Take It All Off

by Weston Parker

  I lowered my chin. “I’m fine, thank you. What did you want to talk about, and why here?”

  “I told you I needed to train for my marathon. I was also hoping if I got you here, you would be more inclined to train with me.”

  “Nope. I’ve already had my run today.” Early this morning when I’d woken up feeling like I was on top of the fucking world after last night, I’d run twice the length of my usual route without breaking a sweat. “What’s up? Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine,” he said, but a frown formed on his forehead. “I wanted to talk to you about Mama, though. I know you’ve been working really hard lately, but we need to make more time to spend with her.”

  “Why? We spend plenty of time with her.” Tiny shards of guilt stabbed me in the gut when I said the words, though. That wasn’t true. I didn’t spend plenty of time with her anymore. “Did she say something?”

  “No.” He sighed and his hands went to his hips as he hung his head, studying the ground as he gave it a slight shake. “I can’t quite put my fingers on it, but she’s been down recently. Ever since Dad passed away, she’s been lonely. I think it’s really starting to get to her now, though.”

  “So many years later?” My throat constricted suddenly, as if long fingers had wrapped around it and were squeezing. Our father had been our mother’s true soul mate. I knew losing him had broken her, but I’d thought all the years that had passed had eased the pain and loneliness some.

  Granted, I had never been in love, but I was starting to realize that time couldn’t heal all wounds. On his deathbed, Dad had told Aldo and me to take care of our mother, and I had failed in that respect. Somewhat anyway.

  As the years had gone on, I had definitely started substituting time spent with her with money for her to do nice things. By herself.

  I swallowed hard, and Aldo gave me a look that said he knew exactly what had just gone through my mind. “Dude, do you really think she’s ever going to stop missing him?”

  Sighing, I shook my head. “Probably not, no.”

  “So what are you going to do about it?” He caught my gaze and kept his there. My own molten golden-brown eyes looked back at me, but I didn’t like what I saw in them.

  “I’ll start getting over there to see her more often,” I promised. “Why are you pissed off at me?”

  “I’m not. I just want you to keep your promise, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  A sudden smile spread on his lips as he clapped my shoulder. “Good, because she’s been on my case about having babies. She wants me to settle down and start trying.”

  I snorted. “Better you than me, bro.”

  “Yeah, right.” He rolled his eyes and checked his training stats on his watch. “You know it’s going to be you before it’s me.”

  “Not a chance.” I heard giggling behind me and twisted around to see the group of college girls had moved closer. Aldo was eyeing them over my shoulder, sending his practically trademarked come-get-me smirk their way. “It looks like you might have some takers in that group, though. Better ask if any of them has a history of twins in her family and pick her. Go on, man. Make Mama proud.”

  He huffed out a breath through his nose and the smirk dropped from his face, replaced with a challenging grin sent my way. “No, thanks. How about you? Do you have any prospects? I’m willing to bet you’re going to beat me to making Mama proud.”

  “How much?” I asked, feeling in the back pocket of my shorts for my wallet. “I’ve got about two hundred on me.”

  “Two hundred, it is.” He stuck out his hand, and I shook it. Just regularly. Contrary to popular belief, not all twins had their own secret handshake.

  Aldo’s head dropped to his side, his eyes intently studying mine. “Hang on a second. You never answered my question. Do you have any prospects?”

  “She’s not a prospect so much as a friend. And an employee.” A friend and employee who’d made me come like a geyser just about twelve hours ago, but he didn’t need to know that.

  Unfortunately for me, while we didn’t have a secret handshake, he could still read me like an open book. “It’s been a long time since you’ve had anyone worth talking about. Who is she?”

  He dropped to his haunches, then sat down on the grass to stretch out his legs. I followed him down but sat with my legs crossed. Plucking a blade of grass out, I rolled it between my fingers as I tried to formulate an answer for him.

  “Her name is Addy. She’s a new client liaison at the company, and she’s going to be fucking good at it. She already is. In fact, she helped me seal the deal with Dave last week.”

  He whistled between his teeth, eyebrows rising up. “Dave? Really? Wow. Gianluca told me about him. Hard ass apparently.”

  “One of the hardest,” I agreed. “He has a talent for taking anything you say and turning it around to use it to prove his point. Addy came on the call, spoke to him for less than five minutes, and he was onboard. I had Gianluca draw up the papers and Dave returned them, signed, the next day.”

  Aldo was silent for a moment, considering what I’d said. “She must be one hell of a woman. How long has she been training with the company?”

  “Less than a week.” I laughed at the look of disbelief he shot me.

  His eyes widened, and his jaw slackened. “No shit?”

  “No shit.” I twisted the blade of grass into a knot and pulled it tighter. “She’s different from any woman I’ve met in a long time. She’s smart, she’s beautiful, she’s independent but not in that haughty way.”

  He eyed the knot in my hand, tipping his head at it. “Looks like she’s got you tied up in one of those. What’s the problem? If she’s everything you say she is, why isn’t she a candidate to settle down with? Mama would be thrilled.”

