“I’m a fast learner.” She sounded defiant, which suggested she had done this to herself. They weren’t accepting any interns, so if someone were conniving and desperate, Nicholas supposed they might seize upon a job for a cleaner and try to upgrade it a paid entry-level position. “I have a college degree,” she was saying now, “I could do filing, type up papers—”
“I have a secretary. What I need is a maid.”
“But I—”
Nicholas ended the video call, cutting her off mid-protest. What a waste of his time. Six applicants so far, and not a single one of them fit the bill. Competence and discretion, that was all he asked. If only Carmela had kept her snide comments about his houseguest to herself. Then he wouldn’t be here, subjected to graspingly ambitious college students.
And now,Eileenhad quit.
He stood so abruptly that his chair shot back a few feet, edging around the sharp corner of the desk to yank the clock bodily from the wall. The nail it had been hanging on tore through the plaster, shedding bits of drywall on the bloodred fibers of his late father’s carpet.
Take that, asshole, he thought.
Carrying the clock under his arm like a football, he marched down the hall, up to the front door, blinking into the harsh sunlight. The air was redolent with dust and pollen, shimmering in the spring heat, though there was still a saline nip in the breeze from the nearby ocean.
He continued down the dusty walk to where the trash cans waited at the bottom of the hill rise for Friday pickup. He slammed the clock into the gray bin, and when he replaced the lid, the ticking sound was finally silenced. Only the throbbing of his own pulse remained to taunt him.
As he headed back into the house that he had inherited from his father, he looked up at the Chihuly sculpture hanging from the ceiling. When the sun passed through the glass, it glowed a violent neon. Over the years, he had grown accustomed to its organic and vaguely menacing silhouette whenever he came in through the main door. Bathed in translucent shadow, however, visitors often revealed a flicker of unease as they looked up at it,over his shoulder.
Jay, he knew, didn’t like it. To her, it was a relic of his father. But when he had talked casually about its replacement, she had given him a disappointed look. If she were here, she would have stopped him from throwing out the clock, and probably gotten angry at him for being rude to the interviewee, but she wasn’t here. She was at the farmers’ market. He had offered to drive her but she said she wanted to walk.
But he knew the truth. She didn’t want him to take her because she didn’t want to be seen with him in public. She had turned down ten million dollars for his sake, but she hadn’t fully accepted him. Part of her was still closed off, and he couldseethat remove every time she looked at him with a caution she didn’t try to hide.
His ambling steps took him to her bedroom. The door was closed, to keep the cat in. When he opened it, her dark gray cat poked its head out from beneath the bed, watching with reflective eyes.
It smells like her in here, he thought wistfully, closing the door behind him.
Apple freesia, coconut, dusty sunshine.
He tilted his head, taking in the mirrored closet, the padded window seat, the faded sunflower motif on the walls. Most of her belongings were still boarded up in her San Francisco hovel, which was now leased in his name, so the room was a strange, frozen blend of the way she had left it in the late two-thousands and what she had brought back with her from the city.
His eyes lingered on the nightstand crammed with fantasy novels and old romances. She’d been reading one; it was face-down on the nightstand beside her Kindle and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses that he hadn’t known she owned.
They had been apart for nearly nine years and she was the same in so many ways that it was always startling to find something that had changed. Once, he had known her better than anyone. It was disturbing to realize that this might no longer be the case.
But when she turned down his proposal, she had said, “I’m going to need some time to think about this.”
He had been taken off guard. She had decided to stay. As far as he was concerned, that was a tacit declaration that she was ready to be his.
“What’s there to think about?”
“You’re asking me to uproot everything I’ve done on my own to spend the rest of my life with you and I don’t know if I can do that.” She had lowered her eyes to the box in her hands, holding it with a care that hurt like violence. “I need to think about my answer.”
How long?he nearly demanded.
They had been in the car, and he had floored the gas, gripping the wheel in a stranglehold.
How long are you going to make me wait?
“Nick.” Her voice had been wary—frightened. “You’re going too fast.”
With a glance at the odometer, he hit the brakes with a screech, bringing the needle back down from the 90-mark.
“Nick?”
(Please don’t hurt me)
“Take all the time you need.” The words tasted like sawdust. He couldn’t look at her again until they got home, which seemed to fill her with pity because she had chased him down in the hall, and said, “Wait” in a tone that had made him think she wasabout to change her mind, so he turned, expectant and ready for victory, only to have Jay press her lips against his.
