by Rachel Kane
Was that supposed to be a veiled insult? He said it in such a friendly tone, that Noah couldn’t tell. It was true, but wasn’t it a little rude?
“Look, I should tell you outright, I don’t think they should sell the house to you.”
They were going to kill him for blurting it out that baldly.
But Dalton sat forward, interest sharpening those sea-green eyes. “Really? What’s your objection? I think the offer was fair…did you think I should’ve offered more? Can I refill your drink?”
“I— Yes, please do.” Anything to buy another moment to think.
He couldn’t say anything about the real reasons for his objection. You didn’t give an enemy insight into your personal motivations. None of it was anything Dalton really needed to know.
So he countered with a question of his own. “What’s your plan for the place, Dalton? Can I call you Dalton? What do you want it for? You could have any house you wanted, anywhere in the world. Why this one?”
But Dalton only smiled and handed him the drink. “Show me around, Noah. Show me the town.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a command.
8
Dalton
Nerves come with the territory. When there are millions of dollars on the line, butterflies in the stomach aren’t surprising. Colby had compared it once to skydiving—his hobby, not Dalton’s, and one their insurers constantly complained about—but he had a point. There’s no thrill, if you know for sure you’re going to win. It’s the possibility of losing, of your chute not opening, that makes you breathe harder, that gives you the endorphin rush. Dalton didn’t trust anyone who claimed to be fearless. Fear was valuable. It was powerful. All that mattered was how you channeled that energy, that anxiety, into something productive.
Although, right now, he was wondering if he had just made a gigantic mistake.
Noah didn’t look like a major opponent. He should’ve been less frightening than the rooms of lawyers and CEOs Dalton usually faced. Yet for some reason Dalton just couldn’t calm down.
“And what’s that building?” he asked, his words just a little too quick.
“That’s the bookstore,” said Noah. “My friend Alex owns it. I don’t know how he keeps it in business, you don’t really think about these folks reading. Yet they seem to.”
Light. Friendly. By some unspoken agreement they were skirting around the real topic. They’d both asked the basic questions of each other: What’s your objection? What’s your plan for the place? Questions that had remained unanswered.
The only question was whose nerves would win, and that, at least, was an easy one. Noah wouldn’t last. Separating him from his friends, letting him know the caliber of professionals currently talking to Liam and Judah, convincing them to sell the place…it put him in a vulnerable spot, and all Dalton had to do was convince him that selling was the right thing to do.
Normally this would’ve involved the city. Take someone to dinner at a restaurant far classier than they’d ever been to. Show them around, show them what real wealth looks like. Hard to do down here in Superbia; the best he could offer right now was the limo, and his presence.
“Have you made a lot of friends in town, Noah?”
“Sure.”
“You seem like you would. You’re very…sociable.”
The young man before him laughed. “That’s a polite way to put it.”
“Do other people put it a different way?”
Keep up the questions. Each one a little nudge, pushing Noah off-center, getting him off-guard, keeping him further and further away from having his questions answered.
“I have been described as a social butterfly, by people who don’t know me very well,” Noah said. “I guess they think I flit from person to person, never stopping very long at any one friendship.”
Dalton narrowed his eyes. People were such bad judges of character. “They don’t notice that you’ve had the same two best friends since childhood?”
Now it was Noah’s turn to react. “How’d you find that out? Did you have a team of private investigators follow us around? Is that all part of your billionaire real-estate thing?”
“It’s on your website. You wrote a whole post about it.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“I’m not a villain, Noah. I’m really not. People misjudge me, the same way they do you.”
“The same way? No, I don’t think that’s true. I think people misjudge you in a whole different way.”
This wasn’t supposed to be some cat-and-mouse game. Noah was just a guy, just some random man who happened to stand in the way of a deal. How did he keep batting Dalton’s attacks away so easily? So comfortably, lounging in the limo’s seat as though he were born for this kind of wealth?
No matter how luxuriously large the back of a limo is, you’re never very far away from people, and Dalton couldn’t help noticing just how close Noah was.
The suit that Colby had so derided was gone, and in its place, something much softer was draped over Noah’s frame, a shirt whose collar was loose and open, showing a vulnerable white throat. If Dalton had been a vampire, it would have been impossible to resist. As it was, Noah was so easy to look at, the way the shirt seemed about to fall off one shoulder, exposing even more of his pale, tender flesh. He was a man who enjoyed being noticed, enjoyed being treated as a work of art.
Maybe that was the problem here. Most of the people Dalton dealt with in business didn’t look like this. Didn’t put their vulnerability front and center. Didn’t drape themselves over the furniture like they were posing for a portrait.
What would Noah do if Dalton leaned over right now and kissed him?
Would he be startled? Offended? Would it change the game entirely, and give the upper hand back to Dalton?
The urge to try it, once it had come to mind, was almost overwhelming. To taste those lips, to steal a kiss before a word had been spoken about it… His whole body began stirring in that direction.
Did Noah see? Did he notice at all? Dalton prayed he didn’t.
