The Tenant

I had thought hearing the truth would make me feel better. But it made me feel worse. I'd jumped to conclusions and chastised him for that.

"Look... I wasn't thinking about the ramifications of not using protection," he added, his voice gravelly. "I saw you were out of condoms. I hadn't been sleeping with anyone else. Honestly, I didn't think you'd mind. But I should have asked. And now that I know what you saw... I get why you were so pissed off. I'm sorry."

I opened my mouth to say I was sorry, too, but I couldn't get any words out around the large lump that had formed in my throat. So, instead, there was just a long, awkward silence.

Abruptly, Lachlan stood and briskly walked to the door. He paused in the doorway and threw back at me, "I just needed to get that off my chest. I'll leave you alone."

He left the room, and I flopped back on the bed, groaning. Yeah, that talk had really improved things.

----

Over the next few days, I avoided Lachlan out of guilt. I concentrated instead on the chair project and made vast improvements. The frame was back to its original luster. And the new legs had arrived.

I took a day off to visit with Mallory, who revealed that she was expecting...and moving out of town. I pasted on a smile and kept her talking about the baby; her husband's promotion; the new house. Anything to avoid questions about Lachlan. Somehow, I made it through lunch without blurting something about my dilemma. We laughed, we cried. Then we hugged, promised to stay in touch, and parted ways.

As I watched her drive away, I felt like my heart was breaking. Why did it seem like I was losing everyone who meant something to me?

After a week since receiving the chair—and just as long not talking to Lachlan—I was finally able to take a better look at the lever. It was slightly bent, and though the design seemed pretty simple, the mechanisms had some gunk trapped between them that was preventing the two cushions from fully reclining or returning to the upright position.

I took a dead blow hammer at the lever to get it as straight as I could then sprayed the gears with a little WD-40. But it just created a mess on my tabletop, and the whole contraption moved whenever I tried to pull on the handle. I even tried leaning my arm on the front bar of the seat then jerking the lever, but the whole contraption slipped and clattered off the table to the floor.

"Stupid chair!" I kicked at the gear section, which sent the frame sliding under the table. With a groan, I got down on my knees and dragged it back out. I was standing back up when I bumped the back of my head on the underside of the thick, wooden surface I used for my workbench. "Damnit! You belong in a fucking dumpster!"

"Trash talking me behind my back, huh?"

I spun around, rubbing my head at the spot that still tingled. I blinked at Lachlan leaning against the doorjamb with his arms crossed. My eyes focused on his mouth that was twisted into a smirk. I gasped softly as it parted and the tip of his tongue licked his lips before they rolled inward for a moment, his Adam's apple bobbing slightly when he swallowed.

I wondered why he was up in my part of the house. How long he'd been standing there. But words failed me, again. Apparently, now I was the silent one.

"Let me see your head." He took four steps toward me, and I backed up two myself before I'd realized it. His smile fell, his raised hand dropping to his side. "Jemma?"

I touched my hair again and checked my fingers. No blood, but man did it smart. "I'm fine."

He watched me for another minute, neither of us moving. Then he started to turn. "I'm no physics major, but you need more resistance."

"What do you mean?" I glanced at the frame that now lay on its side on the table. I righted it, mostly out of needing to do something with my hands.

He had reached the door again but looked back. "Your arm isn't heavy enough. You need more weight holding the rest of the chair still."

"Ideally, I could sit on the seat and lean on the back, but I need to look for material first." I stared at him, worrying my lower lip. I suddenly didn't want him to leave. What excuse could I give, though, to make him stay? If I tried the obvious, I guess the worst he could do was walk out. I took a shaky breath and said, "Do you have any ideas?"

After an awkward staring match, he pressed his lips together and walked over to the table. He stopped only a couple of inches from me, his eyes boring into mine until I yelped when the edge of the table pressed into my back because I'd allowed myself to retreat...and found I couldn't. Only then did he shift his attention to the frame.

I watched him pick it up and turn it over, seeming to study it. After a moment, he held the top bar of the back frame and the front bar of the seat frame in each of his hands and tried to press then pull the two bars closer then farther apart. I tried not to laugh. It looked like he was pumping iron with a medieval device. But a giggle slipped out.

