Legally Yours (Spitfire Book 1)

by Nicole French

  “Ah, no,” he said a little too loudly, suddenly preoccupied with clearing his throat. “Which is probably why it went so god-awful terrible.”

  Without a hat, his ears were tinged pink in the cold, but I thought they reddened even more.

  “It doesn’t happen a lot, but when it does, it’s usually more of a spontaneous accompaniment home from an event sort of thing.” He sighed. “I have to go to a lot of those things. They’re really boring.”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything. I had little experience, but getting all dressed up to go to a glamorous benefit didn’t sound like a terrible Friday night. Especially if you had a happy ending waiting for you afterward. Suddenly the image I had in my head of Brandon in a tux morphed straight into me taking it off him. The shoulders that strained against the seams of his overcoat couldn’t look anything but phenomenal without anything covering them. Except maybe me, hoisted over one. Ugh, there went my stomach again, flipping all over the place.

  We continued to walk another block lost in our individual thoughts (mine a bit more salacious than expected), our footsteps crunching loudly on the salt-covered sidewalk. Although a car would occasionally rumble by and the buses could be heard screeching a few blocks away, we were, for the most part, alone as we walked between the mounds of snow piled up on both sides of the sidewalk from shovels and snowplows, encasing us in cold, white tunnels.

  A sneaky patch of black ice caused me to lose my footing. As I started to fall backward, Sterling shot out a quick hand and caught me by the elbow, yanking me upright again and catching me with both arms so that we were suddenly face-to-face. He peered down at me, close enough that I could smell the sweet, minty flavor of his breath, tinged slightly with brandy. He sucked in a bit of frigid air and exhaled slowly through his nose. I, on the other hand, found it hard to breathe at all. His eyes shot down to look at my top lip, clenched in between my teeth. He inhaled again, sharply.

  Just as he started to lean down closer, we were interrupted by the rumble and exhaust of a delivery truck as it passed by, accompanied by a loud whistle out its passenger window.

  “Take her home, Romeo!” called out its occupant.

  Thankful that Brandon couldn’t see my reddened cheeks in the dim light, I hastily stepped out of his embrace with an awkward mumble of thanks. He watched me for a moment and sighed, but stepped close beside as we started to walk again. When his hand brushed against mine, he captured it quickly and tucked it into his pocket along with his as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.

  “So your dad,” he said. “He’s younger than I would have thought.”

  I nodded, trying to ignore the way his fingers were curled around mine, the pad of his thumb brushing gently against my inner palm. I should have pulled my hand away. Should have, but didn’t.

  “Yeah,” I replied slowly, suddenly finding it a bit more difficult to articulate my words. “He and my mom had me young. Like, high school young.”

  “Was he a good dad?”

  I sighed, more out of contentment. Thinking about Dad always made me feel that way. I adored him; there wasn’t any adequate way of expressing how grateful I was that he was my father.

  “He was—he is—the best,” I said emphatically. “I mean, he couldn’t be there all the time because he worked two jobs to support me and my grandmother, but when he came home in the evenings, before he’d go out to perform, that was our time. He was always game for a hug, always made sure to be there to put me to bed. He taught me how to stand up for myself and always made me feel loved. I never felt like I was missing anything with him…not for a long time, anyway.”

  “What happened to your mom?”

  I frowned. I didn’t particularly like talking about Janette Jadot nee Chambers, but that was because I tried not to waste time thinking about her. I had no idea what she looked like now, but in my mind I saw the same person who had last visited me when I was twelve: a tall, slim woman with dark hair, a turned up nose, and the big green eyes I’d inherited. She was friendly, vivacious, and loved to laugh. She was also a complete flake.

  “She took off about a year after I was born,” I said shortly. “She and my dad were never married, so that made things easier. To leave, I mean. She came from…well, she came from money.”

  He didn’t respond, waiting patiently for me to fill in the gaps. I realized then I hadn’t ever really told this entire story to anyone, not even Jane, who had mostly deduced it on her own. It was embarrassing to admit that your own mother didn’t want you.

