Fix It Up - Mary Calmes Page 0,28
bolt kills you dead, I want to make sure to get out of the way.”
“Listen, smartass, I’m a fuckin’ delight. Ask anybody.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah, sure. You can call the guys I work with.”
His laughter was so good to hear. “Normally,” he began, his voice suddenly husky with welling emotion, “those tree trunk arms of yours would be crossed, along with you looking at me like I’m an idiot. Like, how can I walk and breathe at the same time.”
I made the effort to do neither, but I had to stop myself.
He snorted. “That’s your default everything, annoyed and irritated.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t annoy and irritate me.”
“I think the whole world—with the exception of your mother, it sounds like—just pisses you off.”
I couldn’t stop the scowl that time.
He chuckled again, amused at my expense.
“Why don’t you go and mingle while I sit here quietly,” I suggested, his attention starting to make me fidgety, and I wasn’t sure why.
“I’ve mingled,” he said, turning on the chaise, bending his knee, pressing it to the side of my left thigh, wedging it there, his arm braced on the other side of my thighs so that I was caged. If I wanted to get up, he would have to move. “And why are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Because you hate me,” I replied with a shrug.
“I don’t,” he said under his breath.
“I’m sorry?”
He growled. “I said I don’t hate you.”
“It’s hard to tell a lot of the time,” I told him honestly. “It seems like you can’t make up your mind about me.”
“No, I know how I feel,” he admitted. “It’s just difficult.”
“Why?”
“Because I made a mistake.”
He wasn’t making any sense. “A mistake how?”
He shook his head. “It’s not for you to fix, fixer,” he said with a grin. “It’s for me to untangle myself. You can’t help me this time.”
“But I’d like to.”
“I know. You always want to help.”
“Is that what you really think?”
He nodded.
“Well, that’s nice to hear,” I mumbled. “But you wanted to come to this—is it a party?”
He shrugged. “It’s a small get-together.”
My eyebrows rose. “This is small?”
He grinned, and the garden torches caught the gold in his eyes. For a moment, they glowed as he stared at me.
I had the sudden and unfathomable urge to insist that we go home, now, immediately, so we could build on this bridge and see if it could remain. There was a concern with that, though, because us, sitting together as people, not as fixer and client, could become problematic. The smart thing to do was have a truce and no more, because as tempting as this fragile peace was, it was dangerous territory, me wanting to be closer, the distance being so much safer.
“You wanted to come,” I grumbled at him, “so go talk to your damn friends. Why’re you wasting your time checking on the help?”
He looked startled. “You’re the help?”
“Aren’t I?”
His eyes narrowed, studying me. “You’ve been helping me, yes, but I don’t think that defines your role.”
I was picking at him for no reason. I hated his default petulance and petty anger more than anything, so why I was trying to instigate a fight, I had no earthly idea. Except that by now, it was normal, the sniping we did at each other, and it kept us apart, which really was the only way true change happened. As a fixer I was there to promote change, enable it, but not be the focus. He wasn’t supposed to pin his recovery, sobriety, and new lease on life, on me. That was where things always got murky. It had happened to me before; you fixed someone’s life, and they got attached. I always made sure that by the time I left, whatever in their life needed fixing had, in fact, been fixed, but I also made certain that they hated me and wanted me gone. Already, I could tell that I didn’t want Nick Madison to hate me. Normally, I didn’t care. This time, for whatever reason, I did.
“God, your eyes are so dark,” he mused hoarsely, which brought me back from my wandering thoughts to him. “Are they actually black?”
“Yes, they’re black,” I told him. “Better to give you the death glare with.”
He laughed, and the sound, again, was so good. It soothed me, slid over me like a warm blanket on a cold night. “You do so love glaring at me,” he commented with a sigh before he turned and rose, walking the twenty feet or so over