Live (The Burnside Series): The Burnside Series Read online

  “I mean, if your friend is interested. Obviously?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “You’ll introduce me?”

  “Right away, if you have time.”

  “It all sounds awesome.” She met his look and the shiny flecks in her eyes were silvery again.

  “You’d think so,” Hefin said. He wondered what it would be like to think something was awesome. He watched Des looking around the library with her new, glinting eyes and thought it was possible he already knew, a bit.

  “If I would like to meet your friend? Now? I won’t take you away from your work in the atrium?”

  “No. Freelance, remember? The crew will be glad to have a breather from me.”

  Hefin tried to push down the feeling of unreality as he grabbed her bag for her and led her to the double doors into the staff area. He had watched this woman for weeks and weeks, come close to starting a conversation with her a dozen times, but never managed it, unable to think how. Now, she was right beside him, her fine and shining hair lifting with static from a crooked barrette, her freckles like sand and gold dust.

  She was real. It was her that was grinning, sliding her hands into the pockets of her worn jeans so that they dipped and pulled across a bottom that shouldn’t have been possible on such a thin woman.

  Hefin took a breath, to see how it felt. His blood seemed to move around his body, as usual. His view settled back down so he felt like he was seeing what was in front of him instead of watching his actions from above. He was fine. This would be fine. It would have to be.

  Des grinned, unencumbered. Hefin swung her bag into the space between them. Where he would build his jetty. Sea change was just that, a change in the sea. Something to adjust the rudder against, watch for in the tides, nothing more. Inevitable, but not destiny. Truly.

  Chapter Three

  He told her to wait in the hallway in front of the office for a few minutes, while he talked to his friend.

  Des felt like it had been forever, so she pushed into the room quietly. At first, all she could see was a very healthy philodendron twining over the tops of cubicle walls, but then she spotted Hefin’s long arm gripping around one of the walls, and heard his voice murmuring.

  “Hello?” Des hung back by the door, awkward.

  Hefin emerged fully from behind the cubicle partition and looked at her for a moment as if he couldn’t place her, then turned away to talk to whoever was in the cubicle. Des squeezed the strap of her bag, forcing herself to breathe. Hefin looked back again, briefly, and motioned her over with his head.

  Des took a step forward but hesitated. She suddenly felt the full wash of embarrassment over her breakdown. She looked down at her feet, her silly red Cons, the hole in the knee of her jeans, her purple bike-shop T-shirt.

  She thought about how he didn’t always meet her eyes, and how hard it was to tell if the look he was giving her was warm or just—wincing? Yes, there had been that brief, hot gaze. But—

  “Des?” Hefin was turned fully toward her now, his brows lifted expectantly.

  “Yeah.” It came out a whisper. She swallowed over the yank of mortification. “Yes. Thanks.”

  He met her halfway, then, just barely, sort of took her elbow, maybe a couple of fingers right under its point. She wasn’t sure until he applied a little pressure to direct her into the cubicle.

  The tips of his fingers were rough, and she knew if they moved across her skin, even a little, she would break out in goose bumps. She was able to catch how he smelled, elusively, something like brown sugar and lumber.

  In the cubicle was a gamine-faced woman with short, curly hair and heavy glasses. She stood up when Des stepped into the cubicle with Hefin, and her grin instantly put Des at ease.

  “Hey,” she said, “nice to meet you. I’m Carrie West, the Juvenile and Young Adult librarian and program director.” Carrie stuck out her hand for Des to shake and motioned to chairs for her and Hefin.

  “Nice to meet you,” Des said. “I’m Des Burnside, and I’m really, really glad to be here.” She wanted to look at Hefin, but didn’t think she could keep it together if she did.

  “Hefin told me I should talk to you about the part-time project we have for someone to redevelop and manage the Web site and social-media interface for my program. He said he thought of you right away for the position?”

  He seemed to jolt a bit in his chair, and Des resisted wondering why. “He told me about it this morning, after talking to me about my job search.”

