“Mr. Donnelly, perhaps a cup of tea would be good for all of us just now?” She didn’t wait for a response, but picked up the telephone and called the kitchen, requesting a large pot of tea and some sandwiches. Lee surreptitiously wiped her eyes, and then swung her legs off the ottoman. Somehow she felt much less vulnerable if she were sitting up, her feet planted firmly on the floor. She took a couple of deep, calming breaths, and then turned to her boss, ignoring Chad and the stranger who sat beside him.
“I’m sorry, Sister Maureen Claire. I’m not sure what just happened. You sent for me?”
“Yes, I did, Ms. Wilding. But before we discuss any business, I must insist that you have something to eat.” She turned a stern eye on Lee, whom she had taken under her wing six years ago and with whom she had forged a kind of mother-daughter relationship. “I know you haven’t been eating properly since your father’s surgery, so I’m not surprised you can hardly keep your feet.”
She turned to Chad and the other man and said,
“Our school is very small, and the girls are more than students here. Ms. Wilding has become an invaluable member of our team, because she gives so much of herself to the girls. I have had to admonish her on more than one occasion about stretching herself too thinly.” There was pride in her boss’s voice, despite the words of admonition, and Lee’s heart warmed at the compliment. She tried to ignore the fact that she was proud to be so well-spoken of to the one man she realized she had never forgotten. “Fortunately, I was able to persuade her to take up residence off campus, or I’m sure she would be even more stressed out than she is already.”
Chad turned to look at Lee for a moment, something shining in his eyes that she could not read, and then he turned his megawatt smile on her boss.
“Lee was always a warm and caring girl, Sister, so I’m not surprised that she has continued to be the same as a woman.”
Happily for Lee, whose cheeks were turning red, a knock on the door heralded the arrival of light refreshments, and she sat demurely while Chad served her tea and delicate cucumber sandwiches on a tray. He and the other guest sipped tea but refrained from eating. The silence was broken only after she had eaten two of the little sandwiches and had drunk half her tea. Seeming satisfied that Lee was not going to pass out again, Sister Maureen Claire said, resting her teacup delicately on the saucer,
“Mr. Donnelly tells me you and he share a familial relationship of a sort, Ms. Wilding, which is the only reason I have not sent him and his friend packing.” Here she turned her stern eyes to Chad and his friend. “I thought you should hear what he and Mr. de Graaf have to say with me present, and since we have the concert this evening, I thought it better to relieve you of your testing duties for today. You can make it up to Ms. Williamson tomorrow.” She clasped her hands on the desk and waited for Chad to speak.
“I didn’t want to say anything when I saw you last Christmas until I was sure that the plan was a go, Lee. And Xander and I have been working on this for two years. We’ve finally gotten the permits and the legal issues out of the way, and Xander has ensured that we will never have to worry about funding, so I can tell you now.”
Lee waited impatiently for him to continue. She couldn’t imagine what he could possibly want with her, or what this stranger had to do with it, though from the sound of things, he was a rich man. She looked at the man for the first time properly and realized with some surprise that he was very tall, very blonde, and very, very good-looking. Turning her gaze back to Chad, she asked,
“Tell me what, Chad?” She kept her voice cool and distant. It would never do to let anyone in the room, least of all Chad, know how much she still felt off balance by having him there.
“Xander and I have set funding in motion for an institution for homeless and abused girls. But it’s an institution that will use music as a large part of their therapy.”
“By institution, you mean a school, or merely a counseling facility?”
“It’s a school, but it will now also house a clinic. We’ve acquired it, and expanded it to in
Lee’s eyes shot up to his face, shock evident in her expression. Frankly, she was speechless. No one spoke, waiting for her response, but it took her a good minute to marshall her scattered thoughts into some kind of coherent response.
“I already have a job,” she finally managed to reply baldly, saying the first thing that came into her head. “Aren’t there other candidates for the position? Have you posted it? I’m sure you’ll find there are a number of other people who would be suitably qualified to run your school.”
The look on Chad’s face made shivers run up her back, and she suddenly found herself with a case of the tremors.
“I know you didn’t think I was listening to you two years ago when you first mentioned your dream of running a music therapy center for abused and homeless girls, Lee, but I was paying close attention. As I always do when you speak.”
She remembered the first time she had mentioned that to her family, that Christmas she had gone home for the first time in years, and had found it so hard to be in the same room as Chad for more than a few minutes at a time. He had not had a girlfriend with him then, but it didn’t matter. There had been too much water under the bridge, and she had left on Boxing Day, citing an urgent call from her headmistress to help with a crisis for one of the girls. Sister Maureen Claire would have been appalled had she known her name had been used in a lie, and Lee had found herself having to lie because of Chad far too often. Her stepmother and her dad would not have understood if she had kept missing Christmas and family times.
“What exactly do you want me to do that someone else can’t do?” she asked sarcastically, because she needed to keep her distance from him.
“Nothing,” he replied, as sharp as she had been. “What we want is someone we know, someone we can trust. Someone with knowledge and skill, with passion and integrity. That someone is you.”
