Heartsick & Lipsticks, page 12
After another twenty punishing minutes, the alarm went off on my phone, indicating it was time to start waking up my sleeping beauty. Unlike me, Bella was not a morning person, and she needed to be gently nudged awake over a few attempts.
I grabbed my water bottle and a towel and headed into the main house. As soon as I walked in through the side door, I saw that the kitchen light was on and heard the sink running. It could be Carmen, who arrived between six and eight every morning, depending on the day. Or, it could be Skye.
Last night, my dinner meeting ran late. It was worth it because I’d closed the deal. Mitch Green was signed to a three-year exclusive contract with Locke Media. I got home after ten, so I’d missed her arrival at eight. I’d thought about popping in to Naomi’s room but decided against it. The fact that I was so drawn to her was actually making me want to keep my distance. I wasn’t a huge fan of the magnetism she possessed. I’d never felt so powerless against anything before. It scared me but also excited me, which was a dangerous combination.
Adrenaline raced through me, and my pulse sped as I approached the kitchen. The anticipation was both unnerving and exhilarating. When I saw Skye washing a bowl and mug, a rush of endorphins flushed my system. I’d never experimented with drugs, but I wondered then if this was what being high felt like. If it was, I could understand people chasing the euphoric sensation.
It had been four days since I’d seen her when she left my house on Friday morning after her shift, and I’d thought about her. A lot. All weekend, I’d been thinking about her. She’d dominated my thoughts. But it wasn’t until this moment that I realized how badly I’d missed her.
Growing up the way I did, I was used to people coming in and going out of my life. I’d never really missed someone before, apart from Bella. But that was different. She was my daughter. I’d never missed an adult in my life. Skye was the first to earn that distinction.
Her head was cast down, but when I stepped forward, she looked up, and her eyes widened right before they dipped below my chin, and a flush appeared on her cheeks. Unlike previous encounters in the kitchen, I was wearing a shirt, but since I was dripping with sweat, the thin cotton was clinging to my skin.
Speaking of her eyes, today they were outlined with thick black eyeliner, and she had on mascara. That wasn’t all; her lips were an even deeper shade of red than they normally were. I hadn’t immediately noticed the difference, but now I did. She was wearing makeup.
“Wow, you look…” I stopped myself before I said something inappropriate.
“I know.” Her shoulders tensed visibly. “My friend Rihanna, is a makeup artist, or at least she’s considering the field, and she wanted to perfect the wedding look.”
“Wedding look?” I repeated it as a vision of Skye in a white dress and veil walking down an aisle, directly toward me, appeared in my head. I blinked and shook my head, not sure where that image had come from. But before I was able to erase it, the scene caused a warm feeling to swirl in my chest. That same sensation turned to dread when a thought struck me through the heart like a dagger. “Are you getting married?”
“What? No!” She let out a short huff of laughter as if that were the most absurd idea in the world. “Ri just likes to switch careers every couple of years. Now it’s makeup. And bridal is where the money is. Put bridal, or wedding in front of anything, and you can jack up the prices like three hundred percent. I’m not even exaggerating.” She stopped talking abruptly, as if stopping herself from going on a tangent. “Anyway, she came over last night to practice before my shift, and we lost track of time. I was going to take it off on the drive over, but someone, probably my daughter, but honestly, it could just as easily be my mom, used all of my makeup wipes and didn’t tell me. So, I came to work like this.” She waved her hand in front of her face.
“Are you free on Saturday, the 18th?”
She stared at me for a silent beat without responding. I didn’t blame her. The question had come out of left field. One minute we were talking about makeup, the next I’d asked her about her availability on the weekend.
“Saturday night? Um, I mean… I don’t… I’m not sure…”
Her flustered response triggered a realization in me of how my question must have sounded. I quickly added, “I know you’re not scheduled to work, but I would like to bring my mother to a charity event, my charity event, and I’d feel more comfortable with two nurses there.”
“Oh, right. That makes… I thought…” She let out a nervous laugh before shaking her head. “Never mind. Um, yeah, I think I could do that. Let me just check and make sure that my mom doesn’t have plans. I know Callie’s fourteen, but I don’t like to leave her home alone.”
“Does she go out a lot?”
“Not really. She spends the night at her best friend Jenny’s house a lot on the weekends, but not on school nights.”
I grinned. “I meant your mom.”
“Oh, um, yes.” She nodded. “She has a very active social life.”
I sensed that statement was weighted with some history. It made me wonder what Skye’s childhood had been like. “Has she always been…social?”
“Yep.”
“Was that hard, when you were growing up?”
“I mean, it wasn’t great.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t be. It’s not… I was…” She took a breath. “She was young when she had me, so yeah, it was fine.”
She leaned down and put the dishes in the dishwasher, then closed it.
“You don’t have to do that.” I knew that I’d told her before that she didn’t have to do the dishes, but I wanted to remind her that it wasn’t her job.
Her eyes lifted to meet mine, and it felt like a punch in the gut. She was so fucking beautiful that when I looked at her, I felt a physical reaction.
“Do what?” she asked.
