by Brandon Witt
I shook my head with real regret. “I have to meet Trevor at his office.”
He made a noncommittal noise and a face before leaning over the edge of the bed, searching for something.
“What?” I demanded.
He found the sock he was apparently looking for and casually wiped the spunk off his chest and hand. He threw it back on the carpet when he was done, and I pulled a face.
He sent me a knowing look from light brown eyes. “Just wondering why an otherwise sane, relatively intelligent, good-looking guy would give that asswipe the time of day.”
I gritted my teeth at the relatively intelligent but gave him a pass because of the good-looking. “I just want to get Finn back.”
“And suddenly he brings Finn to his office?” He ran a hand over his face and sighed. “Just be careful, Mac.”
“Oh, play me a song on a tiny violin.”
“Just admit it.” He picked up the spunk sock and threatened me with it. “You still have feelings for him.”
“I admit no such thing, Oprah.”
“Never mind. No need for you to admit what we all already know.”
“You’re a lousy lay, by the way,” I called, shutting the door just in time as he threw the sock at my face.
I searched the living room for a good five minutes before finding my shorts under a coffee table. As I pulled them on, the still-damp fabric fought me like a living thing, souring my mood even further.
Fucking Asher. Since when did he become Madame Fortune Teller of Doom? Despite my irritation, I still turned the lock on his front door before slamming it behind me. I didn’t want him to get shanked by a random beach bum. Yet.
Chapter 5
DAMN THAT Asher, I thought, on the drive over. It’s not like I was going bungee jumping off the Swiss Alps (okay, erhm, so no one ever did that). I was just seeing my ex. At his office. Because no one ever had sex in an office.
I took a left turn viciously, causing a silver Altima to honk. I honked right back.
I had no delusions that Trevor might still want me. Because they weren’t delusions. He did. And he knew that I knew he did. He might be bisexual or whatever, but you didn’t turn gay off like it was a faucet. So we were back to damn that Asher, then. And damn Trevor too. And my weakness for inexperienced blond farm boys.
I was over him. I was over it.
But when his secretary directed me to the conference room, where he was in the middle of a meeting, I realized I was a bit of a liar. Looking at his serious expression, looking down at the glossy screen of his iPad, tapping an unnecessary stylus on the table, I felt something. He was keeping himself focused by jiggling his foot back and forth, and I knew his iPad was open to some sort of word processing document. Quickoffice, probably. Trevor loved Quickoffice. Trevor would never play an app on the job (I still don’t feel guilty), and I knew without even a whiff that he was wearing Artemis cologne. I felt my throat getting ridiculously tight. What was I so upset for? We were over. He was just so damned familiar.
Sans the four-hundred-dollar suit and the preppy haircut, he could be my buddy in class again, peering over at my notes because he was too stubborn to go get glasses. And when I’d finally shamed him into going (“How can instant vision not be on your to-do list, Trev?”), I’d had to convince him that he was still super sexy in them. I blinked back sudden moisture in my eyes. Ridiculous. The creative ways I contrived to do that would just have to remain firmly entrenched in my memory.
The loft-style conference room was beautiful—high arching ceiling with track lighting that looked like it belonged in an artist’s study. A long mahogany table dominated the room, flanked by at least twenty opulently appointed black leather chairs. The whole room opened into an arched window that spanned the entire back wall and gave them an unspoiled view of downtown Fort Lauderdale. From the two times he’d permitted me to visit him at his office, I knew it was equally as impressive. I was caught between a smile and… well, another smile—one sad, one pleased. I was happy for him. Proud of him. He’d done well. Angry at him. He wasn’t mine anymore. Yes, I was the one who broke up with him, but I had only accelerated the inevitable.
Everyone leaves sometime.
It was hard to stalk someone sitting in a conference room made mostly of transparent material. As if I’d spoken aloud, he lifted his eyes to mine, and I was caught between the crosshairs of a cornflower blue gaze. We stared at each other for a moment before I began backing away from the glass door. He held up a finger for me to wait, and I pretended not to see, turning on my heel and speeding down the hall. I didn’t care how it looked. If I saw him right now, it would be embarrassing and awkward for only one person—me.
“Mackenzie!” I heard his hissed shout, still loud in the echoing halls of the cookie-cutter Brooks Brothers firm.
Someone grabbed my arm, and I yelped, too startled to resist being pulled into an office, and relieved, even before I saw my captor, when the door closed softly behind us.
“Jordan,” I said with a huff of surprise. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing. I work here… remember?”
“You had two seconds before I busted out some judo on your ass.”
He grinned. “Yeah, I’d like to see that.” He walked around his desk, picking up a cup. “You want coffee?”
“Wow, you should really join some sort of support group.”
“Jeez, Mackenzie, why don’t you tell me how you really feel?” He sat in his plush office chair and cocked his head in my direction. “You never answered my question. What are you doing here? Is it about my case?”
I flushed, embarrassed for some reason. “I came to see… speak to, actually,” I stuttered, finishing with a weak, “Trevor.”
He was kind enough not to comment, but his eyes spoke volumes. He offered me a seat. “So where are we on the java?”
