I hadn’t told Eric everything about what went down in Sterling’s office, but I had insinuated enough on the train back to Cambridge that he had gotten the basic picture. He had been asking me all week if I’d talked to him.
“No,” I said. “Like I keep saying, I’m not interested. But actually, I have to go. I have a bus to catch.”
“Chinatown?” he asked before taking a large bite of his donut.
I nodded. “Yep. Eight o’clock. I don’t want to miss it—otherwise I won’t get to the city until after one.”
He nodded, swallowing. “Cool. Be careful, will you? Those things catch on fire.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I teased, stepping up on my toes to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Have a good weekend. Try not to get a yourself sued.”
I walked out of the small room where I had worked for most of the last five months and made my way to the main entrance of the building, where I turned in my keycard to the security office and exited through the massive revolving doors. It hadn’t snowed again since Monday, so the streets were thankfully clear and ice-free. I walked out to the curb and looked down the street to hail a cab.
A shiny black town car pulled up in front of me, and I stepped back as driver came around to open the door for a drop-dead gorgeous woman wearing a thick fur coat over black trousers and a black blouse. She smiled at me with perfectly lined red lips as she exited, but it was a cold smile, the kind reserved for nameless help and people on the street. Her dark hair was pinned into an effortless chignon at the base of her neck, revealing large diamond studs at her ears that matched a sizable yet tasteful pendant hanging from her neck. She commanded the attention of just about everyone on the sidewalk with her obvious grace and confidence. I wasn’t the only one watching as she brushed past me toward the lobby, the stiletto heels of her boots clicking impatiently on the concrete.
When I turned back to face the curb again, I nearly shrieked when I was almost knocked over by the second person exiting the town car.
“Shit! I’m so sorry, miss. Are you all right?”
I looked up to find Brandon Sterling gazing at me with obvious concern that changed almost immediately to interest. He looked at me up and down with obvious curiosity, and possibly amusement.
I looked down at my clothes. In preparation for the ride, I had changed out of my work clothes into a more comfortable pair of jeans, black ankle boots, and an oversized gray turtleneck sweater that peeked over the collar of my parka. My favorite gray, knit beanie covered my bright hair, which lay in a casual braid down one shoulder. I had replaced my contacts, which tended to irritate my eyes in the cold, dry weather, with the tortoise-shell glasses. It was a far cry from the normal business attire he had seen me wear the other occasions we’d met.
“Something funny, Mr. Sterling?”
His smirk grew into an impossibly sweet smile—it was almost enough to make me forget his crass offer. “Not at all, Red. I was just thinking you look…well, more like the student you are, I suppose. It suits you.” His eyes dropped to the overnight bag slung over my arm. “Going somewhere?”
A flash of what looked like jealousy blazed across his strong features, which immediately resumed a look of bland calm. Flustered, I tried and failed several times to hike the strap over my shoulder, but it fell easily down the slippery exterior of my parka. Finally, I managed to keep it on. I pushed my glasses back up my nose.
“Classes start Monday,” I said impatiently. “I’m getting out of town for the weekend to visit family.” I glanced at my watch. “Actually, I need to get going if I’m going to make the eight o’clock bus.”
“Bran!”
The woman in the mink coat was standing in the doorway of the office building, ignoring the multiple associates I noticed waiting awkwardly behind her to exit. She frowned briefly in my direction before sending a bright white smile toward Sterling.
“Bran, dear, aren’t you coming?” she asked.
“Be right there.”
He wasn’t quite fast enough to erase the sadness from his face before I looked back at him. He rubbed a leather-gloved hand over his features and sighed before sending me a brief half-smile.
“I’m sorry about our…meeting on Monday, Skylar,” he said soberly. “Really. It was…not what I originally intended, I promise. If I could take it back and start over…well, I would.”
His woeful half-smile tightened visibly as he looked over my shoulder toward the office—likely to the beautiful woman waiting for him inside. Was she his girlfriend? He had said he wasn’t with anyone else. Perhaps an arrangement like he had requested with me, then. Whatever they were, he didn’t seem very happy in her company.