“Tell me,” he said, “how do people misjudge me?”
There was a certain pleasure in hearing a stranger talk about you. It was related to the pleasure of eavesdropping, of having one of your security men put a bug in someone’s office. Wrong, and illegal, and utterly pleasurable, something you could do only rarely, because you began to find it addictive, knowing every word someone said about you.
Noah pulled on his collar, and suddenly that line of shoulder was concealed again, much to Dalton’s disappointment. “Really? You want me to delve into your psychology?”
“Why not? I’m sure you’ll be completely wrong, but I’m interested in hearing it. Clearly you’ve thought about it. I’d bet that while Liam and Judah have been thinking over the money part of my offer, you’ve been thinking about personalities. The…the social aspects of a deal.”
“Who is psychoanalyzing whom?” asked Noah.
Dalton grinned. “Go for it.”
“Hey, stop up here. See that bridge? You can’t drive over it, but it’s great for walking.”
No, let’s stay here, where I have all the power, he almost groaned. Instead, he signaled the driver to stop and let them out.
The bridge was old and wooden, over a stream that swelled at its banks from recent rain. While it creaked underfoot, it felt stable and strong. There was a sign nearby that said Danger: Quicksand.
“Really?” Dalton said, gesturing at the sign. “I don’t think I’ve thought about quicksand since I was a kid.”
Noah stopped at the center of the bridge, and looked down. “Once things dry up a little, there will be sand banks you can walk across down there. But you do have to be careful, you’ll sink up to your knees. Or so I’m told. I don’t have any shoes I’d like to ruin like that.”
“So people aren’t sinking beneath the surface, never to be seen again?”
The thought made Noah smile. “It isn’t like the movies. But then, that�
�s the problem with life. Nothing’s ever like the movies.”
“You were going to tell me about myself,” Dalton said. Somehow they were standing too close together; when they’d stopped walking, he had not been paying enough attention to their position, and now he was bare inches away from Noah. To step aside now would show that he had thought about it, had thought they were too close, that it made him uncomfortable. It would give the game away. All he could do was stay in place, and hope Noah noticed and stepped away.
But he didn’t. “Was I?” Noah asked.
“I’m pretty sure.” You would be an expert negotiator, he thought. Always keeping people off-balance.
“Hm, what can I tell you about the Secret Life of Dalton Raines…” He leaned on the guardrail and looked down into the creek. “I’ll make you a deal.”
“I do like deals.”
“I know you do. I’ll tell you three things about you. You try to tell me three things about me.”
“That’s not a deal. A deal has a pay-off…and a consequence if it doesn’t go through.”
Noah grinned. “What kind of consequence do you want?”
“If you get something about me wrong, you drop your objection to me buying the house.”
But Noah tensed up at that, and Dalton could’ve kicked himself. Damn it, you went too far. You should’ve been more subtle!
Sometimes subtlety didn’t work, though. Sometimes you just had to say what you wanted.
You had to know your audience.
“Try again,” said Noah.
“Fine. If you get something wrong, you have to buy me dinner at the Red Cat Cafe.”
Noah blinked. “You know about the Red Cat?”
“I ate there the other day.”
“And Renee let you escape? Good grief, what strange powers do you have over people? There’s not a single man who has ever stepped into the Red Cat, without Renee trying to fix him up with someone.”
“You think I’m single?” said Dalton. “Is that one of your three guesses about me?”
“It’s not a guess,” said Noah. “What if you get something wrong? What kind of reward do I get?”
“What kind of reward do you want?”
The look Noah gave him was pure evil. Evil? That wasn’t the right word. Because it was an invitation, too. An invitation to go too far, to cross a line, to—
“Dinner, but somewhere else. Somewhere not in Superbia. Take me to one of your fancy billionaire restaurants.”
Dalton had the troubling feeling he might agree to anything if this kept up. He was supposed to be in control here. Why did it feel like he’d been played without realizing it? Like he’d had his entire attention on one side of the chess-board, while Noah crept up and checkmated him from the other side?
“You’d better make some good guesses,” Dalton said.
“So it’s a deal? Do we need to shake hands?”
“You don’t look like the sort of person who likes shaking hands,” he said.
“Is that one of your guesses?” Noah laughed.
“Yes. Yes, I think that is.”
“Good job. Score one point for Dalton.”
“Your turn.”
Noah looked away from him, back out at the creek, as though he were studying the water, or the pale orange sand and clay beneath it. “You’re very reserved. You don’t want people to know how you really feel.”
“You’re saying I’m shy? The man who put you into his car and drove you around town, the man who has been talking to you all this time—”
“I didn’t say shy, I said reserved. I saw you in the spring-house. I saw your reaction to it. You loved it, but you didn’t want anyone to know how much. You stood there trying to recover from it, so no one would see your reaction.”
I knew it. I had the feeling you were watching me, that whole time.
He had stood there before those murals and felt an almost religious experience, a sense of being transported out of the ordinary world, into something more spiritual, something ancient and mythical.
