by Ella Brooke
Kit said nothing but drank her coffee. She sighed, as though relieved.
“I think I’d forgotten how addicted to that stuff everyone in your family is.”
“Not everyone. Just me and my father. My mother runs on pure stubbornness.”
“You’re definitely a hybrid then. Coffee and obstinacy.”
Kit looked like she might swat him again, but just continued drinking her coffee. She seemed determined to stare at it, rather than look at him.
“I definitely owe you one now. Not here, though.” Grant reached into his pocket to check the calendar on his phone. “Maybe you and I could get together sometime this week. Or we could even get a room.”
“That’s fine.” Kit put her coffee down in the sink. “You don’t owe me anything, Grant.”
She lifted onto her toes to graze a kiss across his cheek before heading for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I have things to do. Enjoy your evening,” Kit said without looking back. “It was good catching up with an old friend.”
Grant felt as though he’d been smacked in the face.
Chapter Four
Kit
Saturday morning, Kit rose as early as she could stand, put on her yoga pants and a tank top, and headed out for a run. It was a crisp morning, still early spring, and the streets of San Francisco weren’t too crowded yet.
After about half an hour, she approached the bright red exterior of Farley’s and took a break to stretch before going inside.
“Oh, heavenly nectar,” she murmured as she smelled the freshly ground coffee brewing.
There weren’t ever that many seats available at Farley’s, but that was the way of things. It looked like a cozy dining room/kitchen corner of someone’s apartment, with maybe six places to sit. Kit usually chose to sit outside, however, and did so today after the clerk had taken her order and handed her the large, life-sustaining cup of a roast they called “Wind & Sea.” Because why not.
Gotta love San Francisco.
She relaxed as she waited for her breakfast, stretching her arms and neck as she checked her phone. It had been an embarrassing night for her last night. She always made such terrible choices around Grant that she knew she really ought to stay as far away from him as possible. She’d been totally unable to sleep after returning from the hospital fundraiser. It had been so bad that she’d taken two capsules of melatonin and drunk three cups of St. John’s Wort tea before being able to settle even a little.
It was worth exploring why Grant still upset her so much after all of this time. He’d been a playboy then. He still was. She’d been overly invested in him then, but she didn’t have to be now.
Taking a sip of Wind & Sea, Kit started searching on her phone for the apps that Grant had told her about. It was somewhat interesting, from a business perspective, how many of these services there were and their various uses. It seemed that Grant had been modest about his involvement with SideHustle as well, since a simple search told her that the app had expanded to several other countries on various continents. Grant had to be doing incredibly well.
Not that it would have pleased his mother regardless, since she’d expected him to be a doctor. Anything else would’ve been slumming, even if Grant had created a new movement in the service industry nearly single-handedly.
“Hey, bitch!” Tamara sang cheerfully as she jogged up to Farley’s. She sat across the table from her and shook her head. “How on Earth do you get here so early?”
“I don’t sleep,” Kit replied flatly. Really, it was almost funny.
Tamara rose again to stretch her legs against her chair. A moment later, the clerk from inside returned with two plates: a lox bagel with thickly spread cream cheese and capers for Kit and a cup of organic yogurt with a side of granola for Tamara, who sat again and asked the waiter for water.
“God, that’s a lot of food in the morning,” Tamara said.
Kit shrugged. “It’s about half protein.”
“So is Greek yogurt.”
“I’m not ordering a cup of yogurt at a restaurant. I can get that at the store.” Kit unabashedly bit into her bagel and made loud noises deep in her throat.
“God, gross.” Tamara held her hand up to avoid looking at Kit and stirred her yogurt and granola with the other hand.
“Thank you.” Kit’s words were muffled around lox and bagel.
The two friends ate their Saturday morning post-run breakfasts as they exchanged stories about their weeks. Tamara talked about all of the drama going on at the gallery, and Kit mostly kept her comments related to her annoyances with Buck.
Casually, after they had finished eating and Kit was on her second cup of coffee, Kit asked, “Have you ever used SideHustle?”
“Constantly. I mean, we have some regulars at the gallery, but we can’t afford to keep errand boys around all the time, so we just search up someone to carry heavy items or run out to get things.” Tamara shrugged. “It’s pretty useful.”
“How did I not know this was a thing?”
“Probably because you’re annoying and you are the kind of person who will insist on moving and packing and painting an accent wall in your home by yourself.”
“You used the wrong word,” Kit drawled. “Instead of ‘annoying,’ you mean ‘self-sufficient.’ And they have people doing office work as well.”
Tamara nodded. “Yeah, one time, we were working in the back while Neese was on maternity leave, and we basically had a guy come and sit at the front desk for three hours just in case a buyer came in so they could come get us.”
Kit rubbed her fingers over her lips, thinking about that. Something about it bothered her, but she couldn’t put her finger on what.
“Did you read the article in Salon about the founder? God, he’s the hottest man I’ve ever seen. He must have a serious power tool going on, from the size of those hands.”
Jarred out of her thoughts, Kit looked up. “What?”
