CLARISSA
I
walk, no, run, toward the stairs, practically flinging myself down them.
Fucking Baxters.
Does nothing good ever come out of them? Fucking fuckhead, fucktard, fucking dickface fuckers!
Every single fucking one of them.
Not just Damien, but fucking Gerry too, who’d promised me that our plan was going to work. Gerry, who I’d believed even when I knew he was the last person who should ever be believed.
And now, they’re all flying high while I’m stuck in a fucking run-down building, sleeping on a dusty couch and showering at the gym a block away from my “home”.
And to think that Leanne was trying to set me up with one of them. The worst of them, in fact. At least Damien was serious with his work and wasn’t a manwhore. Wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that Matthias was reported to have knocked up two women?
I hope he catches something that turns his dick green and oozing and it falls off, then it’s dipped in rancid hot sauce and fed to him. Hope he chokes on his pustulating, gangrenous pickledick!
Fuck!
And he’d outed my business to everyone. Once he dropped the information, Halifax had looked at me like I’d looked at Matthias.
The front door sticks so I slam my body against it and fall out into the warm late spring afternoon. I inhale deeply, then exhale with a loud “pahhhh” trying to expel the anger from my mind and body.
Fuck!
Blinded by rage, I step out onto the street, trying to flag a cab. But it’s five p. m. and they’re all full. I don’t really have the presence of mind to book a Lyft on my phone so I just keep my arm in the air, taking in deep, deep breaths.
A few seconds go by before I realize my cheeks are dripping with tears. I can’t remember the last time I cried, or at least the last time I let myself cry. But these are tears of anger, of frustration, spurred on by a man from the same family who’s responsible for where I am in my life right now.
A car horn startles me out of self-pity as a cab rushes by me, leaving a hot cloud of fuel in its wake.
Shit.
I’m going to get myself run over if I don’t start paying attention.
Another cab turns onto the road and it looks empty. I raise my hand, just as someone wraps their arms around my bicep and yanks me back.
It’s Matthias, with a smug fucking grin on his face.
“Hey,” he snickers, his voice saturated with self-satisfaction. Can one word make you want to slap someone? Because he’s just proven it can.
“What do you want? Shouldn’t you go inside to perform for your adoring audience?”
The left side of his mouth lifts into an ironic curl. “Oh, Rissie, have you forgotten? Everywhere I go, there’s an adoring audience.” I can’t help but let out a snort. “Oh, so you agree? Why I’m flattered.” He bends at the waist in a deep bow. It makes me want to shove him down and knee him in the fucking balls.
“I agree about as much as I agree that you should step out onto the road in front of that truck!”
“Can’t. Expensive suit. Just got it back from the tailor.”
“It’ll definitely be worth more with your blood splattered all over it.” Annoyingly, he just laughs, which only makes me scowl even harder.
“I’m going to ask you again,” I hiss, “what do you want?”
“Leanne sent me to give you this. You forgot to pick it up.” He holds up a thick binder with Leanne’s logo on the front cover. I’m sure it is filled with the swatches and paint samples that she painstakingly picked out for me.
My fingers itch to grab for it. I’m been waiting all day to see her ideas. I just didn’t expect that I’d have to deal with Matthias Baxter to get to it. “I didn’t forget it. I had to get out of these because… as I said, there was a bad smell.”
He lifts his arm and gives his armpit a sniff. If my memory serves me right, he’s getting a nose full of Aventus by Creed. Too bad he didn’t swallow the bottle and poison himself.
“Actually, I smell divine. Want a sniff? Maybe your last nose job affected your olfactory nerves.”
My foot itches on the ground to swing at his shin. But that would mean touching him. “Big word for such a small brain.”
“Oh, darling, it’s the only small thing about me.”
Okay, that’s fucking enough. I reach over to grab the folder but just as my fingers touch its edge, he takes a step back. And a step for Matthias, who towers over me at six foot six inches, is a big fucking step.
I refuse to let go of my swatches, however, and for my trouble I fall on him, my face flat against his chest.
And I was right.
He still smells just like ambergris and Moroccan jasmine, and it is fucking divine.
“Well, well, well, Clarissa. If you wanted me to hug you, all you had to do was ask.”
With a hand against his firm chest, I push myself away from him, taking the folder with me as I stand up. “Matthias Baxter, I wouldn’t want you to touch me, if you were the only man alive, and your touch saved me from a flesh-eating bacterium that killed off everyone else on this earth by gnawing their skin off an inch at a time.”
He grins, sticks his fingers into his mouth, and blows, letting out a loud dog whistle. A car pulls out from the curb and drives up to us. Grabbing my arms, he pulls me toward the car, and opens the back seat door. “Rissie, you’re not going to get a cab at this time.” He leans into the car. “Kevin, please take Ms. Masters wherever she wants to go. But don’t take any money she gives you. It could be laced with arsenic.”
“I don’t need a ride,” I shout, even though I do.
“Then why were you trying to get a taxi?” He’s got me there. “Take the ride. Consider it an apology for telling everyone we were almost siblings-in-law.”
The reminder stings. I’d had a relatively quiet existence here with no one really knowing who I was. And now he’s announced it to one of the friendliest but most chatty people in town.
“Am I supposed to thank you for the ride?” I hiss, the rudeness surprising even myself. “Because, as far as I remember, Matthias, you’ve never done anything for anyone out of the goodness of your heart.”