EMILY
I sit at my desk and close my eyes, willing myself to get a grip. Shane was right. Derek is not going to lead the Geminis to me or Shane. Even Seth and his people couldn’t find out who I really was until I told them. Inhaling, I open my drawer and grab the phone I’d used to talk to my brother, and go to throw it in the trash, and then kick myself for even considering such a thing in an office where everyone is in everyone’s business. Instead, I stick it and its battery in my purse. For reasons I can’t explain, Derek really got to me. I press my fingers to my temples.
Why is he getting to me?
Unbidden, my brother’s words come to my mind: What the hell are you doing here? And then, Derek’s words: Righteous like my brother.
It’s then that my mind goes back to the night of my stepfather’s death.
I gape at my brother in disbelief, a streak of blood down his cheek, trying not to look down at my stepfather.
“What the hell am I doing here? Why are you not calling an ambulance?”
“He’s dead. I checked his pulse.”
I start to shake. “Call the police.”
“I killed him. If I call the police—”
“Call the fucking police!” I reach for my purse and suddenly, Rick’s hand is on mine and I can feel the wet stickiness on my skin.
“We are not calling the police or we will end up dead.”
“We? We didn’t do this.”
“He stole money. We fought. I was protecting myself.”
“Tell the police that.”
“If we go to the police, we become a liability to the Geminis. We die.”
I am trembling inside and out. “The Geminis that I’ve been trying to get you to get out of for years?”
“Don’t turn on the righteous bitch routine, Reagan. I’m the only person who’s going to keep you alive.”
My cell phone buzzes, snapping me back to the present. I grab it and pull up a text from Shane: Meet me at the Bentley. You go first.
Because we’re trying, and failing, to keep our relationship a secret, which fits about everything else in my life. It bothers me, but I’m self-analytical enough to know my reaction is not about Shane. It’s just me trying to get to that acceptance stage about the loss of my brother, and a girl named Reagan. I type a return text message: Wait 5 to leave. I need to give the receptionist my number to reach me if necessary.
His reply is instant: See you soon.
Considering my mood, I have no idea why, but that reply makes me smile, and the tension in my spine noticeably lessens. Standing, I survey my desk for anything that needs to be attended to, and walk to Brandon Senior’s office to flip out the light. Then with my coat over my arm, I start for the front office, some of that tension returning with the prospect of running into Derek. Steeling myself for the possibility, I enter the lobby to find the receptionist juggling several calls.
Grabbing a piece of paper and writing down my number, I wait until she pauses between calls, almost ready to leave, when she finally looks up.
“This is my number. If anyone needs me or Mr. Brandon, call me. Do not call him. He’s in a very important meeting.”
She takes the piece of paper. “Got it. Call you.” She points to her mouth. “No gum.”
I laugh at her easygoing reference to my reprimand. “Very good choice.”
She grins and then immediately answers another line and I waste no time darting for the door, and as far away from another encounter with Derek as possible. I start to dash for the door, and then force myself to go slow and easy. I am not going to cower before that man. What will that solve? In fact, if anything, he will be a wolf that smells blood. I am not prey. I am not a coward. I hold my head up high and I step on the elevator with my calm restored. I might not be Reagan anymore, but I am still me, and I am a survivor.
I exit into the parking garage and dig out the Bentley’s key, unlocking the doors, and round the trunk to open the passenger’s side door, where I set my purse and coat in the backseat, but I don’t get in. Control is something I value and own too little of right now. I won’t cower from anyone again, but I do think it’s time I take every step I can to see what’s coming my way, rather than hiding and hoping nothing finds me.
I’ve just reached the tail end of the car when the elevator doors open, revealing Shane as they part. He steps forward, his coat missing, his briefcase slung over his shoulder, his stride long and confident, and I am spellbound.
He is power. He is confidence. He is sex. He is everything that my history tells me is wrong for me, and yet, never before has anyone been those things and still managed to be comfort, pride, and friendship.
Suddenly, he is in front of me, and I haven’t looked away, or even tried to hide how I’ve tracked his every step. “What are you thinking?” he asks, a lean away from touching me, but he does not.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” I confess.
“Anywhere you like,” he says, “and only when you’re ready.”
It is exactly what I need and want him to say, though I didn’t know it until now.
He motions to the car. “But preferably anywhere but here.”
“I like that idea.”