  I sighed. “Why do I have the feeling like you’d see through any bullshit besides the absolute truth?” I repeated softly.

  Brandon chuckled and squeezed my hand tighter inside his pocket. “Trust me, Red, I’m no one to judge your shitty mom. I ended up in a group home after mine fell off the wagon a few, oh, dozen too many times. So it’s fine. You tell me what you want, or just say you don’t want to.” He turned his head to peer down at me. “We all have a few secrets, right?”

  I pursed my lips and blew a breath out slowly, watching it plume white against the night air. “It’s fine. It’s not a secret—thinking about her is just a waste of time.”

  He didn’t respond, just waited patiently as I decided what parts of the story to tell.

  “She and my dad met at the School of Performing Arts. She’s an ‘artist’.” I held up my free hand to mime quotation marks around the word, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “She does mostly these ridiculous installations with a collective she started in Paris. Man Ray style stuff, if you know who that is. Like, hanging strings of glue all over someone’s office to insinuate the constrained web of capitalism.”

  I rolled my eyes at the thought. That particular stunt had ended her first marriage, considering the office belonged to her husband’s boss and cost him his job. I only heard about it when my stepfather called to inform me he would no longer be in my life. I had only met him a handful of times, so I figured the call was mostly for his own sense of guilt than for my feelings. I kicked a hard tuft of snow, which exploded against my boot.

  “Anyway,” I continued. “She left way before that. She said she hadn’t earned the right to be my mother. That she needed to find her path in life before she could lead me down mine. That’s what her letter said, anyway.”

  I looked up, and was surprised to find obvious anger marring Brandon’s kind features, rather than the pity most people exuded when they discovered I had grown up without a mother.

  “When was that?” he asked tightly.

  “I was four when she wrote that letter.”

  “There were more?”

  I snorted. “I’ve got a shoebox full of them. Let’s just say my dad was kind of her rebound every time a relationship—or maybe her latest marriage—ended. It took him a while to stop taking her back, and every time, she’d send me a little apology note for leaving. Or for missing my birthday. Forgetting Christmas. You get the picture.”

  My faced twisted into the familiar expression of disgust that I felt every time I recalled the cardboard box filled with those stupid letters, still sitting under my childhood bed. Some of them were written on hotel stationary—usually from some place swanky, like the Waldorf or the Plaza—but most of them were scribbled on her own personal stationary, engraved with swooping cursive initials at the top of each page. After she moved to France, they were peppered with French idioms for a while until eventually they just stopped. The last one, sent just after I graduated high school, contained a bank account number and the legal documents for my trust fund, which I had only ever used to pay for school. I’d considered tearing that one up, but in the end I decided not to force my dad into debt over my education. I figured she owed me—and him—that much.

  I was twelve when he turned her away for good. She had smiled at me awkwardly from the living room by way of greeting, but it wasn’t until she offered to put Bubbe and me up at a hotel for a week so she and my dad could be reacquainted that he tossed her right
back out and told her not to come back unless she wanted to see me. So she didn’t. Not when I graduated the valedictorian of my high school class or cum laude from NYU. Not when I celebrated any of my birthdays. And definitely not when I was studying abroad in France, just a short train ride from the Parisian suburb where she had lived in with her fifth husband and their two kids since I was sixteen. But I always got her letters.

  “What a bitch,” Brandon pronounced, enunciating each word carefully as the anger gradually dissipated from his face. “I’m sorry, but there’s really no other way to say it. You’re lucky you have your dad.”

  “I am,” I agreed, although my stomach dropped a little thinking of Nick’s comments at the bar. “Plus there was Bubbe, too. We went to live with her, at this house, and together…I don’t know. I would get a little jealous from time to time when my friends would have their moms cook them dinner and pick them up from school, but honestly I got just as many hugs, and Bubbe made just as many meals. I had a good home.”

  He smiled, and squeezed my hand in his pocket. “Bubbe. You’re Jewish, then?”

