Bryn
I spot a group of homeless people on my way to Christos and Co. on Monday. One of the women among the small group and I make eye contact. She’s hauling a cart with recycling cans, her hair is a mess, but her eyes are bright with anticipation when she spots me and asks me for money.
“Sorry, I can’t now. But if this goes well, I’ll invite you to a meal.” I pat my briefcase with all my folders.
“Good luck.” She grins.
I head inside, and I meet Aaric at his office again, this time a bit more prepared. This time, I steer clear of the ladies’ to avoid any distractions.
With a belly full of nerves and clammy hands, I show him my business plan.
Christos reviews it for ten minutes then nods and hands it back.
He levels me a look that makes my heart skip. How the hell did a boy with an interesting face become the guy with the hottest face in the world?
I wait for him to speak.
And wait and wait.
Until…
“Think bigger. The only way to make money is to take on a certain amount of risk. The higher the risk, the higher the reward,” Christos says.
“But it’s your money I’m risking.”
He nods, very slowly, and then equally slowly—nerve-wrackingly—he stands. He walks over, tips my chin. And tells me, trapping my gaze with his, “Don’t worry about the money. I don’t care if I lose it. I have plenty. Think bigger, Bryn.”
A ghost of a smile touches his mouth as he holds my gaze, and I nod dumbly like that waitress, shaking in my shoes because of his smile. It’s gone all too soon, and he drops his hand, back to business, and heads to his desk.
“Expand your concept. I’d be giving you the biggest safety net you could ever have in investing. I’m telling you it’s okay if you lose all my money. I want you to think big.”
“This is big,” I mumble, absently brushing my hand across the lingering tingles on my chin. “This is all I want to do, Aaric.”
I hate that I sound defeated and pleading, but I’m at a loss as to what else to say at this point.
He leans forward, his tone of voice almost intimate. Low. “See, bit, that’s the thing. The world doesn’t care how you personally feel about what you’re doing. You can hate it, and be good at it, and that’s all that matters to them. So in order for us to get you doing what you want to do, you need to give your potential customers what they want. Even, what they don’t know they want…because no one has given it to them yet.”
“But I…will?” I say, reading his train of thought and feeling inspired by it.
His lips curl in quiet male pride.
I gather my things and silently walk away. Hating how hard my heart is pounding—not because of his momentary rejection, but because of HIM.
The way it felt to have his thumb and forefinger on my chin.
The way I wanted the rest of his hand on my face, for everything to miraculously go poof and go away, including the briefcase I’d had on my lap, and for the warmth of his body to be flush against mine. Or rather, mine against his.
Crazy that Aaric only embraced me once when we were kids, but my body cannot seem to forget (and admittedly and uncomfortably, long for a repeat). Even when he was skinnier, he was warm and comforting.
Yet also a little bit too exciting.
“What the fuck, he said it’s okay to lose his money? He never does that. He’s always threatening and he never makes investments he knows he will lose—he always knows he’ll win back something,” Jensen says, confused.
I shrug and tug Natchez toward the park, feeling a bit discouraged after days of thinking and being unable to amp up my proposal.
Why would Christos risk his neck for me? My business plan is a piece of shit. My whole damn life is shit. I’ve had three meetings with Christos and still nothing.
Here I am in New York, a city I’d still get lost in if I wandered out far enough, with a project I’ve had years to plan and is still no closer to maturing, and lusting after another woman’s man, unable to make my project even remotely interesting to him.
“Why can’t I be like you, Natchez?” I ask the Husky, stroking the flat of his back as he turns his head and licks my bare calf. “Oh, you think it’s all solved with a lick. That’s not real life, buddo. At least that’s not real life for humans. Hmm? But give me another one?” I let him sniff my hand, and he licks my fingers, and I giggle happily.
That evening, I sit with my computer, my drawings, my plan. And ask myself repeatedly the same questions he’s asked me.
What will differentiate my business from them?
What can I offer the market that is fresh and different?
God. I look at all of his success and I can’t even get on my feet on my own.
But I’m doing this.
I spend all weekend cooped up, trying to make sense of this dream of mine. I think of my parents—what I learned from them.
