial. That he was selfish. He was likely the most considerate man she’d ever met, and she’d pushed him away for a year.

But, how could she blame herself?

“Some of the junior partners at the time started to quietly shunt their workloads to me,” he said, and pushed his hair out of eyes.

She took his hand and studied his calloused knuckles. His hands should have been soft and manicured, but his cuticles were ragged, and pinky sides of his palms scarred. Trailing her thumbs along the whitened ridges, she felt her brow furrow. That didn’t look like scars from working out.

He pulled his hands away and laced his fingers under his head.

“What is that? Why don’t you want me to see them?”

“It’s nothing.”

Sighing, she got up on all fours and straddled his chest. She grabbed his wrists and gently pried his hands back out. Turning his hands, she stared at the meat where his palms met the backs of his hands. Also, his wrists and forearms. There were patternless white slashes all the way up to his elbows.

“Stephen, what is that?”

“I was dumb, okay? Too confident. I was doing okay boxing. Was winning most of my bouts. A promoter approached me about a bare-knuckle fight. I had never done it before, but he blew a lot of smoke up my ass. Told me if I won, no boxer with a brain in his head would step into the ring with me and fight confidently. I liked that idea a lot. To make a long story short, my opponent brought a knife to a fistfight.”

“So those are all defensive scars?”

For fuck’s sake, there had to be two
dozen
of them.

“Yeah. Stop making that face. I got enough of it from my mother.”

“It’s not funny. He could have killed you.”

He closed his eyes and grunted. “Pretty sure laying me out was one of his goals, honey. Folks had a lot of money riding on my next fight. Didn’t matter if I actually made it into the ring, as long as I didn’t
win
.”

“What happened to the man you fought? Did someone say
enough
and break it up?”

“No, I adapt. That’s how I cope with life in general. I adapt. I had already lost a good deal of blood, but not so much I couldn’t see straight. I figured I had two good punches left in me, so I pulled the stops and let him have them.”

“You laid him out?”

“Yeah. I knocked him out. I don’t remember what happened next. I didn’t pass out, but everything after that until the next morning was a blur. Someone got me to the hospital and everyone acted like the fight never happened. No cops involved.”

“Wow.”

“That turn you off?” He opened his eyes, and they were more tired than curious.

“It surprises me, is all. You keep surprising me.”

“I could say the same for you.”

“Fair enough. So, you’re not a tattler. I take it you never said anything about those junior partners piling you with work.”

“No, but the seniors partners did find out. I suppose certain attorneys becoming extremely efficient when they weren’t before was a red flag.”

“Well, what’d they do?”

“They started dropping files on my desk, too.” He laughed, but it was dry and mirthless. “I guess it’s my own damn fault for not saying no. I started a mudslide and you can’t stop those. You can only get out of their way.”

“No wonder you can’t take no for an answer. You can’t say no yourself.”

“That’s not quite true, is it?” He pressed his hands to her belly and pushed her shirt past her breasts. “I think I’ve been behaving admirably given the circumstances.”

His thumbs made teasing circles around her satin-covered nipples, forcing her starved flesh to taut peaks.

“I didn’t ask you to behave.”

“No. You expected me to dog you, and had probably resigned yourself to the fact we’d probably fuck. You’d hate yourself for saying yes when you’d held out all this time, and I’d feel like an asshole for being the other party to it.”

“So, what do you want? You want me to beg?”

“No, I don’t want you to beg. I want you to be ready.” He pulled his hands away from her breasts and let the shirt fall back as it was.

“You make it sound like packing up for a trip.”

“Oh, it’d be a trip, all right, honey.” He swiveled his hips, and his cock’s head prodded her backside.

Hard as a rock, and yet he was so fucking calm! He’d given no clues of his arousal until that moment. She didn’t want to think about what the man did in his free time to have learned that sort of restraint.

Or maybe she did.

Hmm.

She put her hands on his chest and eased forward a bit to escape the distraction of his cock. She could barely think with it pressing against her.

“Stephen?”

“Jan.”

“Tell me something.”

