by Bru Baker
Parker tilted his head, deepening the kiss as he trailed his tongue along Mason’s full lower lip tentatively, as though seeking permission. Mason smothered a laugh, pulling back enough to mutter his disbelief that Parker would ask before taking the liberty, since he so rarely asked for anything. Parker answered by nipping impatiently at the soft skin, and Mason moaned, parting his lips and letting Parker’s tongue inside.
Parker wasn’t sure when Mason had untucked his shirt, but suddenly he realized that as Parker inspected his mouth with quick, sure thrusts of his tongue, Mason’s hands were mimicking the motions as they swept across Parker’s warm skin. He mapped out the play of muscles, tracing the ridges of Parker’s shoulders and teasing down soft skin until his fingers were dancing along the waistband of Parker’s trousers.
Parker retaliated by nudging this thigh between Mason’s legs, pressing the firm muscle against Mason’s growing erection. Mason moaned, rubbing himself against Parker shamelessly, until Parker pulled back, cursing roundly.
“Shit,” Parker swore. “This better be good, Anna.” Parker watched Mason frown in confusion, and he could tell the moment Mason realized he was talking into his cell phone. He bit back a laugh as Mason blinked owlishly, pleased beyond belief that their kisses had affected Mason as much as they’d affected him.
Mason struggled to right his clothing, and Parker felt a satisfied pang run through him when he noticed Mason’s lips were red and swollen. His own lips were warm, and his hair was mussed. Parker knew it would be obvious to anyone what they’d been doing the moment they stepped inside. He liked the thought of everyone knowing Mason was his.
He watched as Mason paced along the wall, his arms wrapped around himself to fend off the breeze now that Parker wasn’t there to warm him up. He looked absolutely gorgeous, flushed and ruffled.
“We’ve got to get back downstairs,” Parker said after he slid his phone into his pocket and tried to tuck his shirttails back into some semblance of order.
“Right,” Mason said, shaking his head a bit, as though he was trying to clear away the same fuzziness Parker was feeling. “But there will be more of that later, right?”
He reached out and slipped a finger under Parker’s waistband, pinching at the shirt he’d just tucked back in. “I never thought I had any real kinks, but I have to say, the thought of you in an oxford shirt and nothing else? It’s doing it for me.”
Parker laughed, his cheeks flushing as he envisioned the same thing—Mason naked, standing behind him as he rucked up Parker’s shirttails and ran his hands over Parker’s bare ass. He sighed. They had the worst timing ever.
“Definitely. But we’ve got to get back downstairs. Anna has the letters of resignation finished. Luke’s printing them now.” Parker paused, gently dislodging Mason’s fingers. He studied Mason for a moment before turning his attention back to smoothing out his shirt.
“You know, you aren’t committed to this yet,” Parker said, forcing his tone into something he thought sounded casual but actually sounded pained and slightly breathless. “We’ll probably fail. In fact, when Luke and I ran the risk analysis at about 4:00 a.m., we found a 72 percent chance that we will fail. That means there’s only a—”
“A 28 percent chance of success?” Mason cut in, giving Parker a wry smile. “Math major, remember? I’m good with numbers.”
Even though he didn’t mention it, Parker figured that with Mason’s math background, he’d consider the risk formula they’d used to be conservative. Despite Mason’s bravado, Parker knew he’d spent quite a bit of time running the numbers himself. It was an absolutely crazy venture, but it wouldn’t be the death of Mason’s career, not like it would be for Parker and Anna. If they pulled off the buyout, they’d be hailed as business geniuses; if they failed, their reputations would be sullied by the implication of shady business practices. Still, Parker couldn’t help but worry about Mason’s future almost as much as he worried about his own. It was a little disconcerting to realize how important Mason had become to him in such a relatively short amount of time, but Parker didn’t question it. Right now, Mason was just about the only good thing in his life; he wasn’t about to overthink it.
