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The guy wasn’t going to turn up an extra two thousand dollars for those seven days. He turned the keys over, no argument.
That left Bryon three hours to get the shit he needed to make something that passed for food and figure out how the hell to put it together.
Thank fuck the house was already furnished. At least it looked like someone lived there. It was decorated by the landlord’s wife. The guy just happened to be a thirty year old resort style punk kid who never grew up and lived to ski and had the token scrub beard and man bun, but his wife had good taste. She’d picked out tasteful, modern furniture and paired it with antiques here and there and neutral art that appealed to a wider variety, in hopes of justifying the overpriced rent they were charging for the tiny place.
Cason. He had no idea where he’d come up with that name. Or why the hell he’d offered to make something he couldn’t order in and pass off as his own cooking. Or just plain offered TV and takeout.
Noemi was sweet. She’d just had her whole life upended. She was the kind of person who struck him as sincere, a woman who had a good family and was loved and loved them in return. She was obviously vulnerable and not just because she’d fled everything familiar. It was easy to swoop in and be the white knight she needed.
Except that he wasn’t. A white knight. Or what she needed. He wasn’t any kind of knight, because knights didn’t exist. If they did, he’d be that washed up, tarnished kind that had a sagging horse, armor he’d lost in a bad hand of cards, missing teeth, ale on his breath, and likely a good case of something that was going to rot his dick off from getting drunk and engaging in questionable encounters with tavern maids.
Hardly fit to rescue a damsel in distress.
Then there was the whole problem about him being the one she was actually on the run from.
What he should have done was told her his real name and then followed it up by a conversation highlighting his better points- the few that he had- promising that he wasn’t actually that bad, telling her he didn’t want the marriage either, pointing out their obvious chemistry- because they did have something brewing at that table that wasn’t fake, even if everything else was- and ending it all by proposing his marvelous solution to all their problems.
Which he had yet to come up with.
Instead, he’d panicked a little and made up a fake name. He’d made up a fake everything, because he thought she’d run, and he’d never see her again.
There was this small, ridiculous, questionable part of himself that wasn’t completely tarnished by being ultra-rich and jaded by life in general, that wanted her to stay because she was beautiful and he could already tell that she was funny and smart and kind and he really did want to see her get those waffles that he promised. And he wanted to find her dickhead ex and if he didn’t have a butthole on his forehead, tear him a new one right in that spot.
In short, he was into her. He was into his own fiancé- sort of fiancé- and he wanted to know more. He wanted to know her.
Fucking karma. Or irony. Whatever it was, the universe either had a hard on for him or straight up fucking hated him and decided to make him the brunt of every joke possible.
At just after seven, the doorbell rang. Byron had been rushing around the kitchen, trying to use his phone with floury hands to figure out how the hell to cook waffles. He didn’t actually realize he needed a waffle maker and had gone out for it at the last minute.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d put so much effort into anything, but then again, if he lost Noemi, he’d lose the whole fucking deal and he’d worked far too hard his whole life to let it go to shit over waffles.
He pulled the door open to find Noemi smiling shyly at him from the doorstep. She’d curled her hair and it hung in thick ringlets trailing down her back. She had on a red dress, tighter on top, that flared out at the waist. She’d paired it with a set of black flats and had the same black leather bag slung over her shoulder that she’d used that morning. Her makeup was minimal, like she couldn’t actually be bothered with it, though she obviously took time with her hair and he was willing to bet the floor of her hotel room was littered with discarded outfits.
It made him feel strange, seeing her there, though he couldn’t really say what kind of strange. A twinge and his chest and a knot in his stomach kind of strange. Which was enough, given that he generally felt a whole lot of nothing at all when it came to other people.
