by Eden O'Neill
I was happy to help her out, see her again.
I’d really wanted to see her again.
And here she was, right in front of me. A vision to dream, a memory to a ghost. She’d been in and out of my life so quick my head spun, and I was still recovering from the whiplash. I shrugged. “So, you teach at Pembroke.”
I hadn’t asked her—obviously. In fact, we hadn’t done a whole lot of talking at all that night.
Restless fingers had Bri tucking some of that raven black behind her ear, her shrug a subtle one before giving me her back and sliding the syllabuses into her messenger bag.
“Appears so.” Laughter awkward, nervous. She shook her head. “And you’re my student.”
“Appears so.” Definitely awkward, but I didn’t laugh. I didn’t want to make her more uncomfortable than she clearly was. I made an attempt to see her eyes, but she denied me. “Though I guess I should have figured when you said you were a professor.”
Pembroke was the closest campus to Maywood Heights. I suppose she could have taught at the local community college, actually in town, but I hadn’t questioned a lot of things that night. We hadn’t talked at all, things so fast.
Did you really fuck this shit up? Again.
It seemed like it, but I wouldn’t go there. Not yet. More nervous laughter on Bri’s end before she whipped around, hands cuffing her jacket sleeves.
“But you are at least in your twenties, right? Didn’t lie to me to make yourself look cool or something?” Frantic, she flicked and weaved her fingers through her hair. “Because if you’re like eighteen or something I’m seriously about to lose my shit right now.”
She looked on the cusp of an expedited breakdown between us, my eyebrow arching slow. “I’m twenty-two.”
Though it makes sense why she asked. One of my gen-eds hadn’t transferred coming out of Brown, this typically a freshman class.
The announcement of my age didn’t seem to comfort her at all, and if anything, her laughter grew more frantic, more manic.
“Brilliant.” She rose and dropped her hands. “Anything else I shouldn’t assume about you?”
“What did you assume?”
“I don’t know. That you weren’t over a decade younger than me and my student.” She growled. “Ramses, do you realize how bad this is?”
Not really. At least, not to the degree she was taking it. I cuffed my arms too. “I wasn’t your student when we got together, Brielle.”
“Oh, yeah. You were. I just didn’t know it. That was two weeks ago, Ramses.” She held up two fingers. “Two weeks. You were obviously enrolled in my class.”
“And?”
She groaned. “And I can’t do this. I can’t. I…”
She was panicking, needing to stop before her mind ran off with shit and she got crazy. She’d given me a teaser of it before, and I think that was why I did what I decided to do next.
I grabbed her, just her wrists, but it was enough to make her look at me, to get out of her fucking head for just two seconds.
To feel me, my hands on her and that she was innocent in all this. That we did nothing wrong and there wasn’t any reason to think we had. I knew the school had an ethics policy, that she could get in trouble depending on the context, but that most certainly wasn’t our situation. We’d gotten together before we even knew our roles in regard to each other.
“What are you doing, Ramses?” Her breath shallow as she looked at me, but I noticed she placed no distance between us. Didn’t push me away.
So, I pushed.
I angled against her, hitching her up to me, and her throat jumped.
Mine tightened. “I want you to listen to me. You’re not in trouble. We didn’t do anything wrong, and you acting this way is just messing with your head.”
And messing with mine, but clearly in an entirely different way. Her flowers hit my nose, hard, and I wet my lips.
She noticed, followed it down my neck and completely across my chest. In fact, her gaze took complete inventory over my shoulders, my arms, my hands before settling on their place at her wrists. Her body knocked fluid, all but languid in front of me.
Shit. Is she still…
Into this, into me, her student who was twenty-two to her thirty-five? I didn’t fucking care about that, but she sure seemed to.
“Ramses…” The warning in her voice contradicted the dilation of her pupils, her irises darkening, her eyes hooded. “Please.”
Please what? Kiss her?
Just give me the go.
I had no problem taking this woman, right here, right fucking now, the growl on my lips as my chest met hers. Her ass hit the table, my hands too, when I caged her between my arms.
“I can drop the class,” I rasped, gliding my breath along her ear. It took every ounce of strength within me not to fucking touch her. “Just tell me, Jersey girl.”
At the sound of my nickname for her, what I said in general, or whatever the fuck, she sucked a breath through her teeth.
Okay, it’s on.
Unable to fucking fight it, my hand slid between her legs, pinching her sex through her tight little pants. The moan escaped her lips in an instant and I buried my face in her neck, a single kiss before she forced me off her and headed me straight toward the valley of fucking blue balls.
“I told you. I’m not…” She worked her way through her hair again. “Just no. No.”
“Why?” I growled, tired of this shit. Tired of this. She was clearly attracted to me, and me to her. I cleared hair from my brow. “I’ll get out of the class. It won’t be a big deal.”
“It’s not about the class,” she shot, my eyes twitching open. Seeing that, she pressed palms to her eyes. “I mean, it’s about the class now, but this can’t happen. It won’t happen.”
“Why not?” I repeated. Was there something else? She had been acting weird that day, right before I’d left. I’d passed it off.
