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Michelle
I took my time finishing breakfast, painfully aware of the way Gray looked at me. He kept his eyes trained on me for long moments at a time, though his gaze looked far off. Distant. Like he was seeing me, but not taking me in. I wanted to know what he was thinking. What he was feeling. But then again, I didn’t. His brunch meal was fabulous. It took all I had not to moan and praise him over it. Last night still stuck out in my mind, but his admission slapped me across the face.
He was attracted to me?
He wanted me?
I understood his reasoning. His want to keep his distance. And it seemed as if we’d reached some sort of agreement to not give into our attraction. But I didn’t like that. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to have to restrain myself with him. That kiss freed something within my gut. Shot electricity through my veins that I wanted to feel again. But I knew all too quickly how a lust could become an unhealthy attachment, and Gray did have a point there.
He’d be leaving in a few days and I would still be here.
And honestly? I would be leaving, too. If I couldn’t find a job—and it looked more and more like I wouldn’t—then I’d be leaving as well. Headed back to North Dakota. Back to an oil town where my mother would get to say things like ‘I told you so’ and ‘guess you’re really not better than the rest of us.’ Back to a life I hated, but a job I could resume. At least, I thought I’d be able to. I didn’t know anymore. I wasn’t that sure of anything. Pretty much everything was on wobbling stilts, and the foundation I thought I’d planted had been swallowed up by the gaping hole I was being dangled over.
The least I could do was accept the inevitable and start planning my future.
A shitty as my prospects were, I did have the option of going back to school. I’d only gotten my degree two years ago, so the credits were still transferable. I could go to college and get a four-year degree. I’d always wanted to teach. To educate. I could enroll in a teaching program at one of the local colleges. I’d have to take out loans, but I could probably find some financial need based scholarships, too. I graduated with a 3.2 GPA, which should be decent enough to find me something.
That was a plan.
Another option was trying to get some of my old jobs back. I could take the money I had in my duffel bag and use it to buy a used laptop to get back to medical transcription. I hated that damn job, but it had covered my bills nicely. And if I could hook myself up with one of the hospitals in the area, instead of spending my time in seedy bars fucking dead-end guitar players, I could really bloom that into something.
That was another option.
“Are you busy for the next couple of days?”
Gray’s voice ripped me from my trance as I chewed up the last of my crepe.
So good.
“I’m going to be on the road distributing Anton’s possessions, and it’s a huge job. I’ll need someone to help me go through everything and to keep it straight as I get it handed off.”
“I told you I would help,” I said.
“Well, I’d like to pay you for your time.”
I rose my eyes to meet his as he stood at the sink washing off his plate.
“You cooked, I clean. Remember?” I asked.
He grinned and my heart slammed against my chest.
Why did he have to go?
“How does one hundred dollars an hour sound?”
My fork fell to my plate for the second time as my jaw unhinged. And I didn’t even try to conceal my shock. He wanted to pay me what? He had that kind of money!?
“That’s way too much,” I said. “Anton didn’t pay me nearly that much.”
“Well, I’m not Anton,” he said.
“No. You’re not paying me for doing this. I offered to help. Anton was my friend. A good friend. An impactful friend. You’re not paying me to help you distribute things according to his will.”
“Well, you’ll never become a billionaire if you keep giving your time away for free,” he said with a chuckle.
“Well, I’m not at risk to become a billionaire anyway, so I don’t have to worry about it,” I said, giggling.
“One hundred dollars an hour is my final offer. If you don’t take it, you don’t get to help.”
“That’s not fair. What do you have against me helping you?”
“Nothing. But I am going to pay you for your time. Anton was your friend, yes, but he didn’t appoint you in his will to help with all this. I’m enlisting your help because I’ll need it, and I don’t enlist help without paying for it.”
I furrowed my brow at his statement. Was he a business owner or something?
“Okay, fine,” I said. “I’ll take the job.”
“Good. Where do we start?” he asked.
“I need a list of the possessions Anton’s giving away. We have to organize it according to people in the community. If we just go driving around, it’ll take us a lot more time. We need to match names and locations to things, and we’ll need a road map to follow.”
“I’ve got that list somewhere. Let me go get it,” he said.
I took my plate over to the sink and cleaned it off while he went to search. Finally, I felt like I had a purpose again. It was a purpose that would soon dissipate over the coming days, but at least I had something to fill my time with. I washed my hands and wiped my mouth off one last time, then sat down at the table just as Gray walked back in.
“Here is it,” he said.
He slapped a stack of papers in front of me before he eased himself into his chair.
“I don’t need the will. Just the list,” I said.
“That is the list.”
“What?”
He chuckled as he leaned forward onto his forearms.
“Anton has a lot of stuff. Almost everyone in this town is getting something from him. Like I said, it’s a hefty job.”
“You’re telling me,” I said breathlessly. “Okay. So, we need to get started then.”
“You’re in charge.”
“What? Me?”
“Yep. You have a plan in place, so tell me what you need done.”
“You hired me, remember?”
“And as a manager, you delegate.”
“A manager,” I said.
“Yep. And if you play your cards right, I’ll can write you a recommendation letter so you can find a job once I leave.”
I narrowed my eyes at him as he sat back in his chair. What good would a recommendation from some guy I worked with for a few days do? But, it was better than nothing. And it was obvious the resume I had now wasn’t working. So I’d take whatever I could get.
“Deal,” I said. “First, we need a map of the town so we can write names down on it. I know where some people live, and something tells me you know the rest.”
“Unfortunately. Let me go rummage around. I think Anton’s got a few maps of the area around here.”
“And while you’re gone, I’m going to take this list and highlight names so they’re easier to pick out.”
“Sounds good. Be right back.”
We worked side-by-side the rest of the day, plotting out where people lived and what would be delivered to them. And the entire time, my thigh rested solidly against his. There were moments when he leaned over to point something out to me and I felt his breath on my neck. Moments when our eyes connected and the words we spoke fell into a void.
I couldn’t stop focusing on his lips.
It was hard to concentrate. Hard to keep focus. More than once, I found myself distracted by the heat of his leg rather than the words coming from his mouth. It took us hours to plot a trail on the map Gray had finally found. Hours to write in the margins what everyone would receive. We’d have to make at least four trips just to deliver things around the city, because Gray’s car wasn’t nearly big enough to haul all of it at once.
I suggested renting a truck or a U-Haul from somewhere, until I found out that we’d have to travel an hour just to pick it up in the first place.
There was one moment, however, that stuck out in my mind more than the rest. A moment when Gray reached across me to get the highlighter. His bare arm grazed the front of my tits just barely, and I sucked in a sharp breath of air. Gray turned his head and looked into my eyes, studying me as he grabbed the highlighter. He moved his arm over my head as my eyes fell back to the map, but then his hand came up and rested against the chair at my back.
And he scooted his chair closer to mine.
“So do you want to start planning our routes?” he asked.
My eyes fluttered up to his as the sun finally sank below the horizon, coating the house in darkness.
“I um—”
My gaze fell to his lips before I closed my eyes.
“I think we should turn on a light,” I said, breathlessly.
