Forbidden Boy (9 page)

“You know what? I think you might just be on to something,” Jules conceded slowly. “Going incognito, playing innocent. By day, I’m a mild-mannered designer-slash-construction worker, but by night, I’m an undercover super-spy for the Kahn compound, acquiring top-secret information in the service of protecting all that’s good, beautiful, and righteous against the evil forces of the Moore empire!”
Plus,
she thought,
it would be nice to have
another reason to talk to him at work
.

Chloe grinned slyly. “Now you’re talking!”

Julianne spent the next three weeks at work in an eco-friendly nightmare. Every time she turned around, Remi was standing over her shoulder. He was settling comfortably into his role as “boss,” and while he was always a kind, encouraging, and respect-ful equal to the other guys on the site, Julianne felt like he was there for the sole purpose of making her life more difficult.

She was cutting boards at the circular saw the first time it happened. She had pulled her hair down from its ponytail to put on her safety goggles, so it hung loosely down around her tan shoulders. She eyeballed the length of a board and drew a crisp pencil line across the two-by-four before arranging it on the circular saw.

She was about to rev up the saw when she heard
his
voice over her right shoulder.

“Um, Julianne, can I have a word with you?” Remi’s voice was quiet.

Julianne spun around, trying to keep her face neutral.

“Sure thing, but it needs to be quick. I don’t want to get behind on these boards.”

“That’s actually the thing,” Remi responded. His voice was gentle but Julianne could have sworn he was savoring every word. “I think it would be better if you laid off the circular saw for a while.”

“Why? What are you talking about?” Julianne’s cheeks stung with embarrassment at the implied demotion. She used power tools all the time with her sculptures. The last installation she’d made was the size of a tree house, and she’d assembled it out of all sorts of boards and planks.

“It’s not so much your craftsmanship that’s the issue.

It’s more about the dress code.” He sounded concerned, almost parental. Jules, however, had a sneaking suspicion that he was embarrassed.

Julianne looked down at her denim cutoffs, her black ribbed tank top, and her worn-in Pumas. All over the site, guys were wearing practically the same thing, with a few tank top and sneaker variations. She ran her fingers over her belt, which was made of elaborately braided nautical rope. “Is this the problem? I mean, I can take it off.” She began to tug at her belt buckle.

Remi’s face went bright red at the suggestion of Julianne unbuckling. “N-n-no,” he stammered. “That’s not it. It’s your hair. You can’t have your hair hanging down like that when you’re standing over the circular saw.

You could get pulled in. It’s a liability. It’s, um, on all the safety code posters, and I know it seems like a really nit-picky thing, but these tools are really dangerous so …”

His words tumbled out in one rambling run-on sentence.

“Are you kidding me? I only had it down for a second—I was just pulling on my goggles.” Julianne was almost too shocked to be angry.

“Look, all I know is I turned around and you were standing over the platform marking your board and your hair was hanging on the circular saw. If you want the whole DIY haircut look, you can use the scissors in the office during lunch.” His attempt at a joke flew right over Julianne’s head. “For today, how about you measure the boards, but let Jeremy cut them?” Remi mum-bled, darting his eyes toward the floor as he gestured to a new guy—a junior water polo player from Julianne’s school, who had joined the crew the day before. “He’s only here for the week, and it’ll be really good experience for him,” Remi finished quickly. Julianne nodded, too stunned to argue. “Hey, Jeremy!” Remi called.

“Come over here! Jules could use a hand.”

As Jeremy sauntered over, it only took a second for Jules to understand why the entire girls’ volleyball team was always gathered around his locker. Unfortunately, it only took two more seconds for Jeremy to prove that he was also a tremendous jerk. “C’mon, baby,” he said pur-posefully to Jules. “Let a real man show you how it’s done.”

Julianne fumed. How dare he act like the problem here was that she was a girl? Maybe there
were
bigger losers than Remi on this site, after all.

“Sorry, Jeremy. Remi wasn’t able to find a real man, so you’re going to have to help me instead,” she shot back.

“But if a real man comes by, feel free to take notes.”

