Bailey quickly pulls her clothes back on, and glances at the door. “I should go,” she says, not meeting our eyes, her fingers fiddling with the strap on her embroidered bag. I can hear her discomfort in her voice. She clears her throat and looks in Daniel’s direction. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I understand your need for privacy.” She laughs, a false little trill that doesn’t sound like her at all. “I’m sure that NYU wouldn’t approve of what we did either…” Her voice trails off, and she stands up. “See you Wednesday, I guess?”
If you don’t know Daniel, his face is an unfeeling mask. But I’ve known Daniel for a long time, and I see the regret and the shame etched in his features. He knows he’s screwed up. Bailey is not like the women he’s dated half-heartedly in the last seven years. She’s not going to date him for publicity, and she’s not going to spill details of our tryst on social media. I can’t believe Daniel can’t see that.
I want to ask Bailey to stay, but her distress is obvious and I don’t want to cause more pain. “Come on,” I tell her, standing up. “I’ll take you home.”
“No, there’s no need. I’m fine,” she demurs.
As much as I want to respect her desire to be alone, I’m not going to let her take the subway or a cab alone in the dark. I had a deeply conflicted relationship with my parents, but they did raise me to be chivalrous. “I need to go home too,” I point out with a friendly smile. “Let’s share a cab.”
“Okay,” she says reluctantly.
I see her desire to flee in the set of her shoulders, in the hands clenched into fists at her side. So does Daniel. He finally speaks. “Bailey,” he says, his voice barely audible. “I’m sorry. I was out of line.”
She doesn’t meet his gaze. “I told you, Daniel,” she says in a deliberately neutral tone, “there’s nothing to be sorry for.” She turns to me. “I’m leaving now.”
I give Daniel a warning look. He’s done enough for the moment. Bailey had drawn into herself, and she’s too bruised to listen to anything he has to say. There will be another time to make amends. “Let’s go.” I grab Bailey’s jacket from Daniel’s coat closet and hand it to her.
Behind us, Daniel takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. He’s tense again. Earlier this evening, as we’d eaten dinner and played pool and pleasured Bailey on the pool table, he’d become a person he hadn’t been in a very long time. Easy-going, amused, his eyes filled with ready laughter.
Now, that person has retreated once again into the shadows, and in his place I see Daniel Hartman, CEO of a Fortune 500 Company, ruthless businessman. And he’s miserable.
“You can yell, you know,” I tell her in the cab. The taxi driver has a cell phone pressed against his ear, in total violation of New York City laws, and is engaged in a heated argument with someone on the other end of the line. He’s not paying any attention to our conversation. “You’d be justified.”
“It’s not a problem,” she says tonelessly. “Like I told Daniel, I understand.”
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. She’s sitting on the far side of the cab, pressed against the door, and the gap between us right now seems huge and insurmountable. She’s not okay, not even close. “Bullshit. It was a dick thing to say, okay?”
She doesn’t move any closer to me, but she does raise an eyebrow. “I thought you were good friends.”
“We are,” I agree. “It doesn’t mean I blindly agree with everything Daniel does. And it doesn’t mean I can’t admit he was wrong.”
She stares out of the window. Her hands are tightly clenched in her lap, a sure sign of stress, but she doesn’t respond to me. Fuck. I don’t want to lose her. Not like this. Not when there’s so much potential, so much promise. You ever go out on a date and you find you can’t stop yourself from smiling for hours after? That’s kind of how I feel around Bailey.
I want to kick Daniel in the nuts right now.
“Daniel shouldn’t have said what he did,” I say quietly. “But he does have his reasons. Will you listen?”
“I’m in a moving cab,” she replies. “I can’t stop you from talking.”
“He didn’t always used to be so circumspect,” I explain. I can’t help grinning as I remember some of the crazy shit we used to do when we were younger. “When his father died, the board almost voted to break up the company. Daniel’s mom had to swoop in and appoint him CEO. Three members of the board resigned in protest. The stock price dropped twenty percent. It was a disaster.”
