The Love Coupon Page 3

  Whatever he’d done with his face, he masked it by glancing down at the countertop.

  “What I’m saying is I’ll keep out of your hair while I’m here, but it can’t be as weird as it was this week. We’ll have to see each other occasionally. Talk, even.”

  “Right.” Getting to know his temporary roommate was probably a safety feature.

  “I’ll get out of your way.” She didn’t move.

  “That’s not what you wanted to say.”

  “No. I wanted to say I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

  “You wanted to be pathetic so I’d feed you.”

  She shifted her weight onto one foot, brought her shoulders forward and hung her head, her scarf slithering to the floor. Picture of a sad, overworked executive ready to collapse from starvation. She looked over at him from under the exaggerated flutter of her lashes. “Will it work?”

  “I’m not an antisocial ogre.”

  She snapped to attention. “You’re not?”

  He waved her over, while he piled chicken and fried green tomatoes with butter beans on another plate. He still had enough to pack for lunch tomorrow.

  “I didn’t expect you to be home.” She tossed her satchel and the scarf on the sectional and unbuttoned her jacket, sliding onto a stool. He resisted saying Don’t leave your stuff there. “I wouldn’t have banged the door otherwise. I’ve been careful not to bang about. It nearly kills me.”

  “You don’t have to treat me like I’ll break if I should happen to hear a door bang or find you in the living room in pajamas.” He pushed the plate in front of her and went to the drawer for silverware. I can be an antisocial ogre, and keep banging the door like that and there will be words.

  “I don’t wear PJs.”

  A less careful man might’ve shut that drawer on his thumb.

  “I bullied you into having me stay here. I only have so much luck to push and I agreed to respect your rules.”

  “You don’t have to be a ghost.”

  “No smoking, no drinking, no drugs.” He poured her a glass of wine, with a somewhat defiant flourish, but it didn’t stop her reciting all the ways in which he’d established the weirdness. “No obvious possessions. No messing the kitchen. Only sounds of silence. No coming and going all times of the day and night. No fun. No bringing my stripper friends around. Act like a nun.” She took a sip of the wine. “Calling me a ghost makes me sound a lot more interesting.”

  They needed to start again. “You don’t have to avoid me.”

  “I’m an early bird and you prefer to work late. Other than weekends, it’s going to be easy.” She took a bite of chicken and made a good-food groan. “Unless you cook like this all the time. In which case think about getting a restraining order.”

  “When your building access code no longer flashes green, you can expect the worst.”

  “Noted,” she said.

  He came around the counter and sat beside her and they ate through Otis Redding singing “The Dock of the Bay,” Oasis singing “Slide Away,” and during Miles Davis’s “So What,” he snickered.

  “What didn’t I say?” she said.

  “That’s just it. I didn’t think you knew how to be quiet for this long.”

  “Food will make me do it.”

  “Noted.”

  “But otherwise I figure we live in a world that rewards people who can hold the floor, in an age where being thoughtful and measured is tagged as slow and dull.”

  That was something he understood. He was an introvert, but he’d learned early you didn’t get what you wanted unless you asked for it, fought for it, defended it. But that was significantly easier to do at moderate volume with fewer words when you were six-four, took up more than your fair share of space and had a decent baritone than if you were barely scraping five-three, had delicate features, translucent skin, rusty, knowing green eyes and could be considered cute.

  Yeah, his housemate was cute. Adorably so, which was at least half the reason he’d laid down the rules. Not that he was attracted to her—she wasn’t his type at all—but he was fascinated by her like you might be with a natural disaster. No, that wasn’t quite it. Having Flick in his condo was like getting a puppy. You knew the destructive phase wasn’t going to last forever, got caught up in the sheer adorableness factor and couldn’t resist playing around, and suddenly the whole day was gone.

  He didn’t have time for a puppy who could mess up the furniture or piss on things, or a distracting roommate who could do the same. But still, the whole idea of living with someone who was the opposite of everything he’d normally have chosen was oddly intriguing. It put his inner ogre on his best behavior.

  “This is a really great apartment.” She got off the stool and rounded the counter, taking both their empty plates and silverware to the sink and rinsing them off. “I knew it would be when you told me the address. Have you owned it long?”

  He watched her stack the dishwasher. “Not long enough to have made too big a dent in the mortgage.”

  “Did you use a decorator?”

  “Josh. He has a great eye.”

  “That would account for why it’s so Better Homes and Gardens, all this tonal gray and beige, not frat house central.”

  “Mushroom, that’s what Josh called it.” She started on the pan he’d left in the sink, giving it a scrub. “You don’t have to clean up.”

  “You fed me.”

  It had been unexpectedly pleasant. Banished the ghost. “We should do it again.”

  “Ah, Tom.” She leaned back on the counter, arms outstretched, her suit coat opening out to show a silky gray top that fitted close. “Don’t go bending those tight rails you run on for me. I’m temporary, remember.”

  He poured the last of the wine in his glass. Hers was still full. “You think I run on tight rails.”

  “You probably have hospital corners, can bounce a coin off your bed.”

  He still did the army-style corners. She’d snooped in his bedroom.