It wasn’t something he wanted to share with other people. Not strangers. Certainly not Colby. His brother never understood anything.
Noah had been watching him keenly.
Again, he felt exposed.
He wasn’t sure he liked this game.
“I’m not sure I agree with you,” he said, “but I’ll allow that one.”
“Oh, you’ll allow it. Fine. Your turn. I don’t like handshakes…what else?”
“Well, you’re single, and you have been for some time.”
Noah clapped. “All right, Sherlock, how’d you know that one?”
“Oh, don’t make me explain, just accept that I’m a great judge of character.”
“Nope. I had to explain my guess about you, so explain this one.”
Dalton took the opportunity to turn and continue on the path across the bridge, forcing Noah to follow along. At least this way they weren’t standing so close together, so that he could have a little air, and think about how to phrase his observation. There was sand on the bridge, and it crunched under his leather soles. The sound reminded him of something. Was it something from his past, some moment when, as a child, he had walked over tiles, walking after someone, the dirt of their shoes greeting the soles of his? The memory was as fleeting as the sense he had almost remembered something important.
“I know a guy,” said Dalton, “a business director, a very sharp, smart guy. He’s got opinions, and most times he isn’t afraid to voice them. He used to work in one of our divisions, and I enjoyed hearing what he had to say, even when we disagreed. He left, went to another company, and when I met him after that, I saw that he’d changed. I knew the CEO of that company. Harsh guy. Uncompromising. A real control freak. And what I realized was that this director couldn’t give any opinions anymore. He’d been hemmed in. This vocal, interesting guy had become blocked off, because now he worked for someone who wasn’t interested in anyone else’s viewpoint.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me being single. Unless you’re going to hook me up with this guy.”
Dalton shook his head. “Some men wind up with controlling forces in their lives. Bosses, partners. And their voices get silenced. You, I think, are like that. I think the men you end up with are often controlling, and they end up shutting you down. I think you’re probably very meek and mild, in that kind of relationship. The fact that you aren’t meek and mild, suggests to me that you’re single.”
There was a loudness to Noah’s laugh that struck Dalton false, as though Noah were faking an outraged reaction to the truth Dalton had just spoken.
“What the hell, man? So you’re saying I only date abusive guys, and since I don’t look abused—”
“Nobody said abused—”
“Meek and mild. Jesus. That’s amazing. I’m a little mouse. That’s how you think of any of us who aren’t big billionaires like you, isn’t it?”
Dalton would have paid most of those billions to take back the past minute of his life. An observation he’d thrown out without a ton of thought—although an observation he was sure was right—had managed to embroil him in a tension he hadn’t wanted. He tried to play it off, raising his hands in surrender and laughing. “Okay, okay, nobody’s saying you’re a mouse! I take it back! I’ll guess something else! Why don’t you take a turn while I think?”
“Oh, trust me, I already know what I’m going to say.” Noah rounded on him, stepping close again. By instinct, Dalton took a step back…and found the rail of the bridge pressed against his spine. If Noah got any closer, they’d be touching.
Interesting.
Not that he had room in his life for anything like that.
Not that Noah of all people would be the right choice for that kind of moment.
The guy was nothing but trouble, Dalton could see that. Deep, dark trouble. The sort of man who would tangle you up inside, make you say things you ended up regretting.
Yet some par
t of him wanted it. Wanted Noah to take that last step closer, chests pressed together. Wanted that angry face right in front of him. Those angry lips, that angry mouth—
“You think one day your brother is going to be better at the job than you are,” said Noah. “You think he’s going to take over, and it worries you.”
Now it was Dalton’s turn for a loud, brash laugh. “Oh, now, come on, that wasn’t a guess, you’re just trying to get me back. What does that even mean, Colby taking over? Do you even know how our company is structured? His division—”
There was that evil smile again. Noah knew he’d struck home, and he wasn’t going to let Dalton wriggle out of it. “You may know how your company is structured, but I’ve spent my entire life watching brothers play out their little struggles against one another. I never had brothers myself, but watching Liam and Judah fight for dominance when they were kids taught me a lot. They’ve settled into their roles these days. Liam leads the family, Judah supports him, but you should’ve seen them when we were back in school. At each other’s throats daily. I see that in you and Colby. An echo of it. There’s a competition there. Just little signs of it. Colby doesn’t want to come here, but you force him to come, but he gets you back by driving and making you a passenger. When it comes time to really do business, and you bring all your reps here, you can’t get him to come at all. Admit it, there’s a power struggle.”
Dalton smirked. “You are a perceptive little mouse, I’ll give you that. Now, I’m not going to comment on whether you’re right about a power struggle. We’re a publicly traded company, and there are some things I’m not allowed to say to the general public, which is you. But sure, Colby and I have been at odds, at various times of our lives.”
“So I’m two for two. Better fire up the jet engines, you’re taking me out. Unless you’ve got some perfect guess for your final try. Hope it’s a damn sight better than your meek and mild nonsense.”
He was really trying to cut deep, wasn’t he? Dalton had touched a nerve.