“The dishes. You can just leave them in the sink. Carmen will be here soon.”
“Oh no, that’s okay. I could never let someone clean up after me.” No sooner had the words left her mouth than she began to backtrack. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I just mean, I couldn’t. I mean physically, I couldn’t. I have control issues.”
“What sort of control issues?” I asked. The question wasn’t sexual in nature, but that didn’t stop my head from making it dirty. I wondered if she liked to be in control in the bedroom or if she wanted to relinquish that control. As someone who needed to have control in both places, I found myself holding my breath for her response.
She lifted her hand and brushed a piece of hair behind her ear. “I don’t know; I just need to make sure things are done and done right.”
“And that means you have to do them yourself?” Now my mind had taken a detour to her pleasuring herself.
Her left shoulder lifted in a shrug. “Well, yeah, because if it’s not, I’m going to be the one who has to deal with it.”
I didn’t have a complete picture of Skye’s background, but I would definitely say the outline of her life was coming into focus. Her mom had her young; she liked to party, which meant Skye grew up fast. Then she became a mom when she was barely out of her teens, which meant that she was thrust into adulthood with the responsibility of a child.
This conversation only made me want to ask more about Callie’s father. It frustrated me that Maddox hadn’t been able to find out who he was. I could just ask her about him. That would be the most straightforward thing to do. But Skye reminded me of a skittish wild animal. I was scared that if I made any sudden movements or said anything wrong, she’d dart away and I’d lose her. And I wasn’t talking about physically, although she was prone to quick exits whenever I came into a room. I was talking about her shutting down emotionally.
She had walls up. The problem was that I wasn’t sure if I should scale them, walk around them, break through them, or avoid them all together.
“I’ll let you know about Saturday,” she said before walking around me to leave the kitchen.
When she did, a bubble of panic rose in me. I didn’t want our conversation to be over. I didn’t want her to retreat. “How was your night?”
Her head turned, and she looked over her shoulder. “Oh, it was fine. Good.”
“How is Naomi doing?”
“She’s tired. Sleeping a lot.”
I nodded. “Is that normal?”
I knew that it was, but I was just grabbing at straws to keep talking to her.
“It is, yeah.”
She turned again and made it two steps before I said, “And just to clarify, you don’t look ridiculous. You look beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Her cheeks flushed once more before her head turned back and she walked away.
I feared that I’d crossed a line of professionalism and hoped that I hadn’t offended her or made her uncomfortable.
Leaning back against the counter, I ran my hands through my hair in frustration. This woman was driving me crazy, and I had no idea how to regain my sanity. That wasn’t entirely true. I was acutely aware of one way to ease the sexual tension coursing through my veins, but that would entail us being naked, and that would definitely cross the line of professionalism.
16
SKYE
“This isn’t a date,” I insisted as Ri patted my face with a beauty blender. “I’m working. I don’t need makeup.”
“You are going to one of the premier social events of the year. I, as your best friend, soul sister, and fashion guru, in good conscience, cannot have you showing up looking blah.”
“Blah?” I repeated. “So, without makeup, I look blah?” I wasn’t actually offended. I didn’t care if I looked blah as long as I could pay my bills. Blah was just fine with me.
“You know what I mean.” Ri rolled her eyes before wagging her brows. “This is black tie, babyyyy.”
“I’m sure it is for the guests that are attending, but I’m going to be working,” I repeated in vain for at least the dozenth time.
When Ri texted me earlier in the day to see if I was up for a wine and reality show binge Saturday night, I told her about the fundraiser. I could have just said I was working, and she would have been none the wiser. But deep down, I think I’d wanted her to insist on glamming me up.
The truth was, I was nervous to go after seeing the Google images of past years events. Annnd, I had really enjoyed the way that Nick looked at me when he saw me in the kitchen the morning he invited me to this shindig. I may or may not have replayed him telling me that I looked beautiful a thousand or so times in my head.
I totally had.
There was no way I was going to waste money on a new dress. And since I was curvier and about three inches shorter than Ri, none of her gowns would fit me. So, tonight I would be wearing my go-to LBD. It was an off-the-shoulder, form-fitting Ralph Lauren that hit me mid-calf. I’d picked it up for twenty bucks at a thrift shop seven years ago when I was room mom for Callie’s first grade class and they were having a Halloween party. Callie used to love black and white movies, and she wanted me to go dressed as Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. One pair of long black gloves and a stacked string of pearls later I was Holly Golightly.
I hadn’t worn the LBD since, but it was the only designer dress I owned, and I tried it on last week. Thankfully, it still fit. It was a little tighter than it had been, but as long as I didn’t pop the zipper, I was all good.
“Where’s Callie Cat?”
“She’s spending the night at Jenny’s.”
Jenny was Callie’s Rihanna. The two girls had met in preschool and had been besties ever since. I loved that she had a relationship that mirrored what I had with Ri. I wished everyone did.
“And Lola is out, too?” she asked before demonstrating the shape she wanted my lips in so she could line them.
“Yeah, she went to an escape room with Ron.” I copied her expression, my mouth in the shape of an o.
