Aaron’s jean-clad legs were all Mandy could see from her position near Cars to Work’s back door. Still, she kept her distance should anyone be watching from the back offices. They’d been very careful about not being found in the same room together alone, and she was about to nip the affair in the bud. No point making it public now. She kept her voice low, knowing sound traveled well from the parking lot.
“Aaron?”
He stopped tinkering and his foot ceased tapping out a beat only known to him. “Miranda? That you, sweetheart?”
“Yes. Mike is finishing up his packing back in Edenton. He called earlier. He asked me if he could crash at my place for a while until he could figure out where he wants to live permanently.”
Aaron grunted and slid himself out from under the car on his creeper. He had soot all over his cheeks, his hair was mussed, and brow was furrowed. To her, he looked wonderful. She suddenly felt very depressed.
“What’d you tell him?”
“I made up some bullshit lie about the apartment complex needing to move me to another unit because of a flooding issue.”
He narrowed his eyes at her as he wiped his hands clean on a rag and sat up. “Did he believe it?”
“I don’t know, but either way he’s prepared to make other arrangements. I feel like an absolute bitch for not being able to help him out. We’ve always helped each other.”
Aaron shrugged.
“Great.” She turned on the heel of her ballet flat and huffed. She had her hand on the door handle and was rearing back to pull the door open when he called her back. His voice was surprisingly gentle.
“Sweetheart, wait. What do you want me to do? Tell me what you want me to do.”
It was her turn to shrug. Too little, too late.
“I don’t know. Act like you care, I guess? That’d be a good start.”
“I do care — don’t think for a minute I don’t. I’m just not sure how to go about this sort of thing. Secret love affairs aren’t described in political handbooks or anything and, if they are, I’m sure they explicitly advise against them. I’m doing the best I can, Miranda.”
“So am I. Starting from right now, anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think I need to find my own apartment.”
Aaron put his hands on the ground to brace himself to stand and opened his mouth as if to object, but Mandy held up her hand to halt his words.
“Save it. Please, just — just don’t.”
“No!” He was on his feet and pulled her into the shielded entryway out of view of the windows. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and held her against his chest. “No. I’ll figure something out. You don’t have to leave. If you want me to put Michael up somewhere I’ll — ”
She shook her head slowly and gave his chest a little push. “No. Right now I … I need some space. My own space. I’ve gone too long without it and I’m a woman who likes having her own things. I appreciate you taking care of me. I really do, and I know you liked doing it but I just … I don’t … ” She shrugged.
His expression darkened and he took a step back from her. “Is it that guy that called you a couple nights ago? That Bo? Or the one whose card I found in the bathroom trashcan?”
She quirked her head to the side and narrowed her eyes at him. She hadn’t thought about Bo for more than five minutes since his call. She’d thought a lot about his mother’s spanikopita, but not Bo specifically. Besides, Bo was a nice guy, but compared to Aaron’s molten aura, he was a cold fish.
“No, Aaron. I tend to only allow one man at a time to frustrate me. Right now, you’re it.” She yanked the door open and stomped down the hall, forcing back tears.
After gathering her computer and CTW cell phone, she struck out for that apartment complex she’d seen advertising free cable and half-off security deposits.
• • •
“How are you doing, kiddo?” Aaron idly flipped through television channels while slouching low on his sofa. The living room was dim, blinds drawn as he sat alone in the quiet with his phone.
“Super. Sick as a dog, but happy. Carter is supposed to be here to get me tomorrow. He’s flying in with his family’s plane.”
“That’s great.” He turned the television off and tossed the remote. There wasn’t anything on worth watching, not that he was able to concentrate, anyway.
“Great? Who am I talking to, here? Is this my big brother or is this a Rick Bane hoax of some sort?”
“It’s me, why?”
“Because your usual response would be something along the lines of me wasting my potential and blah, blah, blah, and such and such.”
“Oh.” The truth was, he hadn’t even heard her. He’d turned out after noticing Mandy had left her glasses case on his coffee table. He picked it up and rubbed it between his palms.
“I’m sorry, I was a bit distracted. I wasn’t listening.”
Elly groaned. “Then why’d you call me?”
He shrugged then realized Elly couldn’t see it. “I don’t know. It was an automatic reflex or something.”
“Okay. What’d Mandy do to you?”
“Huh?” Aaron sat up.
“Don’t play dumb. I know you. I may be ditzy, but I’m not blind.”
“What?”
“It took me a while to realize it because I’m not so great at putting two and two together when the math is right in front of my face, but give me a night to sleep on it and the answer will come to me in my dreams.”
“Elly, does Carter have you hooked on opium or something?”
“Ha. Funny. Look, it wasn’t hard to figure out. I realized you like Mandy. A lot, probably.”
He struggled to swallow the lump in his throat and when he managed to speak again his voice was hoarse. “Oh yeah? What makes you think that?”
“Dunno. Maybe it wasn’t just one thing, but several, but what really tipped me off is that you let her give me advice.”
“So?”
“And you don’t do that. I don’t know if you’re aware of it. You’ve always gotten defensive when people have tried to tell me what to do, or when they’ve criticized me. You didn’t this time. You even left me alone with her, which tells me you not only like her, but you trust her. How many women do you trust that way beyond Mom?”
“I leave you alone with Tina all the time.”
“That’s different and you know it. Tina’s like a nanny or something to me. She’s hardass, takes no guff, but she doesn’t try to give me life lessons ’cause she doesn’t really like me that much.”
He raked his free hand through his hair and paced beside his kitchen island, still clutching Mandy’s glasses case. He’d seen one like it before, but couldn’t put a finger on where.
The spot where Mandy had used to set up her laptop to do reports was still as empty as the day she’d moved out to her own place and looking at it made his stomach drop again. He missed his girl. He missed her clutter and her just taking up space in his life. She’d bundled up her few things a week before and left while he was at CTW fiddling under the hood of some economy class car like an idiot. Mandy had been working at home ever since, avoiding him, though he wasn’t sure he could blame her. She had said she became easily attached. He couldn’t help but to wonder if she was feeling his absence the same way he was feeling hers.
“You still there, Aaron?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m right, aren’t I? I’m right about something for once?”
“Yeah. I guess you are.”
“Hot damn.” Elly cackled. “So, what’s the problem?”
“The same one as always, Elly. I don’t want to have my private life put under a microscope. I want my relationships to work or not work because of my own actions, and not from outside pressures. Neither of us asked to be dragged into the limelight with Dad, but I can prevent making anyone else suffer along with me.”
Elly sighed all the way from Southport. “God, Aaron. You’re the smartest guy I know. Figure something out and stop torturing that woman. I think mom would like her. She’s got class and stuff. I gotta barf, bye.” She clicked off and he leaned against the island a while longer with the quiet phone still pressed to his ear.
Class, Elly had said. He stared at the programmed numbers in his phone for a minute, carefully choosing his words, and then dialed his mother’s cell phone number.
“Yes?” she answered.
“Are you alone?”
Silence. He heard footsteps then a door being shut.
“I am now.”
“I have a problem.”
“Legal or business?”
“Neither. Romantic.”
Mom sucked in a breath. “Are the marriage rumors true?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. Anyone I know?”
“No.”
“Someone at work?”
“Yes.”
“So, someone I know. Is it Miss McCarthy?”
“How do you know Miranda?”
“Serendipity is how. I raised you to like women with good taste. Apparently that led her right to me. Do you have a pen?”
He rustled through the mess on top of his desk and found the silver pen he normally kept in his pocket. “Yeah.”
“Meet me at this address in … oh, twenty minutes? It’s near the outlet mall. Try not to get followed. I don’t feel like arguing with your father tonight. The only wine left at the mansion is that muscadine swill I have to sample before that festival.”
• • •
“Everything, everything, everything must go! We’re expanding our lot and getting ready for the biggest influx of used car inventory Eastern North Carolina has ever seen. We’re slashing prices and — ”
Mike turned off the television and flicked the remote onto the floor. He put his right arm around Mandy’s shoulders and pointed to the screen. “At first I thought Don was kidding me about Dad shooting a commercial, but after having seen it aired seventy-five times in the past four days I’m inclined to believe him.”
She crossed her legs at the ankles atop her new coffee table and took a sip of her coffee. She made a gakking noise after realizing once again Michael hadn’t put sugar in it. He drank his black and thought she should consider doing the same. She wasn’t a connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination. She just poured it down her throat by the decanter-full and hoped she’d live to see 9 P.M.
“What exactly is he playing at? Edenton can’t support a used car dealership that size. Most people shop for cars in Hampton Roads or Elizabeth City.”
“Yeah, they do, but he’s going to be doing something a little shadier.”
“You mean shadier than he already does?”
“Well, yeah. He doesn’t make much money on the mid-range cars, so he’s converting his business model to economy and older model vehicles he can make more profit on.”
“How? The profit margin is about the same. Used is used.”
Mike shook his head. “Not exactly. Where he’s going to make his money is on the financing. He’s going to price the cars really low and then screw people on the interest rate. Folks’ll end up paying twice what the cars are worth if they don’t get repossessed first. Nobody ever reads all the numbers on the financing paperwork. They just read the number telling them what their monthly payment will be and hold out their hands for the keys.”
“And he’s banking on the fact that people will come from all over to get what they perceive to be a cheap car.”
“Yeah. He’s kind of subverting the Cars to Work program and other charities like it. People get frustrated by waiting lists, so instead they queue up to have themselves screwed without lube.”
“As Abi says: common sense is not common.”
“Your nana is smart.”
“Yes, she is.”
Mandy had actually talked to her grandmother the night before. She’d bitched about her mother’s coolness, Ermine’s metamorphosis, having her stepbrother as a roommate, and of course about Aaron. Abi had been silent and understanding right up until the last part. When she sighed, Mandy knew she had a lecture on the way. Abi didn’t disappoint.
“Listen, mi abejorro. People very rarely take the advice of old women on matters of love, but hear this. There was once a woman, not much older than yourself, madly in love with the nephew of the king. It wasn’t a one-sided infatuation. He loved her right back. The problem was she was low-born and there was already a bride chosen for him. Some ugly French woman with a face like a goat. So, he married the French woman.”
“Abi!” Mandy had balked. “That’s an awful story!”
“Shush! Let me finish. So, they were split up, yes? But that didn’t mean he stopped loving her. Mistresses weren’t an uncommon thing back then, especially in arranged marriages.”
“And she was fine with playing second banana? Is that the moral of the story? I don’t want to be anyone’s tramp.”
“No. The moral is she took what she could get within the constraints handed to her because she loved him that much. Was it ideal? No. But look how much came to bear from that union. You’re here, right?”
“Whatever, Abi.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I just assumed you made that royal lineage story up when I was a kid just to make me feel special.”
“Oh, mi abejorro. What ever happened to you to have so little idea of your self-worth? Of course you’re special, and not just because of lineage.”
“I thought I did have a pretty good idea. It’s been a rough few months. Still, I’m not playing secret lover with Aaron Owen anymore.”
“Owen? Any relation to that woman Elly?”
Mandy had rubbed her eyes and sighed.
“Miranda, I know I taught you to pick your battles, but you’re not picking the right ones. You love him?”
Mandy was silent, but Abi plowed on. “You need to figure out if what he’s asking of you is all that unreasonable. If it is — fine. You’ll move on. If not, figure out a way to make it work. Besos. I have a date with some cake.”
The conversation had left Mandy feeling even more confused than when she’d started.
Michael stood with some difficulty. “Ugh. Well, speaking of cars, I need to get to work. I’ve got to go to an auction in Greenville today. Hope I don’t run into Dad. That’d be awkward.” He stretched his arms over his head and groaned when his back popped. “You working at the office today? We can carpool and I’ll have Frank bring me home.”
She picked the remote up, turned the channel to a morning news talk show and curled her legs up under her. “No. I’ll probably work from home. I need to figure out how some of the part-time techs ended up with overtime last week.”
“I don’t envy you.” Mike shuffled into the kitchen, deposited his mug into the sink, and limped toward the bathroom to shower.
“Right. Fun.”
The truth was she had already figured out the overtime glitch. She was actually avoiding Aaron. They’d been communicating only in terse instant messages for most of the week. He had tried to call her once, but she quickly hit the ignore button on her phone and shut it off for the rest of the day.
