Free Some Like It Perfect (A Temporary Engagement) by Megan Bryce

careful. She couldn’t take him when he was being funny. When he smiled. When he laughed .
    She chewed on her lip, she dug her nails into her palms, and when she couldn’t take it one more second, she peeked over the side of the scaffolding.
    He was typing on his computer, smiling into the screen, and Delia just looked at him.
    She whispered, “Please stop smiling.”
    He looked up. His brown eyes warm and happy and he didn’t look like a perfect asshole at that moment. He just looked perfect.
    She said, “We’re going to have a real problem if you don’t stop doing that.”
    “Because?”
    “Because you’re beautiful and you make me want to paint you.”
    “Don’t.”
    “I won’t.” She would, she was. She wouldn’t tell him. “And I forget that you’re a corporate shill and I work for you.”
    He nodded and looked back at his screen. “I’ve noticed you have a real problem respecting authority.”
    “I have a real problem with people expecting me to respect arbitrary authority.”
    “How do you decide if it’s arbitrary?”
    “It’s all arbitrary.”
    His lips did their slow glide up and she turned back to her paint. Stupid, beautiful men. Stupid, beautiful men who cried out to be painted. She had to paint him just to get him out of her head.
    She ignored him as best she could the rest of the morning, taking her frustration out on the ceiling. She jerked when Gus pushed the door open and shouted, “Lunch! You coming, Delia?”
    Delia peeked over the scaffolding to find both of them looking up at her. Gus was dressed in a white button-up shirt and navy slacks that looked like they’d been a school uniform. Jack pushed his chair back and stood, a smile threatening at the corners of his mouth. Delia held a finger up at him, warning him about that smile.
    He waved her down. “Then hurry up, Delia. Gus is dying to tell us how her first day of work went.”

    Delia went. She liked to eat, she was hungry, and she wanted to know how Gus’s first day of work had gone.
    Gus dug into her Cobb salad. “I filled out paperwork.”
    Delia cut into her steak. Her thick, fatty, cooked-just-right steak that she would never have ordered for herself. Jack had looked at her and said, “Do you eat meat?”
    She’d nodded. “I eat it. I love it. I can’t get enough of it.”
    Gus had laughed. “I would have guessed vegetarian. I would have guessed vegan.”
    Delia had nodded again in agreement. “In my misspent youth.”
    And then Jack had ordered them both rib-eye steaks, medium rare. Delia couldn’t decide if she was upset at him for his high-handed ordering or happy that she hadn’t had to look at the prices.
    Jack said to Gus, “And did you see any positions you were qualified for?”
    She said happily, “I wasn’t qualified for any of them. They were obviously hoping for a best-case candidate.”
    “Which you obviously are not.”
    “I am. I’m your sister. Anybody who hires me, barely out of high school with no work experience, will get major brownie points, won’t they?”
    Delia nodded. “She is not wrong. I could use an assistant.”
    Jack choked on his steak and reach for his water glass.
    Delia said over his coughing fit, “You’d need to open and stir paint cans, carry things up and down an unnecessarily high ladder, move cover cloths, and wipe up spills.”
    “I could do that in my sleep.”
    Delia said wisely, “It is not the chore that is hard but the everlasting repetition that kills the spirit.”
    “Is that a quote?”
    “It should be.”
    Jack cleared his throat loudly and Delia looked at him. “You going to make it?”
    “I appreciate the thought, Delia. But working with you would not teach her the lessons I was hoping for.”
    She raised an eyebrow at him but he merely said, “She’s already learned how to disrespect the CEO. And how to be late.”
    “But has she learned how to do those with flair?”
    “I don’t want her to learn how to do those things with flair. I