André

by Jayce Ellis

  We walked out the lobby to the sidewalk, then Marcus promptly smacked me in the pecs with a heavy forearm. I didn’t have time to figure out what was going on before a group of teens on scooters zipped past us, weaving in and out of traffic and incurring the wrath of screaming pedestrians and honking cars alike.

  “Sorry,” he said when the noise had died down. “I figured you hadn’t seen them coming.”

  I blew out a breath and pretended not to be affected by the touch of any part of him against any part of me. He was already walking, and I quickened my step to catch up. “There any place you like to go?” he asked when we stopped at the street corner.

  “I’m easy. I hit up the vendor and get two links,” I said, pointing to one of the stainless-steel hot dog carts tucked between the row of food trucks lined up on the street.

  Marcus looked me up and down before shaking his head. “You are anything but easy,” he muttered.

  The light turned green before I could respond, and we walked across the street in silence. I tried not to study him, but it was no use.

  Marcus had a presence about him. Not the coldness Harold had referenced multiple times, but there was absolutely a certain aloofness there. I couldn’t tell if it was because of me, of the project, or if this was just how it was.

  Even though Harold’d said Marcus’s interest was in the international corporate field, he worked the Pennington matter like he was born to do it. Why was he so opposed to the idea? Maybe now was a good time to find out. I waited until we’d both ordered Polish hot links—two for me, three for him—and found an unoccupied bench.

  “So, Harold tells me you’re interested in international clients,” I said.

  Marcus finished swallowing, and I tried not to imagine licking a stripe up his neck. “Yeah, I think it’s fascinating.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I find the ones I’ve worked with, at least, are more willing to think outside the box as a matter of fact, not because they’re super-speculative or high-risk like here. A lot of the US-based clients I’ve dealt with are opposed to foreign markets, don’t trust anything that’s not ’Murican.” He rolled his eyes and I laughed.

  “I won’t even argue with you about that,” I said. “That the only reason you prefer international?”

  Marcus cut his eyes at me. “You been talkin’ to Harold? He tryin’ to convince you to bring me over to the dark side?” His voice was sharp, but his eyes twinkled, and a little grin tipped his mouth up.

  I made a show of taking another bite of my link and watched his nostrils flare. “I won’t lie and say I didn’t talk to Harold,” I said, “but I’m also talking about the work I’ve seen you do here. It’s exceptional.”

  He beamed, so big and bright it was nearly breathtaking. Would it kill us to not wait the three weeks? Hell, maybe it would make working together better? Less strained, the way it was now while we both strived for professionalism.

  “Is this what you wanted?” Marcus asked. “I mean, your own practice and everything. Was that always your plan?”

  I settled deeper against the bench. “In a way, yes. I hadn’t planned on branching out this soon, but I can’t say I’m upset about it.”

  “So whatever young, dumb mistake you made was worth it?”

  Not sure I’d ever erase the vision of Harold pointing silently at his screen, which showed the beginning of the sex marathon I’d had with Phil. Not sure I’d ever forget how the head of HR, someone who gave no fucks about feelings, stumbled over her words and couldn’t look me in the eye. Not sure I’d ever erase the phantom memory of my nails digging in my palms while I sat through an “emergency” review with the partners. Of course my sexuality wasn’t an issue, how could I think that? But clients might not be comfortable—a different generation and all—and that limited my opportunities for advancement.

  “You okay?” Marcus asked, setting his hand on my knee. “You kinda disappeared there for a sec.”

  I laughed. Or tried to anyway. “I’m good.”

  “Mistake was that bad, huh?”

  I gave him the broad details, fighting to keep my voice monotone. Unaffected. Total bullshit. I expected to see the same pity on his face as I’d gotten used to seeing on everyone else’s. Where people could pretty much guess that whatever went down had to do with sex, and was secondhand embarrassed for you, but also morbidly curious. I didn’t even mind. I’d be curious too if the shoe were on the other foot.