I remember opening Kelly’s. I remember how I used to be asked questions all the time from customers. Does this shirt match this skirt?
“You’re a visual person. You see things that aren’t there,” my mother would tell me. Aunt Cecile would gush about the simple but pretty outfits I always wore. Could I incorporate it into the business?
By next Monday, I decide not to call Christos and Co. but head over there instead.
Once again, the homeless woman asks me for money.
“Soon. Wish me luck,” I promise, giving her an apple I brought for her instead.
“Good luck,” she says distractedly, gazing down at the apple.
I wait patiently outside his office for his appointment to leave—and when Christos appears at the door, I rise to my feet.
Our eyes lock—and hold.
“I want to meet up with you,” I say.
He raises one eyebrow at me, then two. Shooting a chiding glance at his assistant, she starts to apologize, “She refused to—”
He quiets her by making a “five minute” sign, and then he nods me into his office. “You know you’re the first person who just walks in here expecting to be seen because she feels like it?”
“Well, it’s important.” I walk forward and take a seat across from his desk as he takes his.
“First of all, I need to ask: why are you helping me?”
He shoots me a look. “I’m not helping you yet.”
“I think you are. You’re being more than generous with your time and patience,” I say.
There’s a moment of quiet as we stare at each other. Christos then leans back, scraping his thumb along his lower lip as he looks at me. “You’re responsible, you’re honest, you take criticism well, you don’t retreat in your shell and cry about it. You go and fix what needs to be fixed, you have vision, and that’s what makes a great entrepreneur.”
God, I think my heart just skipped a thousand times, one for each word. “Do you mean that?” I ask.
“Do you have to ask that?”
The look he sends me clearly states he’s a man who means what he says…
I exhale and shoot him a look of gratitude.
“Okay. So I’ve got a great idea,” I tell him as I pull out my presentation. “I’ve even hashed out a business plan. Aside from our head department store in New York, and a kickass website—both carrying exclusive items that I will design along with the top-selling women’s fashion brands—House of Sass will be a personalized, trendy, fashion-stylist software. I have here some studies that prove that women dressed the part make better decisions and act more confidently and get more done when they’re confident about their looks. I want to offer them an app that will act as their personal stylist, with a push of a button. May I?”
I motion to approach, and Christos—hot in slacks and a white shirt—is watching me with a sparkle in his eye as he nods.
I take my phone and show him the small test application that I tried out with a developer this week.
“It’s not done yet, but you have the best tech people around,” I explain, blushing when I realize this must look so rustic to him. “This is homemade. I’m hoping with your loan…” I turn to meet his gaze, and look away when I realize he’s very, very close, “the software can be fully developed. Its database can include location and weather…top-selling products from around a certain mile range nearby…suggestions on what’s in style if you choose to amp up your spring, fall, winter, and summer wardrobes with a few must-have pieces. If the trends are thick belts, chunky bead necklaces, whatever’s up.
“It’s like a personal shopper and closet organizer in one. And it can be accessible to everyone, even people with no budget. All it would require of them is less than a day to input their closet pieces. Picture upload (keywords) and the software does the rest. It’ll save you so much time in the long run.”
I click on a button that reads “Night out.”
And a list of three options appears.
“See, these are actual pieces that I own,” I say, feeling his gaze over my shoulder as he studies it.
“It’s suggesting sweaters and leggings, boots, and wide belts, because that’s a current trend. And it’s supposed to be cool tonight. Now…if we want to make this edgier, we can have users interact with one another. I can give my friend access to my closet to either borrow pieces or vote on my suggested outfits for my occasions.”
“Not a bad idea,” he murmurs. Impressed.
“It’s amazing what the right clothes can do for a woman,” I say, stepping back.
“Did it pick that out for you?” He motions to my black leggings and long sweater.
“No,” I admit. “I sold my wardrobe. To pay a software developer to help me chalk this up. But I kept some key pieces, mostly black or white, which I can mix and match. And my best pair of flats, stilettos, and boots.” I smile. “You realize you don’t need more if they’re well chosen.”
