Monster Among the Roses

We couldn’t finish our measuring without the use of a ladder. So I returned to the supply room and dragged my window-washing ladder back to the library. Before I reached the entrance, however, I noticed some guy ahead of me approaching the door as well.

Frowning, I slowed to a stop.

Who was this?

He wasn’t Mr. Nash or Lewis. He was younger, around my age with dark hair and mirrored sunglasses. When he stepped into the room, I hurried after him, because seriously, who the hell was he?

When he caught sight of Isobel with her back to him as she stood at the study table, studying our “blueprints,” his face lit with a mischievous grin, and he snuck up behind her.

Not sure if I should alert her to his presence, I paused in the doorway to watch him say, “Boo,” just before he tapped her on the back.

Isobel yelped and spun around. She appeared irritated until she focused on his face. Then she transformed, springing toward the stranger and flinging her arms around his neck with a happy laugh. My eyes narrowed as he picked her up and spun her in a circle.

Something solid and nasty plopped hard into the base of my stomach. It swirled and frothed as Isobel cheekily smacked the man’s arm until he returned her to her feet and took a step back. They both continued to grin at each other.

She liked him—whoever he was—she really liked him. I’d never seen her show genuine affection for anyone before, and it didn’t sit well with me, mainly because she’d never seemed to like me that well.

Ah, hell, I was jealous.

Mentally swatting that nasty realization away in my head, I studied the man, dissecting him. He looked rich, friendly, clean, and pretty much too fucking perfect to be true. I decided I didn’t like him. All that shine had to be fake or hiding something ugly.

“When did you get here?” Isobel asked, her blue eyes glossy and bright with a special glow just for him, the lucky bastard.

He grinned, his teeth way too white, and way too straight. “Just now. I thought I’d come see you before I got stuck in some long, boring meeting with the old man.” Then he sighed dramatically, making Isobel laugh.

Holy shit, she’d just laughed, truly honestly laughed. How in the world had this douche gotten her to laugh? It wasn’t right. Totally wasn’t fair.

I pretty much had to hate him now.

Who was he?

Was he her boyfriend?

Her dad made her out to be so lonely and solitary with no one to talk to, yet Mr. Perfect here seemed to be doing just fine making her smile and laugh.

My jealousy burned hotter.

As if feeling my glare beaded in on him, Prince Charming glanced my way, only for his glowing smile to pause with a hint of shock. Instantly, he turned back to Isobel and grasped her shoulders.

“Don’t freak out,” he told her in a steady voice as if he’d just spotted a spider in her hair and needed her to remain calm so he could remove it, “but there’s a guy in your library.”

Immediately, Isobel spun toward me as if remembering I still existed.

Yeah, remember me? The man building your bookshelves.

Her cheeks looked flushed, but I wasn’t sure if that was from embarrassment over forgetting about me or excitement from his arrival.

“Oh,” she said, making me feel even smaller because she really had forgotten about me. “He’s here to build bookshelves.”

Sure, yeah, tell your boyfriend that’s all I’m here for, I wanted to snarl, before it struck me that building her bookshelves really was the only reason I was in her library. I wasn’t here because we were friends or because she actually wanted to spend time with me. I was only providing her with a service for her precious books.

Acid slithered around the jealousy bubbling in my stomach, while the pretty, shiny man perked to attention at the mention of bookshelves.

“Really?” he asked, intrigued. Slipping off his shades and tucking them into his front pocket, he strolled toward me and eyed the ladder I was so lamely holding. “What a good idea. I’d started to worry all those books you were collecting were going to start overflowing out into the hall one of these days and overtake the whole house.”

“Hey.” Isobel, who’d followed him to me like a faithful pet, drilled a reprimanding finger into his side. “If you’re so worried about the number of books I collect, then why do you always bring me a new one every time you visit?”

With a grin in her direction, he winked. “Oh right, thanks for reminding me… Here you go.” He pulled a miniature book from his pocket and tossed it her way.

