It's Only Temporary - The Complete Collection Read online

  He shook his head. “No. Uh-uh. Never letting you go.”

  She grabbed his shirt, pulled him to her. She put her lips against his and kissed him. Kissed him like she loved him, kissed him like she didn’t need to trust him. She had him right where she wanted him. She had everything she wanted.

  She whispered, “Who has the upper hand today?”

  He laughed. Laughed and laughed, and when he stopped, when he wiped the tears away, he said, “Oh, I do. You’re going to marry me.”

  * * *

  About Some Like It Perfect

  A woman who has nothing. A man who wants for nothing.

  Delia Woodson is desperate. That’s why she agrees to it. Because she’s a painter, no one is buying her paintings, and she’s desperate. She has bills to pay, food to buy. Someday she might actually want to live in her own apartment instead of on her friend’s couch. And all she has to do is paint baby-faced angels on an indecently rich, corporate shill’s ceiling. Because, he just can’t think of any other way to spend his money? And she just can’t think of any other way to make it.

  Jack Cabot doesn’t want the mural his mother has commissioned for his office ceiling. He doesn’t want the distraction, he doesn’t want the silliness. He doesn’t want the artist now spending her days ten feet above his head. The artist with paint in her hair, distracting him. Bickering with him. Amusing him…until Jack discovers he does want something after all.

  Table of Contents

  About

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Megan BryceSome Like It Perfect

  One

  Delia Woodson was desperate. That’s why she’d agreed to it.

  Because she was a painter, no one was buying her paintings, and she was desperate.

  She had bills to pay, food to buy. Someday she might actually want to live in her own apartment instead of on her friend’s couch.

  Crashing on a friend’s couch when you were all young and stupid was one thing. Crashing on a couch when you were most definitely not young and the only one still stupid was something else entirely.

  Delia’s friends had stayed in college, and she’d painted. Delia’s friends had gotten jobs and moved away, and she’d painted. Delia’s friends had bought houses, taken out mortgages, and Delia…crashed on their couches.

  She’d followed Justine from San Francisco to Boston when Justine had gotten a great new job with a great new paycheck. Delia had followed because a free spirit who painted was a dime a dozen in San Francisco. And maybe a free spirit who painted in Boston was just different enough to be successful. Right now, she was just hungry.

  Justine propped her hip against the kitchen counter and said, “Are you going?”

  “I’m going.”

  “Painting a ceiling is not beneath you.”

  Delia had heard this before. Michelangelo, yada yada yada. Sistine chapel, blah blah blah.

  Delia said, “I’m painting clouds and baby-faced angels on an executive’s ceiling. I’m happy for the work. I’ll be happy for the money. It is beneath me.”

  “You could go get a real job.”

  “I said I’m going. You don’t need to be mean.”

  Delia stared at the ceiling. If she was going, and despite what she’d just said she hadn’t quite talked herself into it yet, she probably needed to get up. Get dressed.

  Delia said, “How do you get up and put on a suit and go to the office every morning? I don’t know how to make myself do it.”

  “I get roaring drunk every evening. That’s how I do it.”

  Delia looked over at her. “Tonight?”

  “Of course. We’ll have to celebrate your first paying job in Boston.”

  “I guess drinks are on me, then.”

  “Which means you’d better get up so you can pay for it.”

  Delia stared at the ceiling some more. A ceiling she wasn’t going to paint. “Rip-roaring drunk?”

  “The rip-roaringest drunk two thirty-six-year-olds can get without feeling like losers.”

  Delia slid one leg off the couch and let her whole body follow bonelessly to the floor. “Too late. I feel like a loser and I’m not drunk at all.”

  She crawled to the bathroom, her head hanging, every movement slow and tortured.

  Her friend said, “You’re thirty-six, not sixteen. Go put on your big-girl panties and pretend you’re an adult.”

  Delia stood. She straightened her shoulders. She didn’t sigh again, she didn’t slam the bathroom door. She would be an adult. Because doing crap you didn’t want to do was what being an adult was all about.

  Delia would go paint an indecently rich, corporate shill’s ceiling. Because he couldn’t think of any other way to spend his money, and she couldn’t think of any other way to make it.

  And hey, maybe she’d get hit by a bus on the way.

  She could always hope.

  By the time Delia made it downtown, her mood had improved. She loved this city. Loved the accent, loved the history. Loved the cobbled streets.

  She’d even enjoyed the commute. Enjoyed getting pulled along with busy people late for work.

  Granted, it was fall. The gorgeous yellow and red leaves crunched satisfyingly under her boots, and the air was chilly but not miserable.

  She’d yet to experience a New England winter, and maybe she’d change her mind about this whole Boston thing come the middle of February, but for now it was fun. It was different.

  She got pulled up the subway stairs and she went with the flow until fresh air hit her face again. She stared up at a tall, new building with gleaming glass windows and her shoulders sunk.

  No history here.

  But there was money. And uptight business execs.

  Delia rode the elevator to the top. She stopped to look out the full-length window and wondered why those who had these kinds of views didn’t stop to look. Too busy making money to enjoy what it brought them, she guessed.

  And, she knew, repetition dulled the splendor. Beautiful and awe-inspiring turned to normal turned to invisible.

  It was why she hid things in her paintings. Why someone would see one thing when they looked at it one way and see something else when they looked at it another. Why they could look for years and still find something new, something fresh.

  At least, that was her hope. For someday. You know, when people bought her paintings.

  Mr. Cabot’s scary-efficient secretary nodded when she saw Delia. The secretary rose, motioning Delia to follow her into the double-doored office.

  Ms. Charles said, “The scaffolding was delivered and set up yesterday; the paint is here as well. Mr. Cabot is in a meeting this morning; now would be the time to organize.”

  They’d already argued about this. Delia had lost.

  Mr. Cabot didn’t want to vacate his office; had in fact, wanted her to paint at night when he wasn’t there.

  Delia had only won that argument because she couldn’t paint at night. She needed natural light. She needed to paint in the light her work would be seen in. Call her a prickly artiste all you want, it didn’t change that fact.

  And that was only what the secretary had called her. Delia didn’t want to know what the man in charge had called her.

  She was hoping he’d decide to move on out once he got a whiff of the paints.

  Delia surveyed the office. It was as big as Justine’s one-bedroom apartment, half of it cleared of furniture and covered in painter’s cloth. The large desk was still sitting in front of a floor-to-ceiling bookcase on the other side.

  The secretary handed her a check and said, “Please don’t bother Mr. Cabot. If you need anything, come to me.�
�

  Oh, Delia was going to bother Mr. Cabot. She wouldn’t be able to help it.

  She’d never met the man and he already bothered her. You didn’t get to sit in this office unless you worshiped at the altar of efficiency and liked squeezing blood out of stone.

  But Delia nodded at the secretary and watched her leave. She looked down at the check and decided she wasn’t selling her soul. She was doing what had to be done. There could be pride in that.

  Then she took off her coat, rolled up her sleeves, pulled booties on over her boots, and started opening paint cans.

  Delia organized, tested colors on the ceiling, and finally began to see in her mind what the ceiling would look like. By the time she had started rolling out the base coat, she thought she could make this ceiling something decent. Instead of a clichéd nod to the master.

  The door opened behind her and a deep, annoyed voice said, “What are you doing?”

  She didn’t turn around, just kept painting. “Base coat. I hope the fumes don’t bother you.”

  She didn’t smile but it took effort.

  Mr. Cabot didn’t say anything, just went and opened the windows.

  She turned then and said, “They open?”

  And then her stomach clenched and she forgot how to think.

  He was beautiful. Put together by a master, his light brown hair streaked with gold, his brown eyes framed by long lashes. His nose was straight, his jaw strong and sculpted.

  His body was toned beneath his dark suit. Not too musclebound, not too skinny. Just right.

  But he wore an expression of disdain as if everything he saw did not meet with expectations, and since he was looking right at Delia, she could guess what she looked like.

  Red corkscrews would be waving wildly around her head. Her hair could be tamed but it took a long time and a lot of effort and she’d made peace with it years ago. Paint-spattered clothes that even without the paint wouldn’t have looked like much. It was hard to get into fashion when you didn’t have much money and everything you owned eventually got paint on it anyway.

  Delia didn’t care much what she looked like, her paintings showed the world who she was, but next to him she felt unkempt.

  Next to him, Martha Stewart would feel unkempt, so Delia laid the blame where it was due. At his feet.

  He said, “How long will this take?”

  She’d only ever met with the scary-efficient secretary before and suddenly Delia was missing her.

  She said, “It will take less time if I don’t have to work around you.”

  He sat down at his desk and waved behind him at the bookcase. “This bookcase was built in this room, it doesn’t fit through the doors. And every time my mother redecorates my office, I move out. Every time I move the contents of this bookcase, something goes missing. I’m not moving it again.”

  Delia stared at him, her eyebrows knitted together. “Why does your mother redecorate your office?”

  “It used to be hers.”

  “Huh.”

  “So, again, how long will this take?”

  Delia looked up at the ceiling. “I was hired to paint the whole thing. It’s going to take a while.”

  When she looked back at him, his eyes were closed, his face pained.

  Delia said, “Does your mother redecorate your office just to get you out of it?”

  He opened his eyes and said, “The ceiling will take less time if you actually start.”

  She turned back to the roller, filling it with light ochre, and muttered, “Gee, why didn’t I think of that?”

  “The ceiling will take less time if you don’t speak.”

  She said over her shoulder, “Do you think so? I’ll have to try that.”

  Delia rolled the base coat across the ceiling, finishing half of her half before she couldn’t stand it anymore and turned back to him.

  “You don’t care at all what I paint on your ceiling, do you?”

  He didn’t look up from his work. “No.”

  “So I could paint Lucifer’s brothel up here and you wouldn’t say a peep?”

  “Don’t paint Lucifer’s brothel on my ceiling.”

  “You just said…” She trailed off when he raised his head to look at her. It wasn’t a mean look, a mad look. It was just his attention was focused on her.

  He stared at her and she stared back, not thinking, until he finally said, “Just what exactly does Lucifer’s brothel look like?”

  Delia shook her hair and turned back to the roller. “Now you’ll never know.”

  “And that truly is a shame.”

  She finished the half of his ceiling she had access to without talking to him again and started cleaning up for the day. When her paints were stored, when she’d cleaned her roller in the bathroom down the hall because she wasn’t allowed to use his, she turned to find him watching her.

  He said, “Done already?”

  “It needs to dry. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.”

  He nodded. “You’ve signed the confidentiality agreement? You know anything you see or hear doesn’t leave this room.”

  She’d signed the confidentiality agreement. She wasn’t a lawyer, hadn’t even had it checked by one, but she was pretty sure it had said that if she blabbed about anything regarding Mr. Cabot or his company that he would own her. Her, her children, her children’s children.

  She said, “Would I be here if I hadn’t?”

  His eyes sharpened as he looked at her and she said, “Believe me, I don’t care what it is you do here.”

  His eyes ran up to her hair, then down to her bootie-covered boots. “I believe you. Do you even know what we make?”

  Her face blanked as she thought about it. She said slowly, “You make something? Here?”

  His lips twitched. “We don’t make it here, we just run the business from here.”

  “What is it you make?”

  “Paper.”

  She turned away. “Yeah, I don’t care.”

  She took her booties off, checking her boots for paint carefully.

  When she turned back around, his lips were still twitching.

  She shoved her arms through her coat and waved at him like a demented cheerleader. “See you tomorrow!”

  He said, “I. Can’t. Wait.”

  Delia went straight to the bank, opened a new bank account and deposited her check. Three months’ salary that needed to last six.

  Not the worst place she’d ever been, actually.

  And, okay, she was going to have to work adjacent to Mr. Chipper there but the money was going to come in handy when Justine finally kicked her out.

  And, okay, he was at least a little bit funny. If you thought perfect assholes were funny.

  And, okay, she’d never seen a man as beautiful as him in real life. She might have to do a few sketches of him.

  She actually was feeling better and better about painting this ceiling.

  Or, at least she didn’t want to jump in front of a bus anymore.

  Progress.

  She met Justine at the bar after work. They sat on bar stools and drank light beer and ate peanuts.

  Justine raised her glass. “To a paying job.”

  Delia clinked her glass. “To money in the bank.”

  “To clients with money.”

  Delia took a drink, holding it her mouth and tasting it, then saying, “You have gone too far, sir. Too far.”

  “You are going to have to get over this aversion you have to money. Money pays for beer.”

  “Eh. I could live without light beer.”

  Justine said, “Money pays for paint.”

  “I know I have a thing about money. But isn’t there a point where more money is just pointless?”

  “I don’t think you’ve reached that point yet.”

  Delia laughed and took another slow taste of beer. “I know. And I know that most people don’t start buying paintings, or want to paint their ceilings in bad taste, until money is pointless. I should ge
t over it.”

  “A painted ceiling is not necessarily in bad taste.”

  “I think I can do something with it. I’ve decided I’ve been given carte blanche since Mr. Chipper doesn’t care. I’ll just paint whatever I want.”

  Justine said, “You would have done that anyway. You just would have hidden it. And Mr. Chipper?”

  Delia laughed and closed her eyes, picturing him sitting at his desk. Typing with no expression on his face, no emotion. Except maybe disgust that his ceiling was getting painted. Disgust and resignation.

  “He’s beautiful, Justine. You’ve never seen anyone as beautiful as he is. Way beyond pretty. Beyond good-looking or even hot. Beautiful. I stopped thinking when I saw him.”

  Justine said, “I know what’s coming next.”

  They nodded in unison and said, “An asshole.”

  Delia said, “You can’t be that beautiful and not be an asshole. It messes with you.”

  “And he has money.”

  “I know! If you’re rich, you should be butt-ugly. Even things out.”

  “Just don’t get fired, okay? Ignore his beauty, get over his money, don’t taunt him. Don’t get fired.”

  Delia sighed. It was long and heartfelt and she said, “I could have a lot of fun with him.”

  Justine shook her head, draining her glass.

  Delia said, “He wants his ceiling painted as much as I want to do it. I don’t think he could fire me.” She thought about it a little more. “He could probably fire me. There are probably other starving artists who would paint a ceiling in return for signing a confidentiality agreement and not using his bathroom.”

  “Probably. Why does he want/not want his ceiling painted?”

  “Apparently Mother wanted his ceiling painted. He looked like Mother frequently wants things that annoy and inconvenience him. And of course he does it.”

  Justine ate one peanut, brushing the shell carefully onto a napkin. “Don’t knock keeping mother happy too hard. It’s paying for this beer.”