“I need more of it, you need less of it. That pretty much sums it up.” I looked around his office for the first time. “You have nice digs here.”
“I like it,” he said modestly, dismissing the stylishly decorated office with a wave.
The office was roughly the size of my living room, with a seating area and the same ridiculous views as the conference room. Jordan’s desk sat prominently, three ells long, sheer glass, covered with what appeared to be a million papers and manila folders and one flat-screen Mac.
Suddenly a buzz went off on the intercom, and a carefully modulated female voice said, “Mr. Channing, Mr. Smith is here to see you. Shall I show him in?”
Jordan’s eyes met mine in a questioning manner, and suddenly I didn’t care how it made me look. I jerked my head no.
“No, I’m currently in the middle of a meeting with a potential client,” he lied smoothly to the faceless voice. “I’ll have to meet with him later.”
Thank goodness for strong-armed assistants. Had this been my rinky-dink operation, the only thing to stop Trevor would have been an army of dusty plants. Oh, and Miss Edith, the nosy octogenarian that practically lived in the window above my office space. She was in that window so often, I don’t know why she bothered with renting the rest of the apartment. What was charming and helpful in a neighborhood watch leader was detrimental to a business whose customers demanded secrecy. My last client, clad in Jackie O glasses and a gigantic straw hat that had to have been straight from the border, had not found Miss Edith’s nosy advice amusing at all. Honey, the art of disguise is in blending in. Although, that was what she got for wearing a hat the size of a straw UFO.
“Would you like me to cancel your lunch plans?” the voice continued, efficient as ever.
“No, tell Rachel I’ll be there in a half hour.”
“Rachel,” I repeated once the voice clicked off. “My prey.”
His look said he didn’t appreciate my levity. “Yes. She works upstairs. Eighteenth floor.” He continued in a flawlessly polite manner that I knew instinctively was vintage Jordan Channing. “You can
join us if you want. There’s always room for one more.”
“No, that’s all right. I don’t make it a habit of horning in on a lunchtime tête-à-tête.”
“Tête-à-tête?” He raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
I shrugged. “I’m colorful.”
We sat there for a moment, staring at anything but one another, and I wondered why this moment was so awkward. Oh, that’s right, because he’d rescued me running from my ex like a little girl from the boogeyman.
I tried to refocus my energy on something he might be interested in. “I did a little research on your fiancée last night. Ran her address through Google Earth too. Found another vantage point other than that spot on the street. I don’t know when she’d possibly have time to cheat on you, though. Her work hours are—”
He interrupted me by lifting his hand. “Mackenzie, you don’t have to talk about the case. You just started. I know that’s not why you came.” He shrugged. “If you want to just sit here and talk or be in silence, we can just do that.”
“You don’t have to entertain me,” I said, going over to the window and that magnificent view. “I just need… a moment.”
“Take as much time as you need,” he said softly.
I listened to the soothing sounds of his typing as I watched the busy street below. People were so tiny they looked like dolls as they rushed past, dodging one-way traffic against the tricky streetlight at the corner.
He’d chosen to express his doubts about our relationship in an e-mail. Five years of friendship and four years of a relationship, and I’d deserved a fucking e-mail. My lips tightened. It didn’t matter that I knew Trevor had trouble presenting himself. That he was the type of person to type a message before he called someone so he didn’t mess up or forget what he wanted to say. He’d never wanted to sound stupid, like that boy who grew up in the flat states and ran barefoot through the corn. I’d felt privileged, like I was one of the few people who knew him. The real Trevor who didn’t have to write things down to speak to me. The Trevor who didn’t have to be perfect. That he’d reduced me to a long, rambling e-mail about finding himself and his true person made me want to smash something. It had certainly made me bleach a dozen of his fine Italian suits. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
I had left him then, left him and his doubts both. His friends had supported his cowardly decision, and his sister had reduced my five-year presence in his life to a “phase.” I was a fucking phase.
I had proof that I wasn’t some experiment. We’d been saving for a house, dammit. A house. You don’t save for a house with someone and then bail. What kind of monster was he? Especially knowing what had happened with Nick.
“He’s not my brother,” I said out of the blue, before I went absolutely crazy.
A look passed between us that I couldn’t quite define before it was gone. “I know.”
“You know now, or you knew then?”
“Both.” He shook his head. “I thought I had you pegged. Maybe you were both just discreet, private people. But then I realized it wasn’t about your relationship and downplaying PDAs. It was about being gay.”
“What can I say? You’ve got me all figured out,” I said glibly.
“Hardly. And now that I know you—”
“You don’t know me,” I said sharply. “You don’t know anything about me.”
He gave me a measured look in the ensuing silence, looking a bit taken aback by my vehemence. “All right,” he said slowly. “Then my impression of you, after actually speaking to you, is that you don’t seem to be the type to make any bones about who you are. I’m surprised you let him push you back into the closet when it was so hard to come out.”
I was sorry I’d snapped at him. God, he understood being gay better than Trevor ever did.
