“I agree,” Evan says, which is stupid because he didn’t look. He chuckles at our faces and adds, “But they had a firewall worse than any I’d ever seen. The whole thing has been belly-up for a while.”
Holden nods.
“So, he wants to pocket money and a lot of it,” Holden says.
I nod in agreement. When companies buy out, the owner makes less than a fraction of what people might think. If there is a board, they need to be bought out, and, in this case, they do, chairmen and all the employees need severance and unemployment, debts need to be covered, and the owner is the last to cheese on anything. In his case, it isn’t nearly that bad because the company still grosses billions. But greed is still greed.
“I’m assuming, from the looks of it, he can keep millions off the books. We’ll be buying more than we get if we keep the same offer on the table,” I explain, having only had a quick look at everything before I told them.
Holden keeps to himself probably strategizing in his head. Carson asks me more, and I answer him without sounding annoyed. I’m working on my tone. I figure I should eventually. Evan does the same, his questions half sarcastic and half real. I answer him anyway. Honestly, I’m still reeling in the back of my head at Forbes, at her dad’s name. I can’t place why it even sounds so familiar.
“What do you think we should do?” Holden asks.
“Doesn’t matter much, you call all the shots.” Evan chuckles.
“It’s a benevolent dictatorship. Plus, the Board,” Holden gripes.
I sigh. “I don’t want to involve the Board in this.”
“Really? No comments on what Dad would have done?” Holden cocks his head.
“No,” I chortle. “Not this time. But I’ve got a guess he might decide to tug the rug on this one.”
Carson and Evan laugh.
“He only did that once, and he is only ruthless one day out of the year, and that was it.” Holden laughs. I was fifteen when he instituted a merger with some days’ old holding company, but I was old enough to laugh when I found out he went behind the owner to buy out the board first, effectively dissolving the company before the CEO even came in the office for work.
I don’t have the energy to do all that.
“Yeah, but Jackson is a resentful old bag. It was our dollar signs that made him pay attention.” Holden shakes his head. The man is pushing eighty and still sitting around in an office. We offered what he is worth plus twenty percent—it’s generous.
“True. That means we cut the dollar signs until he folds,” I say, and they all agree.
“I’ll take an account of what else I find. I’m sure there is more.” I stand, growing bored of the company.
“Right on.” Holden sighs.
“So, what’s the plan then, just let them?” Carson asks, no doubt thinking about Emily. He doesn’t care much about her losing her job since she is going private and becoming a consultant. There are dozens of companies we know of that could use her skills.
Forbes, I know nothing about, but I’m not thinking about that.
“No, depending on what we find, we’ll either pull the plug or shorten the offer,” Holden answers.
“And quit going global?” I stuff my hands in my pockets, my stance wide and eyes bored.
“I don’t know. We can’t do it dishonestly.” He grows somber, and I almost feel bad for him. We all have the same goal, but Holden actually feels it on his back every day, so it’s different.
“Yeah, right. I’ll let you know.”
I leave their murmurs behind me and reach my office. The screen is still up when I refresh with Forbes’ profile. Emily didn’t tell her about the merger, so she can’t hate me because of that, and if that were the case, she wouldn’t like any of us, but she carries on a conversation with the other three easily. It isn’t that. The investigative bones in my body only work if there is math involved. I can’t figure it out.
She won’t tell me. Neither will she admit to wanting me.
That night at the bar, it was clear as day we’re drawn to each other tighter than the springs holding this building up, more than gravity hanging the sun. I know because I can still feel it on my skin like she is right next to me again. Her eyes tell me I’m right, the clench of her legs that night showed me.
Nothing has caught my attention besides work in years since before Dad even passed or made me think about something other than books and an attention span long enough to read them. Forbes has. It isn’t because she glaringly despises me, it’s the opposite.
It’s because I know there is a part of her that doesn’t.
