Chapter Sixteen
“Brie. What’s—”
Brie stormed past Lori and into her friend’s apartment without a hint of guilt. Her controlled calm had spun between empty acceptance and outright rejection on the bus ride across town. She turned on her now, frustration overriding heartbreak.
“Did you know?” She pointed her finger at Lori in accusation that she hoped wasn’t just.
Lori shut her door, a confused frown in place when she faced Brie. “Did I know what?”
“About Burns?”
“Burns?” Her brows winged up to declare how lost she was. Did she really not know? Or was she playing Brie for the naïve fool she wasn’t?
“Burns,” she stated again, like that would clear up everything. She tried one more time when the blank stare remained. “Ryan Burns.”
Her eyes went wide then, her lips forming an O. She moved into the room, ushering Brie with her as she did. “Have a seat.”
Brie spun out of her hold. “I don’t want to sit.” With the amount of compressed energy buzzing within her, she didn’t know if it was even possible for her to sit. She strode to the window, turned back to glare at her so-called friend. “And don’t placate me.”
Lori raised her palms in a show of defeat. “I wasn’t trying to. Honest.” She waited a beat in which Brie didn’t respond.
She didn’t know what to think anymore, let alone what to believe.
Her friend eased a bar stool out from under the small breakfast counter and sat, her gaze only shifting from Brie in brief increments as she did.
The combination kitchen, eating area and family room was short on space in typical San Francisco fashion. The one bedroom offered little in the way of luxuries, but Lori had the proud distinction of claiming sole occupation of the unit. Her status in the legal community was higher than Brie’s, whose salary, although nice, trapped her into roommate status if she wanted to stay in the city.
Brie braced her back against the wall, her purse and bag sliding to the floor as she locked into the stare-down her friend had engaged. She wasn’t backing down. Not on this.
Not on Ryan Burns.
“How’d you find out?” Lori finally asked.
“So you did know!” She thrust away from the wall, the betrayal slamming into her heart. “Why didn’t you tell me? No.” She looked away, jaw aching with the emotions sealed behind her will. “Forget that.” She refocused on her friend, her pain leaking out. “Why did you let it happen in the first place?”
“I didn’t let it happen,” Lori defended herself. “It just happened. That’s the way the group works.”
It just happened.
The stunning connection that’d melted her insides and woven false dreams into her heart. Ones of her own doing with no encouragement from anyone.
Yeah, that just happened.
She dropped into the cushioned armchair as the huge mountain of hurt swooped in to replace the fight that’d brought her there. Resignation sucked away the energy that’d kept her moving since Burns had ripped her world apart with one simple word. Brie.
“I trusted you.”
Lori had taken Brie under her wing way back when she’d been a TA, and Brie had been drowning in legal case studies her junior year in college. Their friendship had only grown stronger in the ten years since.
“Okay.” Lori accepted the cutting remark without so much as a flinch. “But I don’t see what I did wrong.” The comfy lounge pants and baggy cotton top didn’t diminish the authority Lori tended to wield without thought. Even with the messy topknot, her regal confidence reigned.
Brie barked out a harsh laugh. “Right.” She rubbed her brow in an attempt to ease the throbbing behind it. “The blame is all mine. Got it.” After all, she’d been the one who’d stepped into those rooms of her own free will.
And no matter how many times she repeated that truth, she couldn’t reconcile this outcome with her own actions. This was what she got for daring to be a little naughty. For breaking out of the mold her mother had stuffed her into before she could walk.
She ended up in a compromising position with the exact type of man her mother would love for her to snag. And he was her boss. Her. Boss. How humiliating was that? God, what he must think of her now... “How did I not know?” she reprimanded herself. “His voice. How’d I not recognize it?” But she had, right? At least her subconscious had.
“You weren’t expecting to know anyone.”
“But still—”
“How often do you work with him?” Lori cut in.
Brie tensed, recognizing her friend’s debate intro. “Not very.”
“You were in a foreign environment way outside your comfort zone. You weren’t expecting to know anyone. In fact, you didn’t want to know anyone.” Lori’s shrug was the final note on her simple argument.
She hadn’t, Lori was right on that point. No one was supposed to know the intimate details of what she’d done there. No one she knew, at least.
But Ryan did. He’d had a front-row seat to every embarrassing moan and plea for more.
“But I still should’ve,” she insisted. Shouldn’t she have been aware enough, smart enough to place his voice to someone she worked with? If not before, then after? Unless she’d willfully chosen to not identify him? Which, apparently, she had.
“So it is my fault,” she concluded, sinking deeper into the chair.
“I don’t see why you’re intent on placing blame on anyone.” Lori moved from the bar stool to enter the kitchen. Her turned back allowed her to miss the childish face Brie made at her. She pulled a bottle of wine from her cupboard along with two wineglasses. “Can you please state what, exactly, is upsetting you so badly?”
Brie could only stare at her as she set the items on the coffee table. Did she really not understand? “He’s. My. Boss.”
