By the time he finished with his bicep curls, he’d lost track of Esme’s whereabouts, but that was fine. She was an adult. She didn’t need to be supervised. He started his pull-up repetitions, always five sets of ten.
One, two, three …
He used to hate pull-ups, but now that he’d gotten good at them, he liked them. He had the timing of his breathing and the pulling of his arms perfectly synchronized.
Four, five, six …
If he tried, he’d probably be able to do a ridiculous number of them before his body gave, especially if he didn’t have the twenty-five-pound weight strapped to his waist.
Seven, eight, nine—
Movement outside the window caught his eye, and he froze with his feet dangling over the ground. Esme was in his backyard, hair in a ponytail, wearing baggy floral-print pants—were those Hammer pants?—and a white T-shirt with no goddamned bra underneath. Her breasts swayed gratuitously as she hacked a tree down with … one of his Japanese kitchen knives.
His feet hit the carpet with a hard thud, and he was vaguely conscious of how lucky he was that he hadn’t injured himself with the weight hanging between his legs. Still, he couldn’t drag his eyes away from the window.
Oh hell, it was the meat cleaver. She was cutting down a tree with a meat cleaver. He doubted lumber work was one of the knife’s intended uses, but in the manner of most Japanese engineering, the knife exceeded expectations. And he could see her dark nipples through her sheer shirt.
He couldn’t be the only person who would find this utterly baffling. It was arousing and fascinating but scary, as she was weaponized, and also a little frustrating because she’d so grievously repurposed his fine cutlery.
He marched to the window, cranked it open, and asked, “Why are you cutting that tree down?” With a meat cleaver.
She pulled the cleaver out of the tree’s narrow trunk and smiled at him like all of this was perfectly normal. “I’m cleaning up a little.”
His lips worked without making sound for a bit before he finally said, “You don’t have to.”
“I’m making the yard nicer. You’ll see.”
But he didn’t care what it looked like. No, that wasn’t right. He cared a little. Just enough so he derived perverse pleasure from irritating his neighbors with his dilapidated home exterior and lawn. He’d been about to start fixing things up, but the pint-sized old lady across the street, Ruthie, had sent him this letter, threatening to take him to civil court if he didn’t attempt to make his house fit in better with the neighborhood.
He’d do almost anything if someone asked nicely—case in point being his current predicament, in which a knife-wielding woman was cohabitating with him—but if they threatened him … He and Ruthie were waging a silent battle, and he was going to demolish her. It didn’t matter that she was a hundred years old.
Esme gave the sapling one more solid whack, and the trunk split in two. The leafy top of the tree crashed to the ground, and she held the cleaver up proudly, saying, “I’m good with knives.”
He backed away from the window slowly.
What number had he been on? He had no idea, so he started back at the beginning.
One, two, three—
Esme set the knife down and bent over to haul the fallen tree away, and her pants stretched over her ass in the most beguiling manner. It shouldn’t be sexy. He was absolutely certain those were Hammer pants now. But his cock didn’t care. It stiffened and pressed against his workout shorts.
He shook his head and pushed himself to focus. Mind over penis. Mind over penis. He could do it. Rule Number Six, dammit.
Four, five, six—
The tree must have snagged on something because she began tugging on it, and her perfect Hammer-pants-clad ass shook like in a Beyoncé music video. Khai stared at her, caught helplessly in the most confusing arousal of his life.
When the tree came free, she stumbled backward a few steps and then dragged it to the far side of the yard. She found a shovel from somewhere—he didn’t know where; he hadn’t known he owned a shovel—and returned to drive it into the earth at the base of the newly severed trunk. Her tits bounced, and sweat glistened on her reddened face before she swiped it away with the back of her arm.
It occurred to him that maybe he should be helping instead of watching her like landscaper pornography. You weren’t supposed to let women do any kind of manual labor. He might as well add that to the Rules. But he’d already told her she didn’t have to do this. If her hands longed to till the Silicon Valley soil, what right did he have to steal her joy? Besides, he was philosophically opposed, what with his feud with Ruthie and all.
He tore his eyes away and got back to his pull-ups. Focus. Mind over penis.
One, two, three—
She leaned over, making her pants stretch across her ass again, and a groan rumbled from his chest. After digging out a rock from the dirt and tossing it aside, she got back to shoveling.
One, two, three …
• • •
With every stab of shovel into dry earth, Esme’s determination grew. She’d woken up this morning with her new phone glued to her face and a blanket over her. He’d covered her in her sleep. It was a small thing to do, but the room had been cold. What if she’d gotten sick? It was a sign. He wasn’t perfect by any means, but he was perfect for her. And Jade. She was going to do her best to marry him.
His name, Khải, meant victory, but the way he said it, flat like that without the accent, it meant to open. That was exactly what she needed to do. He was closed, and she had to open him. In her experience, when you wanted to open something, you cleaned it up first so you could see what you were dealing with, and then you worked on it really hard. Esme wasn’t great at a lot of things, but she was good at cleaning and working hard. She could do this. Maybe she’d been made for this.
She’d start by straightening Khải’s yard. Then she’d move on to his house. Last, his life. He’d said he wasn’t unhappy with anything, but that was a lie if she’d ever heard one. For whatever reason, he’d built a thick wall around himself. She was going to knock it down just like she’d taken down that tree and work her way into his heart.
With that in mind, she cleared the yard until the sun was high in the sky. Then she went inside to have lunch with him and seduce him subtly, or not so subtly.
But he was gone.
He’d abandoned her alone in this house without a word.
CHAPTER SIX
When Khai’s alarm rang the next morning, he smacked it off, sat up, and stared blearily at his room. He’d spent his Sunday in the office to escape her, but then she’d invaded his dreams. He was lucky if he’d gotten three hours of sleep. Fantasies had plagued him all night. Sexual ones. Featuring a certain pair of Hammer pants.
He was officially losing his mind, and look at that monster wood. His dick was so hard it was lifting his heavy down comforter all on its own. He needed to take care of this, but how did you do that with another person on the other side of the door? What if she barged in halfway through? None of the locks worked in this house. It hadn’t mattered before now.
Walking with his dick pointing ahead like the needle on a compass, he went to the bathroom, turned on the light, and opened the drawer by the sink where he kept his toothbrush and toothpaste. They weren’t there. He yanked the drawer out all the way, but they didn’t roll out from the back. He knew he’d put them back last night. He always put them back.