The Good Chase

by Hanna Martine

  “He said something about trusting you. How he had faith in you because you guys had the same foundation or something like that.”

  A little ball of nerves in his stomach grew spikes and started to roll around. “That’s what he said?”

  “Yes.” She fondled the edge of a blanket draped over the back of the armchair.

  “He told me he wants you to work for him.”

  The lines across her forehead deepened. “He does. He wants to build me into a brand. Writing articles and a travel series and a bunch of other stuff. He asked once before and I turned him down. He came back to beg for a meeting.”

  Byrne sat up, scooting to the edge of the cushion. “Wow. That’s really exciting. A huge opportunity, Shea.”

  “It is. A huge amount of money, too.”

  Byrne could only imagine.

  “You weren’t thinking about that, about me possibly working with him, when you told him about me, were you?”

  “No, not at all. You’d just shot me down—again—but it didn’t make me think any less of you. Just the opposite, in fact. I ran into him shortly thereafter and realized he’d probably get a kick out of you.”

  That seemed to relax her a bit, though he couldn’t say why.

  “What’re you thinking?” he asked.

  She sighed. “I am . . . intrigued by his new proposal, but I have a lot of doubt about the products his company puts out, what sort of image he’s selling.”

  “Ah. Of course.” Byrne rubbed his hands together.

  “This is going to sound terrible, but the second I heard that you’d introduced us, I had images of you two making some sort of cigar- and booze-filled deals in the back of a strip club about me—”

  “Shea, my God. I would never—”

  “I know.” She held up a hand. “I know that now, and I feel shitty for ever thinking that.”

  Suddenly he understood the sadness and doubt etched into her face. “Marco really fucked with your head,” he said.

  “He did. I’m just cautious now. And maybe a little paranoid.”

  “Not every guy, or business deal, is like that, you know.”

  “I’m slowly learning that, but I’ve been burned so badly before.” She draped one thigh over the arm of the chair and settled her weight onto it. “Pierce knows my doubts surrounding the other things his company does and made mention that he is willing to branch me out under a new umbrella, taking that into consideration.”

  “That’s good. That’s a start.”

  “After you left he made these cryptic remarks about how I shouldn’t judge his proposal based on the fact that you made the introductions. That’s where the foundation thing came in. He said you guys bonded over something, and what he learned about you made him label you one of the good guys. That he trusted you when he trusted so few people.”

  Oh boy.

  “Can I ask you about that?”

  Byrne blew out a breath and had to look away from her. Of course his gaze hit the green toy train engine straightaway, and it made his heart hurt. “You really want to know?”

  “I do. I’m curious, Byrne. I’m curious about you.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes.” She rolled her eyes exasperatedly, but it had shades of the fun Shea he knew and adored. “We’ve spent so much time talking about me, I feel like, and so little time talking about you.”

  Foundations. That’s how Pierce had put it, huh? If what the two of them had had could actually be considered foundations. And Pierce had thrown it out to Shea as part of his sales pitch, it seemed, pulling Byrne into it. Pierce saw no shame in that, but Byrne was mightily uncomfortable. He scrubbed his face with dry hands.

  When he pulled his hands away, there was the train engine again, filling his vision.

  Really no other way around this situation than to just say it. Shea had told him all about Marco and the divorce and the partner involved with the Amber. She’d told him about Scotland and her start with whisky, and had even brought him to meet her parents. And he’d, what, busted on a few rugby guys out on the pitch for her? Made a few jokes and got her naked? Ogled her while she sang karaoke?

  As she slid from the arm of the chair into the seat, he knew that if he wanted her in his life, if he wanted more from her, more between them—he’d have to tell her. If he wanted to give himself to her, he couldn’t do it piecemeal.

  Boom. So here he went.

  “When Pierce said that we—he and I—had the same foundations,” Byrne began, “he meant that we both grew up poor.”

  Shea’s head tilted a little, but she said nothing. Did not recoil or make an otherwise disgusted face.

  Inhale, Byrne. Exhale.

  “And when I say poor, I don’t mean like we clipped coupons and shopped at Walmart and couldn’t go out to eat that much. I mean like, we got our clothes through church donations and at the Goodwill if we were lucky. My family ate at the homeless shelter once a week, showered there, too. Until I got to junior high and I could shower at school, which I did in secret until I got caught one day by the wrong kid with the worst mouth. Speaking of school, I got free lunches and all other sorts of stuff that made for a couple of really awful years. Kids can be evil, and it’s hard to rise above shame and embarrassment at that age.”

  There. That was the expression Byrne had been waiting to see on Shea’s face. That openmouthed shock that straddled the line between pity and “I totally see you differently now.” The expression he dreaded so much growing up that he’d trained himself not to look into people’s eyes so he didn’t have to see their reaction to his hygiene or clothing or free lunches.

  But he was on a roll, and if she wanted to hear it all, then he was going to dump it all at her feet.

  “We lived in a train car, Shea. An abandoned, rusted train car sitting on an old set of tracks that ran through a tobacco field. Me and my younger sister and brother, my mom and dad. We lived in a fucking rotting piece of metal in the middle of a field because my parents had had me when they were in high school and got kicked out of their homes. They never finished school and had seasonal jobs at the tobacco farm because we didn’t have a car and couldn’t drive anywhere.”