Before I could say anything, he reached out a tentative hand and squeezed me gently on the shoulder, the tips of his fingers lingering a moment before they fell away.
“You have a good trip, Skylar,” he said quietly, and walked away.
~
I never liked taking the long bus ride to New York, but at less than twenty dollars each way, it was the best option for a poor student when compared to the hundred-plus-dollar ticket for the train or plane. The buses were noisy, usually packed to the gills with other poor travelers like myself. While I had yet to actually be on a bus that stopped because of mechanical problems, I had heard the same horror stories Eric mentioned of the rickety old things bursting into flames right on the interstate. Still, the drivers drove fast and efficiently, and it wasn’t uncommon to make the trip in less than four hours if there was no traffic.
Being second in line to board, I was able to get my preferred seat—right in the front, where I could watch the road and avoid carsickness. My seat mate was an elderly lady who barely reached my shoulder and didn’t crowd our small space. She lived in Roxbury and was going down for the weekend to visit her son in New Jersey.
“Do you come to New York often?” she asked, her r’s barely evident with her thick Boston accent.
“Fairly often,” I said. “My dad lives in Brooklyn. I grew up there.”
“Oh, what a good daughter you are, going to see your dad. I wish my Tommy would make the trip up here, but he’s got a big job on Wall Street, says he can’t get away.”
She lifted her hands up into the air as if to say, “what can you do?” Then she looked at me up and down the way only older women can do without appearing brazen.
“Pretty girl like you. Look at all that red hair. Is your family Irish?”
I smiled and nodded. “A bit on both sides. I’m told I get the hair from my grandfather. I never knew him, though.”
“Does your dad look like him?”
“Not at all,” I told her. “He takes after my Bubbe with dark hair.”
She balked at my casual use of Yiddish. “You’re an Irish Jew? Honey, you are definitely from New York. There ain’t nowhere else someone who looks like you would have a bat mitzvah, that’s for sure.”
I smiled and looked down at the copy of the Harvard Law Review in my lap. I had never had a bat mitzvah; technically I wasn’t Jewish, since my mother wasn’t. It didn’t matter that I had been raised by my dad and grandmother. Dad didn’t go to synagogue any more, and Bubbe never seemed to care one way or another if I did. “I guess not.”
“Your dad like your boyfriend?”
I frowned and looked back up at her. “Excuse me?”
She tugged a bag of knitting from underneath her seat and pulled out what looked like the start of a tiny sweater “This is for my daughter’s baby, due in October. Little girl. I can’t wait to be a grandmother. I feel like I’ve been waiting forever to have grandkids.” She leaned over knowingly. “Pretty girl like you must have a boyfriend, don’t you, dear?”
Before I could stop it, a certain handsome face with dark blond hair flashed through my head. That thick lion’s mane. That stupid Cheshire grin. Even when he wasn’t there, it got him what he wanted. Oh, he would just love this conversation.
I shook my head, as much to get the image out of it
as to answer her question. “No, no boyfriend. I’m in law school—too busy.”
“Oh, I see,” she said knowingly, with the trace of sadness I often heard in Bubbe’s voice every time she asked about my personal life. I suppressed a huff and opened my copy of the Review to an article on the decision to legalize gay marriage in Massachusetts. It popped up a couple times in my classes, so it wouldn’t hurt to be up to speed about the changes in the law for the clinic.
The bus chugged on into the cold night, and it didn’t take long for the hum of the wheels on the pavement to put me to sleep against the cold window. I woke up briefly for the bathroom break at a roadside gas station, but quickly burrowed into my bunched parka and slept soundly for the rest of the trip.
I awoke to a light tap on my shoulder. My seat mate, who had her knitting neatly bagged up in my purse, smiled kindly at me as she shoved her arms back through her practical winter coat.
“We’re here, dear,” she said kindly.
Blearily, I pulled my gray cap back on and shoved my glasses back on my nose. After pulling on my parka, I filed off the bus after my seat mate.