“One problem,” he frowns as he props back against his desk, folding his arms, “is the time it takes to input a closet.”
“I thought of that. But if we had representatives in every state, we could charge a small fee, like ninety-nine dollars, for one of our reps to go to your home and spend an afternoon inventorying your closet.”
For the next half hour, we discuss my expanded ideas on the store, and I tell him why I think it can be special, how targeting trendy women of all ages would be ideal.
He seems vaguely interested, until his assistant rings him up to tell him his next appointment has arrived.
“This meeting is adjourned.”
I quickly gather my things, hating that time flew by so fast. “So it’s a yes? Say it’s a yes, Christos. You want to say it. I know it,” I bluff.
“Work on it.”
His grin is so irresistible, I’m grinning too. “Can I wait for you outside to talk some more?”
“Don’t think so. I’m heading to the gym at 6.” He dials to his assistant. “Show him in.”
I force myself to leave, checking to see how much time I need to kill before it’s 6 p.m.
I spend the next hour walking Brooklyn, thinking of ideas as I wait for it to be six p.m. and corner him on his way to the gym.
My dad used to tell me the best thing he could ever give me was an education. I didn’t waste what I could get. Even when they died in the fire at the Las Vegas hotel and I quit college shortly after, I always tried using what education I did get. I went to live with my aunt Cecile, and kept thinking that I would do something with this education my parents had given me.
My first business, at eight, was a lemonade stand. It flopped. Nobody walked down the cul-de-sac where we lived—I had like one customer, total (my mom.) Even then, I always wanted to do something with my time. Something lasting. I wanted security and I knew, after losing my parents, only I could provide it to myself. I tried my hand at everything. But plants died. Even my goldfish died. Still, it didn’t keep me from wanting to put myself out there, create things, do things.
I promised my aunt Cecile that I’d be sure we were comfortable at all times in our lives. Even old age. I was thinking ahead. Unfortunately, my determination didn’t prepare me for failure times a dozen.
I always picked myself straight up by my bootstraps and kept going, though, certain that the wheel of fortune would keep turning and one day, I’d succeed.
It wasn’t until after the store closed, after Mom and Dad passed, that I realized I’d had a natural talent for dressing the mannequins, and later, for mending and revamping my own clothes.
And it wasn’t until after many bad jobs, and a shit-ton of tears, that I realized I wasn’t only good at it, I enjoyed it. And it wasn’t until my aunt Cecile died that I realized…I was in my mid-twenties, a college dropout (I’d had to drop out to take care of my aunt), and should definitely think about doing something about my situation before I turned thirty.
I’m thirty now—and I have no more minutes to spare.
So, at 6 p.m., waiting for my future business partner and investor outside the Christos and Co. building, I rehearse the rest of what else I’m going to say. My pitch, as they say.
Some tag line, some brilliant marketing idea, something the man will find irresistible.
He exits and immediately spots me outside, not once breaking his stride.
“I didn’t realize I’d have an escort.” He removes his jacket and slings his duffel behind his shoulders.
“You’re amusing yourself with me, but that’s not a problem if you give me twenty more minutes to discuss my project,” I say.
His lips begin tugging at the corners then. “I’ll give you an hour if you keep doing a good job amusing me.”
“Goodness,” I exaggerate. “Are you that hard to keep entertained?”
“Hard to please.”
“And I’m pleasing you?”
“Pretty close to that.”
“Hmm.” I bite down on my lip under my top lip, then I notice he’s staring at me. At my mouth.
I let go and exhale, then I jump into the rest of my presentation.
We walk past the woman who asked me for money on my way in, the one I promised to invite to dinner if all went well.
As I explain to Christos why I think this is the best business, best timing, everything, she approaches.
“Did it go well?” she asks, eyes wide with hope.
“Oh, I’m not sure yet.” I glance at my future business partner. “Say yes so I can take her out to dinner,” I order.
“No,” he says sternly, slipping her a bill. “Go to dinner on your own, she’s busy.”
I hope he means to talk to me when he suddenly makes a right turn and disappears into a gym. Ooops. I have to backtrack when I realize I was heading in the wrong direction.
