Page 24 of Wreck Me

He let go of the pole as he raised his palms in surrender. “We were just getting to know each other, remember? That was the whole point. I thought we had a nice time.”

“Then why didn’t I learn one iota about you?”

“Because…” he thought back to that night. “…because you were tired. You were yawning. I suggested we call it a night, and you agreed.”

She plastered an exaggerated, sympathetic pout onto her face. “Oh, poor you. That must have been so hard considering how much you love talking about yourself and your real estate.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Actually, I’m not much of a sharer, especially about my work.”

“That’s not what Monique says. Seems you’ve got a reputation at the office for how much you love to talk about your work.”

“I do not.”

“Oh, but you do. Apparently, you can talk the paint off,” she used her hands to make air quotes, “the Golden Gate Bridge.”

A jolt of annoyance shot through Nico. The sister thing again. He really could do without this complication. “Monique is supposed to be staying out of this,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Oh, don’t worry. She’s fully on your side. She just found it hilarious that someone like you would spend an evening with someone like me.” She picked up the second folding chair, but this time at least folded it absently as she raged. “And I have to agree. The only reason someone like you, who looks like you do, would expend any energy at all on someone like me is because I have something you want. So, let’s cut the cheap charade. You’re trying to charm me into giving up this house, and it’s not happening. Ever.”

“I didn’t try to fool you. I meant it when I said that evening was about business.”

She swept an arm over the outdoor theatre he’d set up. “Andthisis about business too? Tell me, was Twinkle Light Draping for Fun and Profit offered in the first year of your Harvard MBA or your second?”

She had him there. This did look like he was trying to charm her. His brother had suggested he start dating her, and Nico had insisted he would never do that, but had he been attempting itanyway? He’d taken a lot of time picking out these supplies, and he’d had fun doing it—almost as if he’d been looking forward to the evening. But that…wasn’t possible. Heat rushed to his cheeks. He rubbed his face roughly with both hands, trying to cover the pink.

Whatever he’d been doing, it was backfiring badly. He had to fix this. “Okay, okay. I went too far with the twinkle lights and the movie. Forget the movie. But can’t we just…talk some more?”

“No,” she said firmly as she scooped up an armload of toss pillows from the carpet and headed toward the truck with them, her purple sweater swinging wide like a ballroom dance skirt.

Perhaps she needed to hear personal information about him? He cleared his throat. “I have a brother, and I live in San Francisco. My brother has a wife and two young boys. They’re off on a fishing vacation right now in Colorado. Personally, I don’t like fishing.”

Hurricane Ginny seemed unaffected by his self-revelations. Even worse, she headed straight for the movie projector he’d set up on a small side table not far from the truck. An image of her smashing the delicate machine as eagerly as she’d smashed a twenty-dollar chair played through his mind, and he hurried to intercept her. The machine was heavy enough that he doubted she could lift it on her own, let alone throw it into the truck. Still, she could damage it just by tipping over the table and knocking it to the ground. “That’s a rental. It’s worth several thousand dollars!”

They each got their hands on the sides of the sleek, medium-sized, white and black box. With only the projector separating them, their faces were inches apart.

“I have a brother,” she said, imitating his deep, slightly nasal lilt with targeted and humiliating accuracy as she pulled onher half of the machine. “Here’s some meaningless information about me to placate you.”

Given his height and obvious other physical advantages, Nico figured a good tug would win him the projector, but his muscles were no longer accepting instructions. For the second time, being this near to Ginny caused his brain to grind to a pathetic, screeching halt. This time, though, it wasn’t just her natural beauty flummoxing him, but the intensity emanating off every inch of her. She was force of will in human form, a ball of sparking, chaotic energy. She was confidence, and abandon, and unpredictability. It felt dangerous. It felt exciting. It short-circuited him.

He forced himself to pull it together. “Well, what do you want to know then,” he asked, regretting the openness of the offer the moment it escaped his lips. There were certain things he couldn’t let her know.

Without a millisecond’s pause, she doffed her head toward the structure behind him. “Why do you want my house?”

A hard ball formed in his stomach. Of course, she homed in on the one thing he could not tell her—neither his business plans for it nor his personal connection to it. Either piece of information would give her way too much leverage in whatever negotiations would follow. He should already have a fake answer at the ready, because this question was bound to come up, but being a stupid idiot convinced he could outsmart a high school educated squatter, he had none. “I…just want it.”

Her sneer was epic, and he felt her grip the machine harder. “Mr. Magnate ‘just wants’ a seven-hundred square foot tear-down with no central air on the most run-down street in all of LA?”

His hands on the projector tightened in equal measure, but his back began to complain. Years of being a state-level high school champion in the butterfly stroke now meant that bendingover like this was something he could not sustain for long. An all-to-familiar knot was gathering in the muscles of his mid-back. It had the potential to leave him bed-bound the entire next day. He needed to calm her, and quickly.

He thought of her sisters and of the dogs—what she cared about most seemed to be other people and creatures, and the needier the better. He could work with that…he was setting up a homeless shelter? A dog refuge? No. He needed a reply that was at some level true, or she was going to see straight through the lie.

“I need it for a family member. A house like this will mean a lot to their future,” he said, wincing at a brief but ominous back spasm. His statement was basically true. The money they’d make would mean a lot to his brother and his little growing family. She didn’t need to know that flattening the house was the first step in his brother’s financial happiness.

The conflagration in her eyes dimmed. He even thought her grip on the projector might have eased ever so slightly. “Really,” she said, her tone softening. “It’s for a family member?”

Relief seeped warily into his veins, and he allowed himself to loosen his grip slightly too. His instincts were right. She was a sucker for generosity and selfless good deeds. Time to amp it up. “Yes. It’s perfect for them. I promised it to them years ago, but they weren’t in a good place to accept it. Now they are. This could really change their life for the better.”

Her face relaxed into a sweet smile. She let go of the projector completely, resting her hands instead on the edge of the little table. The tension that had packed the space around them like a taught balloon evaporated. “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place? The house just wants to be loved and needed.”

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