  “You’re smiling. I’m right.”

  Or it was just a good guess. “That’s the way I learned to make a bed.”

  “Your dad was military.”

  “Army.”

  “That explains a lot.”

  Much as he loved his dad, he’d spent considerable energy on not being him. “What exactly does it explain?” No more coin bounce, no more high-and-tight haircuts. He’d styled himself on Wall Street, not full battle rattle.

  She came around the counter again, marched right up to him and gave him a top-to-toe examination. “The bearing. Even in sweats, you have no slouch. You work out. You appreciate the brain-body connection. The rules. You like order. You like to control your environment. The apartment. You’re a neat freak. The food, hearty favorites. Bet your mom taught you to cook. You don’t like surprises. You believe in hard work, organization and good preparation. You go after what you want. You don’t let things—people—get in your way. But you’re not ruthless, not in an outward way. You’re actually a good guy who runs on tight rails. I could maybe get to like you, Tom O’Connell.”

  Mutual like would be a better-than-expected outcome when he’d already rehearsed the “this isn’t working out, you need to leave” conversation. “My gram taught me how to cook. My mom died when I was a kid. Decided we suddenly needed ice cream cake and went out in a rainstorm to get it. Was driving too fast, wrapped her car around a pole and never came home.”

  She took a step back and shock lit her face. “Holy shit.”

  He closed his eyes. He hadn’t meant to say all that, but Flick seemed to see straight through him, and she had him down, so he’d wanted to kick back with something she couldn’t know. Dumb.

  “How old were you?”

  “I was eight.” Nothing was the same after that. No surprise was good. “Grandma Bel is still alive.”r />
  “Your dad?”

  “Retired. He was engineer corp. He has a home renovation business now. They both live in Florida.” He liked she hadn’t done the sympathy act, but didn’t avoid the whole topic either.

  “Okay, do me.” She spread her arms wide, turning in a slow circle.

  He waited until she faced him again. “Pardon, ma’am?”

  She laughed at his drawl. He didn’t know where it came from, an echo of his father. Her choice of words was like a puppy’s nip and he’d reacted to the unexpected bite.

  “I mean, I sliced and diced you. It’s your turn to do me.”

  “I see.”

  “So go on.”

  “I don’t run on tight rails.” That made him sound limited, hemmed in, and now he sounded defensive.

  “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “It’s being focused, goal-oriented. It’s why I’m here, not in the army or laying roof tiles. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things, but I wanted something different.” And he’d got it. It was the suits and the condo and the career prospects that meant he’d have choices in the future. And why was he defending his choices to her? How he lived was none of her business.

  “And you think I’m not focused. Bring it.”

  He got off the stool and stood in front of her, making her tip her head back to look him in the face. She didn’t back up and they both knew he could use his size to intimidate her. The best thing he could do at this point was shut the hell up, but Flick’s eyes double-dared him.

  “I think you’re part fun fair, part wrecking ball. I think you have an on switch but no off. I think you’re good at your job. Ambitious. Pushy. You’ll play rough if it gets you what you want, but you’re a politician too, so you’re not above manipulation, razzle-dazzle ’em, move fast so they can’t see you coming and don’t see the trail of destruction you leave behind till it’s too late. I think you’ll burn out hard because you can’t pace yourself. Why don’t you have a significant other? What’s with the sexual desert?”

  Her chin bounced higher. “Why don’t you?”

  “I’m asking the questions.”

  She ripped off a sloppy salute that was sheer smart-ass. “Maybe because I run on rails too.”

  Which wasn’t the answer he expected. “Roller-coaster rails.”

  “That’s right, and most men can’t stand the pace, don’t like the sharp turns and jolts. They want me to be predictable, safe. And I’m not. I’m the first person in my family to finish school. To go to college. That took hard work and I couldn’t always be sweet. Nice finishes last and that’s not going to be me, and what I want most in my life is to help other people to have the chances I got.”

  He took a step back and sat. This got hot quickly. He’d pushed it, and she was stirred up, steaming. He needed to de-escalate things before one of them said something they really regretted and couldn’t take back. “Would you like more wine? I can open another bottle.”

  “I would like pie.”

  “I don’t have pie.”

  “But you can cook pie, right? You have pastry in the freezer and canned peaches in the pantry.”

  She had snooped and admitted it. “Yes, I can bake pie.” His entire cooking regime was comfort food he could make half asleep, and pie fitted right in. If he felt like eating clever ingredients, fine food, he ate out.

  “You’re being a shit. If you think I’m so awful, why did you let me move in? I can’t be a nun, though the celibacy part is a lock, and I can’t promise not to disturb you, but I’ll do my best to play by your rules. I’ve had a tough week, disappointed a lot of people, and I would like pie.”

  He should’ve told her where the market was so she could go buy Sara Lee, but she stood there with her hands on her hips, with hair escaping her clip and curling around her face, with red cheeks and over-bright eyes, and he was being a shit, because Flick Dalgetty made him twitch with irritation.

  Which was how he came to be making Grandma Bel’s peach pie on a Friday night, to Talking Heads’s “Psycho Killer,” for the roommate who wasn’t a ghost and wasn’t a nun, who he was unaccountably bothered by.