He walks me to the passenger door and opens it for me, and I’m about to get in when a memory flashes in my mind of the first time we’d met and he’d done the same. The urge to turn and face him hits me, but so do words I don’t want to say with a potential audience. Instead, I sink into the soft tan leather seats and Shane seals me inside, and like that night, my gaze lands on the Bentley emblem; the spread wings with the “B” in the center. I reach out and touch it, years of goal-setting and studies replaying in my mind. My dream car, and I drove it today, on my own.
“Why do you love this car so much?”
I glance up in surprise to find Shane has joined me and I never heard the door open or shut. “My stepfather, of all people, made us keep dream boards. He even took us shopping to see fancy houses and cars. In hindsight, he was just luring us into the Geminis’ web.”
“But it didn’t work on you.”
“No,” I say, letting my fingers fall from the emblem. “My father was a law professor. I think I told you that, I’m not sure. Actually, I didn’t. I just wanted to tell you.” I don’t give him time to reply. “He made me love the law.”
“We have that in common.”
“And somehow neither one of us are practicing.” I shift in the seat to face him. “Do you miss it?”
“I did.”
My brows knit. “Did?”
“I had to let it go to really be here and do this right.”
Let it go. Those words speak to me, stirring memories of how I finally coped with my father’s suicide and the loss of my mother. Now, it’s the loss of a dream. “Do you remember the first night I rode in this car?”
“The night we met,” he supplies.
“Yes. Do you remember what I asked you?”
His gray eyes darken, memory in their depths. “You told me I was driving your dream car after attending your dream school, therefore you weren’t sure if I was your kiss good-bye to your dreams or your promise they aren’t over.”
“And you told me not to let the universe decide what those things meant. Not to let it have that power. But the universe didn’t take my dream. My brother did, and we both know that means I can never go back to law school without the fear the Geminis will find me and consider me a risk.”
“Emily—”
“Please don’t try to make me feel better. You just said yourself that you had to accept the change you faced to really move forward. That’s about claiming control, and I admire that in you. I want to admire that in me too.”
“Acceptance is a bumpy journey.”
“Maybe,” I say, “but thanks to you I have a chance to ensure the Geminis never find me. I’m not going to screw that up by foolishly heading back to law school, even five years from now; I can’t risk the Geminis finding me and considering me a liability they want to eliminate.”
“I want to tell you that risk doesn’t exist,” he says. “But it does.”
“Thank you for not giving me the candy-and-chocolate answer. I still want my Bentley, though. Not yours that I drive here and there. One I earn on my own and deserve.”
“I know you well enough to know that if that’s what you want, you’ll get it.” He leans closer, his arm on the console between us. “Do you remember what else I told you that night?”
“I remember everything from that night. Which part do you mean?”
“The part where I told you I wanted to fuck you so right and well you’d never forget me.”
Heat rushes through me. “You did.”
His eyes darken, then light with amber and blue. “I’m going to do it again.”
“Promise?”
He laughs, low and deep, then settles back in his seat and turns on the engine. “I promise, and I never break a promise.” And those words are the biggest seduction of all. A promise that is a promise. Someone I can really trust.
* * *
We pull out of the garage with a debate over pizza or Chinese, settling on Chinese, and Shane hands me his phone with the number for his favorite place in his directory.
“You must really love it,” I say to him.
“I do and so will you.” He winks. “I promise.”
I laugh, hitting the auto-dial, and oh how that wink from Shane manages to have my belly doing a flip-flop. He turns us on the road and I place our order, finishing up as we reach the door of the Four Seasons. Tai, my favorite doorman, greets us, eager to brag about his daughter’s restaurant making the food section of the newspaper.
“Emily has moved in with me,” Shane announces, wrapping his arm around me. “So take good care of her.”
Tai beams with this news. “Always. And just let me know when, I’d love to bring you dinner from my daughter’s restaurant to celebrate this weekend.”
Celebrate living with Shane. Who would have ever believed that my leaving Texas, and saying yes to a one-night stand with Shane, would lead here. “That would be amazing,” I say with approval, and Shane is quick to agree. It’s a good twenty minutes later when Shane and I step onto the elevator and he settles me in front of him, those wonderful hands of his resting on my hips, while his eyes promise me they will be many other places, soon. I’m pretty much melting by the time we exit and enter the apartment, Shane at my heels.