His eyes narrowed at me. "Take this."

I replaced his right hand with both of my hands on the seat's front bar, and he gripped the back bar in both of his.

"On the count of three, pull as hard as you can."

I nodded and pressed my lips together.

"One...two...three."

We both pulled, and there was a loud creak as the frame's angle widened a couple of inches.

"Try it again. One...two...three."

The arc grew a little more, then our arms shook as the bars jarred. Lachlan set the frame down on the tabletop and jerked at the lever. It moved back and forth maybe a quarter of an inch in either direction. When he looked around, I handed him the mallet I had used before.

"Can you hold the frame still?"

I braced my left hand on the bar of the seat just off the edge of the table and locked my elbow after gripping the back frame in my right hand.

He swung the dead blow hammer at the lever, and I almost lost my grip from the jar of the metal.

I planted my feet and even leaned my hip against the table then nodded at him.

He tried again, but it seemed to bend the lever toward the outside of the chair instead of to the front or back.

"Let me try," I sighed, not for the first time regretting taking on this project. "You hold it."

We switched places, and I took the hammer in both hands. It had power, that I knew. Lachlan turned the frame, and I aimed to hit the lever from the outside inward to straighten it out. But the angle was wrong, and the head of the hammer missed the lever. My follow-through kept going, though, and I fell forward with the momentum, losing my grip on the hammer which clattered off the table on the other side.

"Shit!" I yanked my left arm to my chest and doubled over. Burning pain like a red-hot poker continued to pierce my skin.

"Jemma!"

The next thing I knew, I was sitting in my work chair, rocking back and forth.

"Let me see, sweetie."

I tried but failed to hold back my tears at his soft tone—his gentle touch when he took my arm in his hands. All the stress building up since New Year's just came to a head. Once the crying started, I couldn't stop it.

"Shh. It's just badly scraped. You must have caught it on the lever." He lifted my hand, and I could see a red welt forming between sections of torn skin from my wrist halfway up my forearm. The little blood there looked worse than it was. Then the warmth of his fingers encased mine again, carefully moving my wrist back and forth. "This is a dangerous project you started here. Twice your head, now this? Maybe you should quit while you're still in one piece."

I tried to laugh, too, but I ended up crying harder at the pathetic nature of the situation.

"Hey, hey. I'm sorry." He pulled me against his chest, my sore arm now tucked between us. "I didn't mean to upset you more."

When my sobbing still didn't subside, he picked me up—just like on that first day we'd been together. He set me on the counter in my bathroom, cleaned my wound, and bandaged it. Then he carried me to my bed, removed our shoes, and climbed in with me, pulling the comforter over us both.

For the longest time, he just held me. He didn't speak, but his mere presence was comforting. And eventually, I was just sniffling. I must have closed my eyes and drifted off.

When I woke up later, he was still with me, though his soft snores told me he was fast asleep himself. I snuggled up to him and breathed in his masculine scent, sighing at his strong arms holding me loosely in his slumber. Before I returned to dreamland, I reflected that this was the first time we'd literally slept together.

----

Lachlan made me sit in my work chair the next day to rest my wound while he tinkered with the hammer and the lever. I gave him some suggestions. He shot me the occasional evil glare over his shoulder. I thought we made a good team.

After several hours, he managed to get the frame back to the original 100º. He swapped out the hammer for a rag and wiped his hands, leaning on the edge of the table. "I think this chair's reclining days are done."

"I guess I'll have to call my client and ask her what she wants to do now." I dug my cellphone out of my pocket. A couple of rings later, I relayed the bad news. Then I thumbed the call to end and sighed.

"What's the verdict?"

I screwed up my mouth and mumbled, "She doesn't want it if it's not fully functional."

"So the dumpster then?" He was already standing and grabbing the frame.

"I can't." For some reason, I couldn't look at him. I knew he would think I wasn't being rational. "I've put so much time into fixing it this far."

"Well, I guess it would still work as a chair that is just a chair. What else do we need to finish it?"

I blinked up at him now. "We?"

The corner of his mouth turned up. "Yeah, 'we.' You've only got one good hand right now. You're going to need some help."

