Nailed Down by Chelle Bliss
“I am the storm.”
The guy only blinked at me, a little boy staring at something he didn’t seem able to place. “You’re… Wait, what?”
It was a problem that reared its tiny head anytime the producers sent another intern to me. They tended to scare easy or, you know, not scare at all. Couldn’t let that shit slide. This was especially the case with the ones who had a dad or granddaddy or, Christ, girlfriend’s father who knew someone who knew someone in the damn business. Even if we were just a small DIY cable network show, we were still Hollywood-ish. That meant favors. That meant I got landed with punk interns who didn’t know a wrench from a garden hoe.
“I asked what you do.” The kid closed his mouth, eyebrows up, hidden behind those thick black frames he wore. I didn’t need to look him over too closely. I’d figured out his type when he hurried onto the set and darted straight for me before I was able to get half a mug of coffee down my throat. He didn’t need my attention, not this damn early. Not looking the way he did—stupid glasses he probably didn’t need and a bowtie, a fucking green striped bowtie and suspenders, and it wasn’t anywhere near Halloween, God help me.
Hipster bullshit. Hipster bullshit I didn’t have time for.
“So, when you say you’re the storm…”
Fingers tightening around my mug, I worked my jaw, ignoring the kid as Dale and Gin came onto the set, dropping an armful of cut 1x4s onto the wood subfloor. The sound moved around the wide-open cabin and echoing right against the framing and exposed windows.
“He’s the storm,” the kid told Dale, a pathetic, forced laugh flicking that waxed mustache of his against his bottom lip. “Can you believe that?”
Dale was Navy. Twelve years. I’d hired him four years back—he didn’t have a daddy or buddy in the fancy producer’s trailer. The guy was good and got the job because he knew his shit. We’d grabbed a few beers the night after his first day so he could ask questions. I gave all my crew that shot. One time, only one, to ask what they wanted about me. After that, curiosity was off the table.
Dale had gotten the measure of me after three pints of Guinness. But the hipster intern? Yeah. That wasn’t going to happen.
“He is the fucking storm.” Dale said that with a finality that made the intern frown. Had the kid staring between me, nursing my cooling dark roast, and Dale, glaring down at the kid, stare weaving over the damn bowtie, the thick, curled mustache before he flared his nostrils, disgusted.
“The storm, kid. That’s Kane. He’s a hurricane when we’re on a deadline. He’s a tsunami when we fuck up. And if you do that too much, he’s a motherfucking typhoon. You either handle your shit or prepare for the storm.”
Maybe it was Dale’s voice—that “Don’t. Just don’t.” vibe every SEAL threw off no matter how long they’d been out of the service, but that sage bullshit wisdom worked. The kid jumped up, hardly managed to bother with a nod at me before he followed after Dale, picking up his drill, tugging on a tool belt that dirtied his stupid hipster skinny jeans.
I downed the rest of my coffee, holding back a laugh when the kid threw a glance over at me then jerked his attention away as I pointed to myself, mouthed “the fucking storm,” and shot him the bird.
Damn straight. New season, the whole of which we’d spend a few miles from the entrance to Mount Rainier National Park renovating a huge log cabin, and a brand-new intern to torture. Hell, it was stupid, but I didn’t party like I used to. Had to find some kind of fun where I could.
I gave the kid a day, maybe two. Once he realized this gig wasn’t grabbing coffee for the producers or standing in for the grips or camera people, once he realized there was a hell of a lot of work to do, then he’d get bored or scared and head out with his tail between his legs. Or suspenders. Or custom Converse.
Dale barked orders at the kid as Gin fought with Mario, the floor contractor. The general bustle of bullshit that came along with the setup the crew did for shooting got louder, the noise annoying, gearing up to piss me right off. And then, somewhere about an hour into our day, all that shit went quiet. It was a silence I was familiar with; had heard it years before when kids at school back in Seattle saw me for the first time after my old man took a dirt nap. Funny thing about death. People are sorry for you, but they feel compelled to ignore you. Someone you love dies, and the world acts like you were the one who bit it. They don’t have a damn clue what to say. They only know they can’t mention death or dying or how much it sucks. So, in general, you get the silent treatment because, bottom line, people are self-centered, graceless assholes. Anyway, that was the thought I had, the familiar silent sting I recognized when all the noise on the set went still.
