Underneath It All (The Walsh Series #1) (14 page)

“Remember how I said I know what you need?”

“Theory of the Caveman? Yes, you’ve mentioned this before,” I laughed. My hand moved under his jacket and settled on his back, my fingers urging him closer.

“It’s a pressure-tested proof, Miss Halsted,” he said against my neck.

I slipped my hand lower, between his shirt and jeans, savoring the feel him, his heat. Being with him felt exquisite, or maybe it was that despite all of my single-minded, mission-focused days, I wasn’t totally lost in my work. At least not tonight.

“And here’s my addendum to that proof: if you’re leaving in a few days, we need to get your designs finalized and approved. Stay with me this weekend, and I’ll get it done. Then come to the office on Monday so my sister—”

“The one with the volcanoes?”

“No,” he laughed. “Different sister—the CFO—and she handles all the real estate. She’ll work on getting a clean title so we can order permits and start the work. This is the one thing I can take on for you. You have enough shit going on already so I want you to let me, even if that makes me a caveman.”

My fingers continued traveling along his waist while I processed his words. I could spend the next couple of days indulging in Matthew, and then time zones and miles would separate us for weeks. This crazy, sexy pull would fizzle, and our demanding lives would take over again, and this would become a beautiful memory of a wild weekend.

It was no tiny cheat—more like a binge—but a three-week cleanse would balance it all out.

“You’ve thought of it all,” I said, and tugged at Matthew’s lapels to draw him closer. He smiled against my lips. “Come on. There are some friends I want you to meet, and I need another beverage, and if
you
can promise not to scream, we might go find that dark corner.”

*

Fog wafted over
Atlantic Avenue as Matthew and I embarked on the short walk to his building. Dipping my toes in the coupled pond—even if it was just for tonight—was wonderfully satisfying. I expected some relief from the constant fix-up attempts, but I never expected to feel so whole, so completely and thoroughly myself standing next to Matthew. But for every ounce of satisfaction, there was an equal amount of hesitation.

“I like your friends.” Matthew shrugged, and he couldn’t hold back a smug smile.

While most of my friends expressed some appreciation for the beauty that was Matthew Walsh, only Elsie set my teeth on edge. She went in for the hug instead of the handshake, and wrapped her hands around his bicep while she talked about some remodeling she and her husband, Kent, were considering.

I had no business being possessive or territorial or even jealous, but I was. At this moment, Matthew was with me, and she was a little too grabby for my liking.

I rolled my eyes. “My friends liked you, all right. They wanted to drag you out back and take turns on you. Do you always have that effect on married women?”

Matthew stopped in front of the marina outside his building and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, his face taking on a happy, serene quality that seemed unusual for him. “Marry me and find out.”

“For the love of tiny purple ponies, Matthew.”

I laughed and pushed out of his arms. If I didn’t get out of these shoes soon, I was taking them off and walking down the street barefoot. According to the Commodore, that was the best way to pick up gangrene and lose a foot, and a girl needed both feet and all ten toes. He was also fundamentally opposed to my heels (too difficult to flee when the situation demanded it), necklaces (an invitation for strangulation), and long hair (something else attackers could grab).

“Is that a yes?”

“You really are a caveman,” I said. “I’m tired, I’m cold, my feet hurt, I have to pee, and I want to be out of this dress and eating this cake”—I held up the leftovers from the party—“in the next ten minutes, and we agreed to drinks.”

“And my cock in your mouth.” He stretched his arm and peered at his watch. He nodded, and said, “By the way: when will that be starting?”

“Sometime after I change and go to the bathroom. And I really do want this cake.”

He sighed. “Then we need to talk about citrus fruit.”

Grabbing his hand, I towed him inside. “I’m not even going to ask what that means, Matthew.”

He leaned against the elevator walls and crossed his arms, his brows pinched in thought. He didn’t speak again until we reached his floor. “But I’m a little wounded you turned down my proposal. That shit was heartfelt.”

MATTHEW

M
onday morning arrived
too soon. The last thing I wanted to do was leave the protective bubble of my loft, but Lauren was awake and dressed before me, and if her clipped tone told me anything, it was that the bubble had long since burst. Even though we were heading in the same direction—she lived around the corner from my office—she invented some reason to leave before I hopped in the shower.

At least I saw her go this time.

Thumbing the email app on my phone open for the first time in thirty-six hours, I climbed the stairs to the small conference room on the top floor of the Walsh Associates offices and groaned at the landslide of new messages. I sank into my seat at the round reclaimed wood table, and if that table wasn’t Sam’s baby, I would have banged my head against it a few times.

Six or seven years ago, Sam stumbled upon the fallen red oak on a camping trip to Acadia National Forest in Maine and dragged it all the way home. He fashioned the table in his workshop, crafting the wood for months until it was just right. Getting the table to the top floor meant hiring a crane to move it out of Sam’s shop and into Beacon Hill, blowing out a row of windows, and lifting the table from the narrow street below through the bank of windows. Much like everything Sam did, the event was a massive pain in the ass, but I readily admitted the table was gorgeous, and uniquely suited for our sustainable preservation work.

It also forced us to replace those windows, and back then, not a day went by without finding something new to replace. Those were long days, and they weren’t easy.

The Beacon Hill home went into foreclosure during the last housing market crash, and Shannon pulled some strings to bid on the property right when it hit the market. The firm owned office space in downtown Wellesley, and had been headquartered there for almost six decades, but Shannon and Patrick always insisted it was critical that we establish ourselves without Angus’s interference.

Getting out of Wellesley didn’t remove Angus from the business as much as we expected, though.

