Spectrum

by MJ Duncan

  Bryn set her jaw and forced herself to meet her father’s disapproving stare.

  He shook his head as he, too, got to his feet. She considered it a small victory that he left without a word, and she savored the moment for what it was worth, knowing that she would undoubtedly hear about it before she returned to Washington.

  “Excuse me, please,” Nathan said as he followed his wife from the room.

  Once they were alone, Bryn turned her attention to Edward. “I’m sorry you had to witness that.”

  “Don’t be,” Edward said, relaxing into the sofa and crossing his legs. He smiled and gave a small shrug. “Honestly, I was under the impression that this was a dinner to discuss your family’s support for my campaign. I had no idea what was really going on until your mother started giving me the hard-sell just before you arrived.”

  Bryn glanced down the hall toward the kitchen. She wanted to be angry with him for being there to put her in this situation, but he was as much a victim of her mother’s scheme as she was. Her usual approach to her mother’s set-ups was to just remain cold and distant throughout the evening until any interest the suitor might have had was sufficiently quashed, but Edward seemed like a nice enough guy and since they were alone, she decided to opt for honesty instead.

  “Look, Edward,” she said, leaning forward and dropping her voice so that it would not carry beyond the two of them. “I don’t know what you’re expecting here, but I’m not looking for a relationship.”

  “That’s great.” He smiled and ran a hand through his hair. “Because, truth be told, I am actually seeing someone. We’re just being very discreet about it. And, since I have a feeling that your mother’s source of gossip is the same as my mother’s, that’s probably why she thought that I would be open to something like this.”

  “So we’re on the same page, then.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Bryn gave him a small smile as she allowed herself to relax, grateful that something had finally gone right for her since her plane touched down at Logan the day before. “Thank you.”

  He just waved her off. “Yeah. Of course. Do they do this often?”

  “Try and set me up with supposedly eligible bachelors?” Bryn rolled her eyes. “Far too often for my liking, to be honest. Though, I must say, you have been more understanding about this than most.”

  “Yeah, well, men are jerks, for the most part,” Edward commiserated with a wry grin, his eyes sparkling with secret amusement. “You’re much better off without us.”

  Bryn thought of Anna, and could not contain the slow smile that quirked her lips. “I’ve recently come to that very same conclusion myself,” she admitted with a soft chuckle.

  “Smart.”

  “I have my moments,” Bryn murmured. She studied him thoughtfully for a moment. It seemed unfair that his career aspirations should suffer because her mother was a controlling viper. “How badly do you need their support for your campaign?”

  He shrugged. “It would have helped, but I’ll find a way to manage without it.”

  Bryn nodded. That was pretty much what she figured. “What if you didn’t have to?”

  “What do you have in mind?” he asked, setting his feet square on the floor and resting his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward in his seat.

  “Just that we do this for the rest of the night. The more they think we’re getting along, the less likely they’ll be to withhold their support for your campaign. And it’ll get them to maybe back off a bit on my personal life for a little while, so we’d really be doing each other a favor.”

  She held his gaze as he studied her, and smiled when he nodded and held out his hand.

  “You have yourself a deal.”

  In the end, it ended up being the most enjoyable dinner she had experienced at her parents’ house in ages. Edward artfully steered the conversation from one topic to the next, focusing on issues that were native to Boston, thereby absolving Bryn of needing to actually contribute to any of the discussions. Even her parents’ little jabs about her perceived shortcomings fell with far less weight than they usually did, and by the time the dessert dishes had been cleared away, Bryn was surprised to see that it was already past eight o’clock.

  She followed Edward’s lead when he made a show of checking his watch and announced that he really needed to get going, and ignored the way her parents seemed to care more about his imminent departure than her own.

  “I just need to call my driver,” she announced.

  “Nonsense. I’ll drive you back,” Edward said. His smile was friendly and just a little conspiratorial, and she could not help but return it as she nodded.

  “That would be great. Thank you.”