Shit, was there something?
I witnessed that all over her face, something when she cleared her hands from it. She fisted her knuckles. “Ramses, I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re both a hot mess and you’re completely unavailable.”
“How so?” Intrigued now. “What are you talking about?”
She put out a hand like it was obvious. “I heard you in the bathroom with your friend. Your friend who’s married and you were talking to the day after said marriage, who also just so happens to live next to you, and oh, yeah, you were in love with back in high school.”
I frowned. What the fuck? “Where are you even going with this?” And wait, she heard me? Fuck. “I didn’t mean to sneak around with the call. But she’s my friend and I couldn’t leave her hanging.”
Her brow jumped. “That’s all you got out of what I just said?”
Was there something else? Confusion, clearly on my end, and her response to that was grabbing her bag. She instantly fled toward the door, but I got her by the arm.
“Bri.”
“It’s Professor Whitman-Quintero.”
Like a chill immediately into the goddamn room. Polar ice, a wintry glaze.
And just like that, I pocketed my hands, my shoulders shrugging. “Professor then.”
Her expression fell instantaneously, but she’d drawn the line here. She pressed a hand to her head. “You won’t drop the class because this won’t work. I’m your professor. You’re my student. I’m thirty-five. You’re twenty-two and even outside of that,” she paused, adjusting the bag on her shoulder. “We both used each other that night—clearly, and I’m pretty sure you know that.”
I stayed silent but not for long. It took me a second, but I think I got what she’d been getting at before, and she was a wrong, completely wrong. My jaw shifted. “That may all be true, but what you may or may not be insinuating about me and as you said, my friend is not. That is all December and I are. Good friends, and it is not like that with her. She’s married, and I’m not unavailable.”
At least, when it ca
me to the situation with my friend, again, not like that. I maybe would have argued against that in the past when what happened between us was fresh, but not now. Now, I was just prone to getting into stupid shit.
And Brielle didn’t believe me.
I saw that all over her face too. She chewed her lip. “I wish that we both could have come at each other differently that night. That there weren’t so many variables. That maybe if I hadn’t been so sad and you yourself weren’t…” A shallow breath, an eye pinch before she thought better about what she’d been about to say.
Instead, she chose to leave, block herself and whatever she was going through from me. It felt very familiar, chillingly so.
“I need to go,” she said, backing toward the door. She touched it. “And don’t drop the class. It’s not necessary. I’ll deal if you can.”
“Bri—”
She didn’t correct me because she let the door slam in my face again. I pinched the bridge of my nose but, this time, didn’t go after her.
I wasn’t confident she’d actually let me this time.
Chapter Nine
Ramses
“Ramses?”
My sight lifted to find more than one board member’s eyes on me, but the only one who appeared to be in right form today was Duncan Salsbury, the one who’d spoken.
His lips pinched tight and his back ramrod straight, he lifted his chin. “Are we boring you, son?”
I wasn’t this man’s son, but it was cute he’d decided to put that out there. I did have to call him mister, uncle, or other various forms of male superiority when it came to myself growing up, so it really must chap his lily-white ass how things were now. How he had to answer to me. Call me boss.
My lips tipped slow, actually doing very important research on my end surrounding a certain professor. I’d decided to stalk Brielle’s social media profiles, a dead end since the one she had was locked and her pictures the same. I’d just wanted to find out more about her, figure her out and give me some indicator into why she was so closed off. The venture had turned up empty for the most part, and after a flick of my fingers to minimize her page, I swiveled the laptop around to show Duncan and the rest of the board.
“I’d like your opinion on something actually.” Nosy bastard. I directed a finger to what I now had on the screen, a catering menu. “Yellow or brown.”
“Yellow or... brown?” His eyebrow lifted slow, and he angled a look in the direction of my Mac. Pretty much everyone did, which was fucking funny as hell. About a dozen suited professionals, men and women completely disrupted since this man decided to call me out on the carpet. Duncan shook his head. “I don’t under—”
“Yellow or brown, Duncan. Mustard?” Chuckling, I lounged back in my executive chair. “It’s getting close to lunch, and I find myself simply plagued by this decision. Yellow or brown mustard on my pastrami on rye. I’d really love your opinion since you appear to be so concerned about me, what I do?”
There was more than one chuckle in my direction and a rose-colored tint to Duncan’s aged cheeks. He’d attempted to put me out there, but only ended up embarrassing himself for causing a completely unnecessary disruption to today’s meeting. I may have been bored as hell, but I hadn’t needed him to call me out on that.
He pressed a hand down a chunky tie his grandkids probably got him for Christmas. It was boring and humdrum just as himself, but his grandchildren couldn’t be faulted for that. They were probably just giving the old coot what he wanted. His throat cleared. “I’d advise brown myself. Typically, can’t go wrong there.”
I had to fight my smile now as he managed to make that actually sound serious, like it really fucking mattered and was a huge decision. I placed out a hand, and he took that as direction to continue, good man.
