by Amelia Wilde
“Exactly!” I cried with exasperation, flinging a piece of egg across the counter.
Brandon watched its progress, then turned back to me with an amused expression. “Your point?”
I set my fork on my plate with unnecessary force. “You’re impossible, you know that? What do you do for fun? Like, in your spare time?”
“You mean besides you?”
He laughed when I pretended I was going to stab him with my fork. Then he took a bite of his toast and chewed contemplatively. He swallowed, opened his mouth as if to speak, and then took another bite.
I wanted to strangle him. He just started laughing again.
“Well, first of all, fun is relative,” Brandon said after he swallowed again. “I like my jobs, and they’re what I spend most of my time doing. On the rare occasion I have an extra moment, I’m in my shop. Otherwise, my spare time is mostly taken up by a host of other things that aren’t particularly fun.”
“Such as?” When his only answer was a raised eyebrow, I pushed. “Okay. Run me through the average day for Brandon Sterling.”
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he said with a wink as he used two fingers to drag his phone across the counter. He opened the screen to his calendar.
Color coded and filled to capacity, the page was an elaborate mosaic. I gawked at the sheer enormity of multitasking someone like Brandon had to take on: conference call meetings while en route to London, contract negotiations over dinner, playing squash with a prospective client. Just about seven days a week, the chaos started with a 5:30 a.m. workout with his trainer and often didn’t end until ten at night or later. The only exceptions I saw were the places where a small white box interrupted the schedule every Friday and Saturday evening bearing just one word: Red.
“Didn’t you think to ask me first?” I chastised him, though I couldn’t keep the silly grin off my face. “Maybe I’m busy on the weekends. I have a schedule too, you know.”
Brandon just gave me that delicious half smile that made me want to jump him all over again. “I’m being optimistic. Okay, my turn.”
I opened my own calendar and passed it to him. I was almost as disciplined about keeping it up as he (or Margie) was, but it wasn’t nearly as full. During the week, my days were a combination of classes, allotted study/reading times, clinic hours, and at least four or five swims a week. Brandon thumbed through a few different pages and tapped in something before handing the phone back to me.
“There,” he said, returning to his breakfast. “Now you’ve got me in there too. Hope you don’t mind, but I shared your calendar with my assistant too.”
“Does Margie really care about my class schedule?” I asked, to which I received another sly wink.
“Margie cares about anything that makes her job easier,” Brandon replied. “And that includes the schedule for the most important person in my life.” He grinned and shoved another big bite of eggs in his mouth.
Whoa. Most important person? Was it weird that he was saying something like that so quickly? Was it even weirder that I liked it so much? Unable to hide the blush that immediately rose, I looked down at my phone instead of at him.
He’d scheduled a repeating event on the same days and times he’d put “Red” on his calendar. The green boxes were marked “BS.” I laughed out loud and leaned in to kiss Brandon on his wrinkled nose before clearing my dishes.
Brandon frowned as he watched me. “Red, just leave it. Ana will take care of that.”
“I don’t mind. I know you probably have to get going soon anyway.”
“Babe, it’s what I pay her for. I didn’t take the weekend off so I could watch you clean.”
I set the dishes in the sink and turned to stare at him. “You what?”
The mosaic calendar flashed through my mind—I must have swiped right past this weekend’s blank spaces. I knew now what a major undertaking a day off work likely was for him, and how frustrating it probably was for his assistant.
Brandon just grinned.
“I’m the boss,” he said, as if it didn’t matter that he’d canceled several appointments with undoubtedly important people who had probably been waiting weeks or even months for his time. “I haven’t seen you in a week. Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. Sue me.”
“They might,” I joked, but obediently returned, allowing myself to be pulled into the shelter of his arms.
“One night,” Brandon said, “is not enough. Can you take the weekend too? Or at least stay here?”
Although the delicious scratch of his nibbles around my jaw made it hard to concentrate, mentally I went over the different work I needed to get done before Monday. I was already ahead on most of my reading, and I didn’t have anything written due until Thursday.
“I think so,” I said between a few increasingly shallow breaths. “I only have a few things to take care of for the clinic, but they can wait until tomorrow.”
“Are they at your place?” he asked, although his words were a bit muddled against the skin below my ear.
I nodded, unable to answer properly as he took my earlobe between his teeth and tugged.
“Great,” he replied, releasing me suddenly.
“Hey!” I opened my eyes, ready to complain, only to find him stretching his arms up toward the crown molding overhead, causing his shirt to rise above a few tantalizing muscles. I ogled openly.
“We can swing by there and pick up whatever you need,” he said with a wicked grin when he noticed my expression. “So, you’ll stay?”
I blinked, brought out of my ab-induced daze. “What? Oh. Um, sure, I guess. Are you sure you want me to?” His house was so pristine, so perfect—as much as I liked it, I was scared to muss anything up.
Brandon scoffed and shook his head. “Of course. I’d be upset if you didn’t.”
And with a firm but brief kiss, he brought his plate to the sink, then grabbed his phone to text David to bring the car around.
“Five minutes, gorgeous,” he said with another stamp to my mouth. “Let’s get dressed. And put your coat on. I don’t want anyone else seeing you in that dress but me.”
It ended up being a day where I found out more about Brandon’s interests than he’d initially wanted. After stopping by my apartment for some clothes and some odds and ends, we ended up messing around Cambridge for the rest of the morning simply because of Brandon’s stubborn resolve not to choose any activity we did, despite the fact that all I wanted to do was something he wanted. Out of revenge, I decided to take him puttering around Harvard Square.
Brandon, as I fully suspected, didn’t putter.
“Oh, good,” he said sarcastically as I stopped outside one of my favorite shops. “Another used bookstore. I wonder what’s inside.”
“Do you have somewhere else you’d rather be?” I asked in the most saccharine-sweet voice I could muster. “I thought you cleared your day, Mr. Sterling.”
I nodded at the bookstore clerk as we walked toward the back of the store, where I knew they kept their music section. Hunting for vintage music arrangements was one of my favorite pastimes, and the old bookstores in Cambridge often had the best caches. Brandon followed me with a loud harrumph. He had been game for the first three shops, happy to peruse the science fiction and engineering sections, even purchasing a few books. But after two hours, he had met his limit.
“Red,” Brandon said as he came beside me, leaning against the bin of sheet music as if in pain. “You’ve made your point. My turn, okay?”
I turned triumphantly. “Ha! Okay, but you’re not allowed to choose something you think I’d like. I just dragged you through every bookshop in Harvard Square, so now you have to take me somewhere equally selfish.”
“Thank God,” he breathed, grabbing my hand.
Once we were back on the street, Brandon called David, who promptly drove around the corner to pick us up.
“You packed your running stuff, right?” Brandon asked as we slid into the back of the Mercedes.
I nodded. I figured I’d jog at his place on Sunday instead of swimming my normal two thousand meters.
“Good,” he said. “David, can you take us down to the river?”
Ten minutes later, I made my second important discovery about Brandon that day: he wasn’t just in good shape. He was an exercise junkie.
After changing in the car, we ended up on a popular jogging trail along the edge of the Charles River, from Watertown all the way to downtown Boston. We both wore thin workout gear that wasn’t particularly suited to the chilly February air, although I wore Brandon’s sweatshirt over my sports tank and leggings. Brandon jogged in place to keep warm, given the fact that it was a clear thirty-one degrees outside, and he had only a t-shirt and track pants.
“This is supposed to be fun?” I asked doubtfully, flapping the sweatshirt sleeves that hung over my hands like limp penguin wings. The hem fell to just above my knees. Even with the added layer, I was freezing, and Brandon’s face was starting to resemble a cherry popsicle.
“Nothing feels better than endorphins, gorgeous. Well, except maybe you,” Brandon said with a leer as he picked his knees up again and again. “All right, how far can you go? Two miles okay?”
