A Beauty Uncovered

by Andrea Laurence

  The chime of the elevator sounded and Charlie, the head of security, stepped out onto the landing. The older man looked at her with concern and then bent down to pick up a tube of lipstick that had rolled across the room when her purse dumped out.

  “Come on, Samantha. Let’s get you out of here.” He held out a strong arm to help her off the ground and slowly walked her back to the elevator.

  “I’m sorry about all this, Charlie.”

  “Don’t be. It’s the most excitement I’ve had around here in a while. Despite all the fancy locks and alarms, this isn’t exactly like the covert ops I’m used to. I almost never get to walk people out. Especially not pretty young ladies with broken hearts.”

  How could Charlie see what Brody couldn’t? “He wouldn’t listen to me. I mean I…I love him. I want him to be happy.”

  Charlie frowned at her and put a reassuring arm around her shoulder. “I know, kiddo. But have some faith. He’ll come around soon. And if he doesn’t, Agnes will knock some sense into him the moment she comes back from her trip.”

  Twelve

  “What, in the name of all that is holy, has happened here while I was away?”

  Agnes’s sharp words penetrated Brody’s near soundproof walls. He didn’t even need to look up at the surveillance cameras to know she was back from her vacation and fit to be tied.

  Brody stumbled out of his office to greet her and knew immediately why she was upset. Things had not gone to plan over the past week. Being without an assistant had been harder than he thought. The janitorial staff wasn’t allowed on his floor, so he had days of trash piled up outside his door with more than a few stinky food cartons in it. Charlie had graciously picked up his lunch deliveries and brought them upstairs, but that was all the assistance he’d received.

  The printer had run out of both toner and paper over the past few days. When he finally found the replacements in the credenza, he’d only had a brief moment of glory before the machine started to jam. The printer was currently in about twenty-three different pieces, scattered across the floor. He’d stayed at work until after midnight, certain he could fix it. Until he realized he couldn’t. And he wasn’t able to put it back together, either.

  He was as big of a mess as the rest of the place. Despite not having a drop of coffee, he hadn’t slept more than three hours at a time in the week since Sam left. He hadn’t shaved. Instead of his immaculately pressed suits, he was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. It was all he had clean without asking someone to drop off and pick up his dry cleaning. Peggy only handled his everyday clothes, and he’d been too stubborn to ask for help.

  Agnes could only stare at him with her arms overflowing with office mail he couldn’t pick up. In a huff, she dumped the mail at her feet and planted her hands on her hips. “Brody Eden, is that a bloodstain I see on the wall? What is going on here? What happened to Samantha?”

  This was the moment Brody had been dreading. From the second he’d called security and slammed down the phone, he’d regretted every word he said to Sam in anger. He’d lifted weights for nearly an hour to burn off his emotional maelstrom, and when he was calm again, he knew for certain that he was a first-class jerk. Agnes would no doubt confirm his suspicions and not mince words to do it.

  “She’s…gone.”

  “Why? Did she quit? I told you to be nice to her, Brody. No one appreciates being barked at all the time.”

  “No, she didn’t quit. I fired her.”

  Agnes’s fingers twitched. He could tell she was itching to grab him by the ear and drag him to a chair where he would spill his guts. He would save her, and his ear, the trouble. “We had a disagreement.”

  “About?” Her brows rose expectantly. “Don’t make me drag every word out of you, Brody. What did you fight about?”

  Brody sighed. “She wanted me to go see a doctor in New York that does facial reconstructions. He specializes in burn treatment.”

  “And this made you angry because…?”

  Agnes was going to make him say the words that he dreaded out loud. There was no way around it. If he lied, she would know. “Because I am in love with her, and I thought she was happy with me the way I am.”

  Agnes’s expression softened at his use of the L word. “It sounds as though you two had an eventful month while I was away.” She looked around the room with a resigned sigh. “Give me an hour to deal with this mess. I’ll go get us some breakfast, stop by the dry cleaner and then we’ll sit down and finish this conversation, okay?”

  “Okay.” Brody was a successful, powerful man, but he knew when to step back and let Agnes run the show. Right now, he’d proven he couldn’t do it without her.

  “While I’m gone, why don’t you clean up in the bathroom, shave and perk yourself up?”

  Brody’s office had its own bathroom, complete with a shower stall that he used after his workouts. He nodded at Agnes like an obedient child and disappeared into his office. By the time he stepped out of his bathroom, there was a black suit and red dress shirt hanging on the door, still in the bag from the cleaners. Slipping into his usual clothes made him feel more normal and confident again. As did the scent of warm coffee.

  The aroma lured him out to Agnes’s area. She truly was a miracle worker. The trash was gone, the mail was sorted and there was a new, fully assembled printer on the credenza.

  She was sitting in the guest area that had never actually been used. Brody had put the couch, chairs and coffee table there because the space was big enough and it seemed like the thing to do. But since no one came to this floor, it was more like a museum piece.

  On the glass coffee table were two steaming cups of coffee and two breakfast croissants wrapped in deli paper.