We didn’t realize the amount of work this place required until we peeled away the mustard yellow paisley wallpaper, discovering decades of water damage and decayed structures. The wiring was one blown fuse away from an electrical fire, and at least eight layers of oil-based paint covered every old brick, every inch of hand-carved wood, and every pipe in the five thousand square foot home.

If we didn’t know each other after growing up together, going away to college together, and then working together, living through that renovation taught us everything else we needed to know. There were more than a couple heated arguments, and even more drunk nights spent wondering whether we were crazy for doing this, and the one time when Patrick almost severed an artery with a jigsaw. Taking our degrees and finding normal architectural firms that weren’t embedded in our blood and bones would have been the easier path, and some days, I thought I wanted that path.

But one look at the brick walls, the ones I spent weeks treating to remove the rainbow of paint, and I remembered how much I loved this work and this place. Even when I hated it.

After more than two years spent working out of Shannon’s little apartment near Suffolk Law, where we couldn’t move without tripping over each other or milk crates overflowing with blueprint canisters, we were desperate for more space. Sam was finishing school around that time, and after some high-profile restorations grabbed the media’s attention, we were doing well enough to consider expanding.

That, and Patrick and I showed up at Shannon’s place one morning to find ourselves face-to-face with a naked dude sipping juice in her kitchen like he owned the joint. He was as surprised to see us as we were him, yet he made no attempt to cover up. The three of us stared at each other in awful, naked silence until Shannon called out from the shower, inviting him to join her. He did, and Patrick and I spent the day working from a coffee shop, ignoring her calls, and murmuring that we were too old for this shit and we needed legitimate office space. At one point, we looked at each other, and I said, “We can agree that was the biggest dick in the universe, right?”

“Yes,” Patrick said. “And I never want to talk about this again.”

Open laptops, Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts coffee cups, and cell phones ringed the table, and I leaned back in my seat, surveying my partners. Directly across from me, Patrick scowled at his laptop screen and rubbed a hand over his auburn hair. He leaned against Shannon’s shoulder and pointed to her screen while her fingers flew over her phone, her coppery red hair glinting in the morning sun.

Though her hair was styled in a trendy cut with waves and side-swept bangs framing her face, Shannon’s resemblance to our mother was undeniable and at times, eerie. She shared many of Abigael Walsh’s mannerisms and all of her passion, wrapped in a fireball personality that often scorched everyone in spitting distance.

Riley and Sam bracketed me at the table, their heads bent toward their screens. A printed call sheet flanked Sam’s phone and I rolled my eyes at the extensive list of inquiries into his services. After gracing the cover of
Boston
Magazine
three winters ago and showcasing a North End restoration outfitted with cutting-edge sustainability features, Sam’s celebrity was born.

It didn’t matter that I had the same skills and certifications with the added benefit of more experience. All the calls were for Sam. The team could stop working on individual projects and pick up Sam’s excess, and we still wouldn’t be able to handle the surplus.

It was probably a good thing. Annoying, but good.

It wasn’t long ago that Patrick and I were restoring every random barn and boathouse that came our way while Shannon finished law school. We operated on the blind faith that we’d survive and find our niche. Eventually, the niche found us.

Staring at Riley while he yawned widely, I ignored the urge to slap my youngest brother upside the head. Unless he liked Patrick’s method of asshole ripping, Riley’s hung-over frat boy routine needed to end. Patrick insisted we dress like we knew what we were doing, and he never tolerated anything short of professional.

Riley’s shaggy, messy hair looked suspiciously like bedhead and it fell past the collar of his plaid shirt. A pronounced coffee stain traversed the leg of his wrinkled khakis and his fly gaped open, exposing a flash of Batman boxers. With his ankle crossed over his knee and sockless feet shoved into untied boat shoes, I shook my head.

We had a lot of work to do with this kid.

At the sound of a new text message arriving, I pulled my gaze away from the frayed hem of Riley’s pants and swiveled toward my phone.

07:31 Lauren:
hi.

07:31 Matthew:
hi

07:32 Lauren:
sorry I ran out. I just have a lot going on today.

07:32 Lauren:
but I can meet you around 3

“You seem damn pleased with life for a Monday morning,” Sam said. “Are you cutting your coffee with whiskey now? If that’s your new normal, I’m good with it. Whatever it takes to make you smile, Matt. Most days I think you’re plotting your escape.”

I closed my fingers around my phone before turning to meet his amused expression. “No,” I said evenly. “I don’t need whiskey to be pleased with life today.”

Sam’s eyes glowed, and he leaned toward me. “Satiating weekend?” I tried hiding my grin behind my coffee and ignored Sam’s chuckle. “That’s splendid news.”

“Something you need to share, Sam?”

Patrick’s hazel eyes narrowed at Sam, and attention shifted to us. “It seems Jugger enjoyed the company of a woman this weekend, and I was congratulating him on ending the dry streak.”

Of all the nicknames my siblings tried attaching to me, Jugger—as in Juggernaut, from
The X-Men
—was my least favorite.

“That’s great,” Patrick muttered. “At some point this morning I’d like this meeting to start because we have shit to discuss. So whenever this little tea party is over, let me know. I’ll wait for you to finish.”

Sam leaned back in his chair and fidgeted with his cufflinks. “You’re one moody son of a bitch, Patrick. Honestly. Now that Matt’s in the game, it’s about time you start thinking about the opposite sex.”

“Are you charging for that advice?” Patrick snapped.

“Perhaps I should be,” Sam muttered. “I simply believe it is worth noting Matt’s making time with a girl—” Sam swung back to look at me. “I shouldn’t make assumptions about your sex life. We’re talking about a female, yes?”