10
Forbes
My feelings are voided when I leave the bar for days after. Saturday is relaxation day, in this case, the day before New Year’s Eve. Emily was almost very convincing, and I nearly packed a bag to join her and Carson and his family for their ski trip to their cabin in Aspen, but I managed not to. Managed, an operative word, because I didn’t want to go more than I did.
I have the same plans—dinner from an obscure restaurant that’s open on this holiday and homemade dessert. It’s looking like cupcakes this year because, for some reason, I have a surplus of both chocolate and vanilla icing. I’m not sure why, but it will do.
After doing yoga on my own, I take a brisk walk for three blocks until I get to the coffee shop I like, passing two that I don’t like on the way. I watch my feet, white canvas shoes scraping on the pavement. It’s nice around this part of the city all the while catching fleeting images of Dylan in my head again.
Dylan has the face a tortured artist would draw to emulate beauty and pain, half his face drawn away by the thickness of his beard, hiding his true emotions, whatever they may be. And his eyes, eyes that window his thick emptiness, full of nothing but not shallow, the grayest I have ever seen—they dilate and glisten when he might smile but doesn’t, are normal when he is, and darken with his bolder thoughts. Like the ones he voiced when he pressed himself up against me and held his breath to my ear as he disabled yet another part of me.
I trip, the memory distracts me, luckily no one is around, and I’ve reached the public space of the coffee shop inside. After I order, I figure I’m in no rush, so I sit down inside with my black coffee and plain bagel instead of rushing home only to take a longer shower than I need to. My phone keeps me company, very millennial, and I read the newspaper long enough to pretend I haven’t been reading the same book Dylan was that night. Even though I read it back in college, it was years ago, and a connection visible enough to ignore comes about when I do. It’s getting harder to hate him, which isn’t good at all. It’s all I have. I’m not a workaholic. I leave work every day at five. Hobbies were never my thing either. I have routine tasks but not hobbies. Two years gave me time and leverage to silently stew, reflect, question myself, and then change my mind. Because I know I am right, and what he did was inadvertently evil, to be directly evil would be too easy. We can’t be one thing.
Dylan is complex—the more time I spend around him, the clearer it gets, he isn’t left or right, one way or the other—he is all directions, all possibilities. He’s the man responsible for my only life tragedy as much as the man behind my recent closeted sexual drive. What’s even worse than disliking him is the clear fact that he is right—I do want him, or maybe not I, my body wants him—and I’m afraid to let it around him again in case I may not be able to control it.
I don’t give it a second thought. Emily will never let me hear the end of it if I tell her, and I’ll never be able to either if I don’t tell her and stop going anywhere she never fails to invite me to. I’ve learned how to be around him without imagining stab wounds or planning public defacement, but now there’s something else on the books—teaching my body not to be so damned greedy.
As I sit in the coffee shop, I tell myself to look at all the men walking in and out, any of them—well, the ones that could be my age. It’s Saturday, so plenty of gym goers pass and plenty are sight-worthy, but none
run my pulse like seeing Dylan does. And it’s frustrating. I will anything to happen, and I get nothing. Why Dylan? Why does he have to make me sick and charged at the same time?
Again, there must be, I guess, a very thin line between lust and hate.
* * *
“Shouldn’t you be necking with Carson right about now?”
“No, that was right on the dot of midnight. But I couldn’t leave you all alone in the new year.” Emily graces a laugh. She is a good friend.
“Thanks, I wasn’t alone. I had Ryan Seacrest.” I giggle, she does the same. I hear a lot of movement on her end, noises in the background. I recognize the rugged voices as some of Carson’s brothers. I don’t listen out for Dylan—not at all.
“Right, because he is great company. What did you do today?”
“Nothing, enjoyed my own company. You?”
She sighs. “Skiing. I still don’t know how. I ride the lift over and over. But I have good news.”
“Really?” I smile a bit laying back on the couch after running to answer my phone. I huff out a moist breath as my head hits the cushion of my couch.