  Agnes patted the chair beside her. “You’re looking much better.”

  “Thank you for dealing with the mess, Agnes.”

  She opened a packet of sugar, dumped it into her cup and took a tentative sip. “From the sounds of it, there’s still more to clean up. What exactly happened between you and Sam?”

  Brody slumped into his seat and reached for the coffee. It was hot, scalding his mouth, but he didn’t care. He needed it desperately to think straight. “She’s the most amazing woman I’ve ever met. She is beautiful and stubborn and gentle. She wasn’t afraid of me at all. At least, she didn’t back down if she was. She looked me in the eye without the slightest hint of revulsion.” He shook his head and took another sip. “For some reason she thought I was handsome.”

  “You are handsome, Brody.”

  “You saying it is like my mom saying it. But I can hardly believe any of you, especially Sam. If it wasn’t for the fact that she backed her words with actions, I might never have thought she was serious. She touched me, Agnes. She touched my scars. I didn’t know what to think.”

  “She saw in you what I see. There’s a lot more to you than your scars, Brody.”

  “It all happened so quickly. She kissed me one day. I invited her to my house for dinner, and the next thing I knew, I flew her to Joya Verde. Sam was everything I’d hoped for and feared I would never have. I guess I was so afraid to lose her that I pushed her away.”

  “Did she tell you why she wanted you to see that doctor?”

  “She tried to. She said something about wanting me to be happy and accused me of being a miserable hermit. I was too angry to listen at the time. All my brain could process was that I wasn’t good enough for her the way I am. Despite everything she said and did, she wanted me to be fixed.”

  “You know, she might be on to something there.” Agnes reached out and took Brody’s hand. “You’re not happy. And don’t tell me that you are. I’ve worked for you for years, and I can’t ever say that I saw you content. You’re very successful and comfortable with the way you’ve structured your life. But what kind of life can you have living all alone?�
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  “I thought Sam would be enough to make me happy.”

  “And?”

  “She was. To a point. But then I realized that having her in my life only solved part of the problem. She got upset that day because she couldn’t introduce me to her friends. I realized later that this relationship was awesome for me but horribly unfair to her. I was asking her to live her life hidden away, but I refused to make even one step toward living my life with her in the open.”

  “She probably thought that the doctor could help you feel more comfortable with yourself. Sure, maybe she had some selfish reasons for wanting you to be normal, but can you blame her? How many things would she miss out on in her life because you couldn’t be there with her? Would you guys elope alone instead of having the big wedding she always dreamed of? Or would she give birth to your children by herself because you wouldn’t go to the hospital with her?”

  Brody had been so shortsighted. He’d spent so much time alone that he never really considered how his life and his future would play out with someone else in it. Sam had every right to ask more of him, and yet she hadn’t. She’d only wanted him to be as confident in himself as she was in him.

  “My knee-jerk reaction is to say ‘of course not,’ but when I really think about it, I know you’re right. How did I expect to continue on this way? This life I’ve lived was okay for me, but I can’t subject someone else to it. I know that now. But by the time I put everything together it was too late. I said terrible things to her. I literally threw her out of the office, Agnes. She’s never going to forgive me for that.”

  “Do you think she loves you?”

  Brody thought back to the painful tears he’d seen in Sam’s eyes as he walked away from her. It looked like her heart was breaking, but he couldn’t know for sure. “I’m not certain how she felt. She never told me that she loved me.”

  “Did you tell her that you were in love with her?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But I hadn’t really figured it out yet. I haven’t done this before, Agnes.”

  The older woman smiled sympathetically. “I know, honey. This kind of thing is never easy, whether it’s a first love or your fifth. But you’ve realized you made a mistake and you love her. So now there’s only one question left to ask.”

  Brody thought he knew what she was going to say, but he let her say it first. He had to figure out what the answer was going to be. It wasn’t going to be easy.

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  * * *

  Sam was grateful for her new job. Amanda had helped her find a position at Matt’s investment firm. She was currently supporting the accounting department. It was a temp-to-hire position, but that was fine with her. She didn’t intend to do anything that might jeopardize this job, so she would be a permanent employee before too long. And since her new boss was a plump woman in her fifties who did nothing but talk about her grandchildren, there was no temptation. It was perfect.

  Her first day had gone as well as could be expected. She had been worried at first. Not about the job, but about her ability to keep herself together. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, but the past week hadn’t been a particularly good one for her.

  She had only thought the fallout from the mess with Luke was bad. Sam hadn’t loved Luke the way she loved Brody. This time, she couldn’t even bear to watch movies on the Hallmark Channel. The big upswept happy endings where the hero did the right thing and won the love of the heroine only made her cry, and not with happy tears. She wanted her own big upswept happy ending. But without a single word from Brody in a week, the odds were that she was out of luck. She wasn’t even the leading lady of her own life. From the looks of Amanda and Matt’s fast-moving romance, it seemed that Sam was playing the role of the supportive best friend.