  “You must come to dinner again soon,” Victoria enthused as she pulled the front door open.

  Edward tipped his head at her in a way that could have been read as either acknowledgement or acceptance of her offer as he and offered Bryn his arm. “Shall we?”

  The gesture was more than a little over-the-top, but Bryn smiled at him all the same as she slipped her hand in the crook of his elbow. “Of course.” Bryn turned to her parents. “Thank you for dinner.”

  She was answered with two curt nods before her father reached past her to shake Edward’s hand. “Have your campaign manager call my office tomorrow, and we can discuss Nakamura Financial’s support of your campaign further.”

  “Of course, thank you, sir,” Edward said. He bowed his head at Victoria. “Dinner was lovely. Thank you for inviting me.”

  “It was our pleasure,” Victoria assured him. She glanced at Bryn and sighed, shaking her head once before she stepped back into the foyer, rubbing her hands over her arms. “It has gotten quite chilly, hasn’t it? Brynsley, I will talk to you soon.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Bryn answered, knowing that her mother had said it for Edward’s benefit. She would only hear from her mother when something was expected of her.

  “Wow, and I thought my parents were bad,” Edward muttered once they were inside his car.

  “Yes,” Bryn agreed with a sigh as the engine turned over with a roar. “They are certainly in a league of their own. Thank you, for that.”

  “Hey, no problem. So, where you staying?”

  “The Four Seasons.”

  He smirked and turned down the driveway. “Of course.”

  Bryn just rolled her eyes and looked out the window. “Says the man driving a hundred thousand dollar sports car.”

  Edward laughed and tipped his head in gracious defeat. “Touché. So,” he drawled as he turned onto the main thoroughfare that would lead them back to the highway. “How long are you here for?”

  “Just the week. I fly out Friday night.”

  He nodded. “In and out, huh?”

  “Absolutely. I mean, you just got a glimpse of what I have to deal with when I’m here—can you really blame me?”

  “No.” He shot her a commiserating look. “My parents aren’t as bad as yours, but I would love to be able to just say ‘fuck it’ and skip town.”

  “So why don’t you? I mean, Boston isn’t the only city with a District Attorney’s office.”

  He flexed his hands on the steering wheel. “The person I’m with has ties to Boston that can’t be so easily cut.” He glanced at Bryn and shrugged. “He has a daughter, with his ex-wife, and I could never ask him to move away from her.”

  “Oh,” Bryn murmured. She smiled understandingly and reached out to give his forearm a light squeeze. He was stuck where she would be, if she had met Anna when she had been living in Boston and things between them had developed in the same way they had in Washington. It was all too easy to sympathize with his plight, and she sighed as she leaned her head back against the headrest. “I see. And I’m assuming that since my mother thought we were perfectly suited for each other, that you’re not out.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sure you, of all people, understand how good ol’ conservative families work.”

  �
�Yeah.” Bryn stared out the windshield. She debated telling him about Anna, but she held her tongue. She could not risk letting her secret be known in Boston, even with someone like Edward who would be a natural ally. “I understand.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “You’d think living in a state that was the first to legalize same-sex marriage would make it easier to come out, but…”

  “It doesn’t,” Bryn finished for him. “I’m sorry.”

  “No reason to be sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s not your fault.” He straightened his arms against the steering wheel before relaxing back in his seat.

  “What’s he do?”

  “He’s a doctor,” Edward shared with a proud smile. “So, quid pro quo, Brynsley…how about your special someone?”

  Bryn laughed and shook her head. “Please. It’s Bryn. Only my mother calls me Brynsley. And I don’t know what to tell you. We just started seeing each other this past weekend.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “Orthopedic surgeon.”

  “Ah, so yet another thing we have in common,” Edward said with a playful wink. “I knew I liked you.”

