She comes in the suite. Cellophane crinkles through the air and I laugh. She’s such a fucking mess.
“Hey,” she says, poking her head around the door. “I’m going to take off, okay?”
“Is it five already?” I ask, looking at the clock.
“It’s five-thirty, actually. I stayed over to finish up something for your father.”
“Really? I didn’t know anything about that.”
“It’s no big deal,” she says, waving me off. “But I do need to get going.”
“Do you have plans?”
“I have yoga.” She steps inside my office and I almost choke. Skin-tight pants are stretched over her curves while a white shirt hugs her top. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I say, wheezing. Clearing my throat, I imagine her at dinner with Keenan. “Could I ask a favor of you?”
“Sure. I wanted to talk to you anyway,” she says, pulling her eyes away from mine.
My stomach fills with dread. Heavy, foul, infuriating trepidation. “What about? You can come in, if you’d like.”
She considers it for a good bit before taking the steps to the chair across from me. “After today, Ford’s company will be good to go for the most part. I’m just waiting for you to sign the insurance paper and then I’ll get it faxed back.”
I scoot a sheet of paper across the desk. “I signed it. It’s done. I’ll fax it though. It has to get there by six or the offer is void and we’ll have to start from scratch again.”
“I’ll send it,” she says.
“It has to be there before you leave. If not, we won’t be guaranteed that rate and we need that rate to hit budget.”
“Don’t you trust me?” she grins, taking the paper.
I look at her warily, but she’s right. I do trust her.
“That being said,” she says, clearing her throat, “I’d like you to replace me. As soon as possible, preferably.”
There’s no sunshine in her face, no ease that I’m used to seeing and that winds the dread even tighter.
“Things between us are too complicated for me to keep coming in here every day. I mean, you . . . I . . . we . . .” She looks at me through her thick lashes, begging me to help.
“I understand.” The air moves between us, as heavy as the dismay I feel, and I want to reach for her, but that’s the problem in and of itself. “I don’t want you to go. Can I say that?”
“You can. And I don’t want to go, for the record,” she sighs. “It’s too hard to come here, and I’m not even making a pun this time,” she smiles weakly. “I never should’ve crossed the line with you because we work together so well. But I did.”
I think back to all the times we crossed the line and realize the most serious ones weren’t the times I was inside her body. They were the times I was inside her mind. When she was burrowing herself inside my heart.
That’s what got us to this point. It’s why this conversation feels like I’m being suffocated. If it were only a physical thing between us, I’d manage. It’s not. It’s becoming so much deeper than that.
“I did too,” I admit.
She nods. “I know a girl, actually, that might be a good fit. I can get her resume, if you’d like.”
But she won’t be you.
This is for the best. I know it, even though I can’t help but hear the scream inside my brain, yelling at me to talk her out of it.
“Are you sure? I don’t want you getting yourself in a situation because you leave your job. I can transfer you. You suggested that before, remember?”
“Yeah. But I really think I just need a clean break from you, Graham. You’re kind of like crack and I need to go cold turkey.”
I grin at her analogy, but there’s no happiness in my smile. “I’ll write you a shining recommendation,” I promise. “I could even help you find another job. You’d be an asset to anyone that would be smart enough to hire you.”
“Thank you,” she whispers.
I force a swallow. “So, my favor?”
“Sure. Shoot.”
I can hear nothing but white noise as I fill my lungs with air. “Lincoln is getting married this weekend. It’s at the Farm.” I watch her eyes widen, anticipation written all over her pretty face. “Would you do me the honor of being my date?”
“Graham . . .” she says warily.
“You’re going to leave here soon, and let’s be honest, I probably won’t see you again.” My jaw clenches as I say it, but I press forward. “You’ll go live some other life, and I wish you the best with it. But since we’re stuck together for a little while longer, let’s make the best of it. What could it hurt?”
I know the answer. It’s only going to make it hurt worse in the end, but I’m willing, for the second time in my life, to take the hedonistic approach.
“Are you sure?” she asks. “It’s your family, and a wedding at that, and I . . .”
“What?”
She shrugs.
“And you’d be my date and I’d be honored to have you on my arm.” When she doesn’t agree, I lean forward. “Don’t make me go alone. My brothers won’t let me live it down.”
Slowly, inch by inch, her face gets a glow of that sunshine I miss. “When you put it like that, I suppose I could help you out.”
“There’s one more part.” There isn’t. That was it. Just the wedding. But seeing how easily she agreed, now I’m going to press my luck. “There’s a golf outing with my brothers the day before. We’re all going. It’ll be a nightmare, but it’s what Lincoln wanted to do. The girls of my family are going to the clubhouse and having a shower for Danielle. I thought maybe you’d like to go on my behalf.”
“What? On your behalf? That makes no sense, Graham.”
“Yeah,” I say, thinking on my feet. “My mother will be there, both my sisters. Alison and Danielle and a couple of her friends. I thought it would be nice if you went. I know it would mean a lot to Lincoln too.”
That last bit is a stretch. Lincoln won’t care. He’s only worried about Danielle and making her happy. Bingo!
