Eli Page 8

  I’d been thinking of my family in that conversation. It wasn’t one I would forget. “Yes.”

  “I need you to think about why I made this decision, Eli.” His quiet voice had my stomach going in circles. “I fired Roman.”

  It was like a tornado came roaring through the room. I got light-headed, and suddenly the room started to spin. When I could think again, I found my head stuck between my knees, and Preston yelling at me about being a goddamned drama queen.

  He was so cute when he worried.

  It only took a second for my brain to clear as I sat up. Shit. “You fired him?”

  The sentence didn’t make sense, even though I understood the words. “Why?”

  Preston looked at me like I was an idiot. “Because you two have scared the rest of the staff so badly that I had a couple of the models come to me and ask me not to put them in the same shoots as you guys. They weren’t sure what was going to happen, and they were freaked the fuck out.”

  Oh.

  “But the photos are always great, and we’ve never crossed the line.” Out of all the things I’d expected him to say, that he’d fired Roman wasn’t one of them.

  “Physically, maybe, but verbally yeah, you guys crossed the line, Eli.” Preston gave me an understanding look, then glanced back toward the stairs. “He calls you a hooker and you scream obscenities at him or taunt him into losing it. And I know the two of you thought I didn’t hear the crazy things you said to each other when you were doing that stupid bet where you only wore panties for days, but I did.” When I didn’t respond, he kept going. “The anger and emotion coming from both of you is frightening.”

  “But…” But he was supposed to quit and give up trying to make my life hell, not get fired.

  “No, this is my veto, Eli.” He wasn’t angry, but there was steel in his voice. I knew he wouldn’t back down.

  Preston wasn’t as loud as I was or anywhere near as colorful, but once he made up his mind, he was done. My brain was still fighting to process what he’d said. “But…”

  I sat there quietly for another moment until it started to catch up to me. “I have to go.”

  Standing up, I started heading for the door. I had enough of my brain working to pat my pockets down to make sure I had my keys and phone, but that was about all it was good for. Preston called out to me as I walked away, and I could hear the concern in his voice, but I just waved him off. I needed some space.

  I understood why he’d done it. I’d demanded that he fire the ass three times the first week after he’d started, but Preston had always explained that the pictures were beautiful, and he wanted to see if we could sort out our differences. He’d thought Roman and I would eventually figure out how to function together.

  As I walked out the door and toward the parking lot, I wasn’t sure what I was feeling. I should be elated. Even if he hadn’t quit, I wouldn’t have to hear the anger coming at me. Everything would go back to the way it’d been before he’d shown up and turned the company on its head.

  It took me too many tries to get my keys out of my pocket and actually open the door. My fingers wouldn’t work, and I ended up opening the trunk instead of unlocking the car before finally getting in and shutting the door.

  The privacy and the quiet only made it harder to process what had happened. As I looked out at the windshield and toward the building, I tried to picture how it would feel to walk in there Monday and know he wouldn’t be coming in…to know I wouldn’t have to see him again or deal with his anger.

  It should have been easy.

  I should have felt relieved. Right?

  I should have been happy that the tangle of emotions he caused were gone.

  It wasn’t that easy.

  I kept coming back to the pictures and the way he’d looked at me while he was taking them. Not just the shoot where we’d lost our minds, but the others. Even after that night, the way he’d looked at me hadn’t changed. The desire and passion made him angry, and he’d say cutting words I wasn’t sure he really meant, but the expression on his face sometimes would slice right through me.

  When he thought I couldn't see, or maybe he didn’t even realize he was doing it, desire would flare in his eyes and a possessiveness I’d seen in other men would vibrate out of him…but I hadn’t wanted them. I drove people crazy. Well, Eli drove people crazy. I wasn’t going to hold myself back or pretend to be anyone else when I was here. It was my home. My sanctuary where I could be whatever the hell I wanted.

  Even if it was a horny drama queen who loved being watched.

  Had that been what made Roman crazy?

  He took photos for a living. Shouldn’t being watched seem natural if he wanted to do the watching? That’s kind of what photography always felt like to me, a voyeuristic fantasy of being able to stand back and watch in a socially acceptable way.

  Was it the panties?

  They’d thrown him at the beginning. The first time he’d seen all of us trying on the new stuff, he’d lost his mind. He’d tried to hide it, but the combination of masculinity and femininity had him second-guessing what he was getting himself into.

  After a while, though, the way he’d looked at everyone seemed to have changed. The clothes hadn’t thrown him, and there had been no mistaking the passion and need in his eyes when he’d taken those pictures.

  That night.

  I hadn’t been able to bring myself to look at all of them. The first ones we’d taken were good, but as we’d fallen deeper down the rabbit hole, they’d been spectacular. From the glance that I’d forced myself to take, he hadn’t sent anything that would’ve raised eyebrows, but I wondered what had happened to the other pictures.

  Growing up, I was always shown pictures of landscapes and old dead people and told it was art. The most interesting things I’d seen were some of the weird ones where people were more geometric than anything realistic. Naked meant porn, and that wasn’t art.