Before I can even turn, his hands are at my waist and he’s turning me, backing me against the wall in that dominant way of his, his powerful thighs framing mine. “I want that taste of you I didn’t get in that coffee shop.” And then he is on his knees, and my skirt is already at my waist. “Shane. The food.”
“I’ll make it fast, I promise.” He closes his hand around my panties and yanks. “Good thing you have on thigh-highs.”
“I was cold, actually,” I pant out for some silly reason.
His hands bracket my upper thighs. “I’ll warm you up.” He lifts my leg to his shoulder, and his thumb strokes my clit.
I pant again, my nipples tightening as if they were where he’s touching. He strokes two fingers across the seam of my sex, and there is no time for me to prepare myself before his tongue flicks my clit. I rest my head on the wall, hands pressed there as well, every muscle in my body waiting for what comes next, until it’s there. He’s there and his mouth is on me, sucking, licking, teasing. His fingers slide inside me and I moan, biting my lip in the process, shocked at how fast that familiar deep ache in my sex begins.
“Oh,” I rasp out. “Oh.” I grab his head, steeping my fingers into the long, thick locks of his dark hair that give me plenty to hold on to. My nipples tighten painfully beneath my bra, that deep ache radiates through me until I can’t move or breathe, seconds ticking by before I tumble into an explosion of desire. There is nothing but pleasure spiraling through me, and his mouth on my body, his fingers stroking all the right places. Time passes, yet stands still. I don’t know, but I don’t want it to end, but too soon the intensity fades, and that tight knot in my sex relaxes, the leg that is holding me up turning rubbery.
Shane seems to know; he always seems to understand what I need, even though the two men I knew before him were selfish, focused on themselves. It’s a thought that comes from nowhere, but he drives home that point by wrapping his arm around my waist before easing my leg down. Then he is shoving up my blouse, his lips are on my belly, a rush of emotions crashing over me. I didn’t want to care about anyone the way I do him, ever again.
The doorbell rings and Shane slides my skirt down my legs, calling out, “Just a minute,” before pushing to his feet, cupping my face and kissing me, the taste of me on his lips. “Just in time.” He smiles and strokes my cheek before reaching for the door, and my gaze lands on my panties smack in the middle of the floor, and in full view of the hotel staff person bringing our food.
I scramble forward, my knees wobbling, as I bend down to scoop up my panties at the same moment Shane opens the door. The result is not good. I fall flat on my ass but fortunately Shane’s big body is blocking me from view, and my panties would never have been seen. Shane shuts the door and turns to find me sprawled on the floor. He sets the bag down by the door and kneels beside me.
“What happened?”
I hold up my panties. “They were in front of the door and my knees were still recovering from ah … what you did to me.”
He laughs, and snatches my panties, stuffing them in his pocket, and helping me to my feet. “Let’s eat dinner and I’ll have you for dessert.”
“Promise?” I ask again.
“Oh yes,” he assures me. “I promise.”
* * *
Shane sheds his tie and jacket, while I lose my shoes as fast as I had my panties, and we set up our dinner on the coffee table. I choose a spot on the soft rug beneath it while Shane appears with not one, not two, but three bottles of wine, before claiming a spot for himself on the couch.
“I’m never going to make it past one bottle, let alone three,” I warn him.
“This gives you a chance to pick one you like.” He opens one of the bottles and fills my glass.
“I’m not going to waste wine,” I say, lifting my glass. “This one will be fine.” I take a sip and the woodsy, bitter taste takes me off guard and I grimace.
Shane laughs, downs my wine, and then opens another bottle. It’s bottle number three that my taste buds finally enjoy, along with the meal, which we eat while watching the news and just enjoying our time together. And for once, we talk about politics and current events, finding we are in sync in all the ways that ensure we won’t later want to kill each other. It’s this normal kind of couple’s thing that is not forced, but amazingly natural.
Once the food is gone, and we’ve cleaned up, Shane turns off the television and sits on the edge of the couch right in front of me, those gray eyes studying me. “What?” I ask.
“I don’t remember the last time I just talked with anyone,” he says, and it’s clear in the way he says it that he’s a little taken off guard.
“Well, since I live with you,” I say, “I think you’d better get used to a lot more talking.”
“The unexplainable thing is that I’m already used to it.”
“You are?” I ask, sipping my wine.
“Yes. I am. I told you. I’ve never lived with a woman, because frankly, I didn’t want a relationship.”