  Her eyes immediately traveled to the green engine in the center of the coffee table. And then over to the red coal car on the bookcase in the corner.

  “Reminders,” he said, following her gaze. “Where I came from, and all that.”

  “What about family services?” she asked, her voice quiet.

  He stared at the engine. “My parents avoided that for a really long time. They wanted to keep us all together, to make us the best family they could, to not give up. They were good parents. It may sound strange to say, but they were. They are.”

  The couch cushions dipped, startling him out of his daydream. Shea had moved next to him. He blinked over at her. He was waiting for her disgust to show. The pity. The recoil. Except that she’d moved closer to him.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, where was this? Where did you grow up?”

  “South Carolina.”

  She gave him the tiniest of smiles. “What happened to your accent?”

  “Lost it. On purpose. After I got out of there and went to college, I let it all go.”

  “Byrne, I—” She cut herself off, her eyes ablaze with something he didn’t know how to name. “Wow. And you got into college on that football scholarship. Full ride, you said.”

  “Yep.” Absently, he rubbed his knee that tended to ache whenever he thought about this point in his life. “The second I left South Carolina, I realized I’d been given a fresh start. I could make up my whole past life, lie about my childhood. So I did. No one knew. I learned how to leave it all behind and become someone new. I learned how to push forward and never stop.” He waggled his eye
brows. “I learned how to talk to girls. How to talk to people, period. How to look them in the eye.”

  “And then Wharton.”

  He nodded. “More scholarships. Financial aid. Jobs out the ass. I had absolutely no life.”

  She pressed fingers to her lips and whispered, “Oh my God, Byrne.”

  She scooted closer. Now their thighs touched. He was starting to get a little dizzy from the proximity, combined with the feeling like he was bleeding out from the mouth, his gut empty but his heart fluttery and full.

  “I’d say I can’t believe you did all that on your own,” she said, “except that I totally do. I completely believe that you made all that happen. And now look at you.”

  “Now look at me,” he echoed, thinking of the clothes he’d kicked into the closet barely an hour earlier.

  She gasped. “You look, I hate to say it and I really can’t believe it, ashamed. Like you’re actually ashamed about all that you’ve accomplished.”

  “No, no. I’m not at all ashamed of that part. But the beginning, where I started off, my childhood . . . it hangs over me. How we lived, what I didn’t have, what I had to endure. I can’t shake it, no matter what I do. I’m trying, but I just can’t. You don’t understand what it’s like, hearing about where all these guys I went to school with and now work with came from. And it’s not even that they all grew up with money, although most of them did, but just to have, say, running water was a hell of a lot more than what I had.”

  He could feel his heartbeat kick up. His knee started to bounce. “And the culture I work in, Shea, it’s crazy. It wants wealth alone and tends to look down on those who don’t have it. So I keep my background private, close to me, because I don’t want to be judged for it. I’ve worked my fucking ass off to get where I am, and I can’t afford to be looked at any differently.”

  She regarded him for a thick moment. “I think you’ve got it all wrong. I think people would respect you even more because of where you came from and what you’ve accomplished. I think that’s what Pierce was trying to tell me.”

  “Yeah, but Pierce grew up an orphan, passed around foster homes, taking handouts his whole life. He knows me. He gets me. It’s different.”

  She looked down at her lap, and he knew he hadn’t convinced her. “I didn’t know that about Pierce,” she said. “Are your parents still alive? Your brother and sister?”

  He swallowed. “Yep. Still in South Carolina. Mom and Dad are still doing the odd-job, minimum-wage thing in their fifties. I don’t even think they have insurance. They don’t live in the train anymore. They’ve got a small apartment above a pizza place, but money is only slightly better than it used to be. Caroline just had a baby, well, not a baby so much anymore, but she never got beyond high school either, and her slacker boyfriend just barely supports them. Caroline works part-time as a cashier, but she’s smart, capable of so much more. My brother, Alex . . .” Byrne blew out a breath and scrubbed a hand through his hair.

  “Trouble?” Shea filled in.

  “You could say that. Never did anything his whole life, and then the gambling and drinking took over and we lost him. He’s destroyed my trust, but not my love. Not my hope for him. He’s actually gone home now, says he’s clean and wants to start over. I want to believe he’s better. Caroline tells me to. I’m trying to hold on to that hope.”

  He watched her eyes flicker around his apartment that even he knew was large and quite nice, even by New York standards.

  “They won’t let me help them,” he blurted. “At all. They are far too proud. They’ve told me they want to work, to earn whatever they have. I respect that, but it frustrates the hell out of me, this limitation. I could support them all, it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do since I went away to college, but they won’t let me. They don’t want to be given anything. They want to prove themselves.”

  Shea’s smile was golden. “Like you.”

  He sighed. “Like me, I guess. The checks I’ve sent them have actually gotten ripped up. I’ve learned my lesson.”