For the first time, the stranger who was Chad’s friend, Xander de Graaf, spoke. His voice made her shudder with a physical response she didn’t understand. It was deep, like Chad’s, but hoarse, where Chad’s was smooth velvet. It sounded as though someone had sanded his voicebox but left the surface rough.
“Of course, we know that you will need to complete your contract here, and you will certainly wish to discuss this opportunity with your headmistress and anyone else you trust. We do not expect an immediate reply.”
His accent was barely there, his English impeccable, and his expression solicitous. She found herself grateful to him for giving her space, and she turned a small, tentative smile his way.
“Thank you,” she said sincerely. “I appreciate the consideration.”
She could feel Chad’s eyes on her, and she blushed when she realized she had made it sound as though his friend was more considerate than he had been. And she knew her coolness with him had not gone unnoticed by either the headmistress or his friend. She needed to extricate herself from the situation before things got any worse, and do it without stepping on any more toes.
“If you have a card, I’ll be happy to get back to you as soon as possible. But as Sister has said, I have a concert this evening, and I really ought to get back to the girls.”
“Perhaps a breakfast meeting a fortnight from now will give you enough time to think things through?” Chad was clearly not going to give her any more time than necessary, but two weeks was enough time, she knew, for her to decide whether or not she could stand to have anything to do with Chad beyond a day or two at family gatherings once or twice a year.
She stood up, and the men stood with her. Chad handed her a card, and she took it without looking at it. His friend handed one to the headmistress, and they shook hands all round. Touching Chad, even in so innocuous a fashion, sent sparks up and down her arm, and his friend’s touch did not help to soothe the buzzing that settled in her chest. In fact, the double whammy of electricity that arced between them zapped her, making her body buzz wickedly. She tur
ned and walked hurriedly ahead of them out of the room, remembering to ask at the last minute, as her hand was on the door,
“Where will we meet next time?”
“We’ll let you know,” Chad answered. “We’ll be out of the country for most of the next two weeks.”
She nodded curtly and left the room, her legs trembling the further away from it she went. The morning testing period was over, and the girls were being dismissed to lunch when she opened her classroom door. She thanked Ms. Williamson again for stepping in, and sank gratefully into her chair as the door closed behind the woman. What in the world was she to do? What she wanted with Chad wasn’t a working relationship. And if she were foolish enough to accept their job offer, that was all she could have with him, because to become involved with him, assuming that he would even be interested, would be a conflict of interest. Wouldn’t it? And what about this physical response she felt towards the stranger who was his friend? She’d never been interested in more than one man at a time, so this new development was unsettling to her.
Her mind churned with possibilities, with questions...with worry. She had gone back to graduate school to complete a degree in clinical psychology, working and studying, doing some distance learning, and she knew she was qualified to run a counseling program in a school. Part of her work in her job was to facilitate the limited counseling services offered in her current school. They had not been able to do much for the student who had come and left after one term, but that had fired her passion to start her own facility. And back home, there was a school that was in danger of closing for lack of funds, and because the student population, comprised mostly of abused and neglected girls, was suffering from lack of trained professional staff. Those girls would end up in the system if something wasn’t done to help them. And the system could not always be depended upon to do right by them.
Suddenly, she understood what Chad had meant by listening to her when she talked. That was the school he was talking about. She could realize her dream of helping those girls, and expanding the facilities to include service to the homeless. The idea excited her, and she realized she would need to think long and hard about her decision. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make a difference and to do so in a place that she had been drawn to for a while. And it would be a chance to see if perhaps, after all these years, and all her cowardice, she and Chad might find some common personal ground.
CHAPTER TWO
The cell phone buzzed insistently next to Chad’s ear, and he reached over to see who was calling.
“Where are you?” he asked, his voice hoarse with sleep. “I couldn’t wait up any longer.”
The voice on the other end of the line chuckled. “What have you been doing to make you so tired?”
“Waiting,” Chad said, sitting up in bed. “She still hasn’t called back.” He sighed. “Are you almost home?”
“Pulling into the driveway now.”
Xander’s answer kicked his heart rate up a notch. He still couldn’t believe that he was with this man. He had met Xander de Graaf as a sophomore in college, and their friendship had begun like any other, morphing into something more in his senior year. He hadn’t been prepared to discover that he was bisexual, nor had he wanted to find out that he wanted his best friend as much as he wanted his stepsister. Taking Wendy home with him that Christmas when Lee had been a senior in high school was meant to prove to himself that he was not gay, and was also meant to keep him from jumping Lee’s bones.
Only, he had shut her down by being with Wendy. He realized, when it was too late to fix it, that she saw Wendy as the end of anything between them, and she had run away to England to escape him and the pain he had caused her. And he had not been able to find a way back to her...till now. With the help of his best friend, his business partner, and his lover. Finally. It had taken him long enough to let Xander in, once they had found each other again after college. Now he was prepared to fight for Lee, whom he wanted as part of his life as fiercely as he wanted Xander. Luckily for him, Xander was game, and he only hoped his lover would fall for Lee as hard as he had done.