  I shook my head, laughing. “Not really. Bubbe attends synagogue and sometimes my dad and I take her on special days, but that’s it. My mother’s not Jewish, so to a lot of Conservatives, technically I’m not either.”

  “So, do you know where your mom is now? Is she still hanging glue in people’s offices?”

  I chuckled. “Not that I know of, although I think she does still make installations. She lives outside of Paris, with her fifth husband and their two kids.”

  It was hard to talk about her new family without that familiar ache in my chest. For so long it had seemed like she just wasn’t the family type, that my dad and I had nothing to do with her issues with commitment and devil-may-care approach to relationships. But she had been with Maurice Jadot for almost a decade. If Christmas cards were any indication, they were extremely happy.

  “Do you talk to her much now?”

  I darted a sharp look his way. Why was he so interested in my relationship with Janette?

  “Like I said, no,” I said, maybe a little too sharply. “But my dad and Bubbe was and are all the family I need.”

  I was being defensive, but I couldn’t help it. Years of unwelcome pity for the little girl without a mommy did that to a person. People started to look for the things that were wrong with me when they found out. They searched for my scars. But when I looked back at Brandon, there was no pity in his eyes, only acknowledgement of what I’d said.

  “Of course,” he said softly. “But then again, you don’t seem that hard to love. That’s why…I suppose that’s the real reason I made such an ass of myself.”

  I gulped, my heart stopping in my chest. “Because you love me?” That was even crazier than I’d thought.

  “No. No! Jesus, here I go again, right?” He pulled our hands from his pocket and shook mine back and forth, as if to force me out of the obvious daze the word “love” had cause. “Skylar, no. That’s not what I meant.”

  “Then what did you mean?” I asked, ignoring the drop in my chest and the emphasis on the word “no.” What was going on with me?

  “I just meant…” he stared up at the city-lit sky, covered in its usual halo from the streetlights and buildings that blocked the stars beyond. He grabbed my other hand and pulled me to face him again. “I just meant that you’re special, all right? That much has been clear, since the second I saw you. And it makes me…I didn’t know how to react to it. What do you do when just the look of someone renders you completely and totally awestruck?”

  His words made my breath catch in my throat, and I was relieved that when I looked to the side, I found the familiar drooping eaves of the old house that would always be home. Somehow its comforting presence absolved me of a direct response.

  I pulled my hands reluctantly from his grasp and gestured toward the house beyond the weather-worn, chain-linked fence. “Here’s the castle. Chez Crosby, if you will.”

  The two-story Victorian wasn’t anything impressive. The dark brown paint hadn’t been resealed in my lifetime, causing it to flake in several spots. The front door had swollen after some flooding last spring, so it stuck when opened and closed unless you pushed with your whole body. The lawn, small and currently covered with snow, was bound by the simple chain-link fence and a faded black mailbox perched crookedly at the entry gate.

  Brandon surveyed the property curiously. “It’s nice.”

  I shrugged. “It’s no mansion on the Commons, but it’s home.”

  “It looks more like a home than any mansion,” he said with a small smile, and maybe even a trace of envy? Then his gaze shifted to me and we both seemed to stop breathing for another several seconds.

  “I don’t know what it is about you, Red,” he said, his voice cutting roughly through the silent night air. “Maybe it’s your seriousness. Maybe it’s your hair. Maybe it’s the way you sing or maybe it’s the way you don’t take any of my shit. But when I’m around you…it’s like there’s no more Brandon Sterling, CEO any more. There’s just me. And there’s just you. Am I wrong?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. He wasn’t wrong, but I couldn’t quite find the words to say it. The truth of it scared me too much.

  “I think there’s something here,” he muttered gruffly. “Something that I…that I think I have to make time for it.” He paused. “Am I crazy? You have to tell me.”

  “Maybe a little,” I said back, no sense of joke in my voice.

  His eyes searched mine in earnest as he moved one step closer to me. “But…you feel it too?”

