The Space Between (3 page)

“Let’s get outta here,” he grunted.

His accented voice dragged me back to reality and I shifted out of his hold. Taking in his v-neck t-shirt and hair that looked styled to the point of crunchiness, I shook my head. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the bar to make it happen with Tight T-Shirt. Not even close.

“No thanks.”

I offered my best attempt at a gracious smile. I did grind on the boy for at least four songs, and was leaving him in an unpleasant condition.

“Fuckin’ cock tease,” he murmured, his eyes coasting up and down my body.

I shrugged and walked away. I’d heard worse, and he wasn’t entirely wrong in that moment. That didn’t mean I was required to experience any remorse.

“I’ll be right back,” I yelled to Jess and Marley, both moving with the beat and ignoring me.

I hit the bar for another drink and guzzled a gimlet from the relative quiet of the white leather seating area. If wine was my rabbi, vodka was my therapist, and I needed some sorting out.

It didn’t escape my notice that Patrick was attractive.

Okay, I can be honest: Patrick was strikingly hot.

He possessed the build and authentic masculinity of a rugby player. It was an observation I noted and discarded when we met this morning, and months ago when I read a feature about his work in
Architectural Digest
, complete with several photographs of him. I refused to allow a chiseled jaw or broad shoulders to kill my focus then; I wasn’t excited about allowing it now.

Accepting another tumbler of vodka with lime, I nodded to the waitress in thanks.

Considering those observations were manifesting themselves in the form of dance floor daydreams, it was possible I hadn’t discarded them at all. More than likely, I’d tucked them high on a shelf in the back of my mind and waited for a properly uninhibited moment to take them down and play. If my reaction on the dance floor was any indication, I really wanted to play.

And lest we forget, I hadn’t
played
in a few months.

I spent years admiring Patrick’s work from afar without once admiring him as a man. Becoming his apprentice meant immediately returning those observations to that shelf. It was an uncomfortable thought to swallow.

I frowned at the bar’s faux Miami seashell-and-white-leather décor. As much as I loved my high school friend Jess, growing up and going to college in rural Maine meant she fell on the wide-eyed and naïve side of the lobster trap. In addition to finding a place to live, a hardcore yoga studio, and the farmers’ market, better nightlife options were in order.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Marley shouted as she shimmied toward me. She collapsed on the sofa, panting and drenched with sweat. “Where’d you go?”

“I’m right here,” I replied, muffling another sarcastic comment with my cocktail.

I wanted to like Marley, but I was content with simply tolerating her. Thirty minutes wasted explaining the difference between architecture and construction to Marley didn’t help that tolerance.

“I thought you left with that Hottie McHotpants, but then I saw you over here.”

“Hm.” There was nothing to say to that.

She aggressively fanned her face, and I gnawed a chunk of ice to keep from explaining she was not going to cool off by waving her arms. If anything, she’d expend the same energy as bouncing around the dance floor, though getting that point across in a bass-thumping bar was not a challenge I wanted to accept.

It wasn’t that I was a bitch. Sometimes, talking to people wasn’t easy for me, especially idiots, and Marley was an idiot. And I didn’t mean deep discussions of literature or politics, either. I know it sounded terrible, but the girl struggled to rub two thoughts together without setting her hair on fire. But she was a warm, sweet idiot, and she was an incredible friend to Jess.

Growing up along the coast of Maine, I did not have many options when it came to friends. I wasn’t slamming Jess—there were only forty-six other kids in our graduating class. We’ve always had an easy relationship where we could go months without seeing each other yet pick up where we left off without a shred of awkwardness.

But the fact remained, close friendships were not my strength and I was exceptionally picky about the people in my circle. I possessed enough self-awareness to recognize that keeping people at a certain distance was a measure of preservation formed from years as an outsider. I’ve always been a little out of the ordinary.

I didn’t have the opportunity to meet others who embraced me and shared my interests until arriving at Cornell, and when faced with the option between people who could hold an intelligent conversation and people who grew up on the same frozen tundra, I’d chosen conversation.