  I exhaled deeply, shaking my head as I pressed my lips together. “No, she wouldn’t be. Addy’s great, but she’s American.”

  “Oh.” His shoulders fell. “You’re right. That is a problem. Mama would tear you a new one and probably chase her out of the house with a broomstick.”

  I chuckled, but the sound was humorless. “I know. Luckily, it’s nowhere near the point of her meeting our mother. I just like her, you know? I still don’t really want to settle down, but if I was going to, I could see myself doing it with someone like her.”

  “But not with her?” His brows pulled together. “Mama would get over it eventually. Probably. Maybe.”

  “You know she wouldn’t. She would lament for the rest of her life about how I didn’t choose a nice Italian girl.” I closed my eyes for a second longer than necessary when I blinked. “Anyway, like I said, we’re nowhere near that point.”

  Aldo placed his palms on the grass and pushed himself up. “Then you have nothing to worry about. Enjoy whatever you’ve got going with her and take it as it comes. There’s nothing you can do about her heritage. In the meantime, come race me. I need to see if my training is paying off.”

  He held his hand out and jerked me to standing when I took it. The conversation had made me restless, so I agreed to his race.

  Aldo took off with no warning, but I caught up to him soon enough. My sneakers pounded against the path and then on the compacted ground beyond it.

  With every step I took, I pushed myself harder. I needed to get Addy out of my system. I’d never be able to regret what we’d done last night, but I had to take a step back. For both our sake’s.

  Addy was the kind of girl most men spent a lifetime looking for. She was the whole package, the brains, the looks, the confident businesswoman in the boardroom, and the seductress in the bedroom.

  But as Aldo said, there was nothing I could do about her heritage. My mother’s heart had already been broken once. I couldn’t be responsible for breaking it again.

  At some point, I couldn’t hear Aldo’s footsteps behind me anymore. I turned around and ran backward, finally spotting his red ball cap in the trees between the path and the park.

 
He was cheating. Fucker.

  Shoving all thoughts out of my head, I turned around again and gave it everything I had. I made it back to our starting point seconds before Aldo did, planting my hands on my knees and bending over as I tried to catch my breath.

  “You cheated,” I said when he came to stand in front of me, adopting a similar pose to mine. I lifted my head and smirked at him. “It must be because you’re the younger brother.”

  “By two and a half minutes, you fucker.” He pierced me with a glare but then dropped the act and started laughing. “I guess I have a lot more training to do if I actually want to win this thing. For now, though, all I want is a beer. You in?”

  I nodded. “Sure. I could use a drink.”

  A drink for starters, then a plan. Somehow, I was going to have to balance working with Addy while wanting her more than anything, while also not getting myself into a situation that would hurt my mother.

  Fuck. This was not going to be fun.

  Chapter 16

  Addy

  I had my very own office. I’d even gotten to decorate it this week.

  It was down the hall from Marco’s, situated next to a corner office. My one large window provided a view of the narrow street outside and the stone building beside ours with its red roof and dark green olive trees planted in pots outside it.

  Some natural light filtered in, but I also had an old-fashioned mini-chandelier hanging in the center of my space that emitted a bright glow. A maroon and emerald green area rug covered the portion of the floor between my door and my desk, but the rest of the hardwood remained visible.

  A four-person conference table and a stand with a potted plant on it took up one side of the room while my desk with its visitor’s chair took up the other. Heavy maroon pinch-pleated curtains hung on a wooden rail to frame my window, while bookshelves lined the wall closest to where I sat.

  I loved the warm tones here and had worked to retain the old-school character of the space. All things considered, I thought I’d done a damn good job of mixing the old with the new.

  My desk was glass-topped and my chair was a fancy ergonomic model covered in real black leather. A sleek new laptop sat on the desk, accompanied by a small printer and a conference phone.

  I tapped my nails on my desk as I studied the spreadsheet open on my screen, then moved my gaze over to the book I had open beside it. There was still a lot I had to learn, but Marco had provided me with every resource I could need, hence the bookshelves.

  He’d offered to get me subscriptions to the publications online, and he had gotten them anyway, but I’d always learned better when I had actual paper in front of me. A frustrated sigh tore out of me as I narrowed my eyes at the page.

  As it turned out, learning the customs and excise regulations of Panama wasn’t as simple as I might have thought. At least it was keeping me busy, though.

  Busy was good. Busy kept me from worrying about whether I’d already lost this job but just didn’t know it yet.

  On Monday morning when I’d arrived, the receptionist had guided me to this office. She’d told me it was mine and that an interior decorator would be by to help me decide what I wanted to do with it.

  It had been cool, and I’d been excited. But I’d also expected to see Marco at some point.

  That hadn’t happened. The designer came, had a look through some catalogs with me, wrote down my choices, and left again. No appearance or input from Marco.

  Tuesday morning when I arrived at the office, I found it completely decked out as per my discussion with the designer. I’d thought Marco would come by to take a look. He hadn’t.

  His offer to get me the subscriptions to the publications I would need had been made through an email. As had all of the rest of his communication this week.

  I’d seen him in the hall a few times, but on the rare occasion when I’d managed to catch his eye, he’d simply tossed me a friendly wave and carried right on with what he’d been doing.