  But that’s not what I found when I met Marcus’s eyes. There was a hint of...anger there? That couldn’t be right.

  “So, wait,” he said. “You mean to tell me some asshole posted a video of you and no one cared who it was, or their motives?”

  I blew out a noisy breath. “I was told that the identity of the person who’d sent the video was irrelevant, that the important issue was how our larger clients would feel.”

  “Why the hell would they know? They hadn’t known before someone sent that shit, right?”

  Wow. Marcus was genuinely upset. On my behalf. I’d actually broken down a bit after this, had even called George to vent to him. To this day I didn’t know why. He’d laughed and said he hoped the sex was memorable enough to lose my job over.

  “I’d always been open about being gay,” I told him. “Their concern was about my recklessness over allowing myself to be videotaped by someone so clearly untrustworthy.”

  Marcus huffed, his anger on my behalf refusing to be placated. “Who was it that made the video?”

  “My boyfriend.”

  I was glad Marcus hadn’t been eating or drinking, because he surely would have spit it out at those words. “Your boyfriend sent the video to the partners at your job?”

  “Yep.”

  “Wait wait wait.” Marcus waved a hand. “Hold up. How’d he have their contact info to do that?”

  I snorted. “He worked at Clarymore, too. Still does, as a matter of fact.” Something that, no lie, continued to stick in my craw. Not that I wanted my job back, but for all the partners yammered at me about inherent untrustworthiness, the fact that Phil was still prowling around, moving up the ranks, probably schmoozing the same people who would allegedly run screaming if they worked with me, was almost laughable. Or would be one day. Today wasn’t that day.

  “You gonna tell me who it is?” Marcus asked. The anger in his voice had mellowed, but not dissipated. And something about his continued fury warmed me from the inside out. Enough that I was almost tempted. But no.

  “Not a chance,” I told him. “I’m trying to put it behind me, and I won’t do that if I start tossing his name out there.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough.” He squeezed my shoulder, letting it stay there a fraction too long before he let his hand drop. “You ready to get back to work?”

  “Yes.” Anything to stop my mind from the trajectory it was going. Which had nothing to do with Phil and everything to do with the man next to me.

  Marcus

  Of all the things I could’ve forgotten at Clarymore, I’d managed to leave the cord of the headphones that had been so rudely snatched so long ago. I hadn’t needed them since I’d started with André, hadn’t even thought about them. But Jake had met a new lady friend and she liked to spend the night, and they were loud. My headphones had died overnight, and I heard more from my friend than I cared to imagine. Not a chance I was doing that again tonight.

  I shot André a quick text, letting him know I’d be late, then darted into the lobby of Clarymore’s building. I was on my floor with the cord in my hand and back to the elevator banks in minutes. Where I came face-to-face with Supe.

  “Marcus, a surprise to see you here. Everything okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, holding the cord up. “Forgot these and now I need them.”

  He laughed. “You and those headphones. Trying to block out your ne
w boss already?”

  “No, nothing like that,” I said, wanting to dissuade him from the thought that André had been anything less than professional.

  His grin was broad, almost conspiratorial. “You know, we have the check-in on Friday, but why don’t we grab a drink now?”

  I didn’t want to. Honestly, I wanted no parts of spending extra time with this guy, but his words about my worker bee status chose that moment to buzz around my head. “Sure. Just let me shoot André a text. I told him I’d be back soon.”

  Supe’s smile didn’t waver, and he waited until I pocketed the phone before pressing the button for the lobby. We were quiet on the way down, not the same comfortable silence I shared with André, but the kind that made my skin itchy and warned me to be on top of my game. Which didn’t make a ton of sense since, outside of my mild breakdown over getting this assignment in the first place, we’d had next to no communication with each other and I had no real reason to be wary of him.