Which is how I found myself riding in his car to pick up the boards I'd had cut for the seat and back and then to choose fabric and padding for the cushions. We were discussing patterns for the tops of the armrests when I raised a question I'd been wondering about for months.

"Lachlan? Um...remember when you first moved in?"

"Mm hmm."

"Why were you always so withdrawn? You rarely spoke. Especially when Mallory was around. What changed?"

The plasticy sound of laminate repeatedly hitting a hard surface met my ears. I glanced down to see the handful of two-by-three samples we'd been considering scattered on the store's linoleum floor, like shards of a dropped glass.

"Lachlan?" When he still didn't answer—or stoop to pick up the tiles—I stepped around him and dipped my head to try to see his face.

His eyes were downcast, and his mouth was twisted in a contemplative frown.

I gingerly touched the back of his hand. "What is it?"

His shoulders shuddered with his exhale. "The day I got the call that I'd been accepted to stay in your house and not the graduate dorm, I was ecstatic. I was going to be right by campus but also have seclusion from the rest of the students. A place to unwind at night without too many distractions. I knew I would need that after researching all day. I think better when it's quiet. Then it was move-in day."

He lifted his eyes briefly to mine, his voice lower when he continued.

"I was smitten from the moment I laid eyes on you, Jemma. But I knew you would be my landlord, and you were off-limits. Although it was hard not to admire you from a distance, I knew I could control myself. I had to." He rubbed at the back of his neck and shook his head. "I was unpacking my bags in my room when your friend Mallory came in and shut the door."

I dropped my hand and started to take a step back, but Lachlan was faster and grasped my fingers.

"Wait. Please."

I looked around, but I wasn't really sure why. For someone to help? A path to escape? After a couple of difficult swallows, I relaxed my arm, but he didn't let go.

"I thought the same thing you're thinking now. She was there to seduce me." Another shudder shook both his arm and mine since we were still tethered together. "But she surprised me. Said she saw me watching you. That you had a great thing going with the university housing, and if I fucked it up in any way by making a pass at you, she'd make sure I was out on my ass without a place to stay. I didn't know if she had that kind of pull, but I wasn't about to test it."

Had I heard him correctly? Mallory threatened to evict him because he was looking at me too much?

"I'm normally a little anti-social." He smirked suddenly. "Apparently, I listened to the wrong music growing up, according to my thesis."

I gave him a sad smile.

He released his hold on me and sighed as he turned away. "It wasn't difficult to retreat into solitude. It's what I already knew. I was here to study, anyway."

"It can't always be all about work." I don't think he was listening, though, because he kept his back to me and continued as though I hadn't spoken.

"But the longer I lived in your house, the harder it became to concentrate. To stay away from you. I found myself absently staring at you. Mallory must have noticed because she confronted me again after our first Sunday dinner and told me it was probably not a good idea to continue eating with the two of you. It would be tempting to get too relaxed, and I might slip up...then where would I be living? So, I lingered at the library or the classrooms on campus. Going out all night on the weekends to avoid seeing you. To avoid temptation."

I grabbed his wrist, and he faced me. Anger must have flashed in my eyes because he recoiled when I looked up at him. "I don't know what to say except that she had no right to say those things to you! And I didn't know. I'm sorry."

He raked his other hand through his hair. "I could tell you were bothered when I skipped out on the meals. I wanted to talk to you, but I didn't know what to say. She's your best friend, and I didn't want to jeopardize either of our situations."

It was my turn to sigh...to let go of him. "I wish you had come to me."

"I know." Lachlan cupped my face in his warm palms. "I admired you. I still do. I'm impressed with your work ethic. How you carry yourself. Your confidence."

"My inability to hold my liquor and resulting penchant for talking to lamps?"

"Yeah, that, too." His lips spread into a generous grin as he chuckled. "I'm glad that happened."

I rolled my eyes at him.

"I'm serious, Jemma. That night when I went out, I went to a coffee shop instead of the bar. I wrote down all of the pros and cons on a napkin of pursuing my feelings for you. I've kept it all these months. Mostly as a reminder that it was worth it if I became homeless just to show you once what you meant to me."

I blinked up at him and realized there were tears in my eyes. Before they spilled down my cheeks, he pulled me into his arms and hugged me tight.