  Shea’s gentle, warm hand reached out and slowly unfurled his fingers where he’d unknowingly made a fist in his lap. When she flattened his fingers, she threaded hers through his and edged her body closer. Her stunning face, all shining understanding and pale beauty, was right there. Right there in front of him.

  “I’m sure you’ve done all you could,” she said.

  “No.” Man, his hand really wanted to make another fist, but Shea held it fast, and he found he was grateful for it. “They won’t take my money, so I’m trying to do something else.”

  Now this he’d never told anyone. Not Pierce. Not even Erik. Not anyone.

  “What?” Her other hand slid up his arm and rested where his shoulder curved up to his neck.

  He licked his lips. “I’m trying to buy the tobacco field we used to live on. The land is gorgeous, right near a river. My parents were so upset when we got kicked out. New owners came in when I was in junior high and told us to get off. I mean, we were squatting and it was their right, but they displaced a family, and my parents finally had to go apply for aid and all that. It destroyed them. Killed their pride. We lived in this box of an apartment in a terrible neighborhood where it wasn’t safe to play outside, and every night we talked about the sunsets we used to have over the fields. Caroline and Alex and I missed running over the land, playing in the river. That fucking train was actually a good memory compared to where we’d been carted off, if you can believe that.

  “So I thought that I could buy it back from the company who took it over all those years ago. Give it back to my parents. Maybe they’d let me slip in a house without them knowing.”

  Shea’s eyes glimmered. “My God, Byrne.”

  “It’s a huge parcel. Massive. A shitload of money. I’ve been after it for years. Ever since I graduated. But I finally have the money for it. Finally. And there are whispers that it’ll be on the market soon.”

  She gasped. “Is that why you do this?”

  “This” meaning being Bespoke Byrne.

  He looked into her watery blue eyes. Licked his lips. And nodded. “Yes. That’s why I do everything. For my—”

  He didn’t get any further. Shea’s mouth was on his, her lips wet and warm. She threw a leg over his lap, pressing his body deep into the couch cushions. And he gladly let himself be buried.

  * * *

  Shea actually tasted more of Byrne as she kissed him this time. More of his life, more of his desires, more of everything that made him him. His story had been salt, bringing out the flavors of every aspect of his personality.

  “It’s so great to hold you,” he whispered.

  “Are you kidding? It’s incredible to hold you.”

  Her tongue slid across his. Slow, gentle strokes that had her losing all manner of strength in her legs and arms. She could taste the truth of him, but also the reluctance of him having to voice it. He really was ashamed of himself, of where he came from. She could feel the power of that emotion in the clutch of his hands at her back, and then the way his fingers bit into her ass.

  She regretted ever naming him Bespoke Byrne, for labeling him based on how he dressed. For assuming what kind of person his appearance made him. It was almost as bad as what he’d endured as a kid, only in reverse, and it made her feel ashamed.

  And then all of a sudden it happened.

  It happened when his kiss grew incrementally more insistent, his lips nudging open her mouth painfully slowly. It happened when he shivered beneath her, when she heard the sound of his desire get trapped in his throat.

  It happened as all their prior conversations suddenly came rushing back to her—their jokes, their pure, true connection. It happened as she remembered the contentedness on his face as he’d said grace at her parents’ dining room table, and when she’d sat on the dock telling him about her past. When she’d realized
that he was no storybook fairy tale, that he was anything but false.

  She fell in love with him.

  It was not: Oh shit, I’m falling, what the hell is going on?

  Not: If I’m not careful, I think I may fall in love with you.

  But: I’m already a goner. I’ve fallen. Whoops.

  Shea tightened her hold on him, as though his body were a lifeline and she could use it to hoist herself up and out of trouble. But it was too little, too late.

  She needed a breath, because the stilted ones coming through her nose weren’t enough. She pushed against the couch cushions, removing her mouth from his with a final lick.

  “No, no, no, no, no.” His eyes were at half-mast, his erection at full. “Where’re you going?”

  She ran a thumb over his bottom lip. “Don’t want to take advantage of you in your fragile, exposed state.”

  A bit of the amused gleam returned to his shadowed eyes. “No advantage. None whatsoever. Come back here.”

  He reached for the button on her pants, got it popped out before she scooted off his thighs and somehow found her feet. He looked up at her questioningly.

  “Did I scare you?” he asked, taking her hand. “You look a little spooked all of a sudden.”

  He had scared her, but not in the way he thought.

  “I like your bed,” she said. “I’m an old-fashioned girl like that.”

  “Old-fashioned you are not.” He rose to his feet, dragging his body against hers.

  She reached up and pulled out the band of her ponytail with one hand. As she led him down the hall toward his bedroom, he said, “I love your hair. Have I ever told you that? I love it down.”

  Something that simple made her shiver all over again. It was almost as big a turn-on as straddling the hottest guy in existence on his mortgage-payment sofa. As she turned into his bedroom—a corner room, of course, with the mosaic of the city spread out just on the other side of the glass—she smiled at him over her shoulder. Turning back around, about to pull him over to the bed, she caught sight of an open door, the light on inside. His closet. Shooting him a sly grin, she dropped his hand and headed toward the sumptuous space done in deep cherrywood shelves and racks.