  “You’ve been unemployed for a while, he said?”

  Hefin had said a lot, it seemed. “Yes. I was laid off in the winter from a developer position at a local SEO and design-services company. I enrolled in the unemployment program the last two months or so.”

  Carrie met Des’s eyes, but they were friendly behind the glasses, her smile warm and easy. “So you have computer experience?”

  Des felt her spine lose its torque.

  She found herself telling this lovely woman almost everything, details about her work, what she had been looking for, what it is she thought she’d like to do, now.

  She told Carrie about ideas she didn’t even know she had, until that moment, and they were good ones.

  Carrie grinned, a huge smile that broke through Des’s speech, and Des stopped, a little sheepish. Too bad she hadn’t mustered up that kind of passion at her last interview.

  “I kind of hate that you’re so overqualified for this, Des, but that’s the nature of the economy, I guess. Hefin told you it was just part-time?”

  Des looked over, and Hefin was looking down at his clasped hands in his lap, his knuckles nearly white. As if he could tell she was looking, he lifted his head and looked back.

  There wasn’t even a hint of expression on his sort of noble face, but she was surprised to find his eyes steady, soft at the corners, completely open to her gaze, like he’d hold it forever if that was what she wanted.

  So she looked away first.

  “He gave me the flyer, but honestly, I’d absolutely take anything right now.”

  “Also,” Carrie said, “just so you can plan, the job won’t ever be eligible for more hours, and only has funding for three months on the grant. I can’t guarantee that we’d win the grant again, and even if we did, since this is a grant-funded position, if you were interested in staying with the library, you’d have to apply via the regular application system for library employees just like if you were a brand-new hire—there’s no lateral or in-house promotions from a grant-created position.”

  “I totally understand.”

  “Okay. Awesome. Hefin did say that you were just looking for something to get your feet under you in this market.” Carrie smiled another one of her pretty, open smiles.

  Oh he did? Destiny looked at him again, and maybe he had never stopped looking at her, because she ran right into those bittersweet eyes and he actually smiled at her, a little, and she felt phantoms of her previous blushes skitter over the fine hairs at her temples and neck.

  She didn’t look away. “Yes. I just need to start somewhere.” Hefin broke their eye contact to look back down at his hands.

  Des looked back at Carrie, and there was something considering in Carrie’s face. But it cleared, quickly.

  “I really hope everything works out for you, Des. Could you come back tomorrow morning so you and I can hammer out the details?”

  “Sure.”

  “Great! Honestly, the job’s probably way easy compared to what you’re used to.”

  “Honestly, it’s much more than I’m used to, lately.” She kind of winced as soon as she said it, but Carrie laughed and it was possible Hefin made some kind of laughlike noise as well.

  She looked at Carrie, glad she had someone easy to thank. “I really appreciate this opportunity. I’ve been working from the library for weeks and everyone has always been so helpful. I hope I can prove to be as helpful to you.”

  Carrie grinned, big and sparkly. “You’re so n
ice, Des, and I mean that in its most charming variation.”

  Des risked looking at Hefin, again. Those eyes of his just bottomed out, dark and soft, and she watched a pink flush flood right through his dark stubble. Oh.

  They both looked away at the same time, just as there was a buzzing and clanging from Carrie’s desk. Des watched Carrie scoop up a ginormous phone, look at the screen, and smile in a way that seemed connected to a joy through her whole body.

  She touched the screen and spun away from them, talking to someone low and soft.

  Hefin cleared his throat, like he was going to say something, but he looked at a spot between his feet on the floor, instead.

  “Should I go?” Des whispered to his spot on the floor.

  “Yeah, she’ll be a while with her boy, there. But walk out with me.” He tried to whisper back, but a whisper just couldn’t contain that rough and expansive voice, and so every prosaic word he said seemed like the most intimate murmurings.

  Hefin stood and picked Des’s bag up off the floor before she could grab it. Carrie waved at them over her shoulder.