“Dani isn’t from here,” I say, laying it on thick. “She doesn’t have a lot of friends here and I know Lincoln really wants us all to come out and support her.”
“I don’t even know her,” she points out.
“Yeah, but she’s heard us all talking about you.” I gulp and prepare to wind a little more truth to this. “It would mean a lot to me.”
She sucks in a breath, warring over her decision.
“Please?”
“Fine,” she exhales. “I’ll do it.”
“Great! I’ll—”
“Not so fast,” she says, waving a finger at me. “I’ll go on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You go to yoga with me tonight.”
“Mallory,” I groan. “Be reasonable.”
“I think this is very reasonable. I’m considering accompanying you to a wedding and a bridal shower for someone I don’t even know. That’s a lot I’m giving you, Graham. You can certainly give me an hour of yoga.”
“I don’t yoga.”
“You’ll yoga just fine.” She stands, nestling her hand in the crook of her hip. She knows what she’s doing because she smirks. “You’ll need to be at the studio by six.” Like the decision has been decided, she takes the insurance papers and bounces to the door. “Oh, and Graham?”
She looks coyly at me.
“Yes?” I ask.
“Don’t be late.”
Mallory
I have no idea why I do this to myself. Laughing out loud, I correct my inner monologue. I do know why I do this to myself. At least this time.
I want to see Graham Landry relaxed. He’s been going so full-tilt with all the things on his plate that I want to give him a few minutes away from the office. Just a piece of time where there’s nothing to do but be. Factoring in that I might see some muscle, and if I’m lucky, some sweat, doesn’t hurt either.
Stretching
out for the last thirty minutes, I feel nice and limber. Everything is tingly, but that probably has nothing to do with the moves I’ve been holding and more to do with the headlights suddenly shining in the front window of the studio.
I’m aware I’m an addict and I measure my drugs in Grahams. Just like anyone that has an insatiable craving for something, I want to horde the remaining moments I have with him because once it’s over, it’s over. It has to be. I can’t take a gratuitous huff of his stick from time to time.
My breath catches as he walks in the studio. Dressed in a pair of black workout pants that, as opposed to most men, fit him semi-snugly. Like his suit pants, only not. Only, quite possibly, better. A sleeveless black shirt covers his torso, his arms on display for my gratification.
He glances around, biting his bottom lip. “So this is a yoga studio?”
“It is.” I pop up on my bare feet. “Ever think you’d be in one?”
“Nope.” He gives me a mega-watt grin, tossing a grey duffle bag on the floor. “Shoes off?”
“Please.” I watch as he casts off his shoes and socks and then pads across the floor and to the mat I have laid out for him next to mine. “I hope you’re happy,” he says, looking uncomfortable. “I left a stack of papers unsigned to be here.”
“You must really want me to go to that wedding,” I tease.
“Something like that,” he mumbles, turning in a full circle. “There are mirrors everywhere. This studio could be used for another purpose, if you follow me.”
I smack his arm, making him laugh. “Focus, Graham.”
“Okay, okay. What first?”
“Just sit and stretch out. Get loose.”
He sits and looks at me.
“Don’t act so excited,” I say, sitting next to him. “You’ll wear out your energy before we get started.”
“I’ll try to rein it in.”
He mimics my movements. For someone in such great shape, he’s as stiff as a board. It’s almost comical, but I don’t comment on it. I just enjoy having him near me outside the office. Besides, he’s clearly out of his comfort zone enough without my prodding.
“This is yoga?” he asks, stretching one arm overhead. “This is stupid.”
I hop to my feet and get behind him. “No,” I say, taking his sinewy arm in my hand. “This is yoga.” I turn his palm and pull his arm farther out and up.
“Fuck,” he grimaces. “Easy there, tiger.”
“See? You yoga just fine.” I take his other arm and manipulate it the other way. “How does that feel?”
“Wonderful.”
It feels wonderful to me too to have him in my hands. To be able to touch him and have a reason. “Let’s Downward Facing Dog.”
“I hope that’s a pseudonym for doggy style.”
“No,” I laugh, taking a big step away from him before I rip off my clothes and bend over in front of him. “This.” I pose in an inverted V and look at him. “Do this.”
“Nah,” he grins, sitting back. “I’ll just watch you. The view is phenomenal.”
I fall to my knees. “The deal was you do yoga. Not watch me do yoga.”
“I’m here. I yoga’d.”
“No, you stretched. Kind of.” I flash him a look. “Your body is so stiff.”
“I thought you liked me stiff?”
We grin at one another, but the longer we hold it, the heavier everything suddenly feels. A chasm has been dug between us, a crater we can’t overcome. Things aren’t as easy as they used to be.
“I’m sorry, Mallory,” he says, sitting upright. His arms over his bent knees, he looks at me.
“It’s okay.” I pop up in a plank and focus on my breathing. “We both know what it is . . .” I drop onto the floor, facing away from him. “And what it’s not.”
“I wish I could be something different.”
“No. Don’t, Graham. You’re brilliant how you are.”
He moves to the front of me so I can’t look anywhere but at him. “Can I tell you something?”
