Men at Work: Through the Roof / Taking His Measure / Watching It Go Up

Ben stared at her.

“How dare you?” she asked, her voice shaking. “You call this debasement? Me, trying to talk sense into you and salvage what we have together? God doesn’t bless two people with our kind of love very often, Benjamin Delgado! And you—you want to throw it away because of money. Well, that’s sad. In fact, it’s tragic.”

“I told you that this discussion is over!” He roared the words this time, his eyes blazing.

She stamped her foot. “No, it’s not. It’s not over until I, at least, get one hell of an apology from you, Ben. You want to live a lonely life with your pride, then that’s your choice. But I deserved better than to be told you can’tafford me. I deserved a face-to-face conversation.”

Marina straightened the rest of her clothes while Ben turned away, apparently too angry to speak.

“The truth hurts, doesn’t it, you jerk? And how could you have slept with me just now when you knew you hadn’t changed your mind? You don’t think that debased me? Hell, I should charge you! What am I worth? Let’s call it five hundred bucks. I’ll take it in cash from you, right now.”

He swung around, face white, and took a step toward her. “Marina!”

She held out her hand, palm up. “C’mon. Give it to me,” she said in scathing tones.

“Stop it.”

“Oh, that’s right. How could I forget? You can’t afford me.”

She threw open the door and clattered down the trailer steps. Her face burned; her whole body burned. She ran to her car, threw open the door, fumbled her keys into the ignition and shot back down the dirt road.

In her rearview mirror, she could see Ben, still standing in the trailer’s doorway, looking stricken.

“OOOH-EEEEE, she’s one stacked little spitfire. You get some action, amigo?”

Ben stopped in his tracks and turned the full force of his glare on the pendejo lounging against a sawhorse on site. “Do not make the mistake of disrespecting my fiancée, chivo de mierda. Do you understand me?”

The guy dropped his cigarette butt in the dirt and stepped on it. “Okay, okay, man. Chill out.”

Ben stalked by him and swung himself back onto the big slab. As he approached the crew he was working with, silence fell, which told him he was the topic of their conversation, too. It didn’t improve his temper.

Why the hell had Marina come here? To torment him? To upset them both? To make a spectacle out of herself?

He thought he’d made his position crystal clear. He found nothing unreasonable about it. To marry her now would make him a gigolo. He was goddamned if he’d move into her fancy house, drive one of her spare luxury cars and be given an allowance like a ten-year-old. He’d sooner shoot himself.

It’s not a question of loving her, it’s a question of having balls. I’m a man, not a mistress! Why can’t she understand that?

Why did it make him a bad person that he had principles? That he refused to take advantage of her? Perhaps some people would consider his scruples ridiculous, but they weren’t to him.

It already bothered him greatly when she bought him clothes, and he’d refused to accept the Testarossa she’d unwisely had delivered for his last birthday. He hadn’t even opened the candy-apple-red door—he’d just called the dealer and made them pick it up again within the hour.

She’d been hurt. She hadn’t understood what it had cost him to do that. Did he appreciate the gesture? Of course. The Testarossa was his dream car. He’d drooled over the damn thing. He’d practically wanted to lick it. But he couldn’t accept it. He had his pride.

But his mindset was a lot more complex than simple pride, whatever she thought. He couldn’t explain it, not even to his own satisfaction.

When his father had lost all his money, he’d relinquished some part of himself as well as his wife and family. He’d become vulnerable and somehow…weak, which was unacceptable to Ben.

He didn’t want to be weak, suck on Marina’s money like a niño at the breast. He recoiled from the idea, even as her words came back to him. You want to live a lonely life with your pride, that’s your problem.

Ben picked up the nail gun he’d been using and tried to block out the look on her face, bitter and hurt, so hurt.

Why don’t you take up kicking puppies, man? Mugging little old ladies? Tripping kids on tricycles?

He began driving nails into wooden studs so savagely that the men around him exchanged glances and moved away.

The noise of a circular saw behind him would normally have grated on his nerves. But right now it came as a relief, drowning out the sound of Marina’s voice in his head.

Did he owe her an apology for breaking up with her in a letter? Could she be right—was he a coward? She didn’t mean physically. She meant emotionally.

But that didn’t matter—he didn’t like it. Not one bit. Delgados weren’t cowards of any sort.

Shit. Shit! Ben misfired with the nail gun, narrowly avoiding his own thumb. He drew back his booted foot and kicked a bag of concrete mix nearby.

He’d thought a letter would be simpler. Cleaner. More final. Right there in black-and-white.

It had never occurred to him that it might be cowardly. That it might upset Marina even more.

I deserved better than to be told you can’t afford me… I deserved a face-to-face conversation.

He realized now that he’d given her the equivalent of a pink slip, with no discussion. She had a right to be angry about it. Ben threw down the nail gun and stripped off his work gloves.

Oh, hell. He did owe her an apology.

4

MARINA ALTERNATED between sipping a glass of cabernet and booking various beauty treatments to make herself feel better. Ben Delgado is a pig. Ben Delgado is not worthy of me. Ben Delgado dumped me again, and this time while I was sprawled naked in a double-wide!

She switched from sipping to gulping the sixty-dollar-a-bottle wine. Grapes: They did a body good. Wine was full of antioxidants, it was great for the heart and it contained fewer calories and carbs than chocolate. Wine is a veritable health food. She knocked back another gulp.

Why was Ben being so unreasonable?

Perhaps he had seen signs of cellulite on her thighs? She hit a number on speed dial and arranged for three sessions of endermologie, beginning tomorrow. It was a new process involving a machine that somehow broke up fatty deposits under the skin—rather like steamrolling one’s butt back to an acceptable flatness.

Or maybe her lips weren’t plump enough. She dialed Dr. Davinsky’s office, stat, and arranged for a collagen injection, even though she’d never had one and didn’t at all like the thought of being injected with a big needle right on the kisser. But Angelina Jolie had enslaved another woman’s husband with her pucker. Surely, Marina could take a little pain so as to enslave her own husband to be?

She peered into her mirror in the bathroom and inspected the pale down on her upper lip. Her lighted, magnified looking glass made it appear that she had a mustache to rival Errol Flynn’s. What good were bodacious lips if you had fur above them?

She hit another button on speed dial and signed up for a laser treatment to remove the offending hairs. She wondered if she should take care of the hair under her arms with laser treatment, too. And what about her legs, or maybe her whole pubic area? Hmm.

She’d heard that it really hurt. And one day she might be in a nursing home and didn’t want the staff there to check out her permanent, gray Brazilian and assume she’d been a pole dancer in her youth… On the other hand, she’d never have to get a bikini wax again.

The phone rang as Marina tried to make up her mind. “Hello?”

Her best friend, Chloe’s, nasal New York accent boomed into her ear. “Hi, doll. How ya doin’?”

“Ugh,” said Marina. “That about sums it up.”

“Okay so what are you doin’?”