“The founder? Slash owner, I guess. He and two other people came up with the thing. But I think it was his idea, or they said so in the article.”
“Grant Wharton.”
“Yeppers. Gorgeous and loaded.”
“Well. I mean, his parents were surgeons. They were comfortable.”
Tamara cocked her head to the side. “Girl, are you crazy? That guy is a billionaire. He’s making money hand over fist with that app. Every independent business I know uses it, and from what I read, there are a lot of larger offices that use the SideHustle screening process to try out temps and things.”
Tamara sighed and stretched her arms over her head. “Don’t you wish you could come up with the next big thing everyone’s gonna use on their phones? If it’s not some stupid game about birds or pigs, it’s all these freelancing services.”
Kit blinked. Billionaire?
Grant really had sold himself short. Or did he think that she knew already? She wondered if that wasn’t something she should’ve figured out. While Kit could be a news junkie, she tended to ignore the business sections. It was just boring to her.
“I don’t know if I should say anything, but um… Last night…?”
Kit hesitated before launching into the story. Tamara’s eyes grew wider and wider until Kit finally finished with the part where she’d run off like a spooked Cinder-fellatio.
“I don’t believe you,” Tamara said after a very, very long silence.
Kit rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t lie about blowing a guy in a hotel kitchen.”
“No, I mean, why the hell did you just leave after that? He’s so into you. And he’s hot, and god, filthy rich.” Tamara spread her palms like Kit was the most incomprehensible creature in the world. “Plus, you clearly adore him. I’ve never seen you jump into a relationship that fast before. I’ve never seen you jump into a relationship period. You’re like, allergic to being in a relationship.”
Kit pursed her lips. “Maybe so. But if I am, Grant is why.”
�
�Ohhh.”
“I don’t know if I can do this with him again. He definitely wanted to hook up again, but…” Kit touched her chest as though she’d been physically struck there. “God, Tam, I don’t know if I can survive it again. I’ve never felt the way that I did about anyone else, and I haven’t been able to let myself really fall for anyone since then. I mean, the man has made a damn career out of being inconstant. How can I trust this?”
Tamara reached over and took Kit’s hand. “Okay, maybe you can’t. But I think you owe it to yourself to maybe get some closure. Right?”
“Maybe.” Kit groaned and looked up at the sky. “Why is this so hard? Why can’t I just have lots of orgasms and not care if he ‘like’ likes me? I feel like a twelve year old.”
“You want to bone like a dude, but your heart lives in your vagina,” Tamara said bluntly. “You can’t change who you are. Just…go with it and try to protect yourself a little better this time. You have more experience now.”
Tamara shrugged and crossed her arms. “Besides. He does owe you. You should at least collect on that. It’s not every guy who will even offer.”
“Oh, Tam!” Kit tossed her napkin at Tamara, but she just caught it and set it on her plate.
“You know I’m right.”
Kit was afraid that her friend was right, about closure at least. But if she started trading favors, she didn’t know if she could stop.
***
When she returned home, Kit did a few reps with her free weights, took a hot shower, and spent the rest of the day clearing out her inbox and streaming a reality TV show about amateur bakers trying to make professional pastries.
As the day wore on, her concerns about Grant seemed to fade. Getting things done around the house gave her a sense of control. When she’d finished everything on her to-do list, Kit curled up in the big stuffed chair in her living room with her tablet to do a little reading.
That was when her mind began to wander. It was a traitor, remembering the strength of Grant’s arms, the cut of his abs, the husky whisper of his voice in her ear. He had always made her body feel alive.
When her phone chimed, Kit looked up from her ignored book to see an alert for her email. From Grant. He must have gotten her card from someone at the fundraiser. Or looked her up on the firm’s website. It really wasn’t that difficult to look someone up these days.
Biting her lip, Kit dismissed the alert. She didn’t want to deal with this right now.
***
The message weighed on her for the rest of the day. Kit made a cup of herbal tea and paced around her apartment. She tidied up a few things that were out of place, but since she had cleaned the apartment just a week ago when Tamara and a few work friends had come over, there was no use trying to distract herself with cleaning. It was a pity because sometimes a good, deep clean helped her think.
Deep breath. Glance at phone. Another cup of tea. Glance at phone.
She couldn’t get it off her mind, and she couldn’t make herself read the email.
She lay down in bed at around nine pm. An hour later, she rose, got her iPod, and turned on a few podcasts to listen to while waiting to get sleepy. Another hour later, she was still awake and getting impatient. She closed her eyes, trying to trick her brain into resting, but it resisted, running over and over things she had to do in the upcoming week, as well as her embarrassments from the last.
Especially giving Grant an apparently unprompted blowjob.
Kit curled on her side, wrapping an arm around her stomach, and sighed heavily. This was ridiculous. She hadn’t had a cup of coffee since the morning, and that was saying something for her. She launched herself out of bed and stormed into the kitchen to put on the tea kettle.
She settled, with hot tea and a bag of cracker chips, back in her stuffed chair and flipped around Netflix for something mindless to watch.
