Nicole Hartmann

Project Details TITLE: Sebastian - Tiffany CUSTOMER NAME: SH Naks DATE: 2/5/18 DUE DATE: n/a LENGTH: 2,000 Words HEAT: n/a GENRE/TROPE: Comedy OTHER: First Person, Heroes POV Heroes 34-42, Heroines 26-34 “I think I misunderstood something here.” I stood looking at the disaster that was Tiffany Howell’s apartment. “I thought you said it was a spider, not a rhinoceros.” Tiffany peaked out from behind my shoulder. I smelled her familiar fruity perfume, closing my eyes to drink it in. Her husky voice spoke behind me, embarrassed. “Uh, well it was. A spider. Obviously.” “Obviously,” I repeated in disbelief. I’d been over to her apartment a few times since her and my sister, Anna, had become friends. Usually to do the odd job – leaky faucet, stuck window latch, warped door frame. In that time, I’d always been amazed at how clean she kept the place. You could tell she was an interior designer. All that frou-frou shit that filled up an otherwise bare apartment. Like mine, which had all the necessities and not much else. This did not look like the same apartment I’d seen. There were down feathers everywhere. Water filling up an already over-full sink and leaking down the pristine white cabinets to pool on the kitchen floor. The lamp was knocked off the side table, it’s orange ceramic pieces scattered in a million pieces. Her TV screen was cracked, something that made the guy in me want to sob in agony for it’s beautiful technological face. Her damn dog – which, calling it a dog took a lot of liberties as far as I was concerned…it was really more like a squirrel – was prancing around, picking up spare pieces of plastic from something else that had crashed against the tile. “Where is the beast now?” I asked, meaning the spider but eyeing up the squirrel-dog who was currently chomping on my shoelace. “Bas, don’t patronize me!” She exclaimed, using Anna’s nickname for me. “I killed the spider, but I accidentally knocked off the showerhead and now it’s pouring out water.” She pointed one perfectly painted pink fingernail in the direction of the white three-panel door that was closed. “Tiffany, we’ve had this talk before. It’s just a spider,” I said in soft, soothing tones like I was trying to calm down a rabid animal. Which was exactly what looked to have been unleashed in her place. “Sebastian, go fix the leak and stop making fun of me!” She said, doing her best to look fierce in her white fluffy PJ pants and gray t-shirt. I fought back a laugh, taking care not to comment on the fact that she had damp spot on her t-shirt that gave me a pretty clear indication she wasn’t wearing a bra. Somehow, I felt that calling attention to that fact would not benefit me in the long run. “You might want to stand behind me, ma’am,” I said seriously, grabbing her arm and tugging her behind me. Honestly, I’d take any opportunity to touch her smooth skin. It was pathetic, really. I felt her tiny fist pound me on my shoulder blade. Dead-pan, I said, “Ouch. Please stop. That’s my throwing arm.” “You’ll be lucky if you ever throw a baseball again, Sebastian Darius White!” I blinked, turning back to look at her. “Darius?” Her normally tan skin flushed in an attractive pink hue. “I guessed. It said D. on the insurance claim when you fixed my wood floor.” “Well, I can tell you that it definitely doesn’t standard for Darius.” I snorted. I already had an unappealing, long-ass name like Sebastian. I’d never let my parents live it down if they named me something as effeminate as Sebastian Darius. I pulled open the door, jumping back when the water flowed out of the tiled bathroom. “Jesus Christ!” I heard her voice behind me. “I told her it was leaking…” “Tiff, this isn’t a leak. It’s a damn tsunami! Where’s your water shut-offs? I need to turn them off before I can do anything else.” When she didn’t answer, I turned around. She was looking down, her blue eyes hid from me. “Water shut-offs? Like the weird handle looking things?” Without waiting for another answer about the ‘handle things’, I took off at a jog to her mechanical closet. Whispering a prayer, I yanked open the cover and breathed a sigh of relief when the shut-offs were clearly labeled. I yanked it up and over, hearing the water supply decrease over to her master bathroom. I walked, calmer, back to the bathroom. “I’m going to need a bucket, mop, towels…anything you can get that will help.” “I can do that,” she affirmed, trotting off to go get them. I admired the way her butt bounced in those shorts before shaking my head. Focus, White, I ordered myself. I fixed the showerhead first. She hadn’t broken it, just cracked the pipe that connected to the rain shower. I took the extra piping in the supply closet from when I’d installed that same showerhead not even a month ago and fixed it within a few minutes. I put back up the shower rod that she’d knocked down in her attack on the poor insect. I actually felt kind of bad for the little dude, wherever he was. She had gone full-on Rocky on his ass. Next was mopping up the floor. Luckily, by the time I’d finished the shower projects, Tiffany had produced enough supplies to clean an entire crack den, needles and all. She crouched down next to me, her fragrance wafting over to me. “Tiff, I don’t need your help. I got this.” “Don’t be a grump. It was my own fault. I’m sure you’re already calling me fifty shades of ditz right now, and I’m already kicking myself for calling you,” she admitted, wringing out the once-fluffy white towels that were now sopping wet. I stopped soaking up water for a second. Just the mention of ‘fifty shades’ brought to mind handcuffs and a paddle. I hadn’t read the book, but I didn’t live under a rock. I’d seen the movie, and right now I was picturing her in all sorts of inappropriate ways. I tried to focus. She was my little sister’s best friend. Keep it professional. She hadn’t invited me here to jump her bones. I needed to fix what was wrong, and then leave…like