I hurry into the gym after him. He signs in and gives me a stern sideways look, but then he motions me in with a jerk of his chin and scribbles down his signature again. Silently, I walk behind him as he heads into an area of private saunas.
He walks into the changing room, and I almost walk into the door.
I wait nervously outside, then I see him step out in nothing but a tiny towel and a shit ton of muscles, ignoring me as he heads into a large private sauna. I hesitate for a second, then forge ahead and pry the door open, peering in through the smoke.
I hear his voice from the far end. He seems to be the only one here. “If you plan to be here, go change.”
Nodding even though he might not be able to see me through the mist, I head into the women’s changing room.
I undress quickly, wrap a towel around myself, and head back into his sauna.
I walk inside as the door shuts behind me, sealing us in heat and steam. I’m so nervous that I continuously ensure that I’m firmly wrapped in the white towel.
“You’re quite a little bulldozer, aren’t you, Bryn?”
Christos sits on a bench at the far end. His hips still wrapped in a white towel. His eyes gleaming in the misty shadows.
He sounds amused and, though his words are playful, I can see a spark of respect in his gaze. Smoke fills the cabin as I find a place to sit across from his large, barely clad body.
My eyes fall on a large figure shaped by his towel and, with a kick of my heart, I realize what it is.
His cock imprint.
Breathless in an instant, I glance away because that’s not really my business. His cock is not my business. The fact that it is so noticeable and large?
Not my business.
Not my problem.
“I do my best thinking sweating,” he says, leaning back and planting his arms at his sides and Bryn, really! Stop gaping at his tattoo.
I retrieve my gaze as quickly as possible and gaze at the floor. But it’s such a lovely tattoo. Running up his shoulder, spreading out into a part of his pec.
I pat the sweat on my face with a small towel, already breathing hard but trying not to be too obvious.
“I find that very inconvenient,” I huff, patting my face with the small towel again. The towel around my chest sort of loosens a fraction with the movement—and his eyes fall there.
And stay there.
Right on the edge of my towel, where my cleavage is.
His voice is the opposite of silky, rough and low. “Your towel’s on the edge.”
I’m mesmerized by the change in his voice.
And the heavy, lazy-sexy look in his eyes.
“On the edge of what?”
His lips curve. So devilishly my heart skids. He reaches out to tuck the towel back in, his index finger brushing against the top swell of my breast as he does.
I gulp. Hard.
Aaric withdraws his finger.
The air is hot inside the sauna, but no part of my body feels as hot as the part of skin he just touched.
“Thank you,” I breathe as I nervously retuck the towel.
He grins, crosses his arms behind his head. “You’re welcome.”
I exhale, not even knowing where to put my eyes, trying to ignore his magnetic pull. The way the sweat starts to glisten on his chest, coating his tanned skin and muscles.
The steam keeps coming, and Aaric just looks at me.
He just looks at me.
“I knew you were different, when we were kids,” I don’t know why I admit, but I feel like maybe if I put this out there, the tension I feel when I’m around him will ease. This will put us in friendly mode, and I need friendly mode with him. “You made me feel different. I had to be careful with you. But even with the guys that I dated that seemed more harmless, it was bad news in the end. The good times aren’t even really that good. I didn’t want that to happen with you too.”
He frowns then, leaning forward, his expression unreadable but at the same time, his eyes sharp with interest. “Any particular reason they weren’t worth it?”
“Because the guys don’t get me. It’s like every time I blurt out the wrong thing I want to shove something into my mouth. I feel mortified when I see them get embarrassed. I feel odd and like I just don’t fit. I just don’t fit as the second part of a relationship, I’m just too guarded. Maybe I’m too independent. My friendship with you was more important to me, I realized. At the time.”
More silence.
More nerve-wracking green-gold stare. “Is there a reason you’re telling me this?”
“Yes. I wanted you to know why I never wanted to go there with you. I was scared that you were too valuable to me.”
I fall silent, and Aaric says nothing, and there’s still so much I want to say that I can’t seem to find the way to as he keeps waiting…for me to say more. There’s all this tension in my body—the opposite of what I thought would happen happened. Our naked bodies are sweating underneath two mere towels.