I didn’t run much, but my swimming habit meant I had better endurance than most. I smirked. “How about this: first man down owes the other a foot massage when we get back to your house.”
“Ooh, a challenge, Ms. Crosby? You sure you know what you’re getting into?”
“You’ve got the legs, babe, but I’ve got the lungs,” I smarted. “We’ll see how long you last.”
Forty minutes later, I was on my back again on the sheepskin rug, but this time in a decidedly less seductive fashion. I gasped for breath, waiting for the world to stop spinning while Brandon chuckled from the couch. He removed his shoes before he knelt to help with mine.
“You all right down there, Red?” he asked good-naturedly, all sign of his early surliness gone in his current endorphin-fueled state. Plus, he had won the bet.
“Why?” I asked less sharply than I had intended due to the fact that I was still sucking air like a wind fan.
“Well, you just fell over like one of the Three Stooges, and you’re the color of a tomato. I’m just checking in.”
“I’m a redhead,” I snapped from my place on the ground. “Yes, I flush when I’m exerted. Ha fucking ha.”
Brandon held his hands up in mock surrender. “All right, all right. You seem like you’ve got it under control. You want water or something? Maybe a B-12 shot? A physical therapist?”
Now that the ache in my side had started to subside, I managed to prop myself up on my elbows to glare at him. “I’m actually in decent shape, you know.”
“Oh, I know. I’ve got firsthand knowledge of it.” From his vantage point, he looked me up and down and gave me a lewd wink.
“No, really,” I insisted, ignoring his jibe and pushing off my hands further so I was fully sitting up. “I swim almost every day. I have the lung capacity of a porpoise.”
Brandon slid off the couch and squatted down next to me. “Sure, babe, sure,” he said as he patted me on the leg. “It’s okay. You can admit you’re just a weakling.”
“I am not!” I squealed. Brandon wasn’t the only one who was competitive. “There is no way that was only two miles.” I yanked off his giant sweatshirt, which was suddenly stiflingly hot, and hurled it at him.
He caught it easily and laughed, barely knocked off balance. “Skylar, relax. I might have hustled you. That was almost four and a half, and I run that route twice about four days a week. Harvard Square and back. Usually a little faster than that, too.”
“Faster than that?” I asked, dumbfounded. “What was our time?”
Brandon smirked. “We were running an eight-minute mile for most of it. Actually, I’m pretty impressed you kept up.”
I flopped back on the rug, exhausted all over again. No wonder I had felt like my sides were going to split.
“And you do it at that pace twice?” I asked as I smacked my palm on my forehead. I knew what he looked like naked. Of course he was in killer shape. “Ahh, you did hustle me, you big sneaky snake!”
Two big arms slipped under my back and knees. With one graceful movement, Brandon lifted my limp body from the ground and carried me toward the stairs. Too tired to argue, I wrapped my arms around his neck and laid my head on his shoulder.
“Shower time, babe,” Brandon muttered into my ear in a more than suggestive tone. I was too tired to care, just grunted against his muscles.
“And after that,” he said as he tromped up the stairs, “I think you’ll owe me a foot massage.”
Lesson number three, I thought as I was carried. Do NOT compete with Brandon Sterling. He played dirty.
29
It was amazing how quickly I could fall into a rhythm with someone I hadn’t known for that long. Getting Patrick to commit his time at all had taken years, but Brandon offered what little he had freely. Our schedules meshed surprisingly well (probably because his assistant scheduled his appointments around my calendar). Despite the fact that we often didn’t get to see each other much more than weekends and the occasional mid-week dinner, it didn’t seem to put any undue stress on our new relationship simply because we were both so busy.
It also helped that we texted constantly and talked on the phone almost every night. It didn’t matter what he was doing—especially since Brandon often worked well past the time I usually went to bed—he always wanted to “hear my voice.”