Lori lifted a brow in a clearly unspoken “So what?” She twisted the cap off the bottle, grinning. “I truly love screw-caps on wine.”
Really? That’s where her thoughts were?
Brie gaped at her, lost and too exhausted to even attempt to understand her friend’s thinking. She accepted the glass Lori held out to her. The generous portion of red liquid sloshed in the oversized glass as she sat back.
She didn’t wait for a toast before taking a long hit of the liquid. The flavor sat on her tongue like a dry crumb of burnt wood, but she swallowed it down and took another. The magical sense of relief floated through her muscles to loosen every tightly clenched one that lined her neck and dug into the base of her skull.
The wine might suck, but the effects were wonderful, even if they were only a temporary illusion.
“He’s your boss,” Lori stated with a shrug. “Nothing that happened in the Boardroom will impact your job.”
“Easy for you to say.” She wasn’t the one who had to face him in the office every day.
Lori curled her legs up to tuck her feet beneath her as she settled into the corner of the couch. She eyed Brie with the same look she’d wielded back in college. The one that said think before you jump off the cliff of insanity. That plea only worked once, and it was best to save it for emergencies.
“What?” Brie snapped before giving in. “Okay. Fine. Just lay it out for me. What am I missing or misconstruing?”
Lori tossed her head back, a hardy laugh flowing out to tug a reluctant smile from Brie. Lori raised her glass in silent salute before taking a drink. The college déjà vu continued to soothe her. Those years spent living at home but stretching her freedom at school had provided the basis for her eventual flight from her mother’s tentacles. Granted, they still stretched across the bay, but they were easier to evade now.
“Sex can exist without ties,” Lori said. “Separating the expected emotional bullshit from the physical act is just one of the benefits of the Boardroom.”
The boardroom. The NDA flashed in her mind, the term jumping out to signal its significance. She’d dismissed it before as a loose term for the entity, but got it now. “That’s cute.”
“What?”
“The name. The Boardroom.” She waited for Lori to respond but got nothing. “It’s a play on words, right? Because the sex takes place in the boardroom.” The wine was apparently going to her head faster than normal because it all seemed funny now. Hysterical actually.
Only she wasn’t laughing.
Lori wasn’t laughing either.
“The name of the group is irrelevant.” Lori swirled the liquid in her glass in an act of casualness Brie wasn’t buying. “You’re upset because you now know the identity of a man you performed sexual acts with. But it’s only a big deal to you.”
She’d only performed “sexual acts” with her boss. Great. That made it feel better—not.
“Have you?” she asked, both wanting to know and hating the thought of it. “Performed sexual acts with my boss?”
Lori gave away nothing as she eyed her. That blank mask was essentially a prerequisite for anyone involved in law, but it irritated her to no end now. Didn’t anyone show their emotions anymore? When had everyone lost their heart?
Thank God her dad had swung the pendulum of icy superiority wielded by her mother to show her how love was supposed to work. The man had dedicated his life to providing for them, his gentle kindness often overshadowed beneath the louder demands of her mother’s. But he’d never shied from showing his love in each hug, kind word and gentle encouragement that’d bolstered her courage and assisted in landing her the job at Cummings, Lang and Burns.
Burns.
She was so screwed.
“One.” Lori raised a finger. “I can’t disclose that. And two,” she lifted a second finger, “you know that. You read and signed the NDA and I know you’re not a dumb cookie.”
“So what?” she challenged. “Are you going to turn me in for violating the terms? After all, I just told you who I performed sexual acts with.” The heavy dose of sarcasm hung on those two words to show her disdain for them and everything they represented. But wait. Her frown deepened as she slotted another piece into the picture. “How did you know about Burns before I told you?”
“There’s an app for that.” Lori shot her a cheeky smile before taking a drink of her wine.
An app. Of course there was. There was an app for everything. Why wouldn’t there be an app for arranging group sex in public boardrooms?
Brie slumped further into the chair, utter defeat sucking the last dregs of resistance from her bones. She was in over her head and it was apparent her only friend in the area wasn’t tossing out a life preserver.
She closed her eyes and found a small dose of solace in the darkness. Could she simply stay there? With her head in the sand and heart numbed to the vicious swirl of hurt, disappointment and rebuke compressing it tight?
“This is personal because you’re making it so.”
Lori’s voice floated into her quiet to shatter her small moment of attempted peace. “So fucking my boss isn’t personal?” Because it sure as hell felt like it to her. Every fiber of her was screaming with how personal it’d been. His gentle caresses ghosting over her skin. The throaty rumble of her name as he’d filled her. The tender possession that’d kept her safe.
Yeah. Those classified as personal—to her.
“Would you feel this way if you didn’t work with him?”
“Yes.”
The truth was out before she’d thought about it. Every moment in those rooms had been personal—with him. Just him. And that was the real issue. If it’d been just sex, then maybe she wouldn’t care so much. But she’d made the encounters into way more than they’d been, and that just added another layer to her embarrassment.