Undeterred, Jeremy tossed his arm around Julianne’s shoulders to guide her, barely avoiding wiping out on the laces of his untied Nikes. They made it almost all the way back to the circular saw before Julianne whipped around and mouthed, “I’m going to get you!” at Remi’s receding back. She couldn’t help but notice that he’d finally started wearing better pants—they hung loosely over his long legs—but she tried her best to ignore the improvement and focused on her anger.

“Damn it,” Julianne muttered to herself, her ocean blue eyes brimming with hot tears. Between kicking herself for not being more cautious about her hair and feeling the weight of Jeremy’s toned, chauvinistic arm around her, she didn’t know what to be humiliated about first.

From that point on, it seemed like everything that could go wrong did. Julianne spent three miserable days filing and photocopying invoices in the site trailer. The inside of the trailer was covered in fourteen distinct shades of beige and one very distinct odor of mildew.

She spent every cooped-up moment in there dreaming of the murals she’d paint on its crumbling rent-a-walls if only she had access to the crew’s paints. Even on the days that she was in the trailer choosing colors, design-ing lighting, or planning the landscaping for the owners, she resented the trailer just for
being
there.

Even worse, Remi was everywhere Julianne turned.

She felt like he was looking over her shoulder, just waiting for her to mess up. Of course, she found herself making stupid mistakes when he was around. She could almost forgive him for keeping such a close watch on her, but she wasn’t sure she could forgive herself for letting him psych her out so much. If she started to drill a board into place without sanding the rough patches down first, she’d turn around and, sure enough, Remi would be standing right there. Accidentally attach a solar panel upside down? Remi suddenly appeared two feet away, and Julianne could swear his eyebrows were arched.

The more Julianne stressed out about Remi’s suffo-cating proximity, the closer he seemed to get. She felt paranoid, anticipating that he would find fault even with her best work.

“Hey, Julianne—that panel could be a little bit straighter, okay?” she muttered to herself, mocking his helpful suggestions.

Not even five minutes later, his imagined voice popped back into her head with “Hey, Julianne—that tile could be set a little bit closer to the others, okay?”

“Definitely. I’m on it,” she responded to herself, even managing a jaunty salute. She was totally losing it.

Half an hour later, when she saw Beau’s broad figure lumbering across the site, she tensed up immediately:

“Hey, Julianne—you might want to think about using a different bit on that drill, okay?”

“Anything you say, chief.” Julianne sighed. She was getting exhausted just thinking about it.

“Hey, no need to get snippy with me,” Beau said, raising his hands in faux surrender. “I just don’t want to see you get showered with splinters is all.”

“You don’t want to see me get all splinter-y—or you were
sent
over here to tell me I’m doing something wrong?” Julianne asked suspiciously, fiddling with the Velcro on her work gloves.

“Whoa …” Beau said, laughing, arms still up in mock defensiveness. “I’m here with only the purest of intentions.

No nefarious plotting whatsoever. And every time I’ve talked to you in the past week—if you don’t mind my saying, Jules—you’ve asked me if Remi sent me over. A few too many unnecessary protests, if you know what I mean.”

“Hey now, Mr. Big Imagination,” Julianne protested, half-laughing. “I think you’re spending too many of your lunch breaks reading romance novels—don’t think I haven’t seen you huddled back by the trailer—it’s starting to go to your head!”

“Maybe,” Beau replied slyly. “Or maybe not all the sparks flying on this site are from your drill bit …”

“Oh,
shut up
!” Julianne said, laughing as she rolled her eyes. Beau shrugged and headed back over to his workbench. “Drama queens,” she muttered to herself.

“Guys are such drama queens.”

By the end of the third week, Julianne had resorted to singing to herself—or rather, to every song on her iPod playlist—to keep herself calm and focused on work rather than on Remi. When that lost its charm, she moved on to imagining elaborate spy scenarios. Her favorite one involved her and Chloe—decked out in matching James Bond spygirl outfits—rappelling into the Moores’ mansion under cover of darkness only to find out that the whole thing was an elaborate cover for an international drug cartel. They called in the FBI and not only were the Moores sent to a remote island to grow bananas and repay their debt to society, but the girls were both rewarded with presidential medals and the deed to the entire beach. Which they, of course, designated as a free public space and artists’ colony. Julianne played this fan-tasy over and over in her head until she began to feel a little bit creepy for wishing it were actually true.