I fell back into the discussions of figures and projections, nothing over my head but dull, nonetheless. The board typically met once a month to discuss all this shit, and since I was the new guy around here, the new boss, I unfortunately had to be here for all of it. I tried to be since they had gone out of their way to reschedule things for me. They gave me their respect with that, knowing my frantic schedule with school and its combination with work, so I did give them the rest of my attention before the clock summoned its end, and I got to finally leave and go through things in the privacy of my own office. I really didn’t need these guys telling me every little thing, the hand-holding like I couldn’t read an email or open a file folder. I was a class or two away from getting my BBA, and even without my education, I already knew how my father’s company worked. I’d been born and bred for this shit since I came out the womb, always known this was what I’d be doing and where I was going to be. There were pictures of me in this very downtown office in diapers, sitting on my dad’s desk while he made phone calls and made powerful decisions.
I made that office my own now, on the top floor of a glass-enclosed fortress known as Mallick Enterprises. This was the man hub of my father’s real estate and development company, its location in downtown Maywood Heights, and I hoped, now that I was here and running things, to bleed some of the negativity and arrogance out of it. My father had been a piss-poor human being, which just so happened to make for an excellent businessman. He’d brought quite a few people lots of money through the years, but I was a firm believer that money could still be made without being a dick and making people feel inferior. That may be foreign to this office and the company he used to keep, but that’s what I was bringing around here. All I needed to do now was get familiar with things since I had been gone for the last few years. I’d had my father’s people keep me abreast of things, sending me those same figures and projections in the form of spreadsheets while I’d been in business school at Brown. They thought it funny I actually wanted it all since I was in school, but I didn’t want these people to forget about me, who I was. I was coming back, and they shouldn’t get too comfortable.
And they especially shouldn’t expect my father.
In the comfort of what was now my office, I opened my laptop and got right back to work, only occasionally trying to stalk Bri between emails and phone calls. That final conversation we’d had didn’t sit well, and I had a feeling this woman and I shared more in common than she’d readily admit. I may be twenty-two and she may be thirty-five, but she was right, we both had shit going on and we both obviously opted to deal with it in a certain way that night we met—together. She may have been completely off base with some of the things she’d said, things surrounding December and me. We were just friends, and though some of those old wounds from the past were still there, I’d accepted that long ago and the relationship we had now—just friends. Bri hadn’t been entirely wrong about maybe a few walls I had up, but I wasn’t unavailable and had a feeling we both may deal with sudden conflicts that arose in our lives in similar ways. Brielle seemed like a runner, just like me, and conversations definitely should probably be had between us.
I probably should address these things with her in person, not stalk her on the internet like well, a stalker, but at this point, I felt like a man obsessed. It was like I needed to know about her, everything I could find out, but as I clicked around on the net behind the close doors of my office, I, again, came up empty.
Who wasn’t on social media?
She had that one profile freaking under lock and key, and I wasn’t bold enough to try to friend or follower her, not with me being her student now and all that. Frustrated, I slammed my laptop shut right as I got a call from up front.
“Mr. Salsbury wants to speak to you, Ramses,” my secretary, Leann, said on the other line.
Fucking perfect.
“Send him in,” I told her, noticing he made all staff call him Mr. Salsbury when he had known all these people for years. I didn’t even do that shit, and I was his boss, and what would I look like doing that anyway? These people had known me since I was in diapers.
My eyes were on my laptop when Duncan came in.
I admit I p
retended to be at work, but fuck me, if I didn’t still have Brielle’s Facebook page up. She had a profile picture of her in a football jersey, a New York team with black grease paint under her eyes and a sexy as all hell grin on her lips. I’d basically been pathetically salivating over the thing for the better part of an hour but I forced my gaze up to the world’s most well-dressed stick in the mud. Good ole Duncan loved to spend his money and had pretty much been me for all intents and purposes while I’d been away at school and my father had been in prison. Mallick Enterprises wasn’t just a family company, others had shares such as himself, but I held the majority. This effectively made me this man’s boss, but he was still basically family since I’d known him all my life.
“Ramses,” he said, his smile a firm but respectful one. He pocketed his hands. “How are you holding up, my boy? Adjusting well?”
Had been, but could do a little less with the my boy and sons. I smiled. “Can I help you with something, Duncan?”
I admit I was still a little annoyed over him calling me out before and wondered if I needed to make him call me sir or mister just to take me a bit more seriously. I just worried it might be a slippery slope, and I did want to do things differently around here. People may have respected my father, but they had also feared him. He was the law and I’d feared him, too, in the end.
I guess he’d given us all a reason to.
My jaw working in thought, Duncan decided to take it upon himself to appropriate a seat in front of my father’s desk. I had no serious problems with the guy, that annoying uncle type, but he did hover. He was supposed to be showing me the ropes because he did used to be me, and unfortunately, I did have to put up with it at the present. He knew more than me about all this, my dad’s company, so I did have to listen to him. I wasn’t arrogant enough to think that I knew everything, but I could do without the training wheels and what seemed to be constant check-ins. That first week the man had been in my office every hour on the hour, a buzzing bee and me without my goddamn repellent.