by C. C. Snow
The air had been sucked out of my lungs. Out of the room.
Slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I sprinted out of the apartment, feeling like I was suffocating. As soon as I hit the street, I inhaled deeply, feeling the crisp air fill my lungs. Bending my neck, I looked up at the vast sky, blue and clear with wisps of white clouds, reminding myself that there was a big world out there.
The need to lose myself compelled my legs to move. I started to walk blindly, quickly leaving my neighborhood behind.
I didn’t know how long I walked, but my legs started to ache and the sounds of the city finally started to seep into my mind.
“Can you spare some change, pretty lady?”
The quavering voice pulled me out of my thoughts and I stopped in front of a homeless man sitting on the corner of a gray, concrete building. He looked like he was in his fifties, with tanned and leathery skin, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he were in his forties. Age had a different relationship with the poor and the homeless.
He wore many layers of ragged, dirty clothes, but underneath, he was still shivering. I didn’t know if it was from the early fall air or from something else. I suspected the latter.
“Can you spare a dollar for some food, miss?” he asked. The cloudy blue eyes he raised to me were devoid of hope.
I knelt down and asked softly. “When was the last time you ate?”
“I dunno,” he said, with the slur of the tongue I heard so many times. It was why I was reluctant to give money to panhandlers. I had seen too many of them go into a store with a few dollars and come out with a bottle concealed in a brown paper bag.
I wasn’t judging them. The need to anesthetize against life was a primal instinct. But I also knew they needed real sustenance.
“Stay here,” I said and immediately felt stupid. Where the hell was this guy going to go?
Ten minutes later, I came back and handed a bag over to him. “There’s a turkey sandwich and a soda in there.”
Perking up, he eagerly reached for the food. “Bless you, miss.” He already had the sandwich unwrapped.
“What’s your name?”
He glanced at me like I was crazy and I wondered when someone had last spoken to him like a real person. I repeated my question.
“Charlie Matthews,” he replied around a mouthful of wheat bread.
“Hi, Charlie Matthews. My name is Elle Lazzaro. Would you mind if I take a few photos of you? You don’t have to say yes just because I bought you food,” I reassured him.
“Do what you want. Although I don’t know why you’d want to take a picture of an old bum like me.”
I wanted to say, “Everyone deserves to be seen,” but I didn’t. Smiling at him, I took out the second-hand DSLR camera I bought online.
I took a photography course in my last year of college. I thought it would be a good hobby.
It had become my salvation. Behind the lens, I felt in control. Brave. Safe.
People thought photographers captured the truth, but that was the biggest lie of all. We could manipulate emotions with our choice of subject, lighting, location, everything.
“I’ll wait until you’re done eating,” I said, watching him devour the sandwich.
After he finished, I asked Charlie to tell me his story. And as he talked, I took hundreds of shots, hoping I would be able to catch an ephemeral glimpse of happiness on camera.
Chapter 3
Troy
“Fuck.” Before I even completed my swing, I knew it was shit. I squinted my eyes and watched the ball veer sharply to the left, landing in the sand bunker.
It felt like a fucking metaphor of my life recently.
On the surface, everything should be fan-fucking-tastic. I enjoyed my job as Chief Financial Officer of Weston Enterprises. The company was more profitable than it had ever been. My family was happy and healthy and so was I. But things seemed…off. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Jake laughed at my pathetic shot and I glared at him.
“You suck today,” he said and slapped me on my shoulder.
“Thanks, big brother. Your sympathy is overwhelming,” I said dryly.
We picked up our gear to walk toward the sand trap.
The day was perfect for golf—sunny, but not too hot. Neither Jake nor I were fanatics about the sport like our father, but we were decent players. Our father had been bringing us to the putting green since we were barely out of diapers and we held our first clubs before we learned how to talk in complete sentences.
Normally, I enjoyed the bonding time with my brother, but my concentration was absolute garbage today. People who didn’t play golf thought the sport was about hitting a ball into a hole, but it was a total mind game.
“Your concentration is shot. Everything okay with you?” Jake asked.
I laughed at his keen observation, not surprised by how well he could read me. My older brother was my role model and my best friend. At thirty-five, he was three years older than I was. When we were kids, we fought like alpha wolves protecting their territory, but as we grew up, we grew closer. There was nobody else who knew me better.
Most people couldn’t tell we were siblings. We had each inherited a completely different set of physical traits from our parents. Jake had our father’s dark hair; I had our mom’s blonde. Jake got her straight, elegant nose; I won the jackpot and got our granddad’s long schnoz. The only feature we had in common was our blue-green eyes. Even our personalities were polar opposites. Jake tended to be restrained and serious and I was always ready with a quip and a laugh.
“Yeah,” I said, but I knew I didn’t sound very convincing when he shot me a skeptical look.
Truth was, I couldn’t stop thinking about the firecracker who ran away from me weeks ago. Her snarky attitude. Her innate pride. That hint of vulnerability.
She thought it was her beauty that drew me—and who wouldn’t notice her gorgeous face and that curvy body under the atrocious clothes—but I was attracted to her sass, her fire. It was what compelled me to wait for her in the alley after she made her magnificent exit. She intrigued me on every level.