  He walked out of Carrie’s cubicle and Des followed him, feeling awkward again. He made his way to another cubicle, in the far corner, and she stood at its entrance.

  “You had breakfast?”

  Des shook her head.

  “We’ll celebrate, then.”

  There wasn’t anything on his desk but a travel mug and a white pastry sack, and there were a couple of pictures of what looked like buildings, on the corkboard hanging above his desk.

  Here, in the small space, she could smell tea, sugar, Hefin.

  Turned away from her, she could see how his hair was tightly curled where it grew against his neck and ears, but just random crimps on top, all of it messy and raked through and dark. Just along the nape of his neck, there was a trail of sawdust. She wanted to brush it away from his skin, feel his skin.

  He still wore her bag against his body and adjusted it to rest in his lower back as he bent over to get napkins from a bottom desk drawer. It was hard to tell under his clothes, which were just a little loose on him, worn, but she didn’t think he was much more than abbreviated muscle over bones, hanging together like a hemp-tied raft.

  He stood up, and Des felt a sudden liquid heaviness down low when he reached into a spontaneous stretch, pulling both arms over his head. His T-shirt lifted. His jeans were low on his hips. Muscles gripped and relaxed along his low spine, just above the elastic of his underwear. One pull of soft fabric over his head, another raking yank down his hips, and he would be naked.

  It was a fantasy so crystalline, Des closed her eyes to give him some privacy.

  He gathered a travel mug and the pastry bag in one hand, and slid her bag over his shoulder to his other.

  “Can I grab something for you? Like my bag?” And why did asking that make her blushes creep back up?

  “No, course not, after you.” He waved her ahead with the pastries and she led them back out into the hallway.

  “Just through here.” He stopped at a door with a thick glass window. “Should be unlocked.”

  She opened the door and walked into a pitch-black room and felt him right behind her. She wasn’t sure he had room to clear the door with his full arms, so she stepped forward again and lost purchase on the heavy door. He had kept so close behind her that when the door slammed, they were both shut into the dark room.

  Des looked back, and the low light from the hallway filtered in a bit through the rectangle of glass in the door, but not much. The room was obviously large. “Shit, I’m sorry.” She turned around to find the handle to prop the door for a little more light, but he wasn’t right where she left him, and she rammed into his arm, crinkling the pastry bag.

  “No, I’m sorry,” he said, directly into her right ear. She could feel his breath, warm and tea-scented over her neck, and she was so glad he couldn’t see her shiver. But he didn’t seem to move his body away, either, upon discovering her so close; his breath kept feathering the flyaway strands of hair against her temple and cheek.

  “Let me just move back over to the door and crack it so we can find the switch.” He said this with that nonwhisper whisper, a sweet whisper, which wasn’t necessary, was it? With just the two of them in this room?

  “Okay,” she sort of whispered back, and it seemed nearly indecent to whisper, no reason to be so quiet in the dark, and because she had to move, something, she brought her arm up to wrap around her body, only to discover he was holding his arm, the one with the pastry bag and tea dangling from his hand, sort of protectively in front of her.

  Their arms brushed, her forearm across the crook of his elbow. Their cheeks radiated warmth from the other’s, so close. There was the sound of their breathing, which shouldn’t have been so loud.

  She heard the bag crinkle right before she felt the inside of his arm press. He was warm, so warm, and his arm hair was soft. She pressed back.

  For a disorienting moment, she was in his arms.

  Then, a coolness, and a bar of light slid into the room like a scolding teacher.

  “Got it,” he said, and the overhead light was so invasive, Des actually closed her eyes for a long beat.

  He immediately piled his burden on a chair and started moving small pallets of thick wooden panels off the table, brisk in his movements. She took her bag and the very crumpled pastry sack, setting everything on the table where he’d made space. They sat down side by side.

  “Sorry, it’s a mess in here, it’s a bit of a catch-all room for the restoration project.” He screwed the lid off his mug and fished out the tea tag with his fingers.