"I know she is your friend, but you have no idea how much relief I felt when Mallory spent more time with her fiancé and eventually moved out. I could breathe again without worrying she was gunning for me if I even coughed in your direction. These last few weeks? I was right back there walking on eggshells to not piss you off. I screwed up. I know it. I'm—"

"Stop it. I'm the one who needs to apologize. I accused you without any evidence. I was jealous. And I was wrong. I'm the one who's sorry for causing friction between us. Mainly because I like you, Lachlan. A lot."

"All's forgiven, Jemma." He kissed my forehead. "And for the record, I like you a lot, too."

"Is there anything I can help you with?" a female voice said behind us. "Oh! What happened?"

Lachlan cleared his throat. "Yes, ma'am. We are interested in ordering some laminate. I was a little clumsy, though, and dropped the samples."

I turned away to compose myself, wiping my hand at my eyes. I couldn't help smiling that we had come here to do some home improvement when what we both were long overdue for was a bit of self-improvement.

###

A day later, my arm was still sore but starting to heal. Lachlan found me in my workroom measuring the material we had bought for the cushions. I swore I could work on the chair despite his persistence I continue to rest. He made the mistake of saying he could continue to do the manual labor for me. I was no fool and took him up on his offer...wishing him good luck with reupholstering.

He gaped like a fish out of water for a moment then pushed back his shoulders and cleared his throat.

I took a seat in my chair and rolled up to the side of the worktable. For the next hour, I gave directions while trying not to laugh, and he tried his damndest to cover the two cushions and use the staple gun to secure the material to the undersides of the wood bases.

"We're lucky the client doesn't want this back," he mumbled after trying three times to get the pattern straight on the seat cushion.

I cleared my throat this time and bumped his hip with mine, moving him out of the way. In just a few short movements, I had the pattern realigned and tacked over the new batting and foam I'd chosen.

Lachlan just grunted.

I gestured to my work chair, and he sat with his arms crossed while I finished covering both cushions. Then I handed the reins back over to him. "Do you know how to use a power screwdriver?"

He pursed his lips and grabbed the tool off my workbench, pressing the button a couple of times to make the screw bit spin and whir to apparently prove his aptitude.

I gave him a smirk and turned the frame on its side.

Together, I held each cushion while he reattached it to the frame. As a last-minute decision, I'd accepted his opinion that we not duplicate the old table-like armrests exactly. Instead, we used the same sized boards but wrapped padded material around it to create a more comfortable look and feel. Once secured, he set the chair upright and we both stepped back.

"Too bad your client doesn't want it. I think it's a huge improvement," he said, tapping one finger on his lips while he walked around the table.

"Agreed. Definitely no longer dumpster-worthy." I blushed at the grin he shot me.

"What are you going to do with it now?"

"I haven't decided. Sell it, I guess."

I snapped a couple of pictures of the newly renovated chair, pleased with the silver-starburst pattern on a yellow background reminiscent of the 1950s. Especially with my choice of cotton fabric for indoor use. And the armrests were a much better fit for the vibe I was aiming for.

"What if you kept it?"

I started to scoff but then turned to him. "What would I do with it?"

"Sit it in, of course. You said it yourself that you've put a lot of hours into rehabbing this thing. Have you ever kept any of your projects for yourself?"

"Well, no. I've always done the work for others."

"Then I think you should keep this one. Do you like it?"

"Yes. It's a little quirky with the way the seat is tilted back, but that's part of its charm."

Lachlan suddenly grabbed the chair and walked out of the room with it.

"Where are you going?" I hurried after him. In the hall, I saw him disappear into my room. I was still catching my breath by the time I found him setting the chair in front of the tall armoire of my bedroom set. "What are you doing?"

"Come here." He held out his hand and pulled me up against him when I approached. His kiss was fierce but short. "Take off your clothes."

"Lachlan—"

"Do you trust me?"

"Of course."

"Take off your clothes."

I hesitated only a moment longer then stripped. He didn't seem to care that I wasn't putting on a show. Once I was naked, he took my hand and walked backwards...directly to the chair. As soon as he sat down, he spread his legs and took my other hand.

"Step up on the seat."