  There was a food court on the lower level of the building. I rarely went there, often choosing to bring meals from home, but it came in handy in a pinch. Most things weren’t open yet, but the little kiosk serving breakfast had a healthy line going. We took our places and inched forward, and I eventually ordered a black coffee. Supe grabbed that and a bagel, then found a table.

  “So, how’re things going at Ellison?” he asked around a mouthful of cream cheese–covered goodness.

  I shrugged. “It’s great.” Really, though, what the hell was I supposed to say? Even if it were a purely professional relationship without the undertones André and I were dealing with, I wouldn’t say anything else.

  But Supe didn’t seem entirely satisfied with that response. “I used—” He cut himself off, enough that maybe I’d misheard him. “I heard he was with Clarymore before striking out on his own.”

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “He told me he’d worked here for a few years before starting his firm.”

  “And working for him is going well?”

  Again, what was I supposed to say? No? But I was tired of him pressing, so I gave a short laugh and said, “Sure. We’ll need every ounce of every day to get this together, but I’m confident everything will be ready to go.”

  That, at least, seemed to satisfy him. Or shut him up, and at this point, it didn’t matter to me which one it was. We finished up and he headed upstairs with barely a goodbye. I rolled my eyes at his retreating figure, then took off the few blocks to André’s office.

  Fiona, headset on and speaking, arched a brow and tapped the bevel of her watch when I walked in. I held my hands up. I texted him, I mouthed, and she smiled bright even as she continued her conversation. I continued down the hall, pausing for a moment outside André’s door.

  He was facing his computer, away from me, the glare of his two monitors framing his face. He’d gone back to being fairly reserved after our impromptu lunch, but his confession—the big bad thing that pushed him out of Clarymore—yeah, I could see why he was insistent on maintaining that professional distance. He’d already suffered the consequences.

  And hell, I’d railed against the injustice of anything Boomerang related when it came to me, so I got it. It hadn’t even been a week since I’d scoffed at the idea of sleeping with my boss to get a leg up. But...that’s not what I’d be doing here, right? I wasn’t looking for a promotion, or for him to put in a good word if my work didn’t justify it.

  Once I’d gotten over my initial out-of-pocket response, I could tell André was easy to work for. And for a few minutes yesterday, when he let his guard down and I saw a glimpse of the person behind the mask, I wanted to say the hell with the job, and spend the rest of the day talking. Preferably in bed. Naked.

  “You planning to get some work done, or are you gonna spend all day staring at him through the glass?” Fiona asked as she came to a stop next to me.

  I couldn’t help the grin that spread across my face as I watched him. “Thinking about spending the day staring at him. He’s pretty.”

  Fiona laughed. “That he is.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Go be productive. He’s busting his ass to deal with his other clients so he can focus on this project with you. Give him something to work with.” She gave me a quick squeeze and headed back up front.

  And I was left with a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction. Because I’d told André I was only interested in the Pennington matter, and he hadn’t pushed. I’d said I was down to help, but made it clear it was on my terms. If someone else had done that, I’d talk mad shit about them.

  I gave André one last lingering look, then walked the few steps to my office to get some work done.

  Chapter Nine

  André

  I wasn’t exactly surprised to find Fiona sitting in my chair at the end of the day. If anything, I’d expected her earlier. But I thought she’d be here to gossip. No matter what she said, Fiona knew all the tea, all the time. The look on her face, though, was all business. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” she asked with no preamble.

  “What do you mean?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter. I know this project is taking up a ton of your time, but it’s not like you to not respond to your other clients. Even if it’s after hours, before hours, whatever. You’ve never done this, and I’m having to cover for you. You know I hate that. So again I ask, what is going on?”

  I dropped my head to my hands and rubbed my thumbs along my eyebrows. “I don’t know,” I finally said. “I just can’t seem to concentrate.”