“Well, I hope you have a nice visit with your pops,” she told me as she took her suitcase from the driver.
“Thanks,” I replied, taking my overnight bag from him as well. “You have a nice trip with your son.”
“I will. Tommy’s waiting for me just over there in a taxi. I’d offer to introduce you, but I see you have your own escort waiting for you.”
“What?” Confused, I looked up from my phone, on which I was checking the time.
She chuckled and tapped one finger on the side of her nose. “Sure, you’re too busy. Well, he’s a handsome one, dear, I’ll give you that.” She reached out and patted me on the cheek with a leather-gloved hand before pointing over my shoulder. “You have a good night, sweetheart.”
As she walked toward one of the waiting taxis outside of the bus station, I turned over my shoulder, wondering who she was talking about. And there, of course, was Brandon Sterling, with that damn smile in its full-blown glory as he pushed casually off a streetlight pole like he had been waiting there for me my whole life.
~
Chapter 8
“What the hell are you doing here?”
The question flew out, sharp and curt, before I could stop it. I was bedraggled, still half-asleep, and I probably had upholstery lines on the side of my face. The last thing I expected to see was six feet, four inches of heart-stoppingly gorgeous, utterly chauvinistic tycoon waiting for me on a poorly lit corner in East Chinatown. With almost a solid day’s worth of dark blond growth on his ruddy cheeks, Sterling had a somewhat more rugged quality contrasting his three-thousand-dollar veneer, but he still looked completely out of place in this neighborhood.
A light nudge at my back reminded me that there were still other people waiting for their bags, so I handed a tip to the porter in exchange for mine and walked past Sterling without an answer. The nearest Q line stop was at least fifteen blocks down Canal Street, and I wanted to get out of the cold.
“Skylar! Hey! Where are you going?”
I continued to walk, in no mood to play games. It was after midnight. I was tired and hungry, having skipped dinner. My bullshit tolerance level was down to zero. I felt, rather than heard, his steps quicken so he was walking in stride with me.
“Hey,” he said again. “I don’t even get a hello?”
I sighed, but refused to meet his gaze as I kept striding toward the more crowded parts of Canal Street. I didn’t need that face doing things to me again. I just wanted to get home.
“Skylar, really?”
Finally, I mustered the best glare I could, even though just looking at him made my steps falter slightly. “Fine. Hi. How are you. And what are you doing here, Mr. Sterling?”
“Brandon, I told you. Five days ago I had my tongue down your throat, Red, so I think we’re past formalities, don’t you?” He raised a sly eyebrow, and my steps tripped again.
I huffed, looked back to the pavement in front of me, and tried to outpace him, but his long legs had no problem keeping up with my decidedly shorter ones. Deciding to give up the fight, I stopped and faced him, ignoring the way my bag started to fall down my shoulder again. This stupid coat. Stupid bag. I’d have given anything in that moment for a backpack or a rolling suitcase. God, I couldn’t wait to get home.
“Look,” I snapped, finally letting my duffel fall to the ground by my feet. “Don’t take this personally, but what the fuck is your problem? Seriously. Are you stalking me or something?”
He grinned, and I looked away. His face absolutely transformed with a smile; irritatingly, it appeared that the more he did it, the more impossible it was not to be attracted to it, even in my foul mood.
“It’s cute, you know,” he said. “Your accent comes out when you’re really pissed off.” He leaned in close so his mouth hovered next to my ear. “I wouldn’t mind bringing that out that growl some place more private, you know?”
That did it. Suddenly I didn’t see a smile any more. I only saw red.
“Oh my God! Are you some kind of creep? I don’t know what about me makes you think ‘call girl’, but Jesus fucking Christ! I might be the daughter of a garbage collector, but that doesn’t make me trash, you got me, motherfucker? What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you always treat women like this? Did you not learn that no means no? Do I need to call the fucking cops?”