The kitchen door opened, and Chad scrambled out of bed to meet Xander half way. He listened, but there was only silence after that initial sound. His lover had been an operative in the armed forces for a time, and his training in covert ops made him a silent and deadly force. Chad knew, as he walked down the long hallway, that Xander had wanted him to know he was in the house, which was the only reason he had heard anything at all. And as he rounded the corner to the kitchen, Xander’s arms pulled him in. He raised his own to hug the taller man, letting his body relax into the hard planes and warmth of his lover. Xander’s arms crushed him, and then his hands were on Chad’s cheeks, cupping them, pulling his face up. Lips met in fevered kisses, deepening as they devoured each other.
“Damn, we’ve only been away from each other a couple of days!” Chad chuckled as Xander let him up for air.
“Are you complaining?” Xander cocked a brow, his sardonic tone telling Chad he knew the answer to his question. “I got back here as soon as I could.” He picked up the suitcase that he had dropped as he reached for Chad and they walked into the bedroom together.
“Did it go well?” Chad asked, going back to sit on the edge of the bed and watching Xander undress.
“Better than I had hoped,” he said. “We’ll have a partner school in Amsterdam, and supplementary funding, by month’s end.”
As Xander stripped his clothing from his body, Chad stared in silent admiration. Xander was from Friesland, where it seemed everyone was tall. His gorgeous, blond-god good looks were also pretty typical of the region. Chad used to wonder why, and once even jokingly asked him what they had fed him as a child. Now, though, he didn’t care how his lover came to be this way. He was just happy to be the one Xander shared his hard, muscular body with, and his brilliant smile, and his devastating charm. He hoped that that last would work its magic on Lee. It always seemed to work on him.
“You act like you’ve never seen this before.” Xander’s amused voice broke into his thoughts, and Chad smiled.
“Just hoping Lee will fall for you as hard as I did, is all.”
“Did?” Xander quirked a brow.
Chad laughed. “You worried?”
Xander stripped his socks from his feet before answering, striding over to the bed as he did.
“Should I be?” His voice was quiet, his tone serious. Chad knew Xander still remembered how far and fast he had run when Xander first told him how he was coming to feel about him, and he had recognized his own response to the chemistry between them for what it was.
Chad reached for him, and pulled him down, stroking a hand over his lover’s package while they kissed, and Xander cradled him in his arms. They didn’t let each other up for air until both were hard and throbbing with renewed need.
“Does this answer your concern?” Chad squeezed Xander’s hard cock, and stroked it slowly, feeling it grow harder as he did. His blood heated, and when his lover reached between them to reciprocate, he groaned. More kissing, as they each strove to show the other how much they longed for that intimacy they loved to share. Impatient hands stripped Chad of his boxers and t-shirt and before long, the lovers were lost in the throes of passion. Chad wanted to be possessed tonight, and being the bottom would let him have that wish fulfilled. He liked to reassure his lover that he was never going to run away again, and submitting to him in this way, when they both knew he could be as dominant as Xander, was his way of doing so. Their hands and mouths led them along a fiery path that ended with Xander deep inside, filling him, riding him, pulling cries of raw hunger and completion from him, milking him even as Xander came apart inside him.
Slowly coming back to Earth, the lovers caressed and kissed and cradled each other, now lying back to front on the wide bed. Their breathing evened out, and they fell asleep wrapped around each other. When his cell phone rang, Chad heard it through a fog of sleep and erotic drea
ms. Xander slept like the dead, so he knew he was either going to have to escape the cocoon of his lover’s arms to answer it, or let it go to voice mail. He chose the latter option. Whoever was calling could wait till he had had another go at the man who was finally stirring behind him.
Later, when day was fully upon them, and the sunshine left warm swaths of light on their skin, Chad and Xander showered together, cleaning the sweat and semen from a third bout of homecoming sex off their bodies. Then, dried and dressed, they headed to the kitchen where Xander made stuffed French toast while Chad made coffee and checked his phone. The missed call had been from Lee, and his heart picked up speed as he looked at Xander plying the whisk to beat the eggs that would soak into the thick slices of bread he would be stuffing.
“Lee called...this morning, while we were still asleep,” he said. “She wants to talk, and wonders if we can meet for brunch at Manley’s today. In fact, in an hour.”
Xander turned to him, whisk in hand. “Do you think she would be willing to have brunch here, instead?”
Chad shook his head. “No. I’m afraid I fucked up with her.” When Xander kept looking at him silently, he continued, “I let her think I had a girlfriend way back when she was a senior in high school. She left home as soon as she graduated. I hardly ever see her. I knew how I felt about her even then. I just needed to keep myself away from her...she was my step-sister, and she was still in high school.”
“And now she wants nothing to do with you,” Xander said, clearly understanding Chad’s predicament.
“Oh, I hope to hell it’s not quite that bad,” Chad exclaimed. He looked at Xander, understanding how he must have felt all those years ago when Chad had run from him. The fear was eating him alive.
“Hey,” Xander’s voice broke into his musings, “I got you back, didn’t I?” He had put down the whisk and was standing in front of Chad. “Never give up.”
Chad smiled at him, thankful he had someone who could empathize with him in this situation. “So, are we abandoning your excellent French toast, or are we asking her to postpone the meeting till tomorrow?”
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