Swap Out (2 page)

She pauses, white goop pooled in her palm before she got a chance to attack her other tanned limb, a crinkle between her eyebrows I pride myself on getting to show. “Why?”

“Because it smells.”

She gasps with a playful grin as I start backing out of the driveway, but still starts rubbing lotion onto her right calf. “You don’t like my lotion?”

“I didn’t say that,” I singsong. “I just don’t want my car smelling like a Bath and Body Works.”

She scoffs. “Better than sweat and gasoline.”

I reach over and steal her lotion, Zoe immediately screeching my name before taking it back and thankfully putting it in her purse.

“My car smells perfectly fine, thank you,” I tell her, and she widens her eyes mockingly. “And anyway, I’m a guy, and I do
manual labor
. It’s supposed to smell like that.”

“Disgusting…” she mutters, but the corners of her eyes are sharp and coquettish, and I shake my head.

We’re only in my car because I dropped her Buick Enclave
off at the dealership this morning after she forgot to get her oil changed,
again
, and Zoe was convinced if she didn’t take it in today then it would explode on her drive home. Yeah, okay. And I told her it was stupid to take it to the dealer, but that only earned me an earful about how it’s her car and I was more than welcome to just zip it and do what she said.

I swear, I don’t know what her problem is lately. She’s been swinging between fun and easy-going to grouchy and short-tempered, one minute acting like everything couldn’t be better and the next she’s freaking out about a tiny little tear in the upholstery as though it’s the end of the world. And whatever is causing her to act like this, I hope it’s fixed before I have to tell her to knock it off. There’s only so much flip-flopping I can stand before I’m gonna snap, and I don’t want to go off on Zoe, but I’m also not about to let her stomp all over me in her high heels just because she needs a prescription strength mood stabilizer.

But for now at least she seems content to act like her normal self, immediately pulling out her cell phone, crossing her legs and looking right at home in the passenger seat of my Stingray.

“We have to go get my car,” she tells me, typing away at a rapid speed without looking up, and I nod.

“I know.”

“While we’re there,” she says, her tone slipping into a smooth drawl I’ve seen buy wholesale beds at a quarter of the price, “you may consider checking out the lot and getting something that isn’t older than you are.”

I narrow my eyes at Zoe, and she rolls hers, going back to her cell phone.

“Fine, but I still don’t see the allure of a car with no backseat.”

I gun the engine. And since the vehicular design places us almost directly over the rear wheels, the vibration of the V8 shoots up my legs and I know it’s slipping under Zoe’s skirt. Because she sucks in a breath then re-crosses her legs, turning her blushing cheeks towards the passenger window.

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

“Don’t need a backseat,” I say more huskily than I ever dare around her other employees. “Besides, I travel light.”

“Yeah, okay, Luca,” she taunts, but it’s the truth.

After I was finished being the property of the U.S. government, I spent plenty of time doing nothing except for what I wanted. I bought my dream car with all the tax-payer funded money they had been depositing into my checking account each month, restored it and then repainted it in a shade of midnight blue that reminds me of the sky just before the sun rises. I travelled and hiked and climbed with some of my buddies from basic training, but that life gets expensive and I was burning through cash like it was flash paper.

Glared at my bank account and then reluctantly answered an ad looking for someone capable of moving furniture, and it was: Greetings, Pearce Home Designs. After spending years carrying dead weight through the desert and every other terrain known to man, I figured hoisting a couch would be a breeze. Plus, it would keep me in shape. I didn’t realize I was signing up to be Zoe’s personal servant when she hired me, but then again, she’s always played her cards close to her chest.

You’d think after working for her for the last year, I’d know more about her. Whether her one true love is a goldfish or how she came into enough money to start her own business, but I don’t. What I
do
know is she’s a workaholic, addicted to Starbucks and doesn’t take crap from anybody. She’s a ruthless negotiator, knows what she wants and how to get it, and she has serious problems with control, as in she wants it all of the time. Her trust issues are even worse. Basically, she’s crazy. And her attitude is occasionally so domineering that sometimes, I forget what she really is.

I glance at her high heels kicked off and just lazily resting on the floorboard, and when my gaze travels upward, I see her hands lightly holding her cell phone. But now it’s just laying on her lap and when I check, her eyes are closed as she leans her head against the headrest.

Sometimes, I want to ask what happened to her. If she’s alone in the world and always has been, like me. Or if she didn’t use to be, and that’s why she is the way she is. Because she’s determined to act like she’s impenetrable: always put together, eternally poised, and she never looks like anything less than a million bucks. Not once have I seen her tear up, even when we’re booked with more stages than she has the furniture to supply. But to my eyes, she just looks fragile. Slender neck and thin arms, long legs balancing on needle-like stilettos.

She should have someone to help her, not that she’d probably let him, but at least someone to pull out her chair or open a door, maybe offer to pick up the clothes from the dry cleaner’s or cook her dinner. Just someone to give her a break and help carry the load. I mean, it’s not like I’m hauling those couches and beds on my own, and teamwork was life or death when I was part of Pararescue.

But Zoe doesn’t have that. All she has is me, bitching at her to decide what bedroom set she wants delivered, how she expects me to pull off staging three living rooms in three surrounding cities and have it all done in four hours, and arguing with her about why I’m not going to swap out those area rugs again just because she’s low on caffeine and changed her mind.

Shit, that reminds me.

I pull off the highway, swinging into the drive thru of one of the ten billion Starbucks gracing this planet. And after I place the standard order for a Mocha Latte and creep forward to the window, I check on Zoe again to discover she’s awake: her eyes soft and the corner of her lips pulling up.

