Nope, the pep talk did nothing.
I’d sooner step in a bear trap than accept Nash’s help. Because I preferred him cruel. At least, I knew what to expect.
“I’m good.” I plucked my eraser from the Jana Sport. “I have dinner plans tonight.”
As in, the soup kitchen if I’m lucky.
Nash narrowed his eyes at my words. I had screwed myself when I agreed to civility for Ben’s sake, because each time I didn’t fight Nash, I got more and more comfortable justifying our proximity.
This did nothing for my lust. He still looked like womenkind’s answer to dry spells, and I still had the memory of his fingers inside me and my lips wrapped around his cock to keep me warm at night.
“Emery.” Nash lifted his chin toward the hallway. He had managed to turn my name into a demand. As soon as we reached the elevators, he fired at me in rapid succession, “Make no mistake—I’m not a nice person. I don’t do nice things. If I hold the door open for you, it’s to look at your ass. If I do you a favor, it’s because I expect one in return. If I feed you, it’s because I’d rather deal with your scrawny ass than Ma’s wrath. The sooner you get that, the better.”
But the words held no real bite to them. A toothless husky gnawing his favorite toy. He seemed so uncomfortable with the idea of feeding me, it almost made me laugh. Dip below that, and all he’d done was throw money at my problems with a hint of his signature tenacity.
The exact opposite of the younger Nash who used to give me lunch at the cost of his own, who didn’t speak as if he owned me, and never made me feel like accepting his generosity would come at the expense of my soul.
The slow shake of my head offered me time to summon an adequate response. “My refusal to accept your food has nothing to do with an aversion to niceties and everything to do with the fact that I don’t need your hundreds of dollars in catering, your fancy salmons, or forty-eight-ounce porterhouses that can feed ten families.” My Chuck-covered feet clambered closer to his Salvatore Ferragamo loafers. “Money doesn’t solve all problems, including mine. Sometimes, I don’t recognize you, Nash. Doesn’t that scare you?”
I’d struck him.
Lightning straight to the hollowed-out cavity where his heart should have been.
Old Nash used to go without food so the overprivileged Winthrop could eat lunch. He never asked for a thank you, never made me feel bad about my crappy mother, and never forced me to accept his charity.
He left me notes because my longing eyes would track Betty’s every time Reed flicked it into the trash after a cursory glance. Once, I even hijacked one from the trash, brought it home, and pretended Betty was my mom and she’d written the words for me.
Nash found me hiding it under the bench in the center of the maze, paranoid Virginia would find it and tear it in half. Leaning against his dad’s iron shovel, he eyed the guilt etched on my face and held out a gloved hand.
My shaky fingers dropped the note into his palm. I prayed he wouldn’t toss it. Instead, he offered me a look I didn’t understand and told me the gap beneath the Hera statue made a better hiding spot.
If that Nash walked up to me now with a brown paper sack and a handwritten note, I’d gobble the peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a smile on my face and recite the note over and over until the words etched themselves in my soul.
This had everything to do with pride, but it also involved self-preservation.
I refused to taint my memory of Nash.
His phone rang, sparing us both. Otherwise, who knew the lengths he would go to in his quest of feeding me? He muttered something about Singapore and left me to sketch while the others ate. An hour later, he still hadn’t returned, but everyone had joined me in drawing portrait mockups.
“What did he say to you?” Ida Marie’s hands flew across her pad. She hounded me, for the eighth time, over one of my many arguments with Nash. Except, she didn’t know it had been an argument.
Plus, so much time had passed, and we hadn’t gotten in each other’s faces in a while. Come to think of it, the last time was the Soup Kitchen Incident. Or when I spat the sandwich at his foot if you counted that, which I didn’t on account of A—the distinct lack of witty comebacks on my part and B—my embarrassment over rummaging the sandwich from the trash and devouring it.
A secret I’d take to my grave.
My coffin had better come padlocked.
Who are you trying to fool? You fight him every time he tries to feed you.
“I already told you. He basically told me not to step out of line again,” I lied.
Sort of.
Was it a lie?
He had screamed it with his eyes the whole time, and I was almost certain he had said it, too. I didn’t even remember what the argument had been about. Just that he looked like he wanted to bend me over his knees and teach me a lesson, and my body hadn’t exactly been opposed to the prospect.
Ida Marie handed me a 4B charcoal pencil to fill the palm. I kept the pencil loose and slanted in my fingers as I shaded. Chantilly had us creating mockups for exclusive artwork to be placed in the upper-level suites.
None of us were well-known artists, but she had wasted a ridiculous amount of the budget on importing bamboo panels from China with a tariff that made me want to pull out her teeth and feed it to the gap-toothed Rottweiler that hung around Maggie’s tent city.
Mags, I corrected.
She loved me for slipping Stella my extra bread roll and our mutual obsession over murals. If she knew what I thought of Nash’s nickname for her, she would probably forgo the extra hours of sleep on the weekends and stop allowing me to babysit Stella and Harlan. Not that the tent city posed any dangers, but real mothers worried.
Virginia, on the other hand, never had.
I swapped the 4B for the 9B to color in the middle finger.
Ida Marie set down her sketch and scrunched her nose at it. “It’s awful.” She sighed, tore the sheet of paper from the sketchbook, crumpled it, and started again. Between us, a mountain of discarded sketches towered like a forgotten game of Jenga. “It’s just that Nash Prescott looks at you like—”
Chantilly walked up to us. “He looks at her like what?”
“Like he is disappointed in the entire design department,” Ida Marie lied. “You know, for going over budget on the furniture we ordered. Emery picked out the rugs.”
I bit my tongue before I blurted out the rugs had been on sale, and with the exception of me, everyone had exceeded the furnishing budget. We both knew Chantilly possessed the nose of a shark, and she sought news of me and Nash like a shark sought blood.
“Nash is right.” Chantilly straightened out Ida Marie’s balled up sketch, rolled her eyes, balled it up again, and tossed it into the trash before returning her attention to me. “Do not embarrass me. You may have Delilah Lowell’s protection, but as C.E.O., Mister Prescott outranks her.”
“Sir, yes, sir.” I mocked a salute. If she wanted to treat Nash’s company like it was the military, by all means, I would indulge her, but I would make her feel ridiculous about it.
“I mean it, Emery.” She stalked off after Cayden called her name.
“She hates you.” Ida Marie’s unhelpful remark hung between us. A knife with a dull blade. “Antagonizing her won’t help.”