I nodded down the street, where there were a few police cars were parked outside one of the many Chinese restaurants. Even at this time of night in the middle of winter, the central part of Canal Street was crowded with throngs of tourists, so there were usually at least a few squad cars within shouting range.
Sterling’s cocky smirk disappeared almost instantaneously. His large blue eyes blinked, and he drew a hand roughly through his hair. His ears were turning red in the cold, and all signs of that infuriating arrogance were gone.
“Fuck,” he muttered as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “Fuck. No. God, I’m doing this all wrong, aren’t I?”
“That would be a massive understatement.” I crossed my arms and glared.
He met my gaze and swallowed roughly. “I’m just…Shit, I don’t do this, Skylar. Normally I wouldn’t bother, but there’s something…”
He shook his head in confusion, but I wasn’t sure with what. I sighed. I didn’t have the patience tonight to figure out this guy’s mood swings.
I picked my duffel bag up and heaved it back over my shoulder, then continued my walk toward the subway entrance, still at least eight ten blocks away. A few seconds later, his footsteps caught up with me yet again.
“Skylar. I’m sorry. Truly. Can we start over? Please? I didn’t mean for you to get that feeling from me at all. I’m not some kind of psycho stalker, despite what you might think. And if you knew me, you’d know that I’m the last person to judge someone based on their background.”
“Oh?” I asked dubiously. “And why’s that?”
“Because I don’t exactly come from much myself.”
I stopped walking again and turned to look at him directly. His blue eyes bore no trace of sarcasm—they were wide, guileless.
“Garbage collector’s daughter?” He pointed at me before turning his finger back to himself. “Foster kid.”
Yeah, he certainly had me there. It didn’t explain his crude behavior, but it at least absolved him of being a classist dick.
“Oh,” I said. “Well. Really?”
“Eight years in the system,” he said, his voice strangely upbeat. “Two when I was a baby, six more after I turned twelve. In between I was stuck in a shitty row house in Dorchester.”
It didn’t escape me the way the “r” in “Dorchester” was slightly flattened out, the way cabbies and my classmates from the rougher parts of Boston sometimes spoke. I had barely heard Sterling break his usually region-less diction; he obviously worked even harder than I did to erase
whatever remnants of his former life still remained with him. I sympathized; accents were hard to shake.
“Dorchester, huh?” I asked.
He grimaced. “I don’t really like talking about it, but if you insist, I’ll tell you about it in the car.”
He cocked his head toward the ever-present town car that had apparently been creeping alongside us the entire time.
I frowned. “Well, that solves the rich kid problem, but you’re still a creepy stalker. You had your driver bring you all the way here so you could appear at my bus stop?” I didn’t know whether to be alarmed or flattered. It was just weird.
He glanced back at the car with disgust, as if he realized for the first time what it looked like to me. “Ah, no, this is definitely not my car. My driver is still in Boston.”
I scoffed. I had forgotten he actually had a live-in driver.
“I took a helicopter and called a car from the helipad,” he continued like that was somehow better, oblivious to the fact that he was basically speaking a foreign language. “This is just a regular town car. I’ll give you a ride to wherever you’re going—I’m guessing your family’s place in Brooklyn, right? It’ll save you time and train fare.”
I pursed my lips, still determined not to give in, despite the puppy-dog look I was currently on the receiving end of. I might have felt bad about the foster care stuff, and he might be as awkward with women as he claimed to be, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t still creeped out. “Ah, no thanks. I don’t get into cars with strange men I don’t know who follow me from city to city by helicopter. Subway’s fine for me.”
I continued down the street, dodging around the increasing crowds of tourists perusing the late-night tchotchke stands and gawking at the rows of Peking ducks in the restaurant windows.
“Skylar, you spent the night at my house,” Brandon argued, fighting to keep his big frame paced evenly with mine as I weaved through the crowd. “We’re hardly strangers at this point, don’t you think?”
“Fine. I don’t get into cars with former bosses who have propositioned me for sex either,” I insisted, hitching my bag over my shoulder once again. “Besides, I like the train.”
Legally Yours (Spitfire Book 1) Page 8