Before I knew it, over a month had passed, and I had spent three of the last four weekends on Beacon Street. Although we usually went out on Fridays, we would usually spend the rest of our time lounging around his house, catching up on work when we weren’t rolling around in the bedroom. Or the couch. Or his office.
It was nice to do nothing together, I thought as we sprawled on the couch in the rec room one weekend in March. I was studying for my upcoming midterm exams while Brandon sat perpendicular to me, keeping my socked feet securely against his thigh while he worked on his laptop. Occasionally he’d reach down absently to squeeze my toes or rub my arches. A few times (okay, several times) his touch ended with both of us naked and panting on the alpaca-blend carpet, but most of the time it was just a sweet, absent gesture that let me know I wasn’t far from his thoughts.
Unshaven and unkempt, Brandon looked about as far from a CEO as possible in a faded t-shirt, a pair of baggy track pants, and his favorite worn Red Sox hat on backward. I was just as casual in yoga pants and my HLS sweatshirt. A Star Wars film played silently on the giant HD screen, but neither of us were paying much attention.
After spending more time with Brandon in his own space, there were other small, seemingly inconsequential, yet fascinating things I continued to learn about him. He was a closet comic book fanatic, with a huge collection stored in his office, and could spend hours talking about everything wrong with the new Star Wars movies. He had a very mild nut allergy, but almond butter was still his favorite food.
I couldn’t remember if I’d ever just lounged like this with Patrick—we’d always been out and about in New York together, big as he was on networking. Brandon was busier than most, so it was a relief to find out he was as content to be a homebody as I was.
On top of that, he respected my ambition. He never asked me to delay a reading assignment or push a paper until Monday, nor did he seem upset if I had to stay late at the clinic. Unlike Patrick, who always resented anything that took my attention away from him, Brandon seemed happy to observe and support my work ethic.
“Did you want to go out tonight?” he asked, interrupting my train of thought as I leafed through a child custody case file.
“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. Is there anything going on?”
It was a natural response, one that I’d usually have when Jane asked the same question. As she frequently pointed out, I wasn’t terribly social, so I usually depended on her or sometimes E
ric to get me out of the apartment.
Brandon stopped typing and frowned. “Like what? I just meant for dinner. Margie mentioned an opera premiere we could go to if you want, but we’d have to get dressed up.” He looked pointedly at my sweatshirt and clasped my ankle under my pants. “Or we could just shock the hell out of everyone and go like this. Those yoga pants are working pretty good for you.”
I set my papers on my lap. “Don’t you ever just go out?”
“What, like to a bar or something?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Um, yeah. Or a party. Maybe a show. What are your friends doing tonight, since I haven’t met any of them?”
Brandon pressed his lips together and looked away, a slight flush rising through his tan face. “Ummm…”
I put the file aside and pulled my feet out of his hands so I could kneel next to him.
“Mr. Sterling,” I asked. “Don’t you have any friends?”
“Yes, I have friends,” Brandon retorted a little too strongly. “They’re just…I really only see them at functions, you know. Or business meetings. Sometimes at the gym.”
“I don’t think those qualify as friends,” I informed him. “Those are business acquaintances.”
“I have friends,” he insisted as he shut his laptop a little too harshly and set it on the couch. “I do.”
“Name three,” I dared him. “Three people you hang out with randomly, no plans needed, or whom you talk to about personal issues.”
“Fine,” he said, turning toward me to take on the challenge. His arm snaked along the back of the couch, and his finger snagged a stray lock of my hair to twirl as he talked. “No problem. Okay, there’s Mark Grove.”
“Mark Grove is fifty-seven years old and your business partner,” I replied. “He is not your friend. He is no one’s friend. What do you guys do, grab brandies after work and compare notes on guerrilla trial tactics?”
I had seen Mark Grove when he poked his head into the intern room occasionally. He was a cutthroat securities attorney with a sharp eye that roved like a hawk’s and a mouth that was twice as dangerous. We had all sat up a little straighter whenever he popped in, worked just a little faster.