Pleasure Doing Business

The buzzer goes twice, thirty seconds apart, like they timed it to prove a point.

You open the door to find them already at each other’s throats in your hallway. Sawyer with his tool belt slung low on his hips, dragging the waistband of his jeans down just enough to show the cut of muscle disappearing under his shirt. He’s wearing that smirk he’s had surgically attached to his face since the day you met him. Rhys a half step behind, jaw set, sleeves shoved to the elbow, a pipe wrench swinging loose from one hand like he hasn’t decided yet whether it’s a tool or a weapon tonight.

“...because you flooded the Hendricks unit and then tried to blame my wiring.”

“Your wiring melted a junction box, Rhys. That’s not a plumbing problem, that’s you not knowing what a breaker is for.”

“Boys.” You lean on the doorframe with your arms crossed and watch two grown men shut up mid-sentence like you’ve flipped a switch on them. Fitting, given the company. “The Contractor of the Year committee doesn’t meet for another four months. You can save it for them.”

“He started it,” Sawyer says, entirely too pleased with himself, like being the instigator is a point of pride.

“I finish things,” Rhys says, low and flat, and the line is clearly meant for Sawyer but it lands squarely on you instead, low in your stomach, immediate. The kind of heat that makes you very aware of how thin the fabric of your dress is and how little you’re wearing under it.

You’ve had them both up here before, separately, for separate emergencies. Sawyer came for the panel that kept tripping every time you ran the espresso machine. He’d stood closer than necessary while explaining amperage in that easy, unhurried voice, sawdust dusting his forearms. One hand rested against the wall above your head like it had ended up there by accident.

Rhys came for the guest bath that wouldn’t stop leaking beneath the vanity. He spent forty minutes on his back under your sink while you brought him coffee he never asked for and tried not to stare at the flex of his forearms around the wrench. It was, embarrassingly, the most interesting thing you’d seen all week.

His shirt had ridden up. You’d looked. You’d thought about that strip of hard stomach and the dark line of hair below his navel for three days afterward. In the shower, with the water running hot and your hand between your legs, you’d replayed it more than once.

You hadn’t felt even slightly guilty about it.

That was the problem. You liked them both. You liked the way Sawyer talked with his hands, big and scarred across the knuckles, and left sawdust in tidy little trails across your floor like even his mess had intention behind it.

You liked the way Rhys went quiet and focused when he concentrated, everything else falling away until there was only the problem in front of him and the quiet certainty that he would figure it out.

And you’d heard from both of them, completely unprompted, exactly how much they despised each other, delivered in the aggrieved tones of men who had clearly rehearsed the complaints in their trucks beforehand.

Small-business rivals. Same client pool. Same square mile of luxury high-rises. Even the same annual award, which neither of them has ever managed to win because the vote splits almost perfectly between them every year.

You’d found it obscenely entertaining, if you were honest. The two best contractors in the building, both gorgeous, both competent, and both so thoroughly convinced the other was the villain of their professional life that neither seemed to notice how often your name came up when they complained about each other.

Sawyer asked once, half joking and not joking at all, whether you’d hired Rhys just to spite him. Rhys asked, with considerably less humor, whether Sawyer always found excuses to hang around your kitchen after the work was done.

You told them both the same thing: you hired whoever did good work.

Neither of them believed you.

The truth you didn’t say out loud was that you’d started scheduling their appointments a week apart on purpose, just to see which one of them would ask about the other first. It was always both. Every time.

So when your property manager mentioned that both units needed work in the same week, you didn’t ask for two appointments. You asked for one.

“There’s a leak under the kitchen sink,” you say, stepping back to let them in, “and the outlets in the primary bath buzz every time I run the dryer. I want you both to take a look.”

They come in still glaring at each other over your head, barely acknowledging that you’re standing between them. And something about that, about being treated like the space they’re fighting in instead of the reason they’re fighting at all, flips a switch.

Standing barefoot in your own front hall, heart pounding hard behind your ribs, you decide you’re done watching from the sidelines.