Chapter Six
PARKER tuned out the chatter around him, looking up briefly as Mason sat a Styrofoam box down beside him, then moved on to dole out the rest of the boxes to everyone else. They’d been holed up in Parker’s apartment for the last three hours, working on strategy and board presentations.
And that was after they’d put in a full day at Anderson so as not to cause suspicion, though more than a few eyebrows had been raised when Anna, Parker, and Mason had all left together. Though Parker thought that probably had more to do with the fact that they’d left at something approximating a normal hour, leaving the building when it was still daylight. They’d gone from there to an appointment at the bank, and straight from there to meetings with Margaret and their other main investor, a woman named Nancy who Parker still didn’t know much about, aside from the fact that she seemed willing to invest several million dollars in their harebrained scheme.
All in all, it had been an exhausting day, and it wasn’t close to over. So when Mason sat the open container of lemon chicken in front of Parker, he didn’t even look up from his laptop. Mason stood over him for several more seconds, holding out the fork, his annoyance at being completely ignored showing on his face, and Parker sighed.
Parker was alone at the table; everyone else had gathered around the coffee table or along the kitchen island, chatting as they ate. Luke and Greg had turned on a football game on the television, but even that hadn’t broken Parker’s concentration.
“Sorry. Just eat without me.” Mason sighed and stuck the fork in one of the pieces of soggy chicken before he pulled out a chair across from Parker’s, slumped into it, and dug into his own meal. He stretched his legs out, letting his footrest against Parker’s just like it had during their ill-fated date. Mason ate, teasingly bobbing his foot up and down as he chewed. When that got no response, he kicked Parker hard in the shin.
“What the hell?” “You need to eat,” Mason said as though he hadn’t just visited physical harm upon him. He nodded toward the nowcold plate. “I could probably warm it up for you if you wanted.”
“I don’t have time to eat, Mason,” Parker snapped, drawing his legs back so they were tucked around the rungs of his chair. “You heard what my father said. Century is going to be ready to take their offer for Anderson Industries to the board on Friday. That gives us three more days to get everything in place to go with a proposal of our own.”
“Which you’ll never be able to do if you don’t take care of yourself. I’m not asking you to take time out to go have a goddamn four-course meal, Parker. Just eat the damn chicken.”
Parker narrowed his eyes, glaring at Mason before he picked up the fork and took a very purposeful bite of the chicken. He grimaced, chewed quickly, and swallowed.
“It’s cold.”
“Which is why I offered to warm it up.” Mason rolled his eyes and stood, grabbed Parker’s plate, and took it into the kitchen. The small crowd who had been eating at the island had dispersed into the living room, their attention split between the game and their own laptops. Everyone else seemed to be able to balance normal bodily functions and working on the proposal, though Parker figured none of them had quite as much to lose as he did.
The microwave dinged, and Mason nearly tripped over Parker when he turned to open it. Instead of going to get his own meal, though, Parker took another step forward, caging Mason against the island. Mason melted against him when Parker leaned forward and kissed him, lips gentle and sweet as they moved over his own.
“Thank you,” Parker said quietly after he’d pulled back, resting his forehead against Mason’s.
“Don’t thank me yet. You’ve never reheated takeout rice, have you? It gets all hard.” Mason’s grin was infectious, and Parker found himself laughing along. He was exhausted, as though doze
ns of years rather than dozens of hours had passed since he found out about his father’s plan for the company, but in that moment, standing in his kitchen laughing with Mason, he felt everything was all right.
“You eat, and I’ll look over your numbers,” Mason said, carrying the plate of rewarmed food back to the table to put it at the seat he’d been in before. When Parker opened his mouth to protest, Mason balked. “You’re really going to argue with me about it? Me? You need to eat, and you obviously don’t want to waste any time, so why not let me work on it while you relax for a bit?”
Parker felt the tension in his shoulders relax slightly, and he sat obediently, picking up his fork. The chicken didn’t taste much better warm, and Mason had been right about the rice—it was disgusting. He ate dutifully, hardly tasting the food, as he watched Mason’s dark head bent over his laptop. This time, when he felt Mason’s foot snake up alongside his own, Parker grinned, moving his own leg closer.