  The rest of the drive into the city was spent in friendly conversation that never veered too far into the personal. And, when it did, Bryn was able to arrange her answers in a way that avoided bringing up Anna’s name and gender. Every time she did, however, her stomach would twist uncomfortably and her heart would race for a few seconds, as if by refusing to acknowledge Anna’s true identity, she were being unfaithful. Which was ridiculous because she was certain that Anna would understand, but that certainty did not make her feel any better when instead of saying “she” or “her”, she used a more neutral “they”, or avoided pronouns altogether.

  “And here you are, milady,” Edward drawled as he pulled to a stop in front of her hotel. “The Four Seasons.”

  Bryn smiled as she unhooked her seat belt and gathered her purse. “Thank you, sir.” She paused with her hand on the handle of her purse, and then reached inside for one of her business cards. “I know this entire evening was beyond awkward, but I appreciate your willingness to go along with it.” She handed him the card. “If you’re ever in the Portland area, give me a call.”

  He smiled and pulled his wallet out of his back pocket. He took her card and tucked it into the billfold before pulling out one of his own. “Same here. Next time you’re in Boston, we’ll go grab a drink or something.”

  “I would like that,” Bryn said as she slipped his card into her purse. “Until next time, Mr. Lowry.”

  He nodded and gave her a playful salute. “Until then, Ms. Nakamura.”

  Thirty-One

  Bryn kicked off her heels before the door to her hotel room even fully shut, and pressed her thumb to Anna’s name on her phone as she tossed her purse onto the bed and made her way into the bathroom. She turned the phone to speaker and set it onto the counter as she began removing her earrings, and smiled when Anna picked up after the second ring.

  “How’d it go?”

  Bryn laid the diamond studs in her small travel jewelry case that was lying open beside a folded hand towel on the vanity. “Considering the fact that my mother had a man she’d hand-picked waiting to meet me, not bad at all.”

  After a beat, Anna asked, “You’re kidding, right?”

  “If only.” Bryn unhooked her necklace and stretched it out beside her earrings. “It’s not like she hasn’t done something like this before,” she said as she used a towelette to wipe off what minimal makeup she had worn to dinner. “Though this was the first time the whole evening was not a complete and total disaster. His name is Edward, he’s running for D.A. here in Boston, and he sounds like he is quite enamored with his boyfriend.”

  Anna sighed with obvious relief. “Oh, thank God. You had me worried for a minute there, Nakamura.”

  Bryn picked up her phone and wandered out of the bathroom. “I’m sorry,” she apologized as she laid her phone on the edge of the armoire and began undoing the buttons on her blouse. “That was not my intention.”

  “I’m just teasing you. So, your mother tried to set you up with a nice gay boy, huh?”

  “Mmm,” Bryn hummed as she slipped her shirt off and draped it over the back of a chair. She pulled the zipper down on her skirt and stepped out of it. “She did,” she confirmed as she laid the skirt over her blouse. “Kendall is going to laugh her ass off when I tell her about this one.”

  “I’ll bet,” Anna chuckled. After a beat, she sighed she added, “I miss you.”

  The quiet confession, so honest and heartfelt and unexpected in light of their conversation, made Bryn’s heart flutter up into her throat. “I miss you too,” she whispered. She paused, debating telling Anna about how she had spoken about her with Edward—or not, as the case may be—but decided against it. She had hurt Anna enough Saturday night, she would find a way past this on her own. “I’ve never enjoyed these business trips, but this one is especially cruel.”

  “Only three more days, though. Right?”

  Bryn ran a hand through her hair and nodded as she pulled the silk nightgown she wore to bed out of the top dresser drawer. “Yes.” She pushed her panties off her hips, leaving them where they hit the floor as she reached behind herself to unhook her bra and drop it into the open drawer. “I cannot wait to get back to Spectrum,” she said as she pulled her nightgown over her head. The fabric was cool against her skin, and she shivered as she picked up her phone and hurried to climb into bed.

  “What time do you land?”