Jess accepted this about me, and I accepted that she believed a billionaire would see her across a crowded bar, decide he couldn’t live without her, fuck her in an alley or the back of his limo, and demand she move into his mansion to be his wife and sex slave.

She spent a lot of time fucking skeezy guys in alleys. It wasn’t particularly reasonable, but at least she was upfront about it.

Patrick, should he choose to speak in more than a few words at a time, had the makings of an incredible conversationalist. His thoughts on architecture, history, ecology—all of it interested me, and I was comfortable saying he’d enjoy talking to me, too.

Getting a drink and chatting with Patrick after work would cross an entire quartile off my bucket list. While I’d initially pegged Patrick as a beer drinker by virtue of his rugby player looks, I’d guess his tastes ran closer to rich wines and whiskey or scotch. Sipping some fifteen-year Macallan, we’d bitch about the minimalistic modern craze and speculate about those early craftsmen who built a city on a hill.

His hand would stroke my leg, squeezing above my knee when he laughed at my pithy takedown of all things laminate. As the night wore on, his fingers would tease under my skirt while he debated the value of preservation legislation. He’d argue that, while well intentioned, much of current regulatory guidance prevented preservation from being in line with sustainability as his fingers slipped beneath my panties and into my wet heat. He’d make his point while he brought me to the edge, his eyes sparkling with the secret knowledge that he was wrist-deep and getting me off in a crowded bar. He’d press himself against me when I found my release, swallowing my cry with a smoldering kiss and a promise for much more when he got me alone.

“What was that?” Marley asked, her hands frozen mid-wave.

“What was what?”

“You made a sound. Like…like a sex sound. Did you see a hot guy?”

Oh, shit. Oh,
shit
.

I needed to lock that shit down. No more mixed shots.

I gave Marley a confused shrug, clearly indicating I thought she was hearing things. When she resumed fanning herself, I pressed my glass to my forehead in an attempt to temper the Patrick Walsh as Sex God fantasy playing behind my eyes.

And I thought vodka would sort me out. This called for stronger liquor. What was the right potion to quell spontaneous sexy fantasies about an off-limits man who spent more time scowling than speaking?

Absinthe, my voodoo priestess.

Maybe Jägermeister, my favorite frat boy.

Probably a lethal combination of the two with a chaser of tequila, my Mexican medicine man, followed by a good, old-fashioned stomach pumping.

“So where are you from?” Marley shouted.

I glanced at Marley, her fanning slowing. “Wiscasset. Jess and I went to high school together.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, nodding quickly. “But like, where are you
from
from?”

She squinted at me, and I groaned inwardly. I got the ‘you don’t look completely white but I can’t tell whether you’re something else, so what
are
you?’ question more than I should.

Every time I avoided an explanation of my genealogy and opted for vague responses that illuminated the inappropriateness of the inquiry. A backhanded quip was on the tip of my tongue but I swallowed it, remembering Marley was one of two friends I could currently name in Boston, and she was letting me stay at her place.

“My dad was Persian.”

“Where is that? Is that a country?”

“He was from Iran, but lived in London and Istanbul.” Marley didn’t seem to notice my tone was beyond condescending.

Her eyes widened then narrowed, and I wondered which part she was struggling to understand. “Was? He’s not alive?”

“No. He died when I was young.”

“Oh my God, that’s awful. What happened? Wait. I’ve heard about Iran. Wasn’t there a war there? Aren’t there a lot of terrorists over there? Was he like…involved with that?”

And there it was.

My raised eyebrow offered Marley an opportunity to backtrack and revise. Sensitive I was not—but assuming every Middle Easterner was a terrorist wasn’t a matter of sensitivity. It came as no surprise that she continued gaping at me, waiting for my response to a question she considered reasonable. I’d prefer a scowly conversation with Patrick to another round of ‘so how many virgins did your dad get for being a suicide bomber?’

“No,” I responded, the word sharpened to a point. “He was not a terrorist.”

“Oh.” Before she could continue, Jess wedged between us and wrapped her arms around our necks.

“Where my ladies at?”

“Woohoo!” Marley replied. “I am going to be so hungover tomorrow!”