“We all have jobs that we care about, Sebastian,” she snaps. “Don’t tell me that Daniel’s job is more important than mine because he’s a billionaire, or that he should receive some kind of special pass for being a dick because he’s loaded. That’s the kind of crap Trevor used to pull, and I’m absolutely not going to take it anymore.”
Red’s got a temper, though in this case, I don’t blame her. “I already told you that he was wrong,” I reply. “Daniel’s company is in the middle of some sensitive negotiations, and he needs to keep a low profile till this deal is done. And women he’s been out with have sold him out to the tabloids before. He’s cautious for a reason.”
She looks briefly sympathetic, before her expression turns blank. “You are in the public eye as well, probably more than Daniel,” she points out. “I didn’t see you tell me to keep things quiet.”
She practically snarls the last three words, and I have to fight to keep a grin from breaking out on my face. She’s not giving any quarter. “I’m a chef,” I reply. “If it’s revealed that I’m in a threesome, my company stock isn’t at risk of a free-fall. Board members aren’t going to ask me if I’m fit to run the company.”
“You know what the worst thing is?” She continues on her tirade, not listening to me. She sounds furious. “I’m an assistant professor at NYU, and I don’t have tenure. If the school decides tomorrow that they don’t approve of what I do in my personal life, I’m out of a job. I have far more at stake than Daniel. Unlike him, I don’t have a billion-dollar cushion to land on.”
“You know, you really are yelling at the wrong guy,” I say mildly. “I’m not concerned about the press - I’m completely in favor of fucking you. Heck, let’s do it right now.”
She giggles at that. At first, the laughter is reluctant, but soon, we are both laughing openly. When she sobers up, I lace my fingers in hers. “Give him time, Bailey. When his father died, everyone was dead-set against him running the company. He responded by putting his head down and out-working everyone. He’s finally learning to live again. He just needs to process this at his own pace.”
She doesn’t reply. I spend the rest of the cab ride wondering if she’s going to walk away, and hoping against all hope that she’ll give us another chance.
The last time Daniel and me were in a threesome, it had been an uncomplicated thing. All three of us had been interested in sex and nothing else, and the affair had remained casual. There had been no feelings or emotions on the line.
This time, everything isn’t going to be quite that simple.
18
Daniel
Hell is empty, and all the devils are here!
William Shakespeare, The Tempest
I have a sleepless night, tossing and turning, unable to get the hurt expression on Bailey’s face out of my mind. When my phone rings on Saturday morning, I reach for it, fully prepared to hear Sebastian read me the riot act about last night.
But it isn’t Sebastian, and it isn’t Cyrus either. Instead, it’s someone I actually like to hear from. My mother, Alexa Hartman.
“Hey mom,” I mumble blearily into the receiver. “What time is it?”
She tsks impatiently. No doubt she’s already been awake for three hours. She’s probably meditated and done her yoga, and eaten her scrambled egg whites or a kale smoothie. She has more energy than someone half her age. “It’s nine thirty,” she says. “Why are you still in bed?”
“I had a rough night.” I wince as I hear how whiny I sound.
> “Why?” Her voice is dry. “Did some numbers on a spreadsheet not add up?”
My mother is very free-spirited. She was protesting something in Central Park when she bumped into my conservative, businessman father. It was love at first sight, she says fondly, when asked about it. They were married for thirty years, and they made each other incredibly happy every single day. Growing up, my grandparents and Uncle Cyrus would lecture me about the family legacy, but my parents would just laugh and tell me to do what made me happy. “I did,” my father would say, squeezing my mother’s hand. “Best decision I ever made.”
“I met a girl,” I answer her question. “Then I said something stupid and chased her away.”
“What’d you say, Danny?” she asks.
Even though my mother is unlikely to judge me, I’m not going to tell her that I’m sharing women with Sebastian. It takes me a minute to formulate my thoughts. I fumble my way out of bed and into the kitchen on autopilot, seeking coffee.