She fumbled a moment before catching it. Then she took in the cover and gasped. After she flipped it open to the title page, she gasped again. “Oh my God, this is a first edition fairy tale book. I’ve been looking for one of these forever. Where did you find it?”

“Oh…” After breathing on his knuckles, the man buffed them against his shoulder in accomplishment. “I have my sources.”

“Thank you.” Pressing the tiny book to her chest, Isobel sent him a look full of adoration and complete devotion.

I thought I might puke.

He nodded, looking similarly taken with her before returning his curious gaze to me.

“So…” When he said nothing more, merely examined me as if I were an artifact in a museum, I self-consciously stuck out a hand.

“Shaw Hollander.” I meant to add nice to meet you, but that part stuck in my throat.

He nodded and shook with me. “Ezra Nash.”

“Oh!” I blurted. “You’re the brother.”

Relief and a flood of understanding poured through me. In one brief fraction of time, I felt both foolish for being so irrationally jealous and yet so pleased he wasn’t actually dating Isobel I almost laughed. Then the moment passed and a cold sweat shrouded me as I realized what this meant. I wouldn’t have been so upset to learn she had a boyfriend if I hadn’t been interested in the position myself.

And that thought scared me. I knew I’d always been interested in her—in that way—but my reaction had been so extreme.

She was supposed to be a job, just a job. Falling for her could only cause problems. I needed to keep my feelings in check. I needed to stop thinking of her like that, or looking at her like that, or—

“The brother,” Ezra Nash repeated on a grin. “That sounds so ominous, but yeah, I’m…the brother.”

“The annoying brother,” Isobel snickered, which prompted Ezra to reach over without even looking her way and pinch her in the side.

She shrieked and slapped his hand, causing him to grin wider at me.

I stared between the siblings in awe, intrigued by their comfortable, teasing relationship and once again struck by how glad I was to learn they were only brother and sister.

Completely revising my opinion of him, I decided I liked him after all. I liked him a lot. He could make Isobel smile and laugh, and he wasn’t dating her, so he was aces in my book.

“When did Dad hire a carpenter?” he asked, making me gulp because the glint in his eyes showed suspicion, as if he already knew why Henry Nash had truly brought me into his home.

“Two weeks ago,” Isobel answered, sticking her thumbnail between her teeth as she studied a section of wall near us. “And he’s our new general, overall handyman, not just a carpenter.”

A little pocket of warmth grew inside me at her words. She knew I was by no means a carpenter in any sense of the word, but she still let her brother believe I could actually make these shelves with no trouble. The urge to touch her—just a simple touch, maybe on the arm, to show my gratitude—mounted.

Ah, shit. Yep, I was definitely into her, as into her as a guy could get. This was bad. This was so bad.

Fortunately, she pointed to the wall, tearing my attention from my doomed fate. “How close to the window are you going to make the shelves?”

I glanced over, taking in the space before answering, “As close as you want me to get.”

She beamed, not a full smile, but something warm and pleased enough to slice through me with greediness, wanting more of it, craving her pleasure like a plant thirsty for water and sunshine.

“Not too close,” she said. “I don’t want to block out any more light than necessary. It’s already dark enough in here as it is.”

“Actually…” I lifted a finger, glad she’d mentioned the lighting. “I was thinking we could maybe lighten the walls and add some drop-down lamps or something to help with that.”

Isobel glanced around the room, her eyes wide as she considered my idea. After a moment, she nodded. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “Yes, I think that will work well.”

Again, I glowed from the inside, soaking in her good mood.

“Sounds like you two are going to overhaul the entire room,” Ezra put in.

“Well, it needs it,” Isobel told him.

I nodded. “Libraries should be bright, wonderful spaces since they hold so many bright, wonderful worlds and adventures.”

After a startled blink, Isobel sent me a soft smile. “Exactly.”