I’m fully aware of every inch of this man, of every inch of my own body and what his nearness does to me.
I want to steal my hands under his.
Climb them up his muscled thighs, and touch him, and make him hard for me as I kiss and caress him. Make him want me like he once did.
Make him try again because this time I won’t even hesitate, I’d go for it—recklessly and without restraint because I never want to go to bed with my what if to dream up a thousand kisses from him that never came because I said no. So one kiss has turned into a thousand, and the way I wanted him has multiplied by those thousand kisses, and none of them are real, but they’re real enough to haunt me, to make me want it, to make me wonder how he would kiss me.
If he’d have been gentle and sweet to me, or rough and a little crude and dirty, or maybe some way I couldn’t have even imagined.
“So did you let me in here to listen to more of my plan, or are you planning to discourage me from wanting to do business with you?”
“I let you in here for reasons I can’t even comprehend.” He shoots me a vexed look, his expression bleak and dire.
I laugh, figuring he’s playing with me. “I can’t lose this chance, Aaric. I really want this. It’s easy for you to string me along when you’ve never lost anything at all.”
“I’ve lost something.”
It’s not just the words, but the tone he uses that makes me sit up straighter. I’m too surprised to do more than drink in the stormy, shadowed look in his eyes. Shit. I hit a sore spot. Way to go, Bryn. Nice way to endear yourself to him.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Fuck. I’m sorry too.” He scrapes a hand down his face, sweat glistening all across his gorgeous body.
“So what was it? That you lost.” Suddenly—belatedly—I remember his mother and I want to slap myself for speaking so abruptly.
“Somebody,” he says.
Your mom, I think. “You loved her.”
“Aside from my mom,” he adds. “Yes, but I never got the chance to love her. She died when she was born.”
Shock makes my eyes flare wide open. Whaaat? “You had a daughter?”
He meets my gaze and I see everything I need to see in his eyes.
“And your wife?”
“Not wife. Friend.”
“What happened?”
“She got depressed, left my life, fell in love later, got married. We talk occasionally.”
“Oh. I’m glad.” I glance away, then back at him. “I’m sorry about that.”
He nods as he looks at me.
I just stare back at him, suddenly understanding more.
My heart is doing weird things in my chest. I want to embrace him. I want to run away from him. I want to open up and talk more about our losses. I want to pretend we’ve never lost a thing.
I swallow.
He leans back, the move sort of implying he doesn’t want to speak more about it.
Patting my face with the towel, my breathing fast as my body keeps on sweating and I keep spewing out feelings as if they’re attached to my sweat.
“See, sometimes I’m feeling lonely like nothing will ever turn out my way. I feel different, like a red ink stain on a page full of gold dots.”
“I know what you mean. I used to feel like I was a tear on a page, not a red ink stain though.”
“Why? Like you tore the page?”
“Yep.”
“Like you’re the tear on a page?”
“Yep.”
“Wow, that’s awful. Are you okay?”
“Obviously I’m not.”
“Yeah. Sigh.” I laugh.
“Go on. You were saying,” he prods.
“Oh nothing, only that all these feelings go away when you’re close.”
Shadows darken his eyes, as if my comment gets to him.
“Why is that.” His stare becomes intense enough to singe me to my bones.
“Because another feeling comes in when you’re close and it’s all I can feel. Like a glass of oil is overflowing with water until the oil overflows and then it’s just the most fresh and hydrating water.”
“I’m the water in your glass.” He starts to smile in bemusement, but his gaze doesn’t lose one single bit of its intensity.
I laugh. “You fill my glass. I suppose you’re the water too.”
He grins even more, like this is the best compliment he’s ever gotten.
He leans forward, his gaze level with mine. We’re both glistening with droplets of steam and sweat, but his stare is the most heavenly thing I’ve ever seen look at me. So serious, so sure. “I had no idea,” he says, the green in his eyes more vivid than ever, “how much I missed you, bit.”
It’s so intense I drop my gaze and pull it back to his, my stomach sort of turning in on itself. “Why. Do I fill your glass too?”