“We are trying to buy a company and Cyrus thought I should keep a low profile.” I grimace at the memory of what a dick I’d been last night. “So I told her to keep our encounter out of the tabloids. Not surprisingly, she walked out on me.” My head feels like there are a bunch of dwarfs with very tiny hammers inside my brain, digging for gold. Aspirin. There has to be aspirin somewhere in my apartment.
She hisses in anger. “Daniel Stuart Hartman,” she snaps at me. “I thought your father and I raised you better than this. Is this how you talk to a woman?”
“No mother.” I feel about ten, waiting to hear that I was grounded. “I’m sorry.”
She sniffs. “Yes, well, there’s not much point apologizing to me, Danny. What is wrong with you? Should you be listening to Cyrus for dating advice? Cyrus, who has not had a single meaningful relationship in his life?”
Okay, she has a valid point. I tell her that, and she snorts. “Of course I do,” she says. “So Cyrus told you that the family firm had been around for hundreds of years, and your only role was to pass it down safely to the next generation, and you listened to him and scared away some poor woman?”
“More or less,” I concede.
“Yes, well, what next generation?” she asks sharply.
Oh, there’s not enough aspirin in the world for this particular conversation. “Go bother Susan if you are going to start badgering me for grandchildren,” I tell her. Thanks to the coffee, my wits are slowly returning to me. “I’m not interested in kids.”
“Yes, honey,” she says. “I know that. This isn’t the grandkids lecture, this is a different lecture. Cyrus is miserable and alone, and the company is his entire life only because there’s nothing else to fill it. If you start listening to him, you’ll end up in the same place.”
“Trust me,” I rub my throbbing forehead, “I already feel like shit. The yelling isn’t necessary. Did you call for some specific reason, by the way, or do you have some kind of maternal voodoo instinct that tells you when I screw up so you can lecture me?”
She chuckles. “I called to remind you that we are having drinks this afternoon with the President of NYU to discuss the endowment the Hartman Foundation has been planning to make to the school.”
“Shit, I forgot.” I’m dropping balls all over the place. “What time was that?” As I speak, a glimmering of an idea occurs to me. I need Bailey to forgive me, and in order for that to happen, I need something good. Something big and bold.
“Four. Don’t be late.”
“I won’t,” I promise her. I hang up and gulp back the coffee. I have some groveling to do, and I’m prepared for it. Better still, I have a plan.
19
Sebastian
First we eat, then we do everything else.
M. F. K. Fisher
As soon as I wake up Saturday morning, I text Daniel. ‘Lunch at one?’ I ask, sending him the address of a Hell’s Kitchen eatery that Helen’s told me about. I’m going to tackle two birds with one stone. Taste the cooking of a talented chef that Helen thinks we should hire, and chew Daniel out at the same time. Perfect.
His reply comes instantaneously. ‘See you there.’
So he’s up. Knowing Daniel, I’m assuming he slept like shit, and he’s already formulating a plan to make amends. That’s good.
Last night, in the cab, I realized something. I like Bailey, and I find her intriguing. Some of the things she’s done - living in Siberia for a year, doing field research in the jungles of Indonesia, trekking through North Africa in search of stories of the Silk Road - absolutely amaze me. She’s in her late twenties or in her early thirties, but she’s already crammed in so much travel, so much living and adventure into her life.
If my cock could talk, I’d be hearing an earful about the case of blue balls I was left with after Daniel decided to be an idiot. Even now, thinking about the taste of her, the way her soft creamy thighs had fallen open as I’d pleasured her with my mouth…
Damn it. We better fix this. Because I definitely want to see Bailey Moore again.
“This is an out of the way spot,” Daniel looks up as I walk in.
“My kitchen staff cannot stop talking about this place,” I tell him as I pull up a chair. “They tend to be a jaded bunch. If they are excited, I want to know why.”
The place is small and tired-looking. The wooden tables are weathered and worn, and each one has a dented metal lamp on it. Faded beaded curtains hang on the wall, completing the Arabian Nights theme. My lips twitch. The restaurant is called Aladdin's Lamp, and the decorator has not been subtle. It’s very kitschy.