  Chapter Four

  Who knew it took an hour to bake a peach pie from scratch? No one in Flick’s life had ever cooked any kind of pie. They bought them at Walmart, and they came in a box, and they took twenty minutes to reheat if you bothered with the oven and about five if you were impatient and used the microwave.

  Everyone in her family had been impatient. Mostly they ate pie cold and the dessert default was ice cream.

  She wouldn’t have asked Tom to make pie if she’d known how long it took. Now she had to eat the pie, which wasn’t the hardship; she wanted the pie, it was the hanging around while he made the pie that was the issue.

  Tom clearly didn’t like her, or want her living here, and that was a problem. And hell, she’d known that and yet once she’d learned his address and asking price, she’d jumped in feet first, like always, because the solution in front of you was always a better option than the one that might never materialize.

  What an end to a disagreeable week. Resigning had not gone well. Turning down the counteroffer even less well. Her timing was bad. The firm was busy, and clients relied on her. She’d been made to feel she was letting the whole place down by quitting now, and instead of excusing herself and going to her room when she’d encountered Tom and his fried chicken, she’d gone and reignited the cold war between them, right when he’d started to sound more interesting than a ruggedly handsome boulder.

  And she hadn’t mentioned the job or the move to her family yet.

  Roller coaster was right. Sometimes she made herself feel sick with the twisty machinations of her life.

  At least pie-cooking time allowed her to escape the living room and change out of her work clothes. She took her cue from Tom and pulled on yoga pants and a sloppy top that hung to mid-thigh. He was barefoot, so she didn’t worry about shoes. He’d see her chipped toenail polish, but that detail hardly mattered. He’d seen her temper and her childishness.

  “He really brings out the best in you, Felicity.” She washed her face, removing what traces of makeup, untouched through the day, had remained. Her hair was a mess, but this wasn’t a date. She didn’t need to look like anything except comfortable, so she pulled it out of its band and left it loose, shoved back behind her shoulders.

  She looked pale and tired.

  Annoying that Tom looked as good out of his corporate wardrobe as in. He had the chest and shoulders to make a T-shirt look sexy and the square jaw of a cartoon hero. No denying it, her housemate was a looker for a boulder.

  Annoying that the man cooked so well. Though anything that wasn’t reheated leftovers was good as far as Flick was concerned. Still, annoying. Bet he took back that invitation to eat together again. For about five minutes, it had sounded damn near neighborly, before he said she’d burn out and implied she was a lousy lay.

  She stopped with her hand on the fashionably chromed door handle of her room. “I made a man who doesn’t like me talk about his dead mom and cook pie. Go me.”

  She’d be lucky to taste the pie through the guilt of that. She’d eat, make the appropriate nom-nom noises, offer to clean up and quit the scene before she could do any further damage to her tenuous living arrangement in the nicest apartment she’d ever been in.

  As soon as she opened the bedroom door she could smell the pie. Not as mouthwatering as fried chicken but wonderful all the same. A heated Sara Lee did not smell this delicious; she could almost taste the sugar, and the smoothness of the peaches.

  Tom was settled on the big comfortable modular sectional with the TV on CNN and the remote in his hand. He’d moved her satchel and scarf from the sectional where she dumped them to one of four stools at the kitchen counter. He switched back to the music channel wh
en she came in. Some eighties thing she didn’t recognize. He had a slick sound system but an odd taste in music.

  “The Pixies,” he said.

  “‘Where is my mind?’” she said on top of the lyric. Where indeed? “You like old stuff.”

  “I like playlists other people have made. Saves me the bother.”

  How efficient. And soulless. “Look, I’m sorry about earlier. The pie thing.”

  “It’s fine. Pie is good. I’m a big boy, I could’ve told you to take your pie request and shove it. And you didn’t bully me into offering you the room. It suits my purposes to have you here, and again, I’m not shy about telling people to fuck off. This is a temporary thing between us, but it doesn’t have to be unpleasant. We should take the time to get to know each other.”

  It was a good thing one of them was a rational adult. That was the most he’d said since the hacks-and-flacks mixer when he’d nearly taken her out with his body slam. Except he was looking at her as if she’d done something he didn’t like again.

  “Am I dressed wrong?” Shit. The guy had rules on top of rules. She didn’t know how she felt about him moving her stuff.

  He placed the remote control in a carved wooden tray on the coffee table that was a solid slab of caramel-streaked marble, and stood. “Of course not. I didn’t realize you were so—” He stopped, jaw clamped tight.

  “So what?”

  “Young.”

  “I’m twenty-eight.”

  “You could pass for eighteen without the—” he waved a hand to indicate her body “—uniform—” and her face “—and gunk.”

  She parroted his gesture. “Which is precisely why I need the uniform and the gunk. No one wants to take policy and public affairs advice from an eighteen-year-old.”

  One of her biggest expenses when she’d landed a consultancy job was her wardrobe. She’d lived in jeans and tees and flirty cheap cotton dresses and had never worn heels. She’d had no idea how to dress to impress and neither did anyone she knew.