  When he swiveled in the chair to look at her, he was sucking the tea from his fingertips and their gazes met, but Des couldn’t help but let hers drift where she could just see the soft inner aspect of his bottom lip where his finger was turning it out. She ground her back teeth, hard, when she caught a flash of his tongue between his teeth as his finger slid out.

  “It’s fine,” she said to the tabletop. Weirdest morning ever.

  “Here.” He pushed a very flattened sugar-glazed croissant on a crumpled napkin up against her hand. “You likely need this after your big morning. Sweets for salt and all that.”

  Des dragged the croissant in front of her, and even smooshed, it looked amazing. She hadn’t indulged in bakery goods for a long, long time. She tore a tiny piece from the end, and it fell apart into dissolving flakiness in her mouth. She closed her eyes, and now it was her turn to lick her fingers.

  “Good?” His voice was a scratch, like he was trying to whisper again.

  “Yeah, God, I haven’t had pastries in forever. Thanks.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing. I’ve a bit of a sweet tooth, I guess.” She watched him center his chocolate cream-filled pastry on his own napkin. She wasn’t sure she would survive the tidal wave of lust that would be watching him eat it.

  “ ‘Sweet for salt,’ what is that? I haven’t heard it before.” She tore off another small piece, trying to make it last.

  “Oh, yeah? It’s just, a grandmotherly thing, I suppose. Follow your tears with a bit of sugar so you’re made all right again.”

  She looked over—he was drinking his tea and watching her, with those soft eyes and his hard expression. He was beautiful, true, but something about stumbling through the morning with him as her appointed and gruff advocate had made his beauty easier to take in. Touchable.

  He’d watched her cry and come apart and just, well, stood by, basically. Tried to make her problems go away any way that he could. Why, Des wasn’t sure. Wasn’t sure she cared, at least right now, with the robe of intimacy around them and sweetness on their tongues.

  “I get that, I think,” Des said. She divided the last of her croissant into neat, savorable pieces. “My dad, he could never stand it if I was the least bit sad.” She looked at him, and he looked back, steady. “I’d come home crying about mean girls at school, or bad grades, and he’d make Kool-Aid a
nd open a bag of cookies and say ‘Oh, it’s their loss, Des,’ or ‘You’ll make it up, just you see.’ And we’d gorge ourselves on all that sugar, and it would be better.”

  “You said he ‘could never stand it.’ Is he gone?”

  “Yeah. He died just this last winter, actually. It’s barely been six months. Then I was laid off.” Des, to her horror, inhaled around a new lump in her throat, so easily formed after the morning’s tears. She shoved in a piece of pastry, willing the glaze and butter to soothe it. Like magic, it did, a little. “He was so proud of that job.” She stopped again, unable to make the next words.

  “Why’s that?” His voice, even, like she wasn’t on the brink of falling apart again, straightened her.

  “It’s silly.” She let herself look at him and sink a bit into their easy eye contact. He raised his eyebrows, waiting. “College wasn’t easy for me. Not like it was for my brothers. And my sister never wanted to go and was glad to do her own thing. And he was so absurdly proud of my stupid, state-school computer-marketing degree. ‘You see there, I knew you could do it, Des!’ he’d said. I didn’t even walk in graduation, but when the certificate came, he framed it and hung it over the mantel.” Des watched his face even as she felt the first tears spill. No helping it, now.

  “Every night,” she said, surprised at how steady her voice was, how unflinchingly he took in her story, “every night I go home after a day sending a million résumés or talking to managers who won’t hire me or sitting through some job seeker’s seminar, I sit in his old recliner, which I can’t give up even though it reeks of hundreds of packs of Camels, and I hear him.

  “I hear him say, ‘Ah, Des, it’s their loss, you know.’ ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get after it tomorrow.’ It’s not just in my head, I really hear him, and God, I just want to tell him that I know, I will, and that I’ll be okay, but most of the time, especially lately, I can’t, then today”—she reached up to swipe all the tears from her face—“today, when you handed me that flyer, I swear my first thought was, God, I can really tell him I’m gonna be okay.”