Page 20

I’m still holding my pen. That seems worth establishing, because I’ve no idea how long I’ve been holding it.

I look down at the list, willing my brain to start firing again.

Kelso, R – Bayliner, winter haul, no email. I read it again. Kelso, R. A third time, a fourth, and not one word of it makes it into my head.

My handwriting’s gone to hell halfway down the page too, letters running into each other, the pen pressing too hard, and none of this is going to be legible on Monday.

Behind me, the window comes out of the frame with a crack and a scrape. He leans it against the wall and starts shaving the swollen wood down in long, even strokes, and every one of them puts his shoulders into it.

I shouldn’t look. Just listening to the rhythm of it is doing things to me. I know what his back looks like. No need to see the muscles moving under the stretched cloth of his T-shirt.

I look anyway and have to bite back a small moan.

The sawdust smells better than it has any business smelling. I get up, because sitting there marinating is worse, and I go and stand at the cabinet and pull out several files I already sorted on Friday.

Behind me the strokes keep going, slow and even, my mind supplying his hips moving in that exact rhythm, and I put the files back in the wrong order twice.

Then the shaving stops.

“Daniels.”

“I’m not doing anything,” I squeak guiltily.

He’s got the window back up against the frame, holding the whole weight of it over his head with one hand.

“Didn’t say you were. Come hold this for me, please.”

I put the files down and come around the desk.

“Both hands. Bottom edge, there and there.” He shifts his grip on it. “Push up, keep it there. If it comes down, it takes my fingers with it.”

So that’s how I end up facing the wall with my arms over my head, holding a window in place while my boss crouches at the side of it with a screwdriver in his teeth.

It’s heavier than it looks.

“Higher.”

“This is as high as I go.”

“Higher, Daniels.”

I go up on my toes.

He starts screwing the new strip in down at the bottom, working his way up. He doesn’t touch me. He’s careful about it, keeps his elbows in, works around me instead of leaning into me, and it doesn’t help me even slightly.

He’s close enough that I can feel his body heat through my shirt. When he reaches past my shoulder to get to the top of the strip his forearm comes to within an inch of my breast and stays there.

Nobody in the history of civilization has ever been as aware of something not happening as I am for as long as it takes him to set two screws. I can smell him. Sawdust, coffee, the faint scent of grease under the fresh, clean smell of his soap.

My nipples have gone hard enough to be visible through two layers and there is not one single thing I can do about it with my hands over my head.

“Don’t move,” he says, and stands up.

He doesn’t go round the desk to reach the other side. He comes behind me, close enough that I feel the air shift, and puts his hand on the frame beside my head to lean past me and check the fit at the top.

His armpit is right there. Alongside my face. Short sleeve pulled back so I can see the sawdust clinging to the hair. His scent is so concentrated here I worry that I’m going to give in to the temptation to lean forward and burrow my head into his armpit. Maybe bite down lightly and trace the soft skin of his inner arm with my tongue. Taste the salt.

I want it so badly my jaw aches with it. I want to be on my knees on this disgusting floor with his hand fisted in my hair, wrecking my voice for a week, finding out what noise he makes when he finally stops holding himself together.