I tilt my head, and she barely shrugs one shoulder, a thousand things we don’t talk about settling in the small space between us. It stays there until some kid tells me the total and I tear my eyes away from Zoe, passing him enough cash to cover her drink and taking the cup he hands me. I pass it off to my boss with a wink, then pull away and try to think about anything except for that smile as I drive us toward the dealership.

She’s not supposed to look at me like that. She knows it, I know it, because it’s not part of the deal and it isn’t going to do anything but make life infinitely more complicated. And it’s complicated enough.

I finally get us to her dealership and when she gets out of my car, it’s like she takes the loaded silence right along with her. But I have to admit, I’m still watching the delightful sway of her ass as she walks away from me.

Until my phone rings, her name lighting up the screen.

I answer it and pull out onto the street, a smirk in my tone when I say, “Zoe’s personal chauffeur service, how may I be of assistance?”

“You can stop ogling me like a teenager who just hit puberty.”

Fuck. “Ma’am, I am a professional. I am sure I have no knowledge of the incident you are referring to.”

“Sure you don’t,”
she says, and I snort.
“Anyway I was going to say I have to go get some inventory paperwork off my desk so instead of heading back to the warehouse to lock it up, you can just go home for the night.”

Sweet. “We don’t need to load up the truck for the stage we have tomorrow morning?”

“You’re going to come in early and do it then. But only after you pick up the truck and go grab the four bed frames I ordered because I need them for tomorrow afternoon. You can put them together after you do the first stage in the morning, or you can build the beds once you deliver them, I don’t care. But don’t forget my coffee in the morning, or let it get cold, otherwise you’ll be looking for a new employer,”
she says, then hangs up.

I scoff at my phone, then place it in my cup holder. God, she needs therapy.

And apparently lessons on acceptable social behavior because she’s calling me
again
.

I answer it, then grit out, “What?”

“I changed my mind, I need you to go back to my office and pick up—”

“No, I’m off the clock.
Permanently
,” I snap, then hang up on her. I rev my engine a little harder because the faster I can get away from her, the better.

I swear to God, does she think just because she’s gorgeous and signs my checks that she can treat me like some piece-of-trash minion? Fuck that. And normally I’m happy to help her take care of stuff, to fix things and run errands with her, but not when it means she’s going to act like I’m lucky for every whiff of her perfume she graces me with.

I drive like a bat out of hell the rest of the way home, shutting my front door harshly behind me and stomping all the way into my shower. I scrub my skin with the single-minded purpose of losing the scent of white tea and ginger lotion because it drives me crazy that I always fucking smell like her, and it’s just…it’s fucking cruel.

By the time I’m done and pulling on my jeans, my angry pulse has slowed a bit and I’m ready for a beer and a little perusing of the wanted ads to find myself a new job where I’m not anyone’s bitch. Shouldn’t be a problem with the influx of seasonal work to help corral the spring and summer tourists. But I’m also starving after not eating anything today except for a Clif bar this morning, so I’m going to have to take care of that first. Too bad beer isn’t part of the nutrition triangle.

I bust out my favorite of all cooking appliances, my gorgeous wok, and after twenty therapeutic minutes of cutting up vegetables, my perfected stir fry is just about done. I take another sip of my beer and toss the vegetables in the wok with a honed twitch of my wrist, cashews and green beans and broccoli and onions all dancing around in a dangerously-spicy brown sauce like they’re leaping on hot coals, then carefully, I slide them onto a plate of steaming white rice. I pick out a cashew and toss it high into the air, catching it with my mouth and I am happily moaning at the taste when there’s a knock on my front door that makes my heartbeat thud furiously.

Un-fucking-real.

I stride over and open the door, finding Zoe standing on the other side: her arms crossed and designer purse slung on her shoulder. She’s ditched her blazer; her blue silk blouse tucked neatly into the waist of her white pencil skirt. And when I realize she’s tapping the toe of her navy stiletto on my non-existent welcome mat, my entire body locks into a mode that screams
no.

“Treatment for bipolar sadists is held on the fourth floor,” I growl, and she huffs before walking inside. I grit my teeth angrily as I shut the door, seeing Zoe toss down her purse on my kitchen counter.

“Luca, will you please—”

“No, uh-uh,” I cut her off, walking towards the spot where Zoe is determined to disrespect me in my own goddamn apartment by refusing to look me in the eye, instead only showing me the outline of her shoulder blades through the fabric of her shirt. “This gravy train has left the station and you can get the hell out right along with it.”

“
OhmyGod
, what are you cooking?” she bursts out, whipping around to face me with her hand covering her mouth and nose.

I scoff, offended. “Stir fry.”

“I’m gonna be sick…” She rushes towards my bathroom, and when the door slams shut behind her I stand still, rooted in shock and utterly confused about whatever the hell just happened.

I listen to the unmistakable sounds of her getting sick, and I wince. But there’s nothing I can do so I head into the kitchen, grabbing my plate and putting it in my refrigerator before quickly rinsing out the wok and clearing away anything else carrying any sort of odor. I wish I had a candle or something, but I don’t. I do find a spray bottle of Febreze under my sink, but it’s almost empty. Crap.

She comes out a second later, her skin a little pale and her hair loosely pulled back into a makeshift bun, and it’s hard to remind myself I’m angry, but I am. And it sucks that she’s sick but she’s the one who knocked on my front door. She should have gone home if she didn’t feel well, but
no
, she had to come over to pick a fight.

She takes a deep breath and I cross my arms in preparation for whatever she’s about to say, for the argument that’s been brewing for weeks. But what has me tilting my head in confusion is the fact that she’s not scowling at me: her bottom lip is caught between her teeth, and it’s trembling like she’s about to
cry.

And then
she does
.