  There was no use pretending I didn’t. I didn’t understand the attraction, didn’t know what had caused this man to follow me all the way to New York just to make sure I got home safe. I didn’t understand why my tongue felt about two sizes too big for my mouth when I looked at him or why I didn’t want it to stop either. But somehow, in just the space of a few hours, a few layers had been shed, and it was clear to me that the idiot in his office, the smart ass on the street, they weren’t the real Brandon Sterling. The guy who cared enough to escort me home, who listened raptly when I talked about myself, who spoke vehemently in my defense, and who offered his home to stranger on a cold, snowy night—that guy was the real Brandon Sterling. He was kind, slightly awkward, and intensely generous. And he was someone I wanted—no, needed to know.

  “Yes,” I whispered, unable to summon my normal voice. “I feel it.”

  Slowly he removed his gloves from his hands and put them in his pocket. He placed his palms gently on my cheeks, framing my face and forcing me to look up at him.

  “So it is real,” he murmured as he brushed his thumbs lightly over my cheekbones. “Skylar, do you mind if I kiss you right now?”

  I blew a pale breath through pursed lips as I shook my head wordlessly. There was nothing to say as he bent down to brush his lips lightly over mine. He looked at me as if uncertain whether or not I would allow him to continue. In response, I wrapped my arms around his taut waist and tugged him to me, lifting my mouth to meet his once again.

  He wanted to be gentle, but it only took a few seconds for his hands to cup my head securely at the neck and pull me deeper, teasing my mouth open so that he could twist his tongue sweetly with mine. This kiss didn’t have the same fury as the one in his office, but it was more potent. I relished in the slow, tentative strokes of his tongue, luxuriating in the taste of him. I pulled him closer, wanting more.

  When Brandon finally released me with a nip on my upper lip, we were both gasping, our breath dancing around us in disappearing clouds. He grinned.

  “So,” he said. “Dinner next Friday?”

  Apparently the cocksure guy wasn’t completely gone. I blushed, already feeling like a foregone conclusion, but not caring in the slightest at this point.

  “I thought you didn’t have time for that sort of thing,” I murmured as I tugged a bit on his jacket.

  “I’ll make t
ime,” he said, and leaned in for another brief kiss. “Like I said, I have to. I’ll pick you up at your place at eight. Wear a dress.”

  “Planning something fancy?” I teased.

  He just smiled, his eyes suddenly full of heat that belied the cold weather. “No,” he said. “You just have great legs.”

  Without breaking his gaze, he lifted my hand up and pressed his lips, still warm from our kiss, firmly against the interior of my palm.

  “Good night, Skylar,” he said solemnly. “And please stay safe. Don’t go walking down any dark streets by yourself, all right?”

  He watched from the sidewalk as I let myself into the house, then gave a slight wave before turning to walk back down the street. I shut the door quietly behind me and released the long, deep sigh I hadn’t known I’d been holding. It was going to be a long time until Friday.

  ~

  Chapter 11

  The weekend was far too short as always, but I was able to enjoy a few carefree days with my dad and Bubbe, playing board games while it snowed on Saturday and eating Bubbe’s stuffed cabbage before Dad’s gig. Throughout, however, the conversation with Nick lingered in the back of my mind.

  To his credit, Dad didn’t ask about Brandon, but that wasn’t unusual. I had dated so few men seriously, and I had brought friends to his gigs before. I didn’t want to tell him that his initial instinct was right, that I had possibly met someone special. I wasn’t sure what that meant anyway. Not yet.

  “Now, Skylar, are you sure you don’t want me to pack you some cabbage for tomorrow too? We have plenty leftover,” my grandmother said on Sunday morning, her short, squat frame positioned at the stove while she stirred a pan full of onions and eggs. A large blintz cooked in the oven. As was her usual routine, she had taken my visit as an excuse to stuff her family silly with various comfort foods. I was going to have to roll myself back to Boston.

  “You’re too skinny, girl, look at you. Daniel, will you look at her? Like a twig, this one. What kind of man is going to want a girl with hips like a little boy?”