  Talking with Harold hadn’t helped at all. Now I was worried about what might have happened to put Marcus behind the eight ball on day one. Not that there’d been any sign of it after. He’d loosened up a fraction after lunch, then gone back to the no-nonsense shark Harold’d said he was, even though he’d looked at me more than once like he’d gladly shove me to my knees under his desk. My brain still hadn’t decided if it was on board or not with the prospect.

  Fiona coughed, none too subtly. “Mr. Thompson wouldn’t have anything to do with your lack of concentration, would he?”

  “What makes you think that?” Aside from my mental jaunt to Neverland, where I’d forgotten she was even there.

  “Man’s fine as aged wine and you know it. Siddity as fuck, but he’s here, doing his job, which is more than I can say for you. So what’s good?” She made herself comfortable in the guest seat and flipped her dark blue locks over her shoulder.

  And this was the problem with having someone who’d known you for a long time, in and out of the business. She had no qualms telling me exactly how she felt.

  “I’m trying to make sure I don’t screw it up,” I said.

  Fiona scooted her chair forward and leaned her elbows against the table. “What do you mean? Talk to me.”

  I told her about Phil, about how we dated when we’d first begun at Clarymore, how the relationship had started out good and gone so south so hard. How Phil had taken advantage of the situation and sent that video, and how that had been the really nasty and messy birth of Ellison Financial.

  I was exhausted when I finished, and it occurred to me that it was the first time I’d actually laid it all out on the table. I’d talked about it in vague terms with Marcus, and that was apparently the impetus I needed to tell all my secrets. So I told her the whole sordid thing from start to finish, and allowed myself to not be worried about how she might respond. When I glanced up, I don’t know what I was expecting to see, but it certainly wasn’t the grin she sported.

  “So you’re scared of messing up again, and to you, messing up means getting involved with someone the way you did Phil? What makes you think he’s even into you like that?”

  I looked off to the side instead of at her. She knew we’d hooked up, but it wasn’t just the lack of dick that had me thinking about Marcus all the time. And it frustrated me to n
o end that I couldn’t pinpoint or explain the difference. But none of this had crossed my mind with Phil, and I don’t know if that said more about him or me.

  “André Ellison.” Fiona’s words were almost a whisper. “What did y’all do? He suck your toes or something? Because you look like you’re ready to risk it all.”

  I chortled and ran a hand down my face. “Nothing like that. But, you know, it made me wonder.”

  “Mmmhmm, I’m listening. Wonder what?”

  I was shit at in-depth conversations, and Fiona and I normally saved these convos for the apartment, to the extent we had them at all. But she wasn’t leaving until I bared my soul, and I didn’t much want to wait.

  “One thing I liked about Phil in the beginning was having someone to come home to. Someone I could talk to about the day, who got me, didn’t trip about the hours, that shit.” I shrugged. It sounded stupid to my own ears, like I was whining and imprinting myself on the first good dick that came along.

  “Okay...” she drawled, letting the word linger in the air. “So you talk to him. See if he’s interested in something more when this is all said and done.”

  “There’s not going to be any more. We don’t have that kind of relationship. He’s an employee, however temporarily, and then that’s it.”

  She cocked her head. “Is that all you want it to be? I mean, you guys are both grown. Given that he’s not an employee employee, I don’t even know if hooking up while he’s working for you is that bad, but definitely not once it ends, right?”

  All that did was remind me of Marcus’s words. Just waiting for all passengers to climb on board. The part of me that was a business owner worried about growing his company had said to shut that shit down. The other part of me, the part of me that was here for more of anything that might come close to matching that night’s intensity, was counting down the days until this presentation was over so I could hit the sack. It was seared on my brain, which was why I couldn’t concentrate, which was why I wasn’t handling my business, which was why Fiona was here now. No matter how good it had been, I had to keep my focus, something Fiona had been saying since day one. Marcus didn’t seem to be having a problem with it. And that was despite him making sure I knew he wanted me. The way he looked at me, with undisguised lust? Yeah, it made me heady.