“Me either,” I confess. “I haven’t lived with anyone.”
“Did you ever come close?”
“No,” I say. “My relationships have been—” I laugh again but this time without humor and amend, “My train wrecks are kind of embarrassing.”
“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Experiences make us who we are, and sometimes the bad ones are the best at making us grow.”
“Experiences,” I repeat. “Yes well, I’ve certainly had those.”
“Tell me,” he presses softly, those two words becoming his familiar way to push me to expose some part of me I never thought to show anyone, and yet, I’m about to now.
“Train wreck number one,” I say. “That affair I mentioned with a professor before, was actually a much older law professor. Not my law professor because I wasn’t in law school. I was a freshman and still living at home to protect my brother.”
“How much older?”
“Twenty years and one of my father’s friends. Obviously he was some kind of screwed-up daddy issue I was working through. Feel free to judge now.”
“I’m not judging you, sweetheart.”
“I do and the worst part … When my mother died—”
“How did she die?”
“A car accident, so it was a real shock. We’d fought over my stepfather the night before as well. It was misery, guilt, and pain.” I am reminded of his father’s coughing attack. “Things I promise you are coming with your father, despite how you feel about him. Are you ready for that?”
“No. I am not ready for that and right now, I’d rather talk about you. You were telling me what happened when your mother died, in relation to this professor.”
“Right,” I say, because he knows I’m here for him, and he has to deal with this his way. “I went to the funeral with my brother, and that led to us fighting over him and his Gemini connections. I was a mess afterwards. I showed up at the professor’s house, and that’s when I found out he was still married. I lost it and made a scene and so did she.” I shake my head. “Why would I make a scene over a man that was clearly an asshole? That is not even the person I know myself to be.”
“You were in pain and it sounds like I was right. That moment helped define who you are.”
“You’d think, but I wasn’t done self-destructing. I barely dated for the rest of my undergraduate years and then I started law school. It was some kind of trigger, and I went off the ledge, like a really late rebound with the complete opposite type of man. A tattoo artist who was into hard rock, hard sex, and not a lot of anything else. I guess the appeal with him was that I knew what I was getting and I didn’t want more. There could be no heartache to come because there was no emotional attachment for either of us.”
“How long ago was that?”
“We dated for six months and it ended about a year ago.”
“And since then?”
“School took over and I lost myself in my studies.”
“Which explains your LSAT score Seth mentioned.”
“I’m very competitive,” I say, “which fed an obsession with winning every challenge presented and snagged me an internship at a top firm.”
“Which firm?”
“Norton, Mash, and Company.”
He whistles. “That is not a spot that’s easy to come by, but I can see why they chose you. And speaking of challenges: Let’s talk about my proposition.” He reaches under the table and produces a stack of files I didn’t know were there and sets them on the coffee table before reclaiming a spot on the couch.
“What is all of that?” I ask.
“Potential acquisitions,” he explains. “I want a clean slate for Brandon Enterprises, free of the often questionable ethics of my father. The acquisition of Brandon Pharmaceuticals was meant to produce large sums of money, thus allowing the painless shedding of those other divisions.”
“Has it?”
“It’s getting there, but it’s come with high risk and liability. We need to balance that out with a lower-risk, high-profit addition to our brand. That’s where you come into play.”
“Me?”
“You,” he confirms. “I don’t have time to look for that next venture. You’re smart and I trust you. I’d like you to help me narrow down the prospects to two or three, and then we’ll run numbers and do the due diligence.” He pats the folders. “These are the companies I looked into with my notes, but we’re not limited to these choices. They’re simply where I’ve begun looking.”
“I’d love to help,” I say, both thrilled and honored he wants me to do this.
“I have a private CPA to help with the back end. If there’s something you have a question about, and need answered, he’ll help.” He flips open a folder and indicates a card stapled in the front. “This is him and I’ll make sure he is accommodating.”
“Are you going to get rid of the financial division your father runs?”
“Everything that exists now will be replaced, but that knowledge is to stay with a small group of insiders, which includes Seth, Jessica, and the CPA.”
“Because people are going to be upset.”
“Yes. They will.”
My mind flickers to our morning and his abrupt handing off of the Bentley. “Did that black Escalade that showed up in the garage have anything to do with your plans to exit any of these divisions?”
“It was about exiting a bad business deal Derek got us into.”