You shut the door. You turn the deadbolt slow enough that both of them hear the click.

“Actually,” you say, “change of plans.”

Sawyer’s eyebrows go up and Rhys suddenly goes very still.

“You’re both convinced the other one has been sabotaging you all year. Fake reviews. Lost bids that supposedly went to somebody’s cousin. Whatever the hell happened with the Hendricks unit, which apparently still isn’t settled.”

You walk past them into the living room and feel both sets of eyes follow you. Down your back. Over your hips.

You let them look. That’s exactly why you wore the dress.

The city glows gold and pink through the floor-to-ceiling windows as you turn to face them, chin lifted like you’re the one running this job site.

“So let’s settle it.”

Neither man moves.

“Winner gets my vote for the committee.” You let the silence stretch just long enough. “Whichever one of you fucks me best.”

Silence. The good kind. The kind where you get to watch two grown men reconsider the entire direction of their evening in real time, each taking a very different route to the exact same conclusion.

Sawyer’s grin comes first, slow and filthy. His gaze drops to your mouth, then lower, taking its time over your chest and hips like he’s already imagining what’s beneath the dress. Heat pulses low through your body.

“You’re serious,” he says.

“I don’t repeat myself for men on the clock.”

Rhys sets the wrench on your counter with a quiet click that sounds almost final. Otherwise, he doesn’t move. He just watches you, dark-eyed and silent, color creeping up his throat. Then he shifts his weight, and you catch the unmistakable outline pressing against the front of his jeans.

You have to make yourself look away.

“And if we both think we won?” he says.

“Then I suppose you’ll have to try harder.”

You hold his gaze until something in his expression gives, hunger cutting through the irritation. Like he hates how much he wants this. Like being told to try harder might be the most infuriating thing anyone has said to him all year.

And the one he wants to hear most.

You glance toward the door. “It’s locked. Nobody leaves until I’ve made up my mind.”

For a moment, neither of them moves, and you wonder if you’ve misjudged this. Maybe the rivalry runs deeper than the offer is worth. Maybe pride is going to win out over the idea of sharing anything at all, including you.

Then Sawyer laughs, short and disbelieving, dragging a hand through his hair.

“You’re out of your mind.”

But he’s already toeing off his boots by the door, and that tells you everything you need to know.

“Rules,” Rhys says, because of course he wants rules. The man alphabetizes his invoices. “No sabotage. Whatever happens in here, happens fair.”

“For once,” you say, and watch the words land somewhere just beneath his ribs.

“For once.”

He shrugs out of his jacket like he’s clocking in. The shirt underneath is thin, worn soft, and does absolutely nothing to hide the breadth of his shoulders or the solid muscle in his arms. The same arms you’ve spent an unreasonable amount of time thinking about since the day he fixed your sink.

Sawyer crosses the room first. He doesn’t rush, which somehow makes it worse. Or better. It gives you time to watch him come toward you.

He stops close enough that you have to tip your head back to meet his eyes. You catch cedar and sweat on him, along with the faint, sharp bite of solder. Then he lifts one hand and catches your jaw between his thumb and forefinger, gentle but deliberate, turning your face toward his.

His eyes move over you slowly, like he’s been waiting a long time to get this close and has no intention of wasting it.

“Just so we’re clear on the scope of work,” he says, and his voice has dropped into something rough and unhurried. “You want us to make you come until you can’t remember either of our names, and then you want to hand out an award for it.”

“That’s the job.”

“Say it.”

Your pulse is loud in your ears. Behind Sawyer, Rhys watches with his hands loose at his sides and his jaw tight. He hasn’t looked away once. He’s letting the other man touch you, studying every second of it.

Your thighs press together before you can stop them.

“I want you both,” you say. “I want to find out which one of you fucks like he means it.”

Sawyer’s thumb drags across your bottom lip, catching, pulling it down. “Sweetheart,” he says, “you’re gonna find out a lot of things tonight.”