“We’ll help,” says Greer.“Anything you need.”
“Anything that doesn’t involve me wearing a hazmat suit,” Zoe adds, looking suspiciously at a patch of moldy wall near the radiator.“But everything else, obviously.”
Right then, there’s a little creak and Greer tips forward a bit from where she’s sitting.“Oh! Oh, I’m sorry,” she says, leaping up from where the sill has separated a bit from the window. We all three look at it, at where the wood is rotting a little, at where another repair will have to be made.
But I have to smile. A problem in my own house, one that I can solve, with my best friends here to help? I don’t think I’ve ever felt more like a millionaire.
Chapter 2
Ben
I’ve got a job for you, he’d said.
I pull another stack of slate from the bed of the truck, trying not to slam it down onto the pallet, which is what my hands are itching to do.
It’ll be easy, he’d said.Won’t even take a full day.
Another stack, another half-hearted attempt not to be aggressive with it.We’ve already made contact several times, he’d assured me.The groundwork has already been laid.
I straighten the pieces I’ve put down and turn back to the truck bed, still half-full.Fuck, I think.I’ll be out here all morning. I’m restless and pissed, and doing this kind of work should help, but so far, it’s not doing shit. I’m mad about yesterday, I’m worried about my dad, and I’ve been up since four a.m. so I could drive the fifty miles I needed to go to pick up all this slate and bring it back here. It’s almost funny—thirty-one years old, and I’m home to take care of him, but my dad still bosses me around this yard like I’m his fifty-dollars-per-week employee.
Strangely, though, I don’t feel like laughing.
I hear the muffled sound of my phone ringing from my back pocket, and I already know it’s Jasper, because he’s called three times since yesterday, and I haven’t picked up once. It’s hot as hell out here already, only ten a.m., and my arms are tired from all the lifting.
Might as well get this over with, I decide, and yank off my gloves, tossing them on the truck bed before yanking out my phone. Just to make sure, I check the screen before saying,“Jasper, you are an asshole.”
“That’s some greeting for your best friend, Tucker.”
“It’s what you deserve. I’m fucking pissed, Jas.” I resist the urge to kick at the pallet beside me. Though I’ve been keeping it together in front of my dad, being back here seems to rouse all my adolescent instincts.
“I’m guessing it didn’t go well with Averin.”
“You’re guessing right.”
“Goddammit. Global Chem got to him first,” Jasper says, his voice frustrated. Global Chem is our biggest competitor, and we’re always chasing down the same talent.
I snort a sarcastic laugh. That would maybe be easier. I could play good cop if I was up against Global Chem. But what happened yesterday—there’d be no way E.R. Averin was ever going to see me as a good anything.“She’s not a him,” I snap.“I mean, she’s—Ms. Averin, she’s a she.” I sound ridiculous.
“Oh,” Jasper says, and I’m surprised to feel annoyed on herbehalf. I’ve been annoyed with myself since yesterday, having blown it so thoroughly with her, but Jasper can take most of the blame on this one, as far as I’m concerned.
“You should have done your research,” I say to him.
“That’s your area.”
“Not right fucking now, it’s not. I told you, I needed a couple months here to deal with my dad. You call me, you want me to deal with a recruit that’s in town, fine. But you needed to do the legwork.”
I exhale a frustrated breath, hunch my shoulder to hold the phone against my ear so I can tug on one of my gloves. I’m too mad to be standing here doing nothing. What I said to Jasper, it’s only partially true. I am on family leave while Dad recovers, and Jasperwasasking me to do a special favor in going out on the job while I’m here. But I’d agreed before I left to stay in the loop, to telecommute as much as possible, and if I’d agreed to go out on a job, I should have been as careful as I usually am when I approach a new recruit. All I had before going to see Averin was what Jasper told me—master’s degree in materials science, working as a full-time lab tech at the university, impressive publication record in the area Beaumont was after, high tensile strength metal alloys, the kind of stuff we could use in our building materials division in particular—and the small additional amount I’d scared up through some Google searching an hour before I went in. I should have known something was off there. Everything online about her had been calculated to avoid anything personal—no pictures, no social media accounts, and on her university staff profile page, there’d only been a“No Picture Available” box, and underneath a list of publications so long that I’d had to scroll down twice.
The fact that I’d not taken the time to read a single one was bad enough. But worse was the fact that I’d jumped to conclusions—I’d thought Averin had to be at least forty-something to have that publication record.
And I’d thought Averin was a man.
She was neither forty-something nor a man. I’d thought she was a grad student, honestly. A gorgeous one too. When I’d first seen her, my mouth had gone dry, the tips of my fingers had twitched. It was such a dick move, such a massive error of assumptions that I still got a hot, embarrassed feeling when I thought about it. I may have played it cool when I was standing in front of her—I was terrific at playing that game—but I’d known I had fucked it up, and for some reason, it had felt uniquely awful to fuck it up with her.
“How’s he doing?” asks Jasper, and he sounds genuinely concerned.
“He’s a stubborn cuss, and he’s got me working like a dog. Which I guess means he’s doing all right. Doesn’t quite have his color back yet, but he’s a little better every day.”
