Working Stiff

thought, and reached to change the channel. He shook his head and stopped her. Instead, he turned up the volume for the pants and moans. “McCallister,” he said into the phone, sounding annoyed and distracted. “This had better be important.” He listened for a second, then subtly altered his tone. “Ms. Harte. Sorry. I didn’t check the screen.” Now he turned the volume down. “Yes. Yes, I know.” Another longer pause. “I’ll alert my team to handle it. I’m not close to the office now.” He locked eyes with Bryn, and mouthed, Say something.

What? she mouthed back. He shrugged.

Well, might as well have fun with it. She pitched her voice to a low, sexy range and said, “Patrick, this is no time to be on the phone.”

He shushed her—loud enough for Irene Harte to hear it—and gave her a thumbs-up.

Bryn reached over, took his tie, and unknotted it. The rustle of fabric would sound good, she thought.

McCallister froze, staring at her, momentarily distracted from his conversation. He reengaged with a physical jolt. “Ah, yes. Yes, that’s fine. I’ll be in later. Eight o’clock.”

This was kind of fun. Bryn unfastened his collar, then slipped the second button loose. She was enjoying the rising confusion in his eyes. Thank God she actually had the upper hand in this very weird relationship, for once. Stop, he mouthed. She grinned and went for the next button.

He grabbed her hand in his, tightly, and pulled her closer—so close she could almost make out what his boss was saying on the phone. She froze, and he didn’t move again either, until he said, “All right. See you then,” and hung up the call.

He didn’t release his hold. “What the hell were you doing?”

“I was selling your alibi,” she said. “Let go.”

“That,” he said, “was not at all necessary, Bryn. I thought we agreed not to complicate things.”

“You were trying to make her think we’re having a mad affair. I was just helping.”

“Helping,” he repeated. “Bryn—trust me, you are not helping.”

She met his eyes and held them. “Then why did you pick this particular alibi?”

He bent forward and kissed her. Really kissed her. The shock of his warm, silken lips pressing and sliding on hers made her tense at first, and she thought about resisting for half a second before her muscles melted in to warm jelly of their own accord. She didn’t intend to kiss him back, but she couldn’t help herself. He was warm and alive and strong, and the intense sensation of his mouth opening, of his hands on her back, of his tongue …

He let her go and stood up, very quickly. He took a giant step back from the bed, turned away, and began fastening the buttons on his shirt.

“Pretending that didn’t just happen won’t help,” she said. Her heart was pounding, and she was vibrating all over with the intensity of what had just happened. He was, too. She could see it in the abrupt, jerky motions of his hands. “Patrick. Talk to me.”

“Nothing happened,” he said. His voice was tight and angry. “And nothing will ever happen again. I apologize.”

“I don’t want your apology; I want you to tell me what’s going on between us, because there’s been something for a while now. You know it. I know it.”

“I told you. Nothing. Instinct.” He lips twisted, and he turned away to do up his tie. “Hey, you’re the one who called me a man whore.”

“I didn’t mean it.” She got off the bed and touched his shoulder. “I didn‘t. And … thank you.”

“For what?”

“For … stepping off.” Even if, at this moment, she didn’t want him to. Some desperate part of her wanted this, craved feeling alive, but she knew it was probably a terrible mistake. That was what he was trying to tell her. “I’ll go take my shower.”

She closed and locked the bathroom door, leaned against it for a moment, and then stripped off her clothes. The tub wasn’t particularly clean, but the water was hot and plentiful, and the rough, cheap soap felt good. Not as good as she imagined other things might feel, but good enough.

She washed away the blood, and the desire, and by the time she came back into the cramped, cheap bedroom (and, God, she hadn’t fully appreciated just how cheap and worn it was until that moment) she found McCallister stripped down to a white T-shirt and Joe Boxers, scrubbing mud out of his pants. He was still wearing his socks and dress shoes, which for some reason she found hilarious.

He looked up, frowned at her, and went back to what he was doing. Mr. French was sitting at his feet and watching with his head cocked, evidently fascinated, but he broke off and padded to Bryn. She leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms. “You know, it’s not going to help. That suit’s pretty much ruined.”

“I’ll change on the way.”

“Maybe you can tell Ms. Harte that I like it rough.”

“Not funny,” he said. He put the washcloth aside—a different one, she noticed; it didn’t have bloodstains— and put the pants on. His shirt was wrinkled, but clean, and he buttoned up quickly. Even his jacket looked passable now, except for the torn seam at the shoulder. “If I don’t have time to change, I’ll tell her we had some problems in the field. She’ll believe it.” There was something wrong, some tightness around his eyes and mouth. He almost looked haunted.

Bryn took a wild, instinctive guess and said, “The appointment tonight. It’s not just a business meeting, is it? You and Harte …?”

He passed the loose circle of his tie over his head, popped his collar, and snugged the tie tight before he snapped down the points again. “We’ve got a long drive. Do you need me to walk the dog before we go?”

“No, he’s fine. And you didn’t answer me.”

“I’m not going to answer,” he said. He swung open the door to the setting sun, head down. “After you.”

On the way back to her apartment, plans changed; McCallister got a phone call, said a few terse words, and then said, “Problem at your apartment. Joe is sure it’s been compromised. You’ll have to stay the night at the house.”

It was funny that McCallister referred to the huge pile of a mansion as the house, because Bryn honestly couldn’t imagine feeling that comfortable about it. “Why?”

“Because I don’t have time to find you anywhere else. Liam will look after you.”

“Then why exactly did we spend the afternoon in a cheap motel, when you have a swanky love nest all your own?”

He barked out a laugh at that term, then said, “Do you want to know the actual truth of it?”

“Sure.”

“Our excuse is not so much the cheap, anonymous sex— which was great, by the way—but the drugs I buy there.”

“Drugs,” she repeated. “What kind of drugs?”

For answer, he reached into his coat pocket and came out with two plastic bags. Pills. Some kind of pills. “The kind that get a don‘t-ask, don‘t-tell pass from executives. I make a point to go out there once a month.”

“Do you actually take them?”

“The only ones they see me take are gelatin-filled. I may be the only corporate employee who fakes a positive drug test.”

“But aren’t they going to wonder about you bringing me back here?”

“Joe’s arranging for your apartment to be tented, as if for fumigation. It’s as good as we could come up with on short notice.” He smiled grimly. “And there really are bugs, after all. The electronic kind, anyway.”

They ate the picnic lunch Liam had packed on the way back. There were, in fact, finger sandwiches without crusts. And delicious, too. McCallister was a font of utter silence. He answered when she spoke, but in monosyllables or utterly uninformative responses. Back to the same old Patrick, then.

She wondered if he was as uncomfortable as she felt.

Liam was standing on the steps with a suit coat on a hanger when McCallister crunched the car to a stop on the flawless white gravel, and Bryn’s door was open before she could do more than cast a look Patrick’s way. He didn’t return it. He was staring straight ahead, through the windshield, at the growing gloom and the halogen glare cast by the headlights.

Liam gathered up the picnic basket and Mr. French’s doggy bed, put the fresh jacket on the hook in the back,