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A memory hit me then, of my mother, standing with her chin out as my asshole father screamed in her face. Her jaw was set, hands clenched. But then her chin wobbled, and I knew she was fighting tears.
“Why does she do that?” I’d asked my brother once, my six year old rage toward our dad fomenting even then. “Why does she just stand there and take it from him?”
Blake was only twelve at the time but he’d looked me in the eye and said, “So he won’t do it to us.”
You goddamned asshole.
My anger—now turned squarely on myself—choked me. Pissing people off was one thing. But to make a woman fear for her safety because of me?
“Anita.” I barked. “Who am I?”
“Mitchell William Franklin Harrington,” said Anita.
The woman blinked. It wasn’t enough.
“Who’s the owner of this house?”
“Mitchell William Franklin Harrington.”
Finally the woman took a breath and closed her eyes. A tear ran down her face, but she fisted it away.
You caused that, you fucking asshole.
“You… should go,” I said.
She gaped. “You called me!”
“Like hell I did. I don’t call people like you.”
I realized how it sounded the moment it came out, but it was too late to take it back. Besides, it was true. That shit was Sal’s job.
Sal.
She narrowed her eyes, clearly not scared of me a whit anymore. “Fine. Your people called me to help you. And Blake is nice, so I said yes. Clearly he got the good personality in the family. But you know what? Forget I was even here. I didn’t even want to come here.” She began tossing items into her toolbox, loud and hard. “Go ahead and turn your water back on and enjoy getting flooded in”—she waved her hand around—“shit.”
Jesus fucking Christ, it had been so long since I’d done anything for myself. Sal took care of my whole damn life from the top of one of my office towers in Seattle, where I’d left her six months ago. Where I had to go back next month if I didn’t want the business I’d meticulously built to come crashing down like a house of cards. With the tumultuous way I left my board, Sal was the only one actually holding it all together. I should thank her. But I was pissed that my assistant had colluded with Blake to get all of this done. Sal must have called him to see who could fix this fucking thing in an hour. And look who turned up. During my sacred fucking working hours no less.
I should have said nothing more. I had what I wanted—she was leaving. I should have just watched this bizarre, mouthy little piece of TNT pack up and let her get the hell out so I could go back to my blank fucking page in my bleak fucking pool house office. To write the goddamned novel that wasn’t going to write itself.
Except I couldn’t help notice the set of her jaw and a stiffness to the way she grabbed at the items on the floor. That face—that was one of humiliation.
I remembered that look well. I could practically feel it.
The way it burned so hot it hurt to exist.
“Stop,” I said.
She ignored me. She’d spread out—or things had gotten strewn out when I’d scared her—and had to move around the room to pick all her stuff up.
Clank.
“Stop!” I repeated, louder.
She strode angrily to the sink and reached for the flashlight I’d set on the counter, but she was apparently too flustered to grab it and it skittered off the marble and clattered to the ground.
“Shit.”
She squatted down to pick it up, but I was there first.