IT WAS too much to have hoped that people as high-profile in the local business world as Anna and Parker could have several meetings at a bank that was not one Anderson Industries did business with without someone noticing. Apparently an industrious journalist, having seen Parker in the bank’s lobby, had somehow weaseled the information that he and Anna had applied for a rather large loan out of an unscrupulous bank employee. It had been a risk they’d considered, but they hadn’t counted on it hitting the newspapers the day after it happened.
“I can’t believe he said that!” Mason was nearly incandescent with rage as he scrolled through the article a third time. “Your father insinuated that the two of you were wrapped up in some sort of investment scam!”
Jill had been the one to call their attention to the story, since they’d all been too busy to keep abreast of the news. Aside from Greg and Luke occasionally checking football scores, none of them had been keeping in touch with the outside world.
Mason hunched over his laptop, glaring at the screen. Jill’s father, Tom, read the business section every morning over breakfast, and he’d called his daughter the moment he saw the piece. Only Parker had been awake when the call came, but within minutes all of them had gathered around the table, armed with laptops and phones and anything else they’d need to mitigate the damage the article and its insinuations might cause.
Parker waved off Mason’s indignation, focusing on an email he’d just received from Margaret. Very little of Parker’s wealth was liquid, since most of it was tied up in property he’d inherited from his mother and the stock his father had given him when he’d reached the age of majority. Anna didn’t have anything to fall back on aside from a small inheritance she and Margaret had split when their paternal grandmother died a few years back, and she’d sunk most of that into the apartment she’d purchased. Margaret had mysteriously produced a small amount of cash to get them started, though she’d refused to say where she’d gotten it. It had been enough to set them up, though, and those funds, with the collateral from Anna’s and Parker’s apartments, had been enough to get them the bank loan that would help them bridge the gap. Still, the biggest chunk of the money they’d need for the buyout hinged on their primary investor, Nancy Preost.
Privately, Parker thought Nancy must be crazy to front them so much money, especially because he’d been quite clear in telling her exactly what their plans were. If the buyout worked, Nancy’s investment would translate into stock in Anderson, but she wouldn’t have a majority share. That had been the reason for the bank loan—Parker didn’t want anyone he didn’t trust to have control over the company, and both Nancy and Margaret fell into that category. He and Anna would share the majority stock ownership in Anderson Industries if the buyout succeeded, with Nancy, and to a much lesser extent Margaret, having significant voting shares.
Parker suspected Nancy had an old grudge against his father, especially when Margaret had cryptically mentioned that his mother, Evelyn, had gone to school with her. He’d heard rumors that his parents had had trouble conceiving him, and according to Margaret, Nancy had loaned his mother the money for fertility treatments.
The doctors had told them Evelyn’s body wasn’t suited for pregnancy, but she’d forged ahead anyway, both to please Richard, who badly wanted a son, and because she’d desperately wanted a child herself. Parker had precious few memories of her, supplemented by stories from Aunt Valerie, but he remembered enough to know she’d been a wonderful mother. Parker didn’t remember Nancy at all, but apparently she’d come to his mother’s funeral. There had been a huge fight between her and his father, and Richard had thrown her out. Parker’s memories of the day were scant—having to sit still as the priest spoke, standing beside Anna, hand in hand, at the cemetery, and most vivid, the smell of his aunt’s perfume as she held him when they’d lowered his mother’s casket into the ground and he’d struggled to follow it, not understanding that his mother was dead and wouldn’t be coming back.
“Parker, you can’t let him get away with that. He even hints there might be an internal investigation at Anderson into your departments because of ‘serious discrepancies in the accounting’. It’s—it’s slander!”
“Actually, it would be libel if it was anything, Mason, and it’s not that either,” Greg said, reading the screen over Mason’s shoulder.