Attempting to avoid him that day turned out to be a moot exercise when at eleven o’clock she realized she was missing about half the files she needed to update the employee handbook. She’d transferred them from Aaron’s computer at work onto a thumb drive the week before and left them in her rarely occupied office. Or at least she hoped. She thought with it being nearly lunch he’d be out of the office, or perhaps on the road where he preferred to be.
That hope was dashed the moment she realized the thumb drive wasn’t in her office at all, but his. She’d left it in there when she’d had to place some sticky note reminders on his computer monitor.
She backed into his office and closed the door as soundlessly as she could only to have a pair of large hands grip her around the waist and pull her against a warm, sandalwood-scented chest.
“I’m going to guess by the way you just leapt a mile into the air you weren’t expecting me to be here.” The rough pad of one of Aaron’s fingers dipped into the collar of her shirt and edged down her shoulder. He grazed his lips down her neck and stopped at the place her bra strap should have been. “You’re not wearing a bra?” He answered his own question by looking down the front of her casual tee-shirt dress.
She pushed her collar back up and edged away from his hold. “It’s usually just the girls here during the day. I figured I’d just drop in and run right back out with what I needed.”
When she finally turned around to get a look at him, she sucked in a breath. He was wearing a dark gray suit that seemed to have been cut precisely to his athletic build. Beneath the jacket was a crisp white shirt with the top three buttons undone. A light blue silk tie with a gray fleur de lis pattern hung around his neck. He looked damn good in Tar Heel blue for someone with such an aversion to the color.
He walked to his desk and leaned against the front edge, crossing his legs at the ankles. “And what do you need?”
“I’ve lost a thumb drive … that I need for … going somewhere?” she squeaked.
He made a beckoning gesture with his hands and she found herself walking forward without having given her feet the permission to do so. When they were toe-to-toe, he reached out to her and swept her long bangs out of her eyes.
“That’s better. That’s where you should be.” He let his thumb linger, tracing a trail down the side of her face to her jaw and chin. “I have an important meeting with some potential financial backers. Funding may be a bigger issue come next year.”
“Why?”
He smoothed his palm down to where the heart-shaped pendant on her necklace hung. He fingered it idly and let it fall back onto her chest. “My father thinks he can control me by controlling my grant eligibility.”
“Do you need to be controlled?”
His palms crushed her breasts, pushing them up and together beneath the stretchy fabric of her dress. “No. I don’t.”
She could see a bulge forming at the front of his pants and impulsively put her hand over it.
“I missed you,” he whispered, bringing his head down to the level of hers and locking his lips onto her mouth. He palmed her rear, scrunching the fabric of her dress up in his hands so her ass was exposed to the air. “When are you coming home?”
Home.
She whispered back, “We’ve already had this discussion.”
“Give me an answer I want to hear, then.” He nudged her panties down and parted her cheeks with his fingers. He silenced her with his kiss once more and moved one hand around to her front, tapping into the wetness of her sex and rubbing it onto her swollen nub. When his fingers breeched her tight entrance the only think keeping her from moaning loudly was his mouth over hers.
She placed trembling hands at the waist of his pants, fumbling with the belt and trying to work his button free. Somehow she managed to release the fastening without ripping it off and looked up into his eyes as she encircled her hands around his cock. The head was slick, and she shuddered at the accumulated memories of how many times it’d breached her before.
He seemed to be reading her thoughts, or perhaps something in her gaze impelled him, because he picked her up and set her back flat against the desktop. Seeming to change his mind, he backed off her just enough to slip his fingers under her sides, and turned her over, sliding her back to the edge so her ass was presented to him like a gift.
He slid into her in one easy thrust, the force of which made her try to dig her nails into the wooden desk. She thought she should feel brazen there over his desk with him pounding into her, but with him filling her the way she’d so desired for the past few sleepless nights she found it difficult to care about propriety.
“God, Miranda … please … ”
“Please … what … Aaron?”
She was so close. So close to that brass ring — the queen of all orgasms. She could feel it forming in her loins and spreading upward to her breasts and all the way down to her clenched toes. Her breath had gone shallow, vision blurred, and she spilled over the edge when she felt his teeth clamping into the tender skin between her neck and shoulder. He jammed the heel of his hand against her mouth just in time to stifle her scream.
“What an awful knack of timing I have! I’ll give you two a moment to tidy up,” a deep, cheerful voice said from behind them just before the office door clicked closed.