Jess stood and pulled us with her, smiling. “Then we better enjoy it!”

We occupied the center of the dance floor, and I redirected every guy who approached me to Marley. The attention thrilled her, and I couldn’t risk another Patrick Walsh daydream at the hands of Tight T-Shirt.

PATRICK

I
t wasn’t possible
for my arms to cause me any more distress than they were causing right now.

I leaned against the mantel above the fireplace in Shannon’s office while she walked Andy through paperwork and handed her an armful of documents, equipment, and a fleece vest embroidered with our logo while I wrestled with my limbs like a newborn giraffe.

I crossed them over my chest, and Shannon stopped her explanation of our underground garage access system to tell me I looked ‘angry’ and ‘intimidating.’

I shoved my hands in my pockets, and then clasped them behind my back. Both seemed wrong.

I was trying Matt’s ‘one arm across the chest, chin on the fist’ thing and feeling like a moron when Shannon turned to me.

“Patrick, why don’t you take Andy upstairs? Get her settled before the meeting?”

Shannon glared at me, her eyes fiery and lips pursed, silently willing me to get my act together. I held her stare as long as possible to avoid eye contact with Andy. If I didn’t look at her, I wouldn’t think about her hair, and how I wanted it in my hands. Or her eyes, and how I wanted them wide and hungry. Or her mouth, and how I wanted it on my cock.

I glanced at the ground, my eyes landing on her feet. Steel-toed boots. Seemed appropriate for the girl with the spine of steel.

And I wanted them over my shoulders.

“Now?” When I didn’t move, she pivoted to face Andy. “I’m sorry, Andy, my brother is a bit of a bear in the morning. Especially when he hasn’t had his happy pills or a swift kick in the ass. I’ll make sure he gets an extra dose of both today. If there’s anything you need, please feel free to ask Patrick’s assistant, Marisa. She’s right upstairs.”

Marisa.
It was probably too late to worry about all the times I called her Melissa.

“No worries,” Andy replied, effortlessly juggling the laptop, tablet, cell phone, keycard, and vest. She was the picture of composure while I struggled with the existence of my arms. By all accounts, a fantastic way to start a Monday.

In the week since her interview, I never stopped to consider where she would spend the majority of her time or how we’d work together.

I spent a fair amount of time thinking about her naked in every conceivable position, and if this morning’s erection from hell was any indication, I was enthusiastic about all of them.

She’d be a meter away from me all day, every day. What happened with that case of gin in Sam’s office? Was it too early to start asking?

“This way,” I grumbled, striding out of Shannon’s office and up the stairs to my office.

I took the stairs two at a time and she was on my heels with her lavender scent. We stood in the middle of my office for a long moment while I crossed my arms, uncrossed them, tucked my hands into my pockets, and then propped my fists on my hips. She stared at me, that tiny smile tugging at the corner of her lips as if she knew exactly how she shredded me.

There were tons of stunning women out there, but it wasn’t her beauty that tipped the axis for me.

Andy was exotic and mesmerizing, but she revealed nothing. She moved with aloof confidence and it was clear she gave not a single fuck about anyone’s thoughts of her. Since the moment I met Andy, I wanted to know what she was thinking under that unapproachable shell.

I gestured to the redwood conference table and drafting desk. “All yours.”

I also wanted to see how quickly I could destroy that cool reserve when my head was between her legs.

She blinked at me before moving and my stomach lurched when I realized I needed to give her something to do. Mind blank, I called up the calendar on my computer and glanced at the week ahead. Five minutes together and my head was already fucked up. Squatting beside the milk crate holding the on-deck projects, I selected twelve canisters and dropped them on the table.

“These are work-in-progress. We’ll walk them all at some point this week, and these,” I grabbed three, “today.” Andy nodded, and our eyes met when she accepted the canisters. I didn’t immediately let go, and we stood frozen in a tug-of-war.

Before I could continue with instructions, a quartet of voices rang down from the attic conference room. “Seven thirty!”

“Jesus Christ,” I murmured, releasing the canisters and darting to my desk to snap my laptop shut and tuck it under my arm.