  My problem with his behavior wasn’t that I was feeling used. It did feel a little like that, but I could deal with it.

  Marco hadn’t made me any promises before we slept together, but it was the one he’d made after that bothered me. I could handle having been used to scratch the itch he’d apparently felt from the first time he’d seen me. Hell, I’d been scratching that itch as hard as he had.

  It was the professional aspect of our relationship that had me on edge. He’d said nothing would change, and yet it had, which was making me more than worried.

  When I’d tried to go to his office to talk to him about it, I’d been given the runaround by his assistant. Apparently, he was always busy and didn’t have time to talk. Even the calls I’d been on with him this week had been just that. I took them in my office, and he took them in his. He emailed the brief to me before each call and had said in his first email that he would keep taking the lead but to jump in when I felt it necessary.

  I’d done that, and it had gone well. But now it was Friday, a whole week since our night together, and I was over waiting for the big bad alpha male to dictate the terms of our relationship. Sure, he was the boss, but what I needed to talk to him about was personal and not professional. Therefore, the way I saw it, we were on equal footing with this.

  A knock at my door signaled that he’d gotten my message to come see me. I hid a smile over how effective turning the tables had been. I smoothed out my expression and called out, “Come on in.”

  Marco strode into my office like he owned the place, which he did, so that was fine. There was a confused frown marring his perfect forehead, a lighter lock of brown hair falling just slightly over it.

  “You wanted to see me,” he said, raising a brow and crossing his toned arms. “That’s not really how this works, but Linda said it was about Panama. Those regulations can be confusing, so here I am. Hit me. What’s getting you down?”

  I got up and sashayed my way to the door, shutting it with a firm click behind him. I crossed my own arms as I turned to face him, close enough to smell his masculine, woodsy scent. I’d have been lying if I said it wasn’t a turn on and that it didn’t make some very explicit memories come to the forefront of my mind, but this wasn’t the time.

  “I’m very well. Thank you for asking. How are you?” I motioned for him to take my visitor’s chair, feeling a little rush of feminine power over how this was playing out.

  Marco’s frown deepened, but he huffed out a breath and sat down, unbuttoning one of the black buttons on his jacket as he lowered himself into the chair. “I’m fine. What’s this about, Addy? I have a meeting in twenty minutes and I can’t be late.”

  I folded my arms on my desk and gave him a serene smile. “Nothing is going on with me. The question is, what’s going on with you?”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, a hint of irritation thickening his accent. “Did you have any questions about Panama?”

  “Yes, but there’s something else we need to talk about first.” I didn’t give him the chance to say anything. “You said things weren’t going to be weird between us, but the way you’ve acted this week is anything but normal.”

  He scoffed and dragged a hand through his hair, that same lock falling back into place over his forehead when he released it. If nothing else, it told me it wasn’t the first time he’d done it today.

  “On the contrary, this is me being normal. Last week was me acting out of character. It was necessary to see if and how you would fit into the company. Now I know you will.”

  My eyes met his, searching first one and then the other. “Is that so? Call me crazy, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it. I think it’s because we’ve done the horizontal mamba and you’re letting that get in the way of our professional relationship.”

  For the first time all week, I saw that sexy smirk of his forming on his lips. The annoyed boss demeanor cracked, and the man I had gotten to know came out to play.

  Amusement lit his eyes as he dropped hi
s arms to his sides. “The horizontal mamba? What, are you suddenly too shy to say it like it is? We fucked.”

  I grinned. Finally, I was getting somewhere with him. “Yes, we did. We’ve seen each other in all our naked glory, and that seems to have changed the way we work together. I don’t want to ruin what we have, Marco. I don’t want to feel awkward when I need to talk to you at the office.”

  The skin around his eyes softened, and he dropped his head, running his hands through his hair a couple of times before lifting his gaze back to mine. “You’re right. I’m sorry I was absent this week.”

  “Were you really that busy, or were you avoiding me?” This was no time to pussyfoot around the issues. “You know that I can’t afford to lose this job. More than that, though, I don’t want to lose it. I like the challenge and I like my new office. I don’t want to feel like I’m on the brink of losing it.”

  His entire upper body jerked at my words. Spine shooting ramrod straight, he scooted to the edge of his chair. “That’s what you think? No. God, no, Addy. That wasn’t my intention. I didn’t mean to make you feel like your job is in trouble.”

  “What did you mean to do then?” I asked, my voice quieter than before. “Because I also liked the way things were between us before. You said that what happens off the clock wouldn’t influence that, but it has.”

  He sighed. “Once again, you’re right. Look, I was only keeping my distance because I thought it was for the best. I didn’t want to give you the wrong idea.”

  “The wrong idea?” My eyes narrowed. “What? You thought I was going to think that just because I know what your cock feels like inside me, I was going to assume we were in a relationship? I’m not like that, Marco. To be honest, I’m kind of offended that you think I am.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “This is coming out all wrong. I didn’t think you would assume we were together now. I just wanted to avoid a situation that would only end with both of us getting hurt.”