One Week with her Rival:Eden Manor, Book One(9)

"Silas!" she called out, as loudly as she could, standing just outside  the door of the workshop. She didn't want to barge in and surprise him.  He didn't take to that well.

He didn't like visitors at all, but since she was delivering work and  not paying a social call, she figured he wouldn't be too annoyed with  her.         

     



 

She heard the sound of the clanging of metal inside stop.

"Silas? I've got a window for you!"

There was a wordless grunt from inside, and she couldn't tell from the sound of it whether it was an invitation to enter or not.

"Can I come in?"

"Yeah." He sounded very grumpy.

She opened the door and smiled at him. He was shirtless and soaked with  sweat. He had an incredible body, although she found him only  objectively attractive. He wasn't her type at all. She wasn't sure what  kind of woman would be willing to put up with such an inward, nonverbal,  unsmiling man. His ex-wife certainly hadn't been able to deal with him  for very long.

Vanessa would much rather have a man who smiled warmly and laughed like Joe.

"You said the week after next," he grunted, picking up a cloth to wipe the sweat from his face.

"I know, but they took the window down today, so I figured it would be  safer to bring it out today. Can you help me get it out of my car?"

He didn't answer, but he put down his towel and walked toward her, so  she figured that was a yes. Together, they carefully removed the window  from the back of her SUV and positioned it in a safe place in a corner  of his workshop.

"Nice one," Silas said, giving the window a close look.

"Yeah. It's beautiful. Several of the panes are broken, but they want to  keep the coloring and condition as close to original as possible."

"No problem."

"There are two more windows that I'll bring over whenever they get them taken down."

"Week after next."

"Yes, definitely by then."

"I can't get to them until Tuesday or Wednesday that week."

"That's fine." She grew still for a moment, with that familiar sensation  of impending doom, without any good reason for expecting it.

"I might take another job that'll take me through Monday that week."

"That's no problem." She swallowed, holding herself back from asking the obvious question.

"The job I might take is with Coleman."

She managed to keep her face from expressing any response. "You don't have to tell me."

"Yeah, I do. The money is too good not to consider. It's business."

After clearing her throat, she smiled at him. "Of course, it's business. You don't have to explain yourself to me."

His thick eyebrows lowered, and he peered at her face. "He's making it hard to refuse. The money is...really good."

"That's what you said. You have to think about what's right for you and your business. You don't have to feel bad about me."

Silas didn't say anything. He wasn't the sort of man to talk this much  or this openly. But he obviously felt guilty and still loyal to Carl,  and he didn't look convinced that Vanessa didn't care either way.

She did care. And, no matter how much she tried to tell herself that it wasn't personal, it felt personal to her.

Even more so because Joe had been working on this behind her back, even as he'd been flirting with her and kissing her.

She needed to leave soon, or she wouldn't be able to keep her calm  expression. She gave Silas a quick goodbye and hurried back to her car.

It was fine. It was all fine. Silas couldn't be blamed for taking a job that offered him far more money than she could pay him.

Joe must be taking the extra money out of his own pocket. That was the  only way he'd be able to pay Silas enough to tempt him to work with  someone other than Vanessa.

He really wanted to take Silas away from Vanessa if he was willing to take such a cut in potential earnings.

But it had always been business, and Vanessa really shouldn't have expected anything else.





Friday


Vanessa spent the next day avoiding Joe and pretending like nothing was bothering her.

She stayed away from Eden Manor as much as possible and tried to fill  her time with work she could do off-site. But she was mostly just  brooding about Joe.

She could have lived with losing Silas as an exclusive client. She  wouldn't have been happy, but it was foolish to expect him to hurt his  own profit margin out of loyalty to his dead best friend.

What hurt most was that Joe had been engineering this coup at the same  time he'd been pretending to get close to her. It was exactly what had  happened last time, and she'd allowed it to happen again, as if she  hadn't learned anything at all in the last few years.

That evening, she sat and stared at the TV for several hours. Joe called  twice, but she didn't answer. She just kept stewing about Joe and her  own stupidity until she couldn't take it anymore. She stood up abruptly,  glancing at the clock to see that it was after ten in the evening.         

     



 

She didn't care. She had to do something. Right now.

She pulled on a light sweater to cover her sweats and tank top and  slipped on a pair of shoes. Then she walked out of her house and got  into her SUV, acting before she could talk herself out of it.

She knew it was stupid. She knew it was an overreaction to emotion. But she had to do it anyway.

Joe lived across town from her. She lived in the three bedroom ranch  that she and Carl had bought shortly after they'd been married. Joe  lived in an apartment above the hardware store on one of the three  downtown streets of their little town. She'd been to his place  before-back when they'd been hanging out after Carl died. She'd gone  over a few times for dinner, to watch a couple of movies, and to see the  work he'd done on renovating the bathroom. So she knew exactly where to  park and what doorway to buzz on the street.

It was ten-thirty now. She didn't know what time he went to bed, but he  got up really early, so he might already be asleep. Either way, he was  in for the night and wouldn't be expecting visitors. Normally, this idea  would have been enough to keep her from her plan of action, but not  tonight.

She was in a strange, emotional daze that simply wouldn't be denied.

She pressed the buzzer next to the exterior door until she heard his voice in the speaker. "What?"

He sounded rather grumpy. He might have been asleep.

"It's Vanessa," she said into the speaker. "I need to talk to you."

He pressed the button to open the door for her without saying anything  else, and she walked up the stairs to the door to his apartment.

He already had it opened, and he was standing in the doorway, wearing a  pair of jeans and nothing else. His hair was a rumpled mess, and he  looked only half awake.

He was the sexiest thing she'd ever seen, and her eyes dropped  involuntarily to where his jeans were riding low on his lean hips.

"Vanessa? What's the matter?" He moved out of the doorway to let her in.

She stepped into his apartment. It had beautiful bones-old hardwood  floors, an exposed brick wall, big windows that were original to the  building. But the décor was rather Spartan, made up of an old couch, a  leather recliner, and a huge television. The bedroom was separated from  the main living area, so she couldn't see what his bed was like.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, when she didn't answer his previous question. "Why were you avoiding me all day?"

She was breathing fast, and her heart was racing. It felt like everything inside her was about to burst out.

Then it did. "How could you?" she demanded, without prelude or explanation.

"How could I what?" He was frowning and looked genuinely confused as he  closed and locked the front door behind her. "What's the matter,  Vanessa?"

"I talked to Silas!" The words came out as an accusation-one that couldn't be mistaken.

Enlightenment dawned on Joe's face, and his lips parted slightly.

"He told me what you did," she continued, a rush of anger overwhelming  her again as she realized how deeply he'd abused her trust, how much  she'd let him.

Joe cleared his throat and gave his jeans a tug, pulling them slightly higher up his hips. "I just made him an offer."

"You didn't just make him an offer. You offered him way more than any  job would allow. You can't possibly make any money on the job you gave  him. You took the money out of your own pocket just to spite me."

"Not just to spite you," Joe said, taking a step toward her. "It wasn't like that."

When he reached out to put a hand on her arm, she jerked away from him. "It was like that. It was exactly like that."

Joe sighed, his features twisting slightly. She didn't know what the expression meant. "Vanessa, you know it's just business-"

"It's not just business! You know it's not just business. If it was  business, you'd want to make a profit. You wouldn't want to destroy my  company just to do it."

"I don't want to destroy your company." Instead of the mollifying tone  of before, he sounded slightly annoyed. "Don't be ridiculous."