“What do you mean? That journalist implied that Parker mismanaged—” “Implied. That’s the key, Mason. And Richard led him into it. Richard’s too smart to say anything outright. He’s just given the impression that Parker’s performance at Anderson isn’t optimal, which there’s not really any way for us to refute. And the journalist never actually levied any real accusations against Parker or Anna. There’s nothing illegal about the article or what Richard said.”
Mason sputtered. “Maybe not illegal, but definitely morally dubious.”
That got a response from Parker, who’d looked up from his e-mail to watch them bicker. “Morally dubious. I think that might actually be on my father’s business cards.” He snickered, giving Mason a fond look when the other man threw up his hands.
“I’m just saying it isn’t fair,” Mason said quietly. “Life’s not fair,” Parker said with a shrug, turning his own laptop around to show them the e-mail he’d just received. “But you know what the best cure is for having the whole world know your father finds you to be a disappointment? Getting the notification that your plans to buy out his company have been fully funded.”
“I do think that’s the traditional remedy, yes,” Greg said, stroking his chin thoughtfully.
“Nancy came through?” Anna’s shriek from across the room had the three men cringing. Parker barely had time to stand before she flung herself into his arms, hopped up, and wrapped her legs around his waist, just as she’d done when they were teenagers and she’d wanted to embarrass him in front of his friends.
Parker laughed, meeting Mason’s gaze over Anna’s curly hair, which fell in a jumbled mess over his shoulder. The heat in them made it very clear that Mason wished it was him Parker was holding instead, which made Parker blush and smile.
“As your lawyer, may I recommend a course of action?” “By all means,” Parker said, disentangling himself from Anna and dropping her into the chair he’d been sitting in. She fell into it with a shout, picked up his pen, and tossed it at him as she blew her hair out of her eyes.
“I think you’ll find that proper protocol after having your buyout plans fully funded is to open a bottle of Scotch,” Greg said, waggling his eyebrows.
“Greg, it’s not even ten!” Mason protested, looking absolutely horrified at the thought of drinking so early. “I think we should take his professional recommendation,” Liam said, his head appearing over the back of the sofa as he smirked at Parker. “Still have that bottle of Glenlivet that you stole from Richard’s office during the last Anderson Christmas party?”
Parker beamed. “You mean the bottle you stole and I confiscated?” Parker laughed when Liam merely shrugged. “Yes, it’s in the cabinet over t
he sink.”
Anna dashed into the small kitchen to gather an assortment of mismatched glasses while Liam retrieved the Scotch.
“What better way to celebrate stealing his company than by toasting with his stolen booze?” she giggled, and Parker just shook his head in amusement, wrapping an arm around Mason’s shoulders as Liam poured shots with more than his customary amount of diligence, careful not to spill any of the expensive liquor.
“To good business partners and even better friends,” Greg said, holding his glass high. “To the success of Anderson Industries under new leadership!” Liam cried, clinking his own jelly jar of amber liquid against Greg’s cut-crystal tumbler.
“To Margaret and Nancy, who made this possible,” Anna said, her expression more serious than it had been earlier. “To Abby and everyone else back at Anderson who have helped us, knowing their jobs depend on it.” Luke bowed slightly as he lifted his glass.
“To Parker, the once and future king of Anderson Industries,” Mason said cheekily, grinning when Parker elbowed him in the ribs.
Parker rolled his eyes at the spectacle before him. His closest friends, new and old, gathered around the table in his kitchen. Whether they succeeded in saving the company or not, they were making history. He felt a sappy smile curve his lips as he realized that in the battle he was about to wage to save Anderson Industries, there were no others he’d rather have by his side.
“To the faith and trust of friends, which sustains the soul. May we be victorious in our endeavor and never, even in our success, forget this moment,” he said, raising his glass to join the others. “For Anderson!”
“For Anderson!” everyone shouted, then downed their shots.
The silence lasted only for a few seconds, broken by Mason’s choked coughs. He glared at the half-full tumbler, placing it back on the table as everyone else lowered their empty glasses.