He grinned and put his hands on her hips. “Turning my own tactics back on me, huh? Would you like me to tell you anything in specific?”

“What turns you on?”

“That’s a loaded question.”

“I’m just wondering what your extremes are.”

“You’re asking if I’m a sadist.”

“How do you do that? Just get in my head and pluck out the relevant bits?”

“It’s a gift.”

“Well, are you?”

“Gifted?”

“No, a sadist.”

“No, I would imagine boxers don’t make very trustworthy sadists. Or lawyers, for that matter.”

“But, you do like kink. You mentioned rope before.”

“Yeah, I have a few kinks. I’d imagine that most people do, though they don’t necessarily categorize them as that. A spank or a bite is just a different kind of edge to the pleasure.”

“What do you like besides rope?”

His eyes closed and grin drew in.

“You’re not going to tell me? You don’t trust me.”

“It’s not about trust. I think some things are meant to be shared only with the person you’re doing them with.”

“And you don’t know if you’ll do them with me.”

He didn’t answer.

Fair enough.

She drummed her fingertips on his chest, and his breathing slowed, lips parted. He was falling asleep, and the sound of her own voice surprised her.

“Would you tie me up?”

His eyes opened slowly, and he stared at her as if the words didn’t make sense.

“I’d trust you. To tie me up, I mean.”

He closed his eyes once more, but nodded. “When the time’s right.”

Stephen walked the two long blocks to The Sandbar, thinking of Jan’s words as he stepped over wind-strewn garbage and other detritus from the storm.
I’d trust you
.

It meant everything to him to hear that, not only because he hadn’t had to broach the subject himself, but because he suspected that trust was something that didn’t come easily to her.

Only fools rushed into things, though. He’d waited this long, and he could wait a while longer. Just until they figured some things out.

He rapped his knuckles on the locked front door. A body back in the kitchen doorway cast a shadow into the restaurant, and Derrick poked his head out. He waved at Stephen and jogged to the door.

“Hey, come on in and have a cup of coffee. I’m cleaning up from yesterday. I let everyone go home after lunch since so many had to drive over the bridge. Kitchen’s a mess. How’d you guys hold up?”

Stephen stepped in. Derrick locked the door behind him.

“Pretty good,” Stephen said. He followed the other man back to the kitchen and perched on a metal stool situated near the prep counter. “Have a hole in the roof we’d thought would give us some trouble, but Seth patched it. Might have to replace the whole thing.”

“House is old enough, isn’t it?”

“Doesn’t seem like it, but it just about is. Might look into getting some solar panels installed while we’re at it.”

“Sounds like a plan. I have no idea what the ordinances say about those, though.”

“Me neither. I’ll look into it.”

Stephen accepted the cup of black coffee Derrick thrust at him and grunted his thanks.

Derrick walked to the sink, whistling, overturned a big stainless steel pot, and picked up a scrubber. “So, I imagine you didn’t walk down here before opening for that piss-poor coffee. What’s on your mind? Don’t tell me that knock-out you brought here on Saturday dumped you already.”

“Real fucking funny.”

“Had to ask. If you didn’t want her, I wouldn’t say no.”

“I bet you wouldn’t, but she’s mine. If all goes well, she’s going to be the poor soul who’ll bear me all those children my mother won’t stop nagging about. Kindly remember that.”

“I’ll try. She’s just so pretty. Sometimes my mouth starts running ahead of my brain, and I can’t control what words come out.”

“Yet another reason you shouldn’t be practicing law.”

“Touché, motherfucker. Find out if she has a pretty sister or something, will ya?” Derrick chuckled and put his back into scrubbing out what seemed to be a particularly stubborn spot. “So, what’s on your mind?”

“Law, actually.” Stephen turned the mug between his palms and stared into the murky liquid. It was so thick, it was practically chewable.

“What about it?”

“This trip got me thinking about work and life and how they’ve become one in the same over the past couple of years. I know I’ve got to earn my stripes and all that, put in the hours so retirement is sweeter, but, this doesn’t feel right. I work at work. I work at home. I even work when I’m on vacation. And you know, this is the first time that I didn’t jump to it when the firm sent me something.”