And yep, I blossomed under her radiant stare. My chest expanded with air, making me feel like a helium balloon, and I swear I would’ve floated right off the floor if my feet hadn’t been tethering me down.

“Hmm,” her brother murmured, glancing speculatively between the two of us. “Well, I best get to my meeting with Dad.” He clasped his hands together and took a step in reverse as if he felt like three of us were too many for the moment and he was the odd man out.

Isobel swung to him, flushing as if she’d been caught doing something wrong. “Is your coworker still giving you trouble?”

Ezra shuddered, and an expression of absolute disgust cloaked his face. “You mean the wicked witch?” His tone turning snide and stiff, he rolled his eyes insolently. “That woman lives to make my life a living hell. I swear she tries to nix every goddamn thing I suggest. I have to fight tooth and nail to get anything. It’s completely ridiculous. And uncalled for.”

Isobel sent me a cringe as if she regretted asking before saying to her brother, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“And yet yes is so mild an answer for the indigestion that woman gives me.” His face started to turn red as if merely mentioning her made his blood pressure rise unnaturally.

“Maybe you should talk to Dad about it,” Isobel suggested. “I bet he’ll have some good suggestions on how to deal with her.”

“If it’s not how to hide a body, then it’s not going to be a good enough suggestion,” Ezra mumbled moodily even as he bent to press a kiss to the good side of Isobel’s cheek. But his lips barely grazed her skin before he straightened in surprise. “Hey.” His gaze shot to me, then returned to her. “You have your hair pulled up.”

Isobel flushed and sent me a quick, guilty glance before tucking a stray piece that had come undone from her ponytail behind her ear. Then she shifted to the side, hiding her scars from us. “Yeah. So?”

“So…” Ezra drawled. “You always keep it down and covering your…your face.”

The urge to step in and defend her was strong. Except her brother had done nothing whatsoever to attack. He’d just made her uncomfortable by so boldly pointing out she wasn’t hiding her scars. And I didn’t like her being uncomfortable.

“He’s just staff,” she muttered defensively, making me feel less than human, as if being part of the staff made me a nobody. Staff didn’t have thoughts or feelings or a brain. Staff didn’t count.

Ezra glanced toward me as if he could smell the insult oozing off me. With a small clearing of his throat, he announced, “All right then. I’m going to go talk to Dad now,” and he booked it out of there.

Isobel remained frozen, purposely avoiding looking in my direction. So I turned away to set up the ladder by the wall. Then I found the tape measure on the table and grabbed it before climbing. Once I reached the ceiling, I blindly lifted the tape measure toward the wall, not recording a damn inch.

“So, that was your brother, huh?”

“Yes.” She sounded distant and stiff as if she’d been the one who’d just been insulted. Or maybe she felt guilty for hurting my feelings and didn’t know how to apologize. I had no idea.

I nodded, grinding my teeth. “He seemed nice.”

“He is.”

Okay, I guess the one and two word answers meant she didn’t feel like talking to the staff. Message received.

But then she said, “He just got a job in the fashion industry this last year.”

I turned to her, surprised she’d voluntarily offered information to me. “Oh yeah?” I asked, more interested in the fact she was finally talking to me, opening up—about her brother, but still…opening up.

She nodded, rigidly, as if this talking rationally stuff was all too new and foreign to her. “Yeah. My dad did this merger with a clothing company that was struggling and instead of selling it off again, he decided to put Ezra in charge of the half he’d bought to, you know, give him some life experience on how to administrate and run a real company.”

“And he’s doing okay with it?” I asked, eager to hear more of her voice in that tone. When she wasn’t mad, or condescending, or bitter, she sounded softer. Feminine. Sweet.

Captivated, I watched her face as she shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. Dad seems pleased anyway. I mean, he—Ezra—struggles a lot to get along with the co-CEO of the original half of the company. I guess she’s a real witch. But I can still tell he gets a thrill out of the rest of his job. He likes it, and I think it suits him.”

