I put it back down and chewed on my noodles. The soup was spicy and I began to sweat. I refused to believe it was from nerves, and I took a fortitudinous sip of my wine. When the soup was gone, I washed out the plastic dish and put it in the recycle bin. I debated putting on my pajamas and going to bed. See? I can do avoidance like nobody’s business.
I suspected I wouldn’t sleep without knowing the contents of that stupid envelope. I picked it up and used my thumb to break the seal. One sheet of paper fell out. It fluttered to the counter like a bird with a broken wing. I scooped it up and read.
Ms. Martin:
The hot tub is a part of the pool and as such is off limits.
Daire
Well, that was coldly to the point, wasn’t it? I sighed in disappointment, knowing that I should be grateful that he hadn’t decided to kick me to the curb, given that this was my thirty-day probationary period and all. Still, I was a bit hurt that there was no acknowledgment of my drawing. My artist’s pride was not taking it well. Daire had probably thrown it in the trash. One woman’s art was another man’s garbage, after all.
I wandered over to the window and glanced out at the pool, which was empty, and the hot tub, also vacant, and then turned my gaze to the house. The drapes were all drawn. Jackson had been the first sign of life I’d seen from the big house and now he was gone, swallowed back up into the cloaked abyss. In a weird way, the lack of life about the place depressed me. Much like the bare walls in this guest house.
Daire had probably already gone to bed. If he had a live-in caregiver, or whatever Jackson was, he must be in very poor health. I managed to dig up a little empathy for him, but it was a struggle as I gazed at the lovely purple glow of the hot tub and pondered how glorious a glass of wine would be while soaking under the stars. My sigh was as gusty as a storm front that vanishes right before the rain.
There had to be a way to get Daire to give in, and I was just the woman to find it.
Nick
8
“What was she like?” I asked.
“Fine,” Jackson answered. He lumbered into the room, catching sight of his reflection in the far windowpane and pausing to flex, just the pecs. I rolled my eyes. Jackson could never pass a reflective surface without checking out some part of his muscled physique.
The evening was on the cold side, and I had the fireplace turned on. He sprawled onto the couch beside me and picked up his controller. The large flat-screen TV fired to life as our video game came out of sleep mode.
We were playing a team game, real macho nonsense but stupid fun. We’d been dropped into the jungle and were seeking ancient treasure while fighting off other adventurers, giant spiders, wildfires, and a wraith who wanted us dead. We’d taken a break just before entering a sacred tomb so that he could deliver my note to my tenant.
Unsurprisingly, given how much rent-free space she was taking up in my head, I couldn’t let it be and had to ask him about her.
“ ‘Fine’ as in the slang way of saying she’s really hot, or ‘fine’ meaning she said she was fine, which is girl code for ‘I refuse to talk about this because it’s not fine but I haven’t figured out how I am going to make you pay for it yet’?” I asked.
“My, dude.” Jackson shook his head. “What sort of women have you been dating?”
“Recently? None,” I said. “Before that? Expensive ones.”
Jackson’s mouth curved up on one side. He had very reluctantly been drafted to be my messenger boy. The only reason I even managed to get him to go was by threatening not to finish our quest.
“On your six!” he yelled.
I whipped my character around and took out an enormous arachnid with three blasts from my laser. Zap! I got it right in one of its big red eyeballs. It rolled over with its legs in the air and then turned to dust and blew away.
I glanced at Jackson. “So?”
“You really want to do this now?” he asked. “We’re almost at the entrance.”
I thought about playing it cool and pretending I didn’t care what Annabelle Martin seemed like up close and personal. Yeah, no. Sometimes you just have to be at one with your curiosity, like a cat. Cats were curious and they were still considered cool. Right?
I assumed an indifferent pose and said, “I just want to know if she looks to be the type to have human sacrifices in my guest house living room or not?”
Jackson had started to take a sip of beer and sputtered, inhaling some beverage into his lungs. I paused the game while he coughed. When he could speak, he pointed at me with his beer bottle and said, “You have a dark soul.”
“Don’t I know it,” I muttered.
“No, she’s not having human sacrifices or anything else in her living room,” Jackson said. “She seems . . . nice.”
“Nice?” I asked him. I stared at him like he’d recently whacked his head and was now speaking in tongues. “I saw her. In the hot tub. In her bathing suit. She is not nice.”
He rolled his eyes. “A woman can be attractive and still be nice.”
“No,” I said. “It’s been my experience that those are mutually exclusive traits.”
“Well, your experience is for shit,” he said. He turned his attention back to the game. He was in the lead and I had his back as we navigated the jungle. “You need to raise your standards.”
“My standards are fine. I just like my women to have a certain aesthetic,” I said.
Jackson slowly swiveled to face me. He had one eyebrow raised higher than the other. “Like what? A big ass or something?”
“Not specifically, but I do like them to be supermodel worthy,” I said. I glanced at the screen of our game, trying to maintain a straight face. Why did I enjoy tormenting Jackson with my feigned misogyny so much? It was bad of me, I knew that. He was just such a Boy Scout about these things that I liked to get him all aggro with my knuckle dragger comments.
“So it’s just about looks for you?” he asked. His expression was deeply disappointed. “Well, having seen her up close, I can assure you, she could give any model a run for her money with those big brown eyes, perfect skin, and a killer smile.”
I frowned, annoyed. I used the machete my character carried to hack up some foliage. Totally unnecessary but it made me feel better. “Exactly how close did you get to her? I only sent you to deliver a message, not try to score.”
Jackson’s laugh erupted with a sonic boom. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. I wasn’t. I jumped in my seat. I bit back the urge to slug him. Barely.