“You fucked up last night.” My words are direct. Daniel’s my best friend, and I don’t need to tread tentatively with him.
“I’m quite aware,” he grimaces. “My mother’s already yelled at me.”
I grin at that. “Has she?” Daniel’s mom is quite the firecracker.
“Oh yes.” He shakes his head. “She told me I was brought up better.”
“Yeah.” I’m going to say more, but the pretty waitress behind the bar comes over to us at that point, her notepad at the ready. “Hello, my name is Piper,” she says. “Can I get you something to drink?”
We order beers, and she walks away. When she’s out of earshot, I look at him. “She’s right,” I tell him. “I’m concerned for you.”
“Why?” His voice is tight with tension. With anyone else, I might take that as a warning sign to tread lightly, but my concern for Daniel outweighs my caution.
“Because…” I think through my words, trying to find the best way of expressing my worries. “The version of you that I met in that greasy diner thirteen years ago would have never even thought that Bailey might go to the press. What the fuck is wrong with you, Daniel? She’s an assistant professor at NYU. She’s as ambitious in her career as you are in yours and as I am in mine. You think she doesn’t know how to be careful on keeping her sex life private?”
He hunches his shoulders. “I am a dick.”
“A little bit, yes.”
“A lot.” He lifts his head up. “The moment I said those words last night, I was horrified. Not just because Bailey was hurt, and not just because you were shocked. I did something that I swore I’d never do.” He sighs. “When my father wanted to marry my mother, my grandfather threatened to cut him off and never speak to him again. My mother was not from the right social set.” He makes a face. “My grandfather told my dad that the future of the family company rested on him, and his focus should be on that.”
“Ah.” It all begins to make sense.
“Yeah.” Daniel’s not done. “When I was sixteen, I liked a girl who was definitely from the wrong side of the tracks.” He grins in memory. “She had a nose ring, and a pierced tongue, and most interesting to a teenage boy, nipple rings. I was nervous about bringing her home. I was afraid my parents would sneer at her.”
I can’t imagine Daniel’s parents reacting that way. They certainly hadn’t sneered at me when Daniel had invited me to lunch
. They’d welcomed me warmly and we’d talked about food, and one week later, I had a job as an assistant to one of New York’s most creative chefs.
“That was when my dad told me the story of bringing my mother to meet his parents for the first time. My grandparents more or less told him to fuck her out of his system and move on to a more appropriate woman.”
I wince. “I’m assuming that your dad didn’t listen?”
Daniel shakes his head. “Nope. Both my parents are far too stubborn.” Then his smile fades. “Last night, I didn’t follow my father’s example.” There’s regret mingled with sadness in his voice. “I followed my grandfather’s. I focused on business and nothing else. No wonder my mother is ashamed of me.”
“Stop.” There’s a hopelessness in his eyes that I’m unused to seeing. Daniel always has a solution, he always has a plan. The waitress is approaching us to take our order, but I wave her away, signaling to her to give us another minute. “You fucked up. So fix it.”
He raises his eyes toward my face, and my worry eases when I see the steel in his eyes. He’s not giving up. “Oh, I am,” he responds. “I have a plan in motion. Now, onto other topics. How’s Ben working out at Seb New York?”
I groan as I think about the unpredictable mess that is my sous-chef. Ben is a walking personification of every angry chef stereotype. He yells at the line cooks. He curses and pouts and stomps around, and the worst thing is that most of the time, he’s responsible for the kitchen crisis he’s on a rant about. “I think he might have a drinking problem.”
Daniel frowns. “That’s not good.”
I shake my head. “Tell me about it. Last night, I had to intervene before every single one of our staff walked out en masse. He messed up the tickets, he screamed at the wait staff, and he almost caused a fucking riot. I had to send him home and take over. I was almost going to bail on you.”
Ménage in Manhattan: The Complete 5-Book Ménage Romance Collection Page 10