  As I’d gotten older, I’d learned there were more subtle definitions of art and a lot more naked people in those old paintings than I’d been led to believe. But that night, I’d felt like what we’d created was more than dirty pictures…it was more than erotica…it was something else entirely.

  Had it been art?

  I wasn’t sure.

  Had it been incredible?

  Absolutely.

  Finally turning on the car, I pulled out of the parking lot and started driving. I remembered telling Reece I had to go home for something, but I couldn’t remember why anymore. Had it been clothes? I glanced down to see that I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Boring for me, but fine. Nothing else seemed important enough to matter.

  As I drove through the streets, slowly making my way over to Reece’s apartment, I tried to imagine how their conversation had gone and how they’d patched everything up. My brain wasn’t up to it, though, and it just circled back around to Roman.

  My mind was starting to clear from the fog that had taken over by the time I arrived at Reece’s place, but not by much. Crazy things kept rolling around in my head, and I couldn't decide how I felt. Nothing made sense.

  I didn’t even realize how emotional I was until I saw Reece open the door. His clearly well-fucked expression and the love shining from him were too much to bear. I wanted that. And for just a few minutes, I’d thought I’d found it.

  Throwing myself at Reece, not bothering to hide the drama and emotion any longer, I cried out in sadness and confusion. “Preston fired Roman!”

  Chapter 9

  Roman

  “Would you like to tell me what you’re doing in my office on a Monday morning when you should be working? Even if you don’t have a shoot today, I’m sure you have better things to do.” The fact that Devin had waited almost thirty minutes to ask me that showed his self-restraint.

  If he’d shown up at my place with coffee way too early on a Monday, I’d have asked questions a hell of a lot sooner. He also liked people more than I did, though. That might have h
ad something to do with it. But that still didn’t help me figure out how to answer him. Lying seemed wrong, but the truth was still raw. “How’s that fundraiser going you were telling me about?”

  “It’s like that, huh?” Devin gave me an understanding look before he continued. “Okay then. It’s going great, actually. We already raised everything that we need and then some. A big donation the other day really helped.”

  “I thought you said this one would probably be close and take a few more weeks before you knew if you’d met your goal?” I didn’t really care about his work at the moment, but it was a better conversation than why I was there, so I kept pushing.

  Devin shrugged. “I thought it would be. We’ve already had all the big corporate donations I was expecting for the year. I’m just glad everything worked out.”

  “That’s good.” I wasn’t sure what else to say, and I still wasn’t sure why I’d even shown up there to begin with. No job meant I really didn’t have the extra funds lying around to pay for overpriced coffee, but that was what I’d found myself doing after I’d stumbled out of bed.

  With the shitty night’s sleep I’d had, I should have slept half the day away. But I’d been up at the crack of dawn instead, staring at the ceiling. My brain had been startlingly empty, so it wasn’t like I was obsessing, but staying home hadn’t seemed like a good idea.

  So I’d found myself at Devin’s office at a ridiculous hour, offering coffee but no explanations. He’d humored me through questions about his family and even the goddamned weather, but it was starting to look like his curiosity was at its limit.

  He tried again with a slightly different tactic. “I’m assuming there’s a reason you’re not working?”

  That was easy enough to answer with a nod, but it probably didn’t give him enough information. Devin shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “You and Eli get into it again?”

  “Yes.” That was an understatement.

  Somehow my anger had just boiled over every time I’d seen him. I’d thought with some distance from that night it would get easier, but it’d just gotten harder. Every time I’d looked at him, I’d felt a sickness inside of me that wouldn’t go away.

  I was an idiot and pathetic to boot.

  How I could keep picking such losers was beyond me. If there was a self-centered asshole in a hundred miles, I either picked him up, or he threw himself at me. Deciding I might as well get it over with, I forced the words out. “I got fired. Preston said we argued too much, and it was starting to affect the other employees.”

  He’d also apologized and said he’d wished things had gone differently, even giving me a look that said he knew more than I’d thought he had about what had happened. I knew Eli’s description wouldn’t have been anywhere close to mine, so he had to have found out about it another way, but I didn’t really care.

  Devin winced and shook his head. “Eli’s a handful, but I personally thought you guys would hit it off.”

  “Just because I’m drawn to brats does not make them functional people. It simply means they’re harder to deal with than the average person and most of the time, assholes.” I wouldn’t sugarcoat it.

  I wasn’t going to blame Eli for everything, though. “I shouldn’t have taken the position to begin with. Once I met Eli, I knew it wouldn’t work. The money was great, and it was a steady job and a chance to rebuild everything, but it wasn’t a good fit. I knew he was too much like my ex right off the bat. I should have looked for something else.”

  Devin’s eyebrows shot up. “I don’t know. From everything that I saw online and from what you said, I think that they’re very different. Sure, Eli likes to be the center of attention and probably needs a good spanking once in a while, but he’s not an asshole or malicious.”

  Were we talking about the same guy?

  “I’d say calling me a two-bit hack and saying that monkeys could take better pictures is bordering on malicious.” And those weren’t even the cruelest things he’d said about my work.