“Then I suggest you figure out how to deal with that.”
“No shit.”
“Without sacrificing your job.”
Brie raised her hand and flipped her friend off, her eyes still closed. Lori’s soft chuckle quirked her own lips up. The action had been received exactly as she’d intended—with unspoken sarcasm. And Lori was probably her only friend who would’ve taken it that way.
This was exactly why she was here. To hear the brutal truth when she’d rather hear how wronged she’d been. The latter would justify the anger and hurt burning a hole in her stomach. The former would show her reality and make her face it.
“Can I really continue to work with him?” The silence stretched until Brie was forced to open her eyes. She studied Lori below half-opened lids, not entirely prepared to face her or the truth.
Her friend leveled that interrogation glare and laid into her. “Did he threaten you in any way?”
Her reluctant “no” came out after a long moment of internal debate between telling the truth and justifying her own reaction.
“Did he make an unwanted advance?”
Another “no” was pulled out against her will.
“Did he imply that—”
“No!” she cut her off, too deflated to continue the detailed breakdown of exactly how irrational she was being. “No. Okay? No. He didn’t do any of those things.”
A smile that could only be descried as smug landed on Lori’s face as she patted herself on the back. Brie didn’t even have the energy to flip her off again.
“So what did he do?” Lori asked.
Brie is safe with me.
She squeezed her eyes closed against the shot of pain that laced her heart. The sense of protection had wrapped around her and shredded her at once. She’d understood exactly what he’d meant. He hadn’t been talking about just her secrets or her physical actions in those rooms, but who she’d become.
Who she’d let herself be.
That Brie was one only he knew. Not even the other men in the room could understand what his touch had done to her. Did he have a clue to the havoc he’d set free?
Brie is safe with me.
Was she though? Truly?
“Tell me something,” Lori said, breaking into Brie’s thoughts. She opened her eyes and lifted the corner of her mouth in assent. Lori cocked her head, brows lowering a tad. “Would you or did you do any of those things to him?”
Brie jerked up, scowl set. “No.” Her indignation raised the hair on her arms and sparked the fire that’d burned out after her first sip of wine. “I would never do those things—to anyone.”
Lori’s slow nod was one of quiet victory. “Then don’t expect less from him.”
Brie sputtered, rebuttals dying in quick succession until only one was left. “But that’s our job. We’re trained to expect and prepare for the worst.”
“While ensuring the best possible outcome,” Lori finished. “And in most cases, the worst never happens.”
“We don’t win every case.”
“True. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to lose them all. Or that we should stop trying.”
Brie squinted at her, lost in the sea of innuendo and veiled analogies. “What are we talking about again?” Her brain was fuzzy from the wine and the overload of thoughts that’d been flying in and out of it. Processing any of the hidden meanings in Lori’s words was impossible.
Lori’s laugh filled the room with much-needed lightness. “We’re talking about how you’re going to go to work tomorrow and act as if nothing happened.” Brie’s eyes widened, and Lori nodded, her expression firm. “You are. Your little hitch of unnecessary conscience will not be the cause of you quitting a job you love.”
“Who said I was going to quit?” But the thought had crossed her mind multiple times since she’d fled the building. There were plenty of other law offices where she could work. And none that she’d be able to walk into and have the power and position she did at C, L and B. She was well aware of her elevated status on the paralegal totem pole within their office.
“Excellent.” Lori sat forward and motioned to Brie as she lifted the wine bottle. “At least we have that down.” She refilled Brie’s glass and sat back. Her own was still half-full. “Now what else is there to cover?”
Brie blinked, her mind empty for the first time in hours. Was there more? Yes, but nothing she was willing to share with her friend. Not when Lori clearly had no ties to anything or anyone she interacted with in the Boardroom.
There was a clear line of delineation between the two of them. Brie apparently couldn’t be that detached even when she’d tried to be.
“Nothing,” she deflected. The weight settled over her to press her further into the cushions. “I’m fine.”
Lori’s sharp bark of laughter said how much she believed the bullshit Brie had just fed her.
“Really.” Brie forced a smile and willed her words to be true. “I am. I’ll go to work. Do my job and pretend I’m not daydreaming about every ‘sexual act’ he did to me.”
“Oh, you’re free to daydream,” Lori said with a wicked grin. “Daydream all you want. Just don’t act on any of them—until you’re in the Boardroom. Then it’s game on.” Her glorious cackle set off a wave of dread within Brie.
There was no way she’d ever return to the Boardroom. Not when she had to face her fantasy every damn day for the foreseeable future. There, that was another decision made. She wasn’t backing out of the Palmaro case either.
They were both adults. If he could pretend those two wild, erotic, wonderful encounters never happened between them, then so could she.
Damn her lusty Libido Bitch and every obnoxious thought she’d generated. She’d never thought with her pussy, and she wasn’t about to start now.
Even if the vision of being spread across that conference room table and fucked senseless by him eventually drove her insane.