“Ron? I thought she and Lionel were getting serious.”
Unlike Ri, Mom didn’t go through men at whiplash speed, so I understood the confusion. Usually, Lola’s relationships lasted months, not weeks or days, as was the case with my childhood best friend.
I waited until she finished drawing on my lips before explaining, “She stopped seeing Lionel before you left for India. When you were gone, she was hanging out with Carl. And now it is Ron.”
“Do we like Ron?”
Instead of answering, I just gave her a look that said it all.
“Got it,” she acknowledged.
My mom had always had a type, and it wasn’t great. She was a sucker for a man who had a very high opinion of himself. The only problem was that they never had anything to back up their overinflated egos. They all loved the sound of their own voices and had opinions about everything.
Actually, now that I thought about it, that must have been why Nick rubbed me the wrong way when Callie would play the podcasts. He probably reminded me, on a subconscious level, of all the men I’d had to listen to all my life.
It was so strange to think about just how different he was from the impression I’d had of him. I’d been working for him for a month now. Everything I’d observed about him was the opposite of his cocky, blowhard persona. Thinking the words blow and cock in the same sentence had my mind going to places I needed to avoid at all costs. At least if I wanted to keep my job and sanity.
Had anyone ever gone certifiably insane from repressed sexual desire? If not, I might need to offer myself as a case study. Since meeting Nick, I couldn’t keep a train of thought. I was having spontaneous visions of the X-rated variety. On more than one occasion while I was on shift, I found myself paranoid that he might know how I felt. I’d had more internal conversations where I argued about whether or not the sparks that flew whenever I was in the same room with him were delusion or reality.
As if reading my mind, Ri picked up a clean eyelash wand and began to brush my brow as she asked, “Okay, so what is Nick Locke like in his natural habitat?”
“I don’t really see him that much since I work nights.”
“Do you two… talk?” she emphasized the word.
“Sometimes.” I hadn’t seen much of him since the morning he’d asked me about this fundraiser. I’d been doing my best to avoid him because I didn’t trust myself. Every time we spoke, I revealed something personal about myself. And what was even worse than that was my ever-growing crush on him. The line between professional and personal kept getting fuzzier.
It started out innocent enough, but considering I’d pleasured myself thinking of him the first day we met, I think innocent wouldn’t be the right adjective to describe it, even in the beginning. But now, my feelings for him were evolving into borderline obsession.
“Holy shit.” Ri dropped her hand and looked me right in the eyes. “You like him.”
“No. I don’t—”
Her finger pointed directly in my face. “Yes, you do! Your cheeks are pink, and I haven’t put any highlighter or blush on them. You only get like that when you like someone. That’s how I knew you liked Professor Douchebag.”
I remembered we’d had a conversation very similar to this in the library my freshman year. Ri didn’t go to college, but she was there trying to convince me to ditch my classes and go on a skiing trip with her and two guys she’d met at Coachella. Professor Dubois walked by and told me that I was studying too much and needed to go have some fun.
It was about a month before anything actually happened between us. Ri knew as soon as he walked away from the table that I had a crush on him. She called me a smitten kitten, if I remember correctly, and she wasn’t wrong.
“Don’t call him that.”
“What? Callie’s not home.”
“I know, but I don’t want it to slip out sometime when she is.” I’d always been honest with Callie about her father, depending on her age and how much of the story she could handle. When she was little, I told her that I met her dad in college, which was the truth. When she got a little older and started asking more questions, I’d said that we’d dated for about a year. Then, when she was twelve, she wanted to know everything. So, I’d told her that he was my professor and that he’d had a family.
Even though she knew the basics about my relationship with her father, I never wanted her to hear anyone badmouthing him since she was half him.
“Stop trying to change the subject. You’ve got the hots for Nick!” She stood and began dancing, cheering, and clapping.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“Celebrating!” She threw her hands up in the air.
“What are you celebrating?”
“The end of your celibacy!”
“What?! I’m not going to sleep with him! He’s a family member of my patient.”
“So,” she stated firmly.
“That’s unethical.”
Her head fell back, and she let out a groan. “Oh my gosh, you and your stupid rules.”
“It’s not a stupid rule, and even if it wasn’t, have you seen the women he dates? He would never be interested in me.”
When she straightened her head, she was wearing an incredulous expression. “Are you fucking kidding me? Of course, he would be interested in you. You are smart, sexy, and totally independent. You are the whole package.”
“I think you’re overestimating my appeal.”
“I’m not.”
“It doesn’t mat
ter.”
Ri sat back down on the kitchen chair. “I know you don’t believe me, but let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that I’m right and he is interested. He would be the perfect guy for you to hook up with.”
“Okay.” I agreed easily with Captain Obvious. Of course he was perfect; he’d been voted the Most Eligible Bachelor in San Francisco just a few short years ago, and his appeal hadn’t lessened over time.
Ri must have sensed my unspoken sarcasm because she shook her head. “I’m not talking about how he looks or the fact that he’s stupid rich. I’m talking about his three-strike rule.”
