Morena Ramos scrubbed the shower viciously, putting her frustrations to good use. The man was insufferable, not to mention dangerous and a little... insane, she thought, attacking the tiles, revelling in the soothing sound of the bristles scraping across the tiled surface. But all the irritation in the world couldn't mask the fact that she found him wildly intriguing. The realisation upset her even more and sent the brush scouring even faster.
Morena was a native to Charming. Born and bred, she had lived there most of her life. She was also one of those people who dodged the spotlight and lived pretty much under the radar of anything exciting. It had taken her a very long time to decide what to do with her life. After odd jobs in Europe, au pairing to rich families, she finally returned home to pursue her studies. No longer in her twenties, she felt she had a good grip of where her life was headed.
When a friend of a friend mentioned in passing that hellish and whorish Tig Trager was looking for someone to clean his place a couple days a week, she jumped at the opportunity. Of course, she didn't tell the friend of a friend or her friend that she had taken the job. They'd call her insane. But money was tight and the life of a student was always a tough one. She didn't necessarily have the luxury of choice. While she was not naive enough not to know about the reputation of the Sons of Anarchy, she was surprised by its Sergeant at Arms. Besides the initial interview that lasted all of a minute, the only statement being 'twenty dollars a day, two days a week,' she hardly ever saw him, heard from him or spoke to him. She'd called him Mr Trager once or twice, but winced when she remembered those blue eyes zeroing in on her, his drawl amused when he said, "It's Tig. Just Tig."
That moment showed her as clear as a billboard: keep your head down, do your work. And remember to call your employer 'Tig'. The problem was, she was usually so bloody nervous around him based on all the rumours, she had ended up calling him by his offensive last name a few times. Most recently, he'd just stared at her in what she interpreted as disgusted confusion. She felt his blue gaze penetrating her brain and probably mentally shredding it to pieces. He'd frowned and shook his head, slamming the door as he'd left.
She knew a fair amount about The Sons; anyone living in Charming knew about them. And after working for Tig, finding guns in odd places, knives and live rounds stowed all over the tiny apartment, woman's underwear, lingerie and intimate apparel strewn haphazardly sometimes, she had done some research. He was feared – greatly - in many circles. An ex-marine, he had done hard time and had a reputation for fearlessness and violence. He loved women; many of them and often. Any person with a lick of sense would have dumped the job and ran a mile. But he never bothered her. Ever. In fact, whenever he saw her, he tended to want to get out of her way. He wasn't kind. He wasn't courteous. But his usual monosyllabic grunts were as close to polite as she was going to get from him.
Besides that, the man was hardly around. Sometimes she would come in and the place was as neat as she'd left it the week before. Yet the money was always stuck to the tiny refrigerator with a magnet, a skull and crossbones emblazoned over the front. No note. Just the cash. Most of the times, more than he'd promised.
But she'd noticed that in the last few months, he tended to be here more often than before. And there was always loads of booze around, too much for casual drinking and more along the lines of numbing himself from something. While she liked to believe he let the whores out before she got there, she didn't kid herself. Once in a while they stumbled out just before she got there, clothes in disarray. And more than one had eyed her suspiciously, some mumbling, "Good luck bitch," others smirking in surprise and saying any variation of "more after last night? He's a fucking stallion".
"Stallion or not, he never made a move on me," she huffed while stripping the bed of its linen with unnecessary vigour. She wasn't a great beauty, but Morena was confident enough to admit she was pretty. With thick, dark, wavy hair pulled back in a serviceable ponytail, a petite, but curvy build, large dark eyes and a generous dusting of the lightest freckles across the bridge of her nose, she was actually closer to wholesome than sexy siren. Deflated, she sighed. She was, by definition, the type of woman she was sure Tig would find least attractive of every woman, ever.
She started to dress the bed with fresh linens she'd had laundered. She smoothed the sheets and pillows, dusted the tiny spaces and cleaned the small kitchen. And then she wondered... There were no personal effects in the apartment. At all. Not a picture, a note. Not a card. Nothing. There were no CD's, not even a TV. Was there nothing he cherished? Nothing he kept near? There were guns however, and all manner of other accoutrements, but nothing that spoke to the man - who he was or where he was from. Everyone had memories littered through their possessions. At least here, he seemed to have none. Unexpectedly, she felt sadness at that.
A couple hours later, the small apartment was spotless. And as usual, she sat down at the tiny counter and opened her textbooks. She wasn't sure how Tig would feel about her using his space for academia, but it was quiet and she usually got quite a bit done. She tried, she really did. But she just couldn't concentrate and felt oddly... depressed.
All she saw were blue eyes. Sad, dangerous, tortured, violent, capable, lonely eyes. And a shiver ran down her spine involuntarily. He wasn't a man to be trifled with. And yet somehow, she couldn't help but wonder what else there was to his hardened exterior. Was he the cold blooded mercenary almost everyone described? Or were there shades of grey?
"Why are you even thinking about this? He's dangerous. He's kind of crazy. Focus on the crazy, the numerous amounts of question marks, the whores! His prison record..." For the second time that morning, the tiny apartment's walls bore testimony to an occupant whispering, "Pack it away, Morena."