Legally Yours (Spitfire Book 1)

by Nicole French

  “She’s actually an amazing pianist.”

  Brandon’s deep voice boomed behind me, and I felt the touch of a hand slip around my waist. Jared’s eyes zeroed in on the hand and back up to Brandon. His expression was not particularly friendly.

  “Jared Rounsaville,” he said as he offered a stiff handshake. “And you are?”

  “Brandon Sterling,” Brandon responded casually, returning handshake without removing his other hand from my waist. My gaze bounced between the two like I was watching a ping pong match.

  Jared’s mouth dropped slightly before he recovered in time to speak. “As in, Sterling Grove?”

  “And Ventures,” Brandon replied with a slight smirk. I nudged his ankle with my foot, but he didn’t alter his expression. “How do you know Skylar?”

  “Oh, we’ve gone out a few times. We know each other from school.” Jared directed a knowing look at me. “I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.”

  I frowned uneasily. “Brandