Gideon (Boyfriend for Hire Book 3)

by RJ Scott

  “Yes. Rowan.” He used the wall to help him to his feet and slipped Gideon’s housekey into his coat pocket. “We got back last night.” He bit his lip not entirely sure what the elderly woman knew of Gideon’s private affairs. “It was a long drive and it was getting late, so he let me stay over. He’s a good boss, always looking out for his staff.” He ended with an awkward laugh.

  Mrs. Hallewell held out her bags. “Here. Carry these for me.” She gave him a stern look. “And Hilda is fine.”

  Rowan raised an eyebrow at her bluntness but took them without protest.

  She sighed heavily as she rummaged inside her handbag for her keys. “My daughter’s always telling me how I should get groceries delivered. Honestly, if I didn’t go myself, it’d be another reason for me not to leave the house. She’d have me cooped up inside, rotting away.”

  “I’m sure she’s just worried about you.” Rowan followed her inside.

  She snorted a laugh. “I’m sure, I’m sure. Can you put them in the kitchen for me, please?”

  Rowan stopped by the door and went to toe off his shoes.

  “You can leave them on, your shoes, just make sure you wipe them well,” she called to him from another room.

  Scary. Was she psychic? “Sure.” He used the doormat then took the bags through to the kitchen, placing them on the end of the counter. A sweet scent hung in the air, her perfume maybe? Mixed with the underlying musty, wooden smell of antique furnishings.

  “There you are…”

  Rowan couldn’t make out everything Hilda was saying, but he could hear her voice. He glanced at the bags. Should I unpack them for her?

  “Rowan has come to collect you.” Hilda walked into the kitchen and in her arms, she held Gideon’s cat, Kimi. “I’m sure Gideon’s missed you.” She pressed her face into Kimi’s white and gray fur. “Here you go.” She closed the gap, passing Kimi to Rowan.

  “Erm.” Rowan took the cat in his arms. “Okay.” He hadn’t interacted with Kimi much, the blue-eyed Ragdoll favoring Gideon’s attention over a guest’s. Rowan was grateful Kimi didn’t struggle and settled against him. He hugged her to him. She was warm, and her purrs vibrated through his chest above his heart. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to take her?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be? You work for him, right?”

  “I thought you might—”

  She waved her hand. “He’ll be around soon enough to thank me. He’ll have been missing her.” She scratched beneath Kimi’s chin, the cat lifting her head, purring more loudly. “He might have trouble outwardly showing his affections for others, but I can tell how much he loves her.” She looked at Rowan. “The way he smiles when he’s with her. I’ve only seen him smiling that way around one other person.” She looked pointedly at Rowan then patted Kimi’s head. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to call my daughter and tell her I’m home. She’ll worry herself silly one of these days.” Hilda shook her head, pointing to the shopping bags as she walked away. “Thank you for your help. You can see yourself out.”

  Rowan looked down at Kimi, who returned his gaze. Her blue eyes conveyed her impatience as if questioning why Rowan was still standing around and telling him to leave already. “Fine,” he said, gently stroking the length of her back. “Let’s get you home.”

  Rowan headed back to Gideon’s, fumbling with the door as he tried to juggle the cat and fish the keys from his pocket. Once inside, he lingered in the entrance, listening. Was Gideon awake? Kimi squirmed for her freedom, and Rowan leaned down, allowing her to jump from his arms. He watched as she made a beeline for the kitchen. He followed slowly behind her, peeking around the corner to find Gideon sitting at the breakfast bar, staring at a mug in his hands and the contents he appeared to be nursing. A frown creased his brow.

  Gideon looked down when Kimi nudged his ankle. “Kimi? What are you…” He trailed off when he spotted Rowan.

  “Hey,” Rowan said and raised his hand. “Morning.”

  “I thought…” Gideon leaned down and picked up Kimi. “I thought you’d left.”

  “I went to get breakfast.”

  “Was it tasty?” He tilted his head.

  Rowan glanced at his empty hands. “Ah. I didn’t get very far.”

  Gideon smoothed his hand over Kimi’s head and smiled. “Hilda grabbed you.” His shoulders relaxed as if coming to terms with the fact Rowan hadn’t run away.

  Rowan decided it was easier to agree. He stepped into the kitchen and came to stand beside the counter. “So, last night was…”

  He braced himself but Gideon didn’t say anything.

  At least he didn’t say it was a mistake.

  “Do you want to talk about it? Us? What we do going forward?” Everything inside him was screaming for him to stop, but they needed to figure out their relationship. Whatever that might be.

  “I do, but…” He hugged Kimi.

  “But?” Rowan clasped his hands together.

  “Can we do it once I finish my coffee?” Gideon grinned.

  Rowan dropped his head forward and closed his eyes. “Coffee sounds like a great idea.” He slid onto the second stool and leaned his elbows on the edge of the counter while Gideon poured him a mug. They sat quietly together, Gideon fussing over Kimi, who had settled on his lap and Rowan watched them.

  His smile really is brighter when Kimi is around. He wondered how he hadn’t noticed that before. Too busy focusing on work. Until now the only reason for him to enter Gideon’s home.

  “So, where do we start?” Gideon pushed his empty mug away from him.

  Rowan ran his fingertips up and down the side of his as he considered what to say. “First, can we just make sure we’re on the same page? Forget about whatever anxieties you have about the company and work stuff. Do you want to have a relationship with me? A relationship that isn’t that of a boss and his PA?”

  Sex with Gideon had been great, but if that was all that was on the table, he couldn’t go along with it. Not this time. Not Gideon.

  Gideon stroked Kimi’s back. “It’s been a long time since I entered into a relationship with someone. Something serious. Because of various reasons that wasn’t what I wanted.” He looked at Rowan.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  Gideon nodded then stared down at Kimi, who purred like a train.

  “I had this boyfriend.” He looked up at Rowan, his blue eyes bright with emotion. “Actually, I need to be completely honest with you, otherwise what’s the point? I met him in college, and he was more than just a friend. He was my best friend, my lover. His name was Luke Waites.”

  Rowan’s eyes widened. “Waites? As in Bryant & Waites? You told me that you made that part up to make the company sound good.”

  “I lied. It was a joint idea to build a company. Luke and I were both fresh out of college with our shiny degrees in business, and hopelessly in love. We wanted to do something different than to end up in an office.”

  “How did you get the idea for hiring out boyfriends?”

  Gideon half-smiled. “Luke’s friend needed to produce a boyfriend out of thin air to go to a party, and Luke volunteered me. I could have killed him, but it went okay, and the germ of an idea of setting up a company that hired out boyfriends on a professional basis was born. Of course, there was a lot of tequila involved in the conception of the company. It had been Luke’s idea to begin with—thus the Waites part of the name. Only Luke never saw our ideas become reality.”

  “What happened?” Rowan laced their fingers and held tight after grief washed over Gideon’s expression—something Rowan had never seen in him before.

  “The night before my birthday, he proposed and I said yes, and we had the most amazing Christmas, you know the kind of special day that stays with you forever?” He waited for Rowan’s reaction and Rowan nodded. “The evening after Christmas Day everything changed. He had this bike, an old Harley he’d been fixing up. It was snowing, and they’re not sure what happened, but the accident was fast and br
utal. He never saw the car…”

  Rowan gasped. “Oh God, I’m so sorry.” Rowan was choked up at the grief he could feel in Gideon now. What a tragic waste, what a loss to a young man on his first steps out into the world.

  “I felt as if my heart had been severed, and I was broken. It took me a long time to get on track and to build Bryant & Waites into something real as a way of honoring Luke. The pain of his loss has lessened to become an ache in my chest, but it can still hurt even after all this time. Particularly on Christmas. It’s twenty years ago now, but I will never forget him.”

  “Why would you? He’s as much a part of you as your blue eyes.”

  Gideon slid his hand from Rowan’s, leaned over, and kissed him gently as if he’d needed Rowan to be that understanding.

  “I never thought I’d let what I had with Luke stop me from living, not until you walked into my office for your interview seven years ago, and now it’s all I can think about. Without realizing it, I shut down that side of myself because losing Luke was like losing a limb, and I didn’t want to go through that again.”

  “Okay.” Rowan gripped his empty mug.

  “I guess getting to spend time with you, and your family, made me realize having people in my life might not be such a bad thing.”

  Rowan eased his grip. “So you’re saying…”

  “Yes. I’m saying, yes, I want to be in a relationship with you.” He smiled. “And that scares me a little.”

  “I swear boyfriend-me and PA-me are two very different people,” Rowan said with an embarrassed chuckle.

  Gideon nodded. “I think I get that having spent time with you these last few days. But dating PA-you isn’t what scares me, not in that way at least.” He sighed. “If watching my parents has taught me anything it’s that when relationships end, people can become petty, and if—and I mean if because nobody knows what’ll happen in the future—the relationship ends, I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to end up petty.”

  “You’re not like your parents,” Rowan said then bit his lip. He knew nothing about them.

  Gideon tilted his head. “If I’m being honest, I don’t think I am either. But relationships and love and…it can make people crazy, right? You’ve said plenty of times how much you love your job, and even though I’d like to think we could carry on the same, even if things ended, I just don’t know. Maybe being an asshole is embedded in my DNA.”

  Rowan pursed his lips and considered what Gideon had said on top of his revelations about Luke. “I’ve been your PA for a while now. After a string of failed attempts at carving a career for myself, this job was a breath of fresh air. I finally found something I was interested in. A big part of loving my job is because of you. Of course, there’s other stuff, the clients, the boyfriends, the various companies we work with, and filing. God, how I love filing,” he added in a sarcastic tone.

  “Ah, yes, I think you might have mentioned that or rather the exact opposite a few times over the years.”

  “If you’re scared, then I’ll be brave for both of us. I’m willing to risk you becoming an asshole, assuming this…” he waved his hand between the two of them “…goes downhill faster than you being knocked off your feet by Bear. I love my job. I want to keep it, but if I were to choose, if I have to choose right now…then I want to take a chance on us being together. We can take it slow, as slow as you need, that way we can keep your petty gene from activating, and if we need to, we can back out, end things with minimal damage to our working relationship, and—”

  “Rowan,” Gideon interrupted.

  “What?”

  He crooked his finger, beckoning Rowan toward him, to move closer. “Shut up,” he said with a smirk when Rowan was within his reach. He tugged the front of Rowan’s shirt, encouraging him forward until they were close enough to kiss.

  The kiss was gentle, slow, and Rowan let out a soft sigh as he was silenced.

  Gideon nibbled Rowan’s lower lip then pulled away and held Rowan’s gaze. “I already said yes, didn’t I?”

  Rowan looked up at the ceiling. “That was a yes? A genuine one? But you said—” Gideon grabbed him, kissing him harder.

  “I said it was scary, but I’m going to do it anyway.”

  Rowan wrapped his hand around Gideon’s. “You mean we’re going to do it?”

  “Yeah.” Gideon pressed a kiss to Rowan’s cheek. “We are.”

  Rowan rested his forehead to Gideon’s. “Together.”

  Sixteen

  Gideon

  Gideon had no clue what to do next, even with Rowan in his arms and the bedroom only a few feet away. His entire relationship with Luke had been based around college, youthful exploration, and a bright shining hope for a grand future. Relationships since then had been short lived, based mostly around sex, and with not much in the way of dating as such. He could easily slip into that with Rowan, but he wanted this to be different, not only because he was putting everything on the line but because what they had must mean something more.

  “We should go out for brunch,” he announced just as Kimi leaped up onto his shoulders and began kneading his hair.

  “That sounds so grown up,” Rowan teased and extricated himself from Gideon’s hold carefully so that Kimi didn’t lose her grip. If Gideon thought it was even possible, he fell a little harder then. Love me, love my cat.

  “I know this place, it’s nothing fancy but the bacon is always crisp and the pancakes—”

  Rowan kissed him to stop him from talking. “You had me at bacon. Can I get a shower first?” He glanced sideways at the suitcase which sat inside the door and raised an eyebrow in question.

  “Yeah, sure, sorry…go for it…I’ll go after—”

  Another kiss to keep him quiet. If this was going to be how Rowan got Gideon to finish sentences, then it was going to get awkward in the office.

  “How about we save water?” Rowan asked, but he was already backing up to the bathroom, tugging Gideon with him so fast that Kimi meowed loudly then grumbled and sulked as she leaped down and curled up on the sofa. Water plus Rowan? It was a no-brainer.

  One bathroom blowjob later, with both of them smelling of Gideon’s shower gel, they finally got dressed, and Rowan was looking a long way past smug.

  “It was one bet,” Gideon grumped, wishing he’d never suggested who could hold out the longest. But come on…seeing Rowan on his knees and looking up at him and doing that thing with his tongue, and then his wandering fingers…no one would be able to keep their orgasm at bay, let alone Gideon, who had fantasies about Rowan on his knees.

  Sue me, it’s Rowan, and he’s hot.

  Stepping outside of the apartment and then onto the street into the cold biting wind was a shock to the system. Inside they’d just been the two of them where reality didn’t intrude, but out here it was obvious everything had changed, not least of which was Rowan reaching for Gideon’s gloved hand.

  “We don’t have to…I mean it’s only down here,” Gideon said and had to sidestep around a woman walking a dog, narrowly avoiding having to make a scene about not taking Rowan’s hand. Only he wasn’t getting away from it as Rowan moved swiftly in front of him and blocked his way before kissing him soundly in front of whoever the hell was looking from whatever window.

  Well. That was that then.

  This time he took Rowan’s hand, despite how awkward it was with the bulky gloves and the fact that they only had to walk two blocks to The Bean. They’d have to talk about boundaries in the office later but holding hands as they ate pancakes and bacon one-handed whilst grinning at each other like idiots was clearly the new normal.

  Rowan slid around to snuggle in next to Gideon. Is this what it was like to have a boyfriend now? To hug and kiss and snuggle in public? I’ve been missing out on so much. Gideon even ignored the looks and simply smiled at everyone who glanced at them. Not that people knew he was cuddling with another man who was his PA. To them this was just boyfriends on a coffee date, and that wasn’t some
thing that caused much of an issue. Not one of them knew the weight of what they were doing.

  “So that’s date one.” Rowan patted his belly and gave a full body sigh.

  “I thought date one was staying in the same cabin.”

  “No, that was a pre-date as in it pre-dated us deciding to give things a go.” He chuckled before sipping fresh coffee.

  “It’s your turn to organize date two,” Gideon was decisive.

  The check arrived, and they tussled for a moment before Rowan distracted Gideon with another kiss and stole it from the table. “I win again.”

  “That’s cheating.”

  “Get used to it, Gids.”

  “You called me Gids.” Gideon shrugged on his heavy coat and wondered exactly how he felt about that. Plenty of people in his life had attempted to shorten his name but Gideon had never liked it. Until Rowan.

  “Is that an issue?” Rowan asked seriously as he wrapped a scarlet scarf around his neck.

  Gideon considered the question and then shook his head. “I like it.”

  “Okay then, Gids, my sexy lover.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Follow me.”

  It wasn’t so much following him as being tugged out of the shop and then dragged down the street and up East 9th street. They ended up in Greenwich Village at the arch into Washington Square Park. It was a big space, formed from a lot of pathways with grass between them, but it wasn’t its usual busy self. Most of that had to be due to the fact that icy wind blew around the buildings, collecting snow and blasting it in people’s faces. They couldn’t talk much into the wind, but finally they found a bench under a leafless sugar maple, and the wind was partially blocked by the tree.

  “This is a good date,” Gideon murmured, wondering where that came from as he was sitting in a cold park, on a freezing bench, in a bitter wind, wrapped up so only his eyes were visible.

  Rowan snuggled in again as he’d done at the coffee shop, and Gideon knew with certainty that it was being with Rowan that made it a good date. His cell vibrated in his pocket, but there was no way he was taking off his gloves, let alone rooting through his coat until they were back in the office or at home. His job was twenty-four-seven and who knew when someone would have issues on a booking, but he was having this morning off.