“Yes. Dylan ate snow really hard yesterday, sprained his ankle.”
“Oh, I was hoping for a clean break.” I snicker, but the disdain doesn’t even come through as usual. I can’t even be my usual hateful self toward him anymore. It’s like I’m broken, weighed down by the drawing tension of the physicality between Dylan and me.
“You’re so foul. Anyway, we’ll be home soon. I’m not sure when Carson wants to leave, I imagine the second or third, though. We can go shopping and ring in the new year right.”
I smile to myself. “Sure, sounds good. Thanks for calling.”
“Yeah, no problem. I don’t have to go, though. The guys are camping out, and everyone else fell asleep.”
“I do, I’m half asleep.”
“Ugh, you, too.”
I lie. “Yeah, long day. We’re not nineteen anymore.”
“Okay.” She sighs. “I guess I’ll entertain myself. What was up with you and Dylan at the club, I meant to ask?” her voice spikes. And to think I was almost free of a prying conversation. It’s why I avoided talking to her leading up to it. Over lunch at work I talked about my doctor’s visit, she’ll never glaze over that. And if she asked, I easily dodged it. I answer because I’m running out of excuses.
“Nothing.”
“A truce?”
“Hell no.”
“Does he know why you don’t like him? He probably thinks you’re just a bitch, which would be easy considering how you talk to him.” She laughs. “It’s funny for me, not so much for him. But he doesn’t know you aren’t really like that.”
I scoff. “I don’t care what he thinks,” I lie, though I only care if he is thinking that I believe he is right.
“He doesn’t know, and I don’t think I will tell him.”
“Will you tell me? So I at least know how serious you are,” she presses. Emily wouldn’t think I judge people, go off that assumption and never change my mind. So, she knows there is a reason but doesn’t know what it is because I haven’t told her, not beside the gist I gave her a few weeks ago.
“I don’t know. You’re like part of their family, and it would be weird.”
“Forbes, they’re not invincible to me. And I’m not Dylan’s friend, not really.”
“Yeah, I know. Maybe. Dylan is…”
“Handsome and brooding in a secret way? Obscenely rich and exudes big-dick energy? I’m missing something…”
I laugh from my gut. “No… well yes, but no. It’s complicated.” I laugh again.
“Yeah, I can imagine. Well, you know Dylan wasn’t always like this. Before his dad died, he was a completely different person.”
“You don’t have to defend him to me…” I can relate to that incredibly well because before my dad died, only certain parts of me were gone, slowly fading with time because of him losing his job and changing. Before he was gone contrasts with after he was gone and until now.
“I know. At the bar, you two hiding off in the corner. You looked good, and it didn’t look like you hated him at all. It sure did look like he was enraptured by you, though,” Emily sings.
“I… that’s neither here nor there, are you done?”
She laughs. “Sure.”
An unknown amount of time passes where we talk about anything, mostly her trip, and I listen dutifully. It’s easy to talk to Emily because she knows when I’m in the mood for questions and doesn’t ask me them if I don’t want her to. But I wasn’t kidding about being tired. I almost fall asleep on the phone with her until we hang up, and I migrate to my room.
I go through my nightly routine—face wash, teeth whitening gel, use the bathroom, braid down my hair. I eye my shower like it’s done me wrong. It corners the bathroom space, tall and wide, granite walls and a glass door, and the shower head is a large silver block pointing down. In short, it sold this apartment for me, that, and the detached tub on the other side. I stare it down for so long because only one thing happens in there at night since what Dylan said at the bar, what Dylan did. Still, I strip and climb inside letting the water get as hot as it can and ignoring how it dries my skin out. And his face staples to my thoughts as I step under the spray and close my eyes.
My hands drop down my body. His voice, as well as I can remember it, accompanies the hallucination of his hands on my skin. The inner fuel of my abhorrence toward him strikes a fire with the outer desire my body feels for him and cradles me right to an inevitable end. With wobbly knees, buckled feet, and a languid center, I drop into bed after barely drying off to beg sleep to end this day.