“Reality show, reality show, braindead girl dating vampires…”
She bit into a cracker and glanced at her phone. She knew that once she opened the email, she would definitely give Grant whatever he wanted. She was helpless when it came to him, and it terrified her.
She’d had two and a half cups of tea and too many cracker chips when she finally caved. She grabbed her phone and opened the program for her email.
Kit,
It was wonderful talking to you the other night. I would love to be able to meet up with you soon. I’ve made reservations for dinner for every night this week at The Blue Room. Just tell me what day you are free, and I will make it happen.
Yours,
Grant
Kit blinked as she read over the message maybe nine times.
Then she deleted it. Her heart just couldn’t take this.
Chapter Five
Grant
Grant frowned as he stared at the box sitting on the large oak desk in his home office. It was filled to the brim with materials both mundane and salacious, though he could not for the life of him recognize any of them.
“Is this a gift?” He picked up a pencil and used it to lift up a red, frilly thong. After a moment, he realized that the pair belonged to a girl he’d brought home just a week ago, whose hair had been nearly as red. Well, on her head, anyway.
Behind him, a throat cleared loudly. Grant turned to see his round-faced housekeeper frowning at him.
“I found all of that cleaning,” she said sourly. “There is no place for these things, unless you would like to direct me to your drawer where you keep your frilly panties.”
“Technically, these belong to someone else. I bought them for her.” Grant grinned. “A gift given to her under the table during dinner. She wasn’t the kind of girl to wear panties regularly.”
“Nasty.” Malika shook her head. “You should give them back to her then. No other woman is going to want to wear someone else’s used thong.”
“I couldn’t possibly remember how to contact her.” Grant waved the thong on the end of his pencil. “What was her name…?”
Malika’s lids fell half-closed. “Garbage.”
Grant laughed as she went to collect the box, with the implication that she was going to throw these women’s items away. Though she could also be commenting on his behavior or the quality of girl he brought home.
He was used to it. And truthfully, Malika’s crankiness amused him. She was a good servant: loyal, honest, and afraid of nothing. He could handle a few barbed comments from a motherly figure. Malika’s judgments were straightforward at least, and they came with a good deal fewer implications of the worthlessness of his character.
Malika seemed to take everything in stride. Though, she often still treated him like a teenage boy who needed a stern watching.
Grant sat down to his computer to check his email. He would like to say that he was being a diligent CEO, staying alert on the weekend, but in reality, he was hoping that Kit had answered him. It had been nearly a full day. For anyone else, that wouldn’t bother him, but Kit had always been the kind of person to answer any kind of communication right away. Even when they were in the middle of their college fling, her text messages were frequent and quick. It wasn’t even that easy to text seven years ago, but she was a dedicated communicator.
That she hadn’t responded made him wonder whether she had gotten the message at all. Otherwise, what? She had just ignored it? She had deleted it? After the way she’d run out of the fundraiser, he had to wonder.
Why was she so skittish? That wasn’t like Kit. Not the Kit that he had known, in any case.
Grant rose from his desk and drifted into his kitchen. He poured himself a large glass of orange juice and sipped it slowly as he remembered the feeling of Kit’s confident hands on him, the smell of her, the way she’d looked so young and mischievous as they’d snuck away from the fundraiser. Like a couple of college kids cutting out of a boring event the adults were holding.
In a way, it shouldn’t be that surprising. She had always carried herself as a much older person. Even during h
er shier days in high school. Very serious, very conscientious. But she was really only twenty-six years old, and whenever she acted her age, it was a breath of fresh air.
Grant spent the next few hours moving between working and checking his email. He couldn’t help it; her failure to reply soured his mood irrevocably.
***
Come Monday morning, Grant arrived at the office with his employees skittering out of the way. He wasn’t going to complain. He didn’t have it in him to care about what people thought of him. That morning he’d called her office and had to leave a message with the office secretary. It had been a long time since a woman had turned him down, and he couldn’t remember a woman ever simply refusing to respond to him. When was he the one who had to leave messages?
“Do you need a donut or…um, a Xanax or something, man?” Tyrese strolled into his office, hands in his pockets, and leaned against the doorframe. He was wearing a tie today, which was a step up, but along with the dress shirt was a pair of jeans.
You had to pick your battle with the tech side, Grant figured. Tyrese was his partner in the business. Grant had the ideas, but Tyrese had created the actual app and ran the side of the business that updated their web presence.
“I’m fine.” Grant settled into his chair and pursed his lips.
“I think I speak for everyone in the office when I say your bad mood is palpable. People are scared that you’re going to start handing out pink slips.”
“What? Well, spread it around that it isn’t that. It’s just personal.”
Tyrese came in and sat down. “Yeah? Your mom?”
“No. It’s about a woman.”
“Really?”
“Enough. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Tyrese shrugged. “Wouldn’t matter if you did. I couldn’t possibly remember details about the number of girls you go through in a week.”
Grant tapped his cell phone on his desk. “That isn’t true. And this isn’t like that. Kit is an old friend.”
“An old friend… Who you’re upset hasn’t called you?” Tyrese cocked a brow. “What did you do?”