I smiled. “Well, good. That’s pretty cool.” Then a thought struck me. “Did you ever want to be a CEO or run a multimillion-dollar company?”

“Me?” Her lips parted and lashes fluttered for a second before she jerked her head back and forth. “N-no. Not at all. That was never my dream.”

“What was your dream then?”

Shadows and ghosts filled her eyes, haunting her. Panicking because I’d put them there, I revised my question. “When you were five,” I blurted. “What did you want to be when you were five?” Then I grinned and laughed at myself. “I wanted to be a mailman. Nothing gave me a bigger thrill than mail time. Mom always let me open the junk mail advertisements, and I’d pretend all day they were important documents that needed to be archived and organized.”

Isobel gazed at me a moment before saying, “I was pretty typical for a five-year-old, I think. I wanted to be a princess.”

I grinned at the idea of her running around in a dress full of tulle, a tiara and maybe a magic wand. She was probably the cutest little five-year-old princess ever.

“And when you were fifteen?” I asked.

“Fifteen?” she asked, lifting her eyebrows before drawing in a breath and thinking. Then she said, “I wanted to be a professional reader.”

That one made me laugh, before nodding my approval. “I like it.” Then a thought struck. “Do you now? Write reviews for all the books you read, I mean?”

She shrugged. “Not really. Nothing in a professional capacity, anyway.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know why that depressed me. It just…it was sad that none of her dreams had come true, and on top of that, she’d been hit with the fire, and her mom’s death. How many other things had she missed out on doing? How many things was she avoiding because of her insecurities?

“How old were you when your mom died?”

Holy shit, where the hell had that question vomited from? I hadn’t even really been thinking about it. It had seriously just popped out without any kind of prompting from my rational brain.

Isobel froze for a second before slowly saying, “I was seventeen.”

A knot formed in my throat. What an awful age for a girl to lose her mother. About to finish high school and move on to adulthood. Everything in her life was already changing; she probably needed her mother most then, to help guide and advise her.

“So, you’re twenty-five now?”

That question seemed to throw her. It boggled my mind too. I had no idea why I’d asked it, probably to help drag sad memories away. But she nodded.

I nodded too before mumbling, “I’m twenty-eight.”

“Oh,” she said.

She didn’t seem to know what to do with that information, and I had no idea why I’d offered it. Feeling like a moron, I rushed to add, “I was three when my dad died.”

She blinked. “Oh, I…” Her hand slowly moved to the base of her throat. “I didn’t know.”

I shrugged. “It was a car accident on his way home from work. His fault, so we had to help the insurance company pay a bunch of others who were injured that day. I guess we weren’t that bad off—financially, anyway—until then. Not that I remember. I don’t remember what our life was like before that…or anything about my dad.”

“What do you think is worse,” she murmured, watching me thoughtfully. “Having gotten to know your parent and missing her terribly after she’s gone, or never remembering him at all, and always feeling like this huge hole of nothing is stuck in the middle of you?”

I stared at her, shocked. She’d just nailed what I’d always felt. I’d never mourned for my father properly because I hadn’t remembered him the way my older siblings had. They’d always told me how lucky I’d been, that I didn’t have to hurt as much as they did, but I’d still felt something. An ache I couldn’t describe.

But the way she just said huge hole of nothing had labeled it perfectly. I had suffered, just as my siblings had, except in a different way.

“I don’t know,” I murmured. “They both kind of suck.”

“Yeah,” she agreed slowly. “They do.”

Silence fell between us, but a good silence, a bonding kind of silence where for once we seemed to understand another soul and that other soul understood us in return.

“I usually start running at five every morning,” Isobel said.

I jerked my attention to her. My heart began to hammer. “Five?”

She gave a single, abrupt nod, refusing to look my way.

Hope—hope like I’d never felt before—exploded inside me. “I’ll be here.”