I hate that Dylan is right, and I can’t even hate him the way I deserve to.
11
Dylan
I make the call with a pit of dread weighing me down for reasons I don’t understand. I’m not a stalker, but it is exactly stalker material. Asking for information on someone, paying someone else to find it—the middleman doesn’t make it any less weird or in some ways illegal.
But I have to know.
Adrian Walters—the name rings bells that don’t make enough noise for me. I know it, I can remember how long ago it was relevant, but so much happened that it got shoved under a pile pressed by everything else—keeping Dad’s secret and then losing him, my family running in and out of circles with the aftermath of it. Not much outside of that stuck, including this.
The same man who we hired to find Isaac and still couldn’t find him seemed good enough for the task. Forbes isn’t missing. I want to know everything about her without asking because if I do, she wouldn’t tell me anyway. Any conversation I try to run with her goes around the track and doesn’t stop, relayed with the obvious coil of burning tension between us.
It makes everything worse. If her disliking me isn’t hard enough, physicality has to come and rear its head leaving me thinking of her when she isn’t even in the room, nowhere to be found. And it drives me crazy wondering how someone so alluring can have such an unattractive attitude if I can even call it that. Her quick wit and negative snipes toward me are as much arousing as the next girl sashaying herself around in front of me.
Both come at a price.
After I finish the day in the office, I’ve got nothing else to do but waste time until I drive to the estate for the New Year’s holiday. We usually do the same thing every year, and this year is no different with us flying to Aspen, besides the new additions, Alec and Brant’s kids, since they couldn’t go anywhere last year as they were recently born. It was weird when Alec got married since he is younger than me. It was a reminder that I don’t have much to show for, which isn’t a bad thing. It was completely different with Brant, though. He’s ten years older than me, always been a lifetime ahead of me. Now it seems like they both are.
I’m on my way to the gym when Avery Horris, the private investigator, calls.
“Do you have anything yet?”
“Hello,
I’m doing well. Glad you asked.” His voice is gruff, southern with a harsh humor he doesn’t mean intentionally.
“Right.” I slow my walk down the block, a few paces from the entrance to the gym.
“I don’t have anything. You know I don’t share any information until I’m sure.”
“Then why did you call?” My hand rests on my hip as I stare out into the empty street with only one working street light. I live in the middle of nowhere for less than market value. Everything goes in the bank. I don’t care for what I don’t need. I’m the most frugal of my brothers.
“To make sure you were sure about this.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“People think they want to know everything. Until they know everything.”
I chuckle under my breath. “Okay, Horris.”
“I have to be sure of these things, quality assurance.” He laughs.
Pausing to think about it happens easier than I thought. It might be wishful thinking that I could get everything from Forbes herself. It must be because that seems impossible. If it isn’t, then any hope I have of getting what I think I want will be lost if I show up knowing everything she wants to keep from me.
When someone hates you as much as she hates me, it feels even worse not to know why.
“Yeah, okay. When you get the information, let me know. I’ll tell you whether or not I want it then.”
“Okay, whatever you want.”
“Thanks, Horris.”
“Sure thing, and what about this other guy? Your brother.”
I scoff. “You can talk to Holden about that.”
“Got it. Talk soon.” He hangs up before I reply, though I wouldn’t have said much.
It feels like a good plan. I’ll know that someone has the answers while I still try to get them myself. Forbes won’t make that easy for me, though. Horris does most of what we could call dirty work for us. At first, we only hired him for background checks. He had a business back when Dad found him. Somehow, it trickled down into more private work, hence, why Dad asked him to try to find Isaac. He left his original company probably to continue his less-than-perfect legal work finding people who don’t want to be found. It’s hard to do that within the limits of the law. Regardless, it didn’t work on Isaac.
Wilde About Dylon: The Brothers Wilde Series — Book Four Page 7