I always did. Like she expected me to. “Hey, look at me.” She looked up at me, her blue eyes wary. “What?” “You’re not a ditz. You’re not stupid. You panicked, and the rest was an accident. It happens,” I said, trying to calm her. It wasn’t just to placate her. Tiffany might have an unholy fear of spiders, but I knew first hand that she was smart. A hell of a lot smarter than I was. And she was talented. I’d worked on some of the real estate projects Anna had presented to Tiffany for flipping. Most of them were disasters. Like orange shag carpet and hand-painted mural kind of disasters. But you’d never know it when Tiffany finished with them. She had a clean style that, even as a guy, I could respect her for. She didn’t seem to be buying it so I thought quickly. “If it makes you feel any better, yesterday I went into American Eagle and asked for Size 34 Obese.” She burst out laughing, her eyes twinkling and her shiny red lips curving into a smile. Man, she was gorgeous. She wiped a tear from her eye. “You realize that’s not a real size, right?” I chuckled at myself. “Well, yes, I know that but it’s not what my brain apparently knew. I think I was looking for ‘husky’ but somehow that came out obese. The lady just stared at me with this blank look.” Tiffany’s uncontrollable laughter kicked off my uncontrollable laughter and pretty soon we looked like two crazy monkeys in a zoo. A zoo that was still flooded. We went back to wiping up water. At some point, she put up her pretty brown curly hair into some kind of ponytail that reminded me of some kind of retro-do. We were both tired and sweaty by the time we were done, having carried buckets of heavy towels and water into the utility sink in the mudroom. I helped her tidy up the rest of the room, together sweeping up the shattered remnants of the lamp and vacuuming up all the down feather fragments that were floating around the room. We moved on to the kitchen. I drained and unclogged the sink, holding up a tattered piece of paper towel that had been jammed down there. “Did you forget where the garbage can was?” This time, she didn’t even try to hide the laughter or the embarrassment. “Bas, don’t judge me…” “I’m instantly judging now. You may refer to me as Judge Judy. Or Your Majesty. Or Ken.” She laughed, then got confused. “Wait, why Ken?” I shrugged, hiking up my shoulders. “I don’t know. I always wanted some girl to tell me I looked as hot as Ken.” “Like the Barbie doll?” She gasped, laughing too hard to breathe. I scowled at her good-naturedly. “Yes, like the Barbie doll. Like the very manly Barbie action figure named Ken.” She hiccupped and that set her off into fits of laughter again. I stood there with a big dumb grin on my face, thinking she had never been more beautiful than she was right now, in this moment. “Tiffany,” I said in a warning tone. I stalked slowly over to her. She didn’t even seem to notice me, but there was something about her innocent laughter that had turned me on to the point of distraction. She likely didn’t even know it – standing there in her fuzzy pajamas with that practically see-through shirt. I knew she wasn’t a virgin and she didn’t play the games that women seemed to always want to play, and somehow that just turned me on more. Her laughter died down to a husky chuckle. Suddenly, she noticed that I had crossed the distance of the kitchen, coming to stand only a few feet from her. “Bas…” “Your shirt is wet,” I said, my brain not functioning like it should and blurting out the first thing that I’d been meaning not to say. She looked down, gasping. She tried to cover up her thin shirt that did nothing to hide the nipple beneath it. “Shit.” Her little expletive didn’t do anything to curb the raging fire in my pants right now. She was so close right now that I could reach out and touch that damp spot on her shirt. My eyes focused on that, willing her to move her hand. As if a prayer had been answered, she dropped her hand. “I should probably go change.” “Yes,” I breathed, not meaning it at all. “Sebastian…” I groaned. Something about the way she said my name, all husky like that…it did things to me. Things that definitely weren’t friendly or brotherly. I took that last step to her, until her head had to tilt backward to see my face. There was such a difference in height, that I could look directly down her shirt to see the naked mound that I’d been craving to touch since I’d first walked in. “Take it off,” I demanded, shocked at my own low voice. I could see her eyes flutter, her pupils dilate. I’d never gone this far, never pushed our boundaries like this. I waited for her to run, or laugh, or skedaddle away, but instead she just stood there, her blue eyes darkening to a navy. Amazingly, she did as I asked. Maybe it was my tone, or the intense look I was giving her that was basically liquid heat. She handed me the shirt. I put it behind me on the kitchen counter, making a note that I was taking that shirt when I left. It would get me through a lot of nights when I didn’t feel like being with someone that was a poor imitation of the beautiful woman standing in front of me. I took off the flannels shirt I was wearing and draped it over her. Confused, she put her arms into it. Apparently deciding that I’d just been teasing, she smiled awkwardly. “Sorry about that. I—” She was cut off by me, swooping down and picking her up. I set her on the countertop. “Tell me if you don’t want this.” “If I don’t want—” Considering my due diligence served, I bent forward and slid my lips over hers. My hands went to surround her face, my thumbs stroking both cheekbones. She hesitated for a second, and then I groaned when I felt her hands dig their way into my hair, scratching my scalp. My tongue traced her lower lip, bit it gently and when she gasped, I swallowed the sound with my own mouth. She tasted sweet and warm and fruity, and I knew that one kiss would never be enough. I would make her mine. I had to.