  “Just before ten.” Bryn pulled the duvet up over her chest and leaned back against the pile of pillows that were stacked against the headboard. “So, by the time I collect my suitcase and get back to my car, I expect I should be back home sometime around midnight.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know,” Bryn replied as she reached over and turned off the light. “It’ll be late, but the alternative was staying here for another night, and then fly out Saturday morning…”

  “No. I’d much rather see you sooner, even if it means saying up past my bedtime.”

  Bryn smiled. “You don’t need to wait up for me. We can just do breakfast or something Saturday morning.”

  “Please. Like I would rather do anything besides give you a welcome home kiss that leaves us both completely and totally breathless after not seeing you all week.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” Bryn murmured, closing her eyes and letting herself imagine how nice it would feel to have Anna’s arms around her again.

  “Tell me about it. No matter how much I enjoy it, dreaming about you is nowhere near as satisfying as actually being able to touch you.”

  A hot blush erupted over Bryn’s face, and she was grateful for the darkness that surrounded her as she confessed, “I dreamt of you last night, as well.”

  “What was I doing in your dream?” Anna asked, her tone light and playful, with just a hint of mischievousness behind it all for good measure.

  Really, Bryn blamed it on the book she had been reading before bed. She had read enough of the romance novel Anna had shown her that day in Jitters so many months before to know that it was incredibly vivid in its imagery, but thinking about sharing a bath with Anna had made her realize that she did not know how to make love to a woman, and she had bought the book on Amazon hoping that by reading it she could maybe pick up a few hints.

  She had assumed that all romance novels were trash, but she was instantly sucked into the story from the first page. The women were complex, layered, and nuanced, and she found herself caring more and more about their happiness with every page she read—and when the story became more intimate, she was pitched headfirst into a world of sensation and emotion and she had been unable to stop reading until the story was finished.

  Once she had finally fallen asleep, she was immersed in one vivid dream after another, each one a variation of a scene she had just read where it was her and Anna and nothing but skin and heat and shu
ddering breaths that trailed into deep, rumbling moans. When the alarm on her phone startled her from a particularly intense dream just before she peaked with orgasm, she had nearly flung it across the room in frustration.

  “Bryn,” Anna murmured. “You still there?”

  Bryn cleared her throat. “Yeah.”

  Anna chuckled. “So, it was a good dream, huh?”

  “Yes, Ms. Fitzpatrick,” Bryn said huskily. “It was a really good dream.”

  Anna groaned. “I really want to kiss you right now.”

  “I really want you to kiss me right now too.”

  The longing-filled silence that filled the line was eventually broken when Anna sighed dramatically and then suggested in a playful whisper, “So…you wanna tell me about your dream?”

  Bryn laughed and shook her head. “I don’t think so. Why don’t you tell me about yours instead?”

  “Well,” Anna murmured, her voice dropping into a low, seductive purr that made Bryn’s heart skip a beat, “we were making out on your ridiculously comfortable bed. We were both topless, and your legs were wrapped around my hips as I ground slowly against you. I had one hand tangled in your hair and I was kissing you slowly, deeply, like we were kissing the other day when you were on my lap—those long, perfect kisses that made my heart skip a beat and my head spin.”

  Bryn closed her eyes and pressed the phone harder to her ear as her body responded to the picture Anna’s words were painting in her mind.

  “Your nails were scratching up and down my back, digging into my shoulders when I held our hips together and rubbed against you, and you made the most incredible little noises when I dipped my head down to take one of your nipples into my mouth…”

  As if on cue, a small whimper escaped Bryn.

  Anna laughed softly and asked, “You okay?”

  “Yes.” Bryn closed her eyes. Had her voice ever sounded that rough before? “I’m fine.”

  “Fuck,” Anna groaned.

  Bryn squeezed her eyes shut tighter and shook her head. “Indeed, Ms. Phone Sex.”

  Anna laughed, and Bryn could just imagine the impish smile that was undoubtedly curling her lips in that moment. “Hey, you’re the one who asked me to share,” Anna pointed out. “But, for as fun as the idea of getting you all worked up is, I’m going to stop now. I’ll phone sex the shit out of you on your next trip, but for now…”