“Not sure.” He winks, smirking. “Maybe you just fill my well, girl.”
I laugh, and he chuckles, and we sort of spend the next minutes in silence, our smiles lingering on our faces.
By the time we leave the sauna, I feel good. Physically, I’m relaxed, but emotionally, I’m in a bit of chaos/confused mode. Christos offers to drive me home, but I decline. An hour later, a message appears on my phone.
Tomorrow. Next appointment. 8 p.m. @ Peasant (Nolita). Be there.
I’m so there.
Midnight text to BFF:
Do you remember when you stole into the guys’ locker room to chase after Lyle?
Becka: No. I promptly forgot that when the coach found me before Lyle did and called my parents about what a perv I was.
Me: Okay, forget that part. Imagine that you’d found Lyle. In nothing but this tiny towel. Like a fig leaf, that small.
Becka: Okay, what’s going on?
Me: It’s Christo’s fault. We went to a sauna and…we went to a sauna.
Becka: And? Dish out!!!
Me: And…muscular man. Tiny towel! Heat and sweat? Ugh. I’m still squirming inside.
Becka: Baby girl, that’s hot! I vote you go impale yourself on Christos. I sure as hell remember he’d like that.
Me: Not anymore. He’s taken, okay.
Lucky bitch
Becka: All is fair in love and war.
Me: It’s not love.
Becka: What is it?
Me: Terrible
Terrible lust
Becka: Was he really muscled? He was skinny before. No?
Me: You have NO idea the muscles he packs. And I won’t even get into the SHAPE of what was under his towel.
Becka: Now who’s the perv! HA!
Me: Lucky I don’t have a principal after me. (But maybe an angry girlfriend if she ever found out her man was with me in a sauna? I’d be jealous out of my mind!)
Becka: Me thinks you’re in trouble, bestie…
Me: Nooooo. I just needed that off my chest. I’m good now. I’m going to work!!
Really.
No, really.
Not thinking of Christos’s sweaty, tattooed bod in a tiny towel at all!
I dreamed of him. He was hugging me in his office, and I was crying on his shoulder because my parents had just died. It makes no sense. He wasn’t there when my parents died, flowers sent in his absence. The only time he ever hugged me was when we said goodbye. And maybe…well, it wasn’t exactly a hug, but when he tried to kiss me. Still, he didn’t hug me in his office yesterday. But when I wake in the middle of the night, my face is wet and I can’t go back to sleep.
It feels odd to see him, remember the girl I used to be—he reminds me of my childhood. He reminds me of my dreams, my parents, myself before my heart broke into pieces, one for each person I’ve loved and lost.
Maybe, even, including him.
I’m distracted with Milly, Natchez, and the rest of my dog tribe the next day. Then Milly’s owner, Mrs. Ford, invites me to join her for tea when I drop Milly off that afternoon.
“Brynny! You’re back just in time for tea. Come sit with Milly and me.”
“Oh, Mrs. Ford…I couldn’t…”
“You can and you will,” she declares in moody New York fashion.
So I grudgingly agree, “Five minutes,” and sit in her European-style sitting room, drinking tea.
“Tell me about yourself, Brynny. How are you finding New York?”
“I’m finding it,” I say, and she laughs. I admit, “It’s a jungle, Mrs. Ford, but I suppose I’m learning the ropes of how to survive around here.”
“Like what?”
“Like if I stand at the pizza line and don’t know exactly, exactly, what I’m having when it’s my turn, I get skipped.”
We laugh, and she tells me of the days when she moved into Manhattan seven years ago.
“At my age, you can imagine what a shock the city was. It’s why I’d rather look at the city from up here.” She motions to her lovely view, and I say, “If you ever want to go out, I’d be happy to walk with you or ride with you anywhere.”
“Thank you, but I do have family who visits occasionally. But thank you for offering, Brynny.”
I feel relieved that she’s not alone in the city—mainly because I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t met Sara when I got here—so I smile, make her a new pot of tea, and head out, not before petting Milly. “’Bye, girl,” I whisper in her ear. “Wish me luck tonight.”
I rush to get ready for my meeting, more nervous than I care to admit.