In the end, it was her words that had the most staying power. Her unflattering assessment of me had burrowed under my skin like a microscopic splinter. Impossible to remove and equally impossible to ignore. I tried to convince myself she was spouting bullshit, but there was just enough truth in it to discomfit me.
Sure, I had a privileged upbringing, but I didn’t think I was spoiled and entitled. Was I?
Sure, I appreciated women and went after what I wanted, but I didn’t consider myself a player. Hell, most of the time, they were the ones chasing me and I let myself be caught. After all, that was the gentlemanly thing to do. We had a little bit of fun and then went our separate ways when things cooled. Nothing wrong with that, right?
I grumbled under my breath, annoyed beyond reason that the woman’s words had stirred this tempest of emotion. Very little in life triggered my temper. Life was too damn short to take every little thing too earnestly, but she managed to rattle my cage—something that never happened. What she thought about me shouldn’t matter, but for some damn reason, it did.
I had kissed her to stem her tirade, but the utterly unexpected, explosive heat we generated had almost brought me to my knees.
Goddamn…I hadn’t become so hard, so fast, since I was a teenager. My senses were so scrambled, it took a moment to register that she sprinting away from me. Instinctively, I started to chase after her, but I lost sight of her within a block.
Standing on that street corner, I felt an inexplicable sense of loss as I heard her footsteps fade into the night.
I wanted to find her and…I didn’t know what I would do if I saw her again. It was a toss up between arguing with her or throwing her on the nearest flat surface and fucking her until we were incoherent.
Or both. Definitely both.
It was the first time in m
y life I’d actually felt exhilarated fighting with a woman. I needed to have my head examined.
But I’d never get the chance to act out my fantasies because there was no way to track her down. She no longer worked at the restaurant and I didn’t have her last name. I could either strong-arm her weasel of an ex-manager into giving me her information or hire a private investigator, but both methods were too creepy to contemplate.
Forget about her, Troy.
Damn it. If I only could.
Was I obsessed with her because I couldn’t have her? I tried to review the situation soberly and mentally shook my head.
Contrary to her opinion of me, I wasn’t an arrogant bastard. Rejection wasn’t a foreign concept to me, but I normally let it slide off my back. But I couldn’t with her. God damn it, I knew she was attracted to me; I could still feel the phantom slide of her tongue in my mouth. And that little sound of arousal she made in her throat almost made me come in my pants. The memory of that one kiss was hotter than the raunchiest sex I’d had.
Frustration thrummed through me. I hadn’t been this hung up on a woman since…ever and it aggravated the shit out of me.
We arrived at the sand trap and I stared at the golf ball buried so deep only a little bit of white was showing. Fuck, nothing was going my way. My brother and I might be best buds, but we were still competitive. There was no way I would win today.
Resigned to a shitty game, I adjusted my clubface, widened my stance, and swung. And missed.
I repositioned myself. Swung. Missed again.
“Fuck me,” I growled and did what no golfer should ever do: hack away at the ball. In my current mood, I would be better off working out my moodiness in a batting cage.
Jake started to laugh like a loon.
I stopped to glare at him. Some of my inexplicable frustration drained away at seeing my brother’s wide smile.
He looked good. Content.
And why shouldn’t he? He was happily married to the love of his life, with a perfect son and another baby on the way.
For a long time I had worried he would be too embittered by his ex-assistant’s betrayal to trust a woman again. Sophia Chandler had conned Jake into thinking she was a damsel in distress and when he came to her rescue, she repaid him by stabbing him in the back. Not only had she sold confidential information to our competitors, she had the gall to sue Jake for sexual harassment charges when he broke up with her. After that nightmare, he became guarded and downright cold with everyone except the immediate family.
But then he hired Cora Branton as his executive assistant and she changed everything. From the start, I could see he wanted her, but he didn’t make a move. I did what any loyal brother would do: I baited him by flirting with her. It did the trick because Jake got his shit together and did me proud. Using his tactician’s mind, he obliterated Cora’s barriers and insecurities to win her. There was a rough patch when someone tried to frame her for spying on the company, but they came through stronger than ever.
I couldn’t love Cora more if she were my own sister. Not only was she an amazing woman—compassionate, intelligent, and beautiful, but she also brought my brother back to the living.
“Dad would kick your ass for doing that,” Jake razzed.
“Well, he’s not here and if you rat me out, I’m going to tell him you ate the last piece of that cheesecake,” I threatened. If there’s one thing my father loved above everything else, it was his daughter-in-law’s baked goods. Given a choice between Cora’s pecan pie and a game of golf, he would happily trade in his clubs for a fork.
“That’s beneath you.”
I chuckled. “Nothing’s beneath me. Speaking of the parents, have you talked to them?”
“They video chatted with Aiden a couple of days ago. They’re loving their European cruise. Dad’s thinking about extending their stay.”
“Of course, they’d call their grandson. Once he came along, you and I became invisible,” I joked. “The only thing I got from them was a postcard at their last stop.”