“Sure. Unless it’s something like you don’t want me to go to the wedding because Joy has already committed to letting me borrow a dress. That’s no easy feat, my friend.”
“I didn’t consider you didn’t have a dress.”
“Oh, I do,” I lie. “I just wanted hers.”
“I could get you one,” he offers.
“And I could not wear it.”
He chuckles. Taking a deep breath, he slowly looks at me. “I just, I want you to know the real reason things between us will never be anything.”
My throat burns as I force a swallow past the boulder-sized lump. “I think we already discussed that.”
“I only gave you a part of it. The easy part to admit.”
“Graham, there was nothing easy about that conversation for you.”
“True. But I don’t want you walking away from this thinking this is your fault or you did something wrong or there’s something wrong with you that would prevent us from being together.”
I frown, my heart breaking. “Do we have to do this?”
“It’s important to me,” he whispers. “If you decided you had feelings for me, then decided you didn’t, I think . . . I think that would be very difficult for me to deal with.”
I know this has something to do with Vanessa, the bitch I’d like to kick in the face for screwing up this man. Even so, I don’t know how to respond. My heart sings, yet breaks, at his admission and all I can do is watch him wrestle with his emotions.
“I dislike very much when things aren’t planned for,” he says softly. “I like numbers. Schedules. Dates. Then you walked in my office and sort of took everything I want and threw it all in the air with your water bottle and papers.”
“I’m not asking you—”
“No,” he says, reaching for my hand. “I know you’re not. You’re not asking anything of me. But I’m struggling here because . . .”
Standing, I walk behind him and take his shoulders in my hands. I work them back and forth, the quietness of the studio comforting us both.
“Promise me you’ll start doing something for you,” I say finally. “Maybe you don’t yoga, but you could get a massage. From a man,” I add with a gulp. “I could get you a standing appointment every month. I know you would go if it was on your calendar.”
Chuckling, he tilts his head and looks at me through his thick, dark lashes.
“And you need to keep some protein bars in your desk. You go too long in between meals,” I add. “I can have Hillary’s House start bringing you breakfast—”
“Mallory,” he breathes, but doesn’t continue.
“Just . . . take care of yourself, Graham.”
He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. I’m glad for it because if he did, I might cry.
Graham
“PROMISE ME YOU’LL START DOING something for you.”
It’s that line, that one little sentence, that’s fucked with me all night. It’s why I burned my salmon, why I knocked over a new bottle of Blanton’s, my favorite bourbon. It’s why I left the shower running for a good ten minutes before I realized I never got in.
I think about the small things she does for me. The way she goes out of her way to take care of things, the way she worries about me. As much as I love being with her physically, the way she feels against me, this part of her is what hits me in a way I haven’t felt before. It’s what I can’t shake, what I fear will leave a hole when she leaves.
When she leaves.
“Shit,” I groan, pressing my hands against the glass door to the patio. I’m all tied up, a complete fucking wreck, and I really don’t even have the energy to try to straighten it out.
Shoving off the glass and turning towards my briefcase on the kitchen table, I pull out a few files I need to work on. I glance at them and realize—I don’t care. Not like I should. Something is off and it’s not Landry Security or Lincoln’s contracts. It’s something else.
I slam the files on the table and they hit it with a smack. Something rolls out of my briefcase and drops to the floor. A wide grin tickles my lips.
Laughing, I scoop it up and hold it in the air. A roller bottle with a label for “Stress Relief” catches the light.
“Mallory,” I whisper. “Damn you.”
I could call up a woman and try to distract myself. I could . . . try to replace her. My brothers’ words rip through my mind, leaving a trail of awareness behind.
I can’t replace her. I don’t want to. Hell, I couldn’t.
There’s no way to switch her out for another woman. It would take two, three, maybe even four to amount to all the things she’s becoming to me.
Before I can contemplate that too much, my phone rings. I don’t even look at it. I just answer it, my brain too fogged up by my realization to think straight.
“Hello?” I ask, preoccupied.
“Graham?”
The phone wobbles in my hand and I almost drop it to the floor. Surely I’m wrong. I must be so twisted over Mallory and stressed out that I’m imagining things. That has to be it.
“Graham?” she asks again. Her voice is clear this time and exactly how I remember it.
I force a swallow, my emotions strung all over the place. I’ve waited to hear her voice for years, wondering what I would say to her. Now that she’s on the line, I have no idea what to say at all.
“Vanessa?” I ask.
“It’s me,” she says breathily. “I wasn’t sure if you’d remember my voice.”
Images of her lying in my arms, of her smile, and then of her husband’s face standing at the end of her bed flip through my mind. My stomach knots.
“Why are you calling me?”
“Lincoln’s wedding is all over the entertainment channels and magazines. He looks so much like you did back then.” She pauses. “How are you, Graham?”
“Vanessa, I . . .” I scrub my hands down my face, searching desperately for some calm in the center of this storm. “So you see my brother on television and you think, ‘Oh, I’ll call up the guy I fucked over years ago’?”
She’s taken aback by my tone, and frankly, so am I. Whatever I thought I’d say before isn’t what I’m feeling right now.
Switch Page 16