“Since I’m looking for replacement investments, can you tell me what it was and why it was bad, so I don’t make the same mistake?”
“You are not Derek,” he says. “You would not have made this deal.”
“What was it?”
His hands come down on my legs. “Nothing you need to worry about.”
“But I’m curious. I want to do a good job.”
“You will do a good job.”
“You don’t want to tell me,” I say, confused by his mixed messages. “Is it a trust issue?”
“I trust you. You know I do.”
“But obviously there are boundaries to what you feel comfortable sharing.”
“Don’t do this. Don’t put a wall between us that doesn’t exist.”
“I’m not trying to put a wall between us. I just want to know that there will be a point when we’re closer—”
“You are closer to me than anyone has ever been. I repeat. This isn’t about trust. I can’t say that enough times.”
“Then what is it about?”
“You are too good to be a part of Derek’s creations. That’s what it’s about. You’re the future, not the past. You’re the good that I need while I get rid of the bad.”
“You’re protecting me.”
“You’re damn right I’m protecting you.”
“Like I was protecting you, but I ended up telling you everything. You insisted.”
“And now I can keep you safe from everything.”
“Who keeps you safe?”
“I don’t need to be protected.”
“But you decide when I do?”
“In this? Yes.”
I have a flashback of my mother questioning my stepfather and him saying something similar. Only she accepted the answer. I won’t. “I don’t like secrets. My life has had too many secrets.”
“This isn’t a secret. You know this is about Derek’s bad business.”
The doorbell rings. “That’s going to be Seth. He’s bringing you the details on all the holes he plugged in your background. We’ll finish talking when he leaves. We’ll figure this out.” He stands up and walks away. I sink back onto the floor, pick up my wine, and instead of drinking, watch the red liquid swirl in my glass. Secrets. Lies. Trust. Love. Hate. Family. Sex. I guess I’d rather have silence than lies. Wouldn’t I? I down my wine and reach for the bottle, refilling my glass before opening the first file, which ironically appears to be a winery. This intrigues me, but is it low liability? Maybe, if we aren’t the ones doing the retail sales.
Footsteps sound behind me, and I shut the file. Shane reappears, and I twist around as he sits on the couch, placing a file on the table. “This has all the details about your past filled in. You’ll want to study it.”
“Of course.” I narrow my gaze, noting the hardening lines of his expression. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to head to a meeting with Seth and Nick, the person running much of our private security.”
“Is there a problem?”
“We’re working on a solution to last night’s security breach at BP.”
“Oh right. I forgot about that. What happened?”
“We don’t know and that’s unacceptable. I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone.”
“Any word on my security guard Randy?”
“I’m sure I’ll get an update on that at this meeting, but no one has mentioned it to me since Seth started looking into it.” He pushes to his feet and offers me his hand. “I have something to show you upstairs before I leave.”
Curious, I let him help me to my feet and lead me forward. “What is it?” I ask as we start up the stairs.
“A surprise I arranged today.”
Extra curious now, I’m excited to see whatever this might be. We enter the bedroom and he flips on the light, and then guides me to the closet. “Ready?”
“Yes. I’m dying to see whatever it is.”
He opens the door and I walk inside while he flips on this light as well. I gape then, at the rows of women’s shoes and clothes lining the closet. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
“You can take anything you want back and I’ll get you a credit card tomorrow.”
I whirl on him. “No. No, I don’t need a credit card and Shane, this is too much. I don’t need all of this.”
“But I want you to have it. I want to take care of you.” He snags my hips and walks me to him. “Please look at it and enjoy it. I need to go, but tell me how we did when I get home.”
“Shane—”
He kisses me and then says, “You’re beautiful,” and then he’s gone, leaving me standing in the closet. I stare after him, a tight ball of emotions beginning as a pebble in my chest, my body frozen in place as that pebble grows and expands. I squeeze my eyes shut and replay the past. I was fourteen and my stepfather had come home after being gone for several days without a call. He’d greeted my mother by going down on one knee and handing her a blue Tiffany box. Flash forward, to the moment he’d put the necklace on her neck, and then cupped her face and said, “You’re beautiful.”
My eyes snap open and I face the row of clothes, tags from expensive brands dangling from several sleeves. This would be the fantasy for many women, but it is not mine. Shane has secrets. Shane has money and power and I am enthralled. I am in love. Have I become my mother?