When she wasn’t imagining new and creative ways for the universe to karma-smack Remi and his family, Julianne waited with her ears perked for any mention of Remi’s name around the site. Whenever one of the other guys mentioned Remi, Julianne would hang back pretending to tie her shoe, or take additional measurements on something she’d just measured twice a few minutes earlier. Unfortunately, they never seemed to say anything, except what a great guy and good manager he was.

She was becoming a pro at looking casually disinterested or distracted while secretly absorbing every last syllable being uttered around her. In short, she was well on her way to being the best spy in Southern California.

Okay, maybe not. But definitely the best spy in the Palisades.

Julianne crept around the corner, trying to stay crouched down low to escape notice. She was holding a small, electronic stud-finder in her hand, working her way around the perimeter of the wall. If anyone walked by, it would look like she was checking to see where to attach the moldings at the bottom of each wall.

She kept her head down, waiting to make her move.

Only a fellow spy would have recognized that Julianne was honing her skills—waiting for Remi to come around the corner after his 10 a.m. meeting. James Bond had nothing on her.

After three weeks of progressively more intense surveillance—of what she and Chloe were now jokingly calling “the subject”—Julianne had come up with precious little that was of any help to her cause. She had, however, developed a whole arsenal of easily deployed spy tricks. The stud-finder was her latest innovation. As Julianne knelt on the floor, she was torn between feeling incredibly clever and beyond sketchy. On one hand, she was undercover—complete with techno-props. On the other hand, she
was
sort of curled into a ball as an elaborate excuse to try to overhear a few seconds of Remi’s morning plans.

She heard footsteps coming and snapped back into her position—her face shielded, the stud-finder level with the floor and beeping softly. The click-click-thump of shoes was getting closer, and Julianne strained to hear what was being said. After a few more moments, she began to get worried. Nonetheless, she kept her head down and the stud-finder level. Five minutes passed, then five more. Julianne’s hands were beginning to cramp up around the stud-finder, and she couldn’t feel her right knee after sitting on it for so long. Finally, her patience was rewarded with a snippet of conversation.

“Dad, I know it’s important … of course I do. Yeah, Dad, I know. I understand I have a responsibility. Yes, for the fourteenth time, I promise I will not forget.”

Remi’s tone was a blend of stress and annoyance, and Julianne could picture him pulling at the tie around his neck as he walked. “Yes, Dad, I know I’m too old for you to be keeping tabs on these sorts of things for me. I promise you, I can handle it myself.”

Julianne’s ears were burning from the strain of listening in on the conversation. As Remi walked past her along the other side of the wall, she inched slowly in his direction. What could Remi and Mr. Moore be discussing? What was so crucial that only Remi could attend to it? Maybe his dad had him gathering land value information from Bill or from Dawson and Dawson. Or maybe they were going to be expanding the perimeter of their property again and Remi was going to set up the gates. Julianne practically fell over herself to hear Remi’s last words before he turned the next corner into the space beyond her earshot.

“Look, Dad, I have something I need to get to in my office. I know there are other things you want to discuss, but can we just do it later? Yeah, I’ll be around.” Julianne heard Remi’s cell phone click shut before he’d even spat out “Goodbye.” As his footsteps faded in the distance, Julianne refused to be deterred. After waiting a few minutes to be sure he’d left the house, she popped her head up to see whether the coast was clear. No one on the left; no one on the right. Julianne crouched like a sprinter waiting at the starting block and, after a second’s hesita-tion, dashed out toward the trailer, stud-finder still in hand.

She tiptoed around the back of the site trailer, being careful not to step in any of the patches of dry, brown summer grass around the perimeter, just in case they made a crunching sound and gave away her where-abouts. She knelt down in the space under the trailer’s back window, steadying herself with one hand on the grass and one on the plastic siding of the trailer. It was like waiting with the stud-finder all over again, only now her spy prop just looked silly. She waited and waited to overhear even a hint of conversation coming from Remi’s desk, but he wasn’t talking and her calves were screaming from her awkward crouch.