“Hah! You should have seen the call. The first thing they said to me was: ‘Where’s Aiden?’ No ‘Hi, son. How are you?’” Jake imitated our mom’s higher voice and I laughed. “At least Cora got a hello from Dad,” he grumbled.
“That’s because he wants to keep his baked goods supplier happy.”
“That man is sad.” Jake shook his head mournfully.
“Pitiful,” I concurred. Not that Jake and I didn’t fight for our share of the dessert offerings, but it was deplorable to see a sixty-seven-year old man filch food from his sons.
I rotated my shoulders and took my stance again. This time, my club made contact and the ball sailed over the rise. “Finally.” I walked up to the green to join Jake. “We’ll count that as three strokes, shall we?”
He snorted. “Even at three strokes, you’re still fifteen over par.”
I grimaced, knowing my score would probably sink even lower before we finished the last few holes. Unwilling to examine the reason for my distraction, I changed the subject to what I understood best: business. “Kayla scheduled a conference call with the CEO of Smythe Corp for next week. Do you know what he wants to meet about?” SC was an old, respected company, but in recent years, they had been losing their edge.
“Remember when we went in to save DataPoynt?”
“You mean when you swooped in to save DataPoynt to impress Cora.”
Ignoring my jibe, he continued, “They’re interested in a few of the products DataPoynt is working on that could help bring SC into the digital age.”
“Have you told your wife how brilliant she was for urging you to acquire DataPoynt? Over the last few years, they have dominated the market on cyber security and data analytics. They have more than doubled our initial investment.”
“I tell her she’s brilliant all the time,” Jake said with a goofy smile as he lined up his shot.
“Well, SC can buy all the technology they want, but they won’t be able to go anywhere with their current leadership. Patrick Lawrence is a dinosaur when it comes to innovation. He’s driving the company into the ground.”
“Apparently, the board felt the same way because they gave Lawrence a big enough incentive for him to retire and hand the reins over to his son-in-law, Carter Nichols.” With a light stroke, Jake sent the ball right into the hole.
“Damn. Bogey,” I muttered in disgust. “Do you know anything about the new guy?” It always paid to know as much as we could about the key players in any business deal. Jake and I had always used both our mind and our instincts when we made decisions.
“Not much. He’s young for a CEO. Twenty-eight, I think. He became the VP of Marketing for SC after he graduated with his MBA. From all accounts, he did a decent job in the role, but he’s going to learn that being in charge of one department is a piece of cake compared to running every aspect of the company.”
I nodded in agreement. As CFO, my priority was to ensure the financial health of the company. Jake, on the other hand, was responsible for everything from dealing with a curmudgeonly board of directors to overseeing a new advertising campaign. If I was a trumpet, my older brother was the whole orchestra.
“You became CEO at the age of twenty-six,” I pointed out. “And tripled the profits.”
“Yeah, but I also inherited a company that was already thriving. SC’s stock prices have been sinking steadily for the last couple of years. Nichols has his work cut out for him.”
“Is there anything you want me to look into before the meeting?”
Jake shook his head. “No, let’s see what Nichols wants first.”
“I’m going to have Kayla pull up their income statement just in case,” I said, making a mental note to talk to my executive assistant first thing on Monday. It was always better to be over-prepared for these meetings.
“That’s a good idea.” He tilted his head, his eyes speculative. “If Nichols can’t turn the company around, I think we might have an opportunity
to take over some of their contracts in Asia. They practically have a monopoly on the ports in Taiwan. If we get a foothold there, we could expand our Asian division.”
That ruthless edge was what made Jake a legend in the business world. He was able to game out the possibilities and take advantage of a competitor’s weakness.
“Are you thinking hostile takeover?” It was a tactic we rarely employed because it was messy and could become protracted if the other company decided to fight it.
“No, but there are other ways to put pressure on them that will yield the same results. If they’re desperate enough, they will be open to selling some of the components to keep the company intact. But I’m not going to kick a man while he’s down. We’ll give Nichols the room he needs to correct the course of the company. If he screws up, then we’ll consider making a move.”
Jake’s phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket. When his lips curled in a small smile, I knew who had sent him a message. Cora and he were perfect together, but they could also be nausea-inducing at times.
While he was preoccupied, I tapped my ball into the hole. “How are Cora and the baby?” I asked when he put his phone away.
Jake’s smile dimmed. “This second pregnancy is harder for her. I wish she’d hire a personal assistant to help her. Mrs. Miche comes in three times a week to clean the house and pick up groceries, but Cora needs someone full-time.”
Frowning in concern, I put away my driver. “Is she okay?”
“Yes, she and the baby are healthy, but she’s getting tired more easily. I didn’t notice while her brother was here over the summer, but now that Marcus has left for the fall semester at MIT, she’s exhausted by the time I get home. And Aiden is getting more energetic with each passing day. At least she agreed to cut back her hours.”
“Maybe she should quit altogether,” I suggested.
“Troy, if I can’t convince my wife to hire a PA, I can’t get her to quit.”
“You’re whipped,” I said, omitting a critical word out of respect for Cora.
“Someday you’ll know what it’s like,” he said knowingly.