  Of course, I’d called him—

  “What did you say to him?” Devin gave me a long stare as I shrugged. “Eli generally doesn’t start it unless he thinks someone he likes is being attacked. What did you do?”

  Like it’d been all my fault.

  “I told him to go stand on his street corner to get attention and not try to get it from me.” No point in hiding the insanity now.

  Devin’s eyes about bugged out of his head. “You called him a hooker?”

  “Several times.” The look on Devin’s face made me want to defend myself. “He’s unprofessional in shoots. He’s not just wearing the clothes, he’s turned on and aroused with his hard dick swinging at everyone. It’s ridiculous and insane. I don’t care about how popular he is or how sexy he looks in the damned panties. I was hired to photograph clothes, not porn stars.”

  Devin chuckled but was still shaking his head. “So he’s a whore because he likes being watched and the panties turn him on? Isn’t that kind of his job description?”

  Fuck.

  “There’s a difference. The other guys who are really into it don’t make it seem like they’re begging every guy to fuck them. Eli’s behavior was over the top, and the brat thing is too much for work. I wanted him to be professional.” Devin didn’t seem to get it, so I kept going. “He walked around nearly naked last week because some guy online dared him to. What kind of person does that at work?”

  “Someone who’s raising money for a youth center,” Devin said in a deadpan voice. “The guy online made the bet just to drive you crazy, and then other people pitched in. Eli managed to donate over five thousand dollars to the center last week, just by doing that dare.”

  What?

  So maybe the fact that it was a bet to donate money to the center made a little bit of a difference—but not that much. “He was practically naked for a week just to make me uncomfortable. I think that negates any good the money might do. In any other company that would be grounds for sexual harassment. They’re like this big family that doesn’t have boundaries or common sense.”

  Devin winced. “Are you going to sue or something?”

  “No. Not because I’m wrong, but because I have no desire for any more notoriety. When I gave Preston a similar answer, he thanked me and gave me three months of severance pay.” Eli might not have been able to see past his own cock, but Preston had seemed to understand the bigger picture.

  “I’m just wondering how many other people Eli’s tortured into quitting because they didn’t fall at his feet and worship at his dick.” Maybe the words were harsh, but that didn’t explain the way Devin’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone who hated working there. I think there were a few people when they first opened that weren’t a good fit, but I’ve never heard anything like this before. We wouldn’t have worked with them if I’d heard stories like that from other people.” Devin was shaking his head, and it seemed like he couldn’t believe the picture I was painting. “Eli’s always been a flirt, but I’ve never met a harder worker. I don’t think he’s even dated anyone else at work, much less made it seem like he wanted to have sex.”

  “I guess I was just lucky.” I shrugged, not really caring. “He had it out for me from the first day when I didn’t fall all over him. Who greets a new employee almost naked?”

  Devin choked, trying not to laugh. “No one explained that later?”

  At my confused expression, Devin continued. “They have every prospective new employee either sit through a shoot or meet the models like that so they can see who would be a good fit, and who just sees the guys as sex objects. They’ve had a lot of people over the years completely fail that portion of the interview. Some guys couldn’t keep their hands to themselves or made overly suggestive remarks, but they usually explain it once you’re hired.”

  “I got no explanations. All I got was a nearly naked slut who made suggestive comments and talked about getting spanked in an
interview. When I didn’t appreciate his sense of humor, evidently, it only got worse.” Leaning back in Devin’s chair, I took a sip of my now-cold coffee, trying to ignore the anger that was starting to build.

  “I’m sorry you felt that way.” Devin seemed torn. “Did you ever talk to him about it, confront him or something?”

  “No, I needed the job. I thought at one point things were changing, but they got worse. Now, I’ve only got a few months to figure out how to build up my business again. And without any connections besides you, I’m sunk.” And also without any ideas about how I needed to go about growing it again. It’d taken years to build it up the first time, but I wasn’t going back to working a thousand dead-end jobs while I tried to get it off the ground.

  He winced. “My couch is always available.”

  “Which is just sad, man. Why don’t you have someone in your life?” I was done talking about me.

  He gave a careless shrug that seemed to be hiding what he was really feeling and took a long drink of his cold coffee. Yup, hiding something. “I work too many hours. It makes meeting people almost impossible.”

  Bullshit.

  Trying to lighten the mood, I gave him a stern look. “Well for god’s sake, don’t find someone now; I might need that couch in a few months.”

  The look on his face said I might’ve already lost the couch. But when he didn’t volunteer any information, I didn’t push. If he wasn’t comfortable sharing, I’d give him his space for a while. I had enough problems in my life. I didn’t need to add alienating my only friend to the list.

  Devin gave a low laugh and nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. And I don’t mind helping you out, but what are you going to do about the business?”

  “I’m not even sleeping on the couch yet, and you’re already bitching about me moving out.” Grinning to show I was teasing, I tried to think of a good answer. “I don’t know. The photos I’ve been taking have turned out great, but I’m not sure about going back to the stuff I was doing before. It doesn’t seem to be a good fit anymore.”

  The vague answers made me crazy, but I couldn’t give anything better.