  The only hiccup in her day so far had been the call Sam received from Agnes. Her godmother was back in the office. She didn’t mention Brody at all but asked how Sam was and what she was doing. Sam was happy to tell her she’d found a new job and the people she worked with were all great. She hoped Agnes would relay the information to Brody so he could stew about it.

  Several times as they’d spoken, Sam had wanted to ask about him. But she wouldn’t. She really didn’t want to know if he was doing fine without her. In her fantasies, he was a mess and she liked it that way. It made her feel better when she lay alone in bed and wished she could see the stars overhead like she could on Joya Verde.

  Sam’s fingers sought out the golden sun pendant at her throat. She should’ve given the necklace back. Knowing Brody, she guessed it cost more than a year of her salary, but she couldn’t make herself do it. It was all she had left of him, and she needed that near to her heart if she was going to make it through this breakup.

  “Hey, Sam?”

  She turned to find one of the women in the department heading toward her desk. She wasn’t certain, but she thought her name was Kristi. “Yes?”

  “Do you know where the human resources office is?”

  “I think so. I had an in-processing there this morning, so hopefully I can find my way back.” It might take her three tries, but she was confident she could do it.

  “Great. Could you take this file down to them?”

  “Sure.” Sam was glad to get up from her desk and move around for a while. If this was going to be her new workplace, she wanted to get familiar with the layout and meet the people. She was always quick to make friends with her coworkers, so hopefully she could fill up her social circle and be too busy to think about Brody.

  Luckily, the HR office was right where she left it. She dropped the file off with their assistant and grabbed a bottle of water from the break room before heading back to her desk. She was about to sit back down when something caught her eye and sent the water in her mouth sputtering into her lungs.

  There was a bright pink rose on her desk in a silver bud vase.

  Sam coughed violently, the water stinging her lungs and drawing pain-filled tears to her eyes. She tried to look around her for the person who had left the rose there, but she could barely see two feet in front of her, much less down the hallway.

  When she had finally soothed her lungs and the blood rushed back out of her face, Sam wiped her eyes. The rose was still sitting on her desk. She hadn’t imagined it. She walked up to examine it more closely. It was the same vase. She’d left it behind in her hasty departure from ESS.

  “You know, the employees that work at the front desk of my building are very nice people.”

  Sam spun on her heels at the sound of a man’s voice behind her. Brody was standing a few feet away, another single fuchsia rose in his hand. She blinked her eyes a few times to make sure she wasn’t seeing things.

  Brody was still there and looking as handsome as ever in a black suit and a flaming red shirt. But it couldn’t be real. Brody didn’t go out in public. Ever.

  “I feel bad that I didn’t meet them sooner. Of course, I gave them quite a shock when I marched through the lobby and introduced myself.”

  Not only was she seeing things, but her imaginary Brody was talking crazy. She could not afford to have a nervous breakdown on her first day here. She needed this job too much. Sam squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath.

  “Aren’t you going to say something, Sam?”

  At the sound of his voice, she opened one eye and found he was still there. “It’s one thing to have delusions. It’s another to interact with them.”

  Her imaginary Brody strode across the room until he was standing right in front of her. She could smell the warm scent of his cologne and feel the heat of his body so close to her. This was a really nice delusion. It was a shame she couldn’t have it at home, at night.

  And then he touched her. Sam gasped as Brody’s palms cupped the back of her upper arms. Her eyes flew open wide, and sh
e found herself gazing into the sapphire depths she’d fantasized about since the first day they met.

  She placed one tentative hand on his lapel, then another. “You’re really here.”

  He nodded. “I know. Your new job is so close I was able to walk over here from my office.”

  Brody walked? Through a public space? “Who are you and what have you done with Brody Eden?”

  “I smacked him around until he came to his senses and realized that he was in love with you. And then I knew that I would do anything to hold you again, including walking through several public places to find you.”

  Sam didn’t know what to say. Her jaw dropped open, the words escaping her. There were so many things packed into his last statement she could barely process them. But the word love was blinking in her mind like a neon sign.

  Brody glanced down at her throat and smiled. “You’re wearing the necklace I bought you.”

  She nodded. “I wanted a piece of you with me. This was all I had left.”

  “I’m sorry for the things I said to you. I lashed out because you were right about everything. I’ve been hiding from my life because I was afraid. I punished you because of my own insecurities. Deep down, I could never really believe that you wanted to be with me.”

  “Why?” she managed.

  “Because you are everything I wish I could be and never dared to hope for in a lover. You’re confident in yourself. You’re comfortable in your own skin. You know your own worth. I envy that about you. I couldn’t understand why a woman like that would even look at me twice.”

  “Brody…”

  “But I’ve realized,” he interrupted, “that that’s my problem, not yours. I’ve got an appointment after Thanksgiving with that doctor in New York. I know a lot has changed since I last saw a specialist, but I’ve been too afraid to go and find out that I’m still a lost cause. We’ll see if they can do something to help me feel better about myself. But if not, that’s okay, too. I need to learn to accept myself and see value in who I am either way. Like you said at the beach house, I need to find something I like about myself and be more confident in knowing I have good qualities, inside and out. And I think you can help me with that.”