“I understand him.” I shrugged helplessly. “I understood him, anyway. It was hard to come out to my parents. My dad, anyway. My mom passed without ever knowing. I don’t think he ever felt the same about me.” God, why did just saying that make me feel a little choked up? “You don’t want someone you love to go through that.”
My phone buzzed on his desk, and he finally asked, “Are you going to get that?”
“Not really.”
He looked at the screen and then laughed aloud. “Well, according to this log, someone named Asswipe called four times.”
I grinned cheekily, glad for the distraction. “I changed a few things around in my address book.” His amusement gave me the courage to answer the next time it buzzed.
“What?” I answered, as Jordan busied himself on his computer.
“What kind of game are you playing?” Trevor sounded a little pissed. “You said you’d give me five minutes, and then you run off with Channing. What could you possibly have to speak about with him?”
“Business, Mr. Smith, nothing for you to worry about.”
“The firm has its own PI agency on retainer,” he snapped. “What business could you possibly have with Channing?”
“Business,” I repeated. “Did I stutter?”
“What kind of business? Business with his dick and your ass?”
My face went red-hot. For God’s sakes, I wasn’t some sort of office ho, hopping from associate to associate, I ranted silently, forgetting that I had just had convenient buddy sex with Asher. Okay, fine. But that still didn’t make me an office ho. Asher was clearly not an associate of the firm.
I wouldn’t expect Trevor to understand the difference. I settled for, “I don’t have to explain anything to you.” So there.
He was silent for a moment before continuing. “You know he has a girlfriend, right? Fiancée, actually.”
“Get bent, Trevor.”
“Real mature.” His voice went lower. “I’m only looking out for you.”
I snorted. “Great job so far.” I hoped my tone was sarcastic. Hoped I managed to minimize the hurt. His murmur said I didn’t succeed.
“You looked good.”
“Oh for heaven’s sakes—”
“Come and talk to me. You know where my office is.”
I knew that tone. Knew what it meant. After two years of wheedling, I knew exactly what that tone led to.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I hissed. “Does Laura know about this?” Jordan had stopped pretending to work and was looking at me with his brow furrowed, fingers steepled.
“Know about what, exactly?” Trevor’s tone went cold. Hard. And I suddenly knew what it was like to see him across the courtroom. It was what made him such a great lawyer. Such a great liar.
“Should I be more specific?”
“Do it and it’s going to take more than Channing’s secretary to stop me from coming in there.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!”
“Stop being such a brat.”
“You wanted to talk? Let’s talk. About the one thing that I care to talk to you about. I want Finn back,” I snapped. “He’s my dog.”
“Dream on,” he shot back. “I’d rather give him back to the pound.”
“God, you’re such a fucking—”
“Call me when you grow up, Mackenzie. You know where to find me. And tell that fucker Jordan where to find me after he’s done playing Sir Lancelot. I can give him some tips on how you like to be—”
I hit the end button so hard I’m surprised I didn’t crack the screen, then growled. It wasn’t enough. Man, I missed the days of slamming home an actual receiver. I glared at the window, my fist threatening to clench the phone into dust.
Jordan tsked, looking at the thundercloud of my face. “Don’t do it. This glass is so thick you’d only wind up needing a new phone.”
“I can’t believe I ever loved that moron.” I began to pace, treading a path through Jordan’s thick carpet. “He’s being completely unreasonable and won’t give me back my dog.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I know exactly what I’m going to do,” I said, my face a mask of determinat
ion.
Jordan sat back in his chair. “Wow, I can practically smell the lock-picking equipment.”
I made a face. “You heard him,” I said, forgetting the fact that he, in fact, did not. “He’s going to give him back to the pound.”
“He’s just being a dick,” Jordan said, shaking his head. “He won’t do that. Give him some time to cool down. We did, after all, just slam the door in his face.”
“I don’t have time for that idiot to cool down. He’s determined to make sure I don’t get my dog back. I may be a PI, but if he wants to hide Finn good enough, even I won’t be able to find him.”
“You need to go through legal channels,” Jordan insisted, and really, what else did you expect a lawyer to say? “And will you please sit down? You’re giving me a migraine.”
I gave him a derisive look and flopped down in my original chair. “See where that’s gotten me.”
“Not in jail?” He pushed out of his chair with a smooth motion and rounded the desk.
He leaned back on the edge, folding his arms. I wondered briefly, off topic, if he knew how crazy sexy he looked. If he realized how ridiculously inappropriate our positions were—him at the perfect height to unbuckle his pants and me at the perfect height to…. Damn that Trevor for putting such ideas in my head (like they weren’t there before). I was an office ho.
“Look,” he said, raising his coffee cup to his lips and pausing to take a drink, “I think this thing with your dog could be moot anyway.”
“Finn is not moot.”
“The point is moot. Not your dog.”
“Can we stop using the word moot?”
His laugh was tinged with frustration. “Will you listen to me?”
I shut up for a moment.
“The point would be… a nonfactor if you guys got back together.”
“Apparently the rumor that straight guys don’t listen is true,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Let me refresh your memory. Me gay. Trevor straight. Me like boy. Boy like girl.”