It meant Kit was back.
The kid was the only one still yammering on. Hands around an extension cord, Hipster was boring Gin stupid about some shit I didn’t care enough to listen to. I only knew she was listening to him because she jabbed him in the rib as I walked through the set, bypassing gawking, awkward folk watching as Bill, our producer, spoke to Kit like she was a kid, not the talented badass host of our show. He was doing the bumbling, clueless shit. A glance around the set, the stares she got as she walked into the cabin, and I realized everyone did the same—stared and gaped and looked like assholes in the process.
She kept her dark gaze on the top of the cup of coffee she held, listening to Bill as he patted her shoulder, as he made pointless attempts to distract her from the suck she’d landed in.
“So, you…um…I…” Bill spoke in monosyllables, some freakish jackass language he clearly didn’t have a handle on. “What I mean is…”
“Look,” Kit said, waving off his muttering stupidity with a shake of her head. “I get that this is weird, and you don’t know what to say, but I’m okay.”
“You really don’t have to be back yet, sweetheart.” It was hard not to laugh at the glare on Kit’s face. She thought Bill was some reject from the seventies no one had clued in to the notion that it was definitely not okay to pinch a woman’s ass or call a professional “sugar” or “sweetheart.” I mean, shit. He was from California. Not Georgia. There was zero excuse for the sweet talk.
“I’m fine,” she mumbled, hid those two words behind a long drink from her Styrofoam cup, and kept her gaze downcast, stifling the glare I knew was there.
“Babe, I know it’s been hard.” Bill stood a little closer than I liked, and I thought about breaking it up, telling him to go fuck himself, but I knew Kit wouldn’t appreciate the big brother shit. She wasn’t a princess. She was a fucking general. She could cover her own ass.
“I know you and your cousin were close.” Bill put that flabby arm around her, and Kit straightened her shoulders, taking a step to the right to slip out of his reach. “Losing someone you’re close to, well, I can imagine.”
“Can you?” She didn’t wear a lick of makeup. The chicks in the back trailer with all the girl shit hadn’t gotten to her yet, and still Kit looked like something out of a Zeffirelli film; young, vibrant, skin like silk, eyes large and dark. Her face was heart-shaped, cheekbones pronounced, russet-colored eyes round with large lids. I loved her big eyes, how dark they were, how she kept everything she thought right behind them, never letting anyone see what went on in her head. She was beautiful, shaped with tempting curves and an athletic build, but her legs were long, and her ass was plump and spectacular. She looked like she belonged on the side of a B-52 bomber, inspiring fighting men to keep at it, not on some small DIY program that only drunks coming in from partying and newborn parents saw at four a.m.
“If you need anything,” Bill tried again, but Kit cut him off, directing a wide, toothy smile at him that held more cyanide than sweetness behind it.
“Thank you, Bill. Really. And thank you for the flowers. They were nice.” Then Kit grabbed his hand, dropping it from her shoulder. “But the only thing I want to do is get to work.”
The quiet kept on, with the crew puttering with busywork shit that didn’t need handling, all in weak attempts to watch Kit and Bill. It pissed me off, especially when those nosy assholes kept at their staring even when I stepped into the center of the room.
To my left, Kit was squaring off at Bill, challenging him with a glare to get any closer to her. She might not need me to do the big brother bullshit, but the crew did need reminding there was work to be done.
“Enough of this!” I shouted, not bothering to keep the bite out of my tone. “Get back to work.” That staring moved from Kit and lingered on me, but only until I moved up an eyebrow and shouted, “Now!”
They scattered like a bunch of ants whose hill had been kicked by a mean fourth grader, but at least they got moving. Kit came at me a half a second later, standing at my side while she looked over the cabin. Two slow sips from her cup and one swipe of her gaze up to the roof and she finally spoke.
“You get the new header?”
I watched right along with her, pushing back the slow whiff of something sweet I caught coming from her hair. “Be here on Thursday. First thing in the morning.” We stood there for several long seconds just watching the room, taking in the exposed beams and the looping wire curling through the walls. I could almost hear the gears in her head shifting, like she had something to say but didn’t need me to fish it out of her.
When she went on drinking her coffee, I answered the questions she didn’t voice but knew she had. “That shop in Shelton had your stove.” She looked up at me then, and I thought I could make out a slow-working grin moving the side of her mouth. The woman liked her appliances. The older, the better. “It’s a 1930 Aga. Black with copper fixtures. Fully restored.”
Kit turned then, full smile now, and I shifted a glance down at her, head shaking at the flash of something ridiculous and fucking sweet in her eyes. “Stupid expensive?”
“Obscene.”
That smile was lethal now, and if she’d been a less classy chick, I’d have sworn she was about to shimmy. Can’t say I’d hate seeing that. “And Bill knows how much it was and still let you buy it?”
I shrugged, then nodded a thanks when Gin paused near us, close enough to hand over a refill on my coffee. She turned to Dale, offering him the same, and I cocked an eyebrow at the look he gave her. “I was convincing.”
“Ha. You were intimidating,” Kit said, nudging me with an elbow. “Thanks. That makes me happy.”
“It’s why I’m here.” I hid the smug grin I wore behind my coffee, telling myself it wasn’t stupid to feel like a chump for making the woman happy. I liked when she was happy. Mainly I liked being the man to do the job, but that shit came from somewhere I didn’t bother thinking about. No need to imagine things when I knew the truth: Kit Carlyle was my friend, but fuck, did I want to be a helluva lot more than that.
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she admitted, and some stupid, ridiculous thing in my gut went all wobbly. But if Kit noticed the break in my composure—and the quick blink of my eyes and a long, slow sip from my mug to keep me from saying something stupid—she didn’t mention it. Instead, she looked around the cabin, nodding a greeting to Gin when she smiled as she moved past us before I felt another nudge on my arm. “I need to run something by you.”
“Such as?” But she went all quiet again, out of character when Kit wanted something, enough that I turned to watch her, eyebrows shooting up when she cast a look all around, looking damn guilty or stupid nervous. I couldn’t tell which. “Something up?”
“Well, it’s just that I need…”
“Hey, Mr. Storm…” The intern started laughing at himself before Kit stepped back, clearing her throat as though she didn’t want this little punk to know she was about to say something only for my ears. That just pissed me off.
“You see me standing here speaking to someone?” I asked the kid, tilting my head to glare at him. He nodded, then looked to Kit as though she might tell him it was okay to interrupt us. But the woman’s attention was on her phone when she took it out as a distraction. I snapped my fingers, bringing the kid’s attention back to me. “Go. Away.”
“Look, Kane…” But Hipster didn’t get a chance to bug me any further. Dale approached, taking the kid’s shoulder to turn him, then gave the boy a gentle shove to lead him back toward a stack of 1x4s. The saws started up after that, and I nodded toward the door, getting Kit to follow me out of the cabin and down the driveway until we were at my silver F-150. She hopped right in when I opened the door for her, curling her arms over her chest as though she were frozen solid. The woman was always cold, no matter the temperature, and always bitched that I never ran the heat in my truck.
“All right,” I said, my head shaking at how she blew on her fingers like we were in the Arctic and not in a small wooded area intersected by Copper Creek. “Jesus.” Then I flipped on the heater and moved the vents toward her. “Now. Whatcha got?”
“Oh.” Kit went a little shy on me, way out of character, and I forgot about everything else but the small slip of fear that started crowding my head. This woman never shied away from telling me what to do or what she needed and the fact she wouldn’t look at me put me on edge.
“Hey,” I said, leaning over my steering wheel and moving my head toward her, trying to catch her attention. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing… It’s just…” She exhaled and rubbed her eyes. I could make out the frown behind her hands when she scrubbed her face, and for some reason, that bullshit worry grew more intense. Finally, through a long breath, Kit looked at me straight on, licking her lips like I’d seen her do a thousand times. That shit meant trouble. I’d seen it firsthand. That slow, preparing for battle lip lick meant shit was about to get twisted. “Kane,” she said, squaring her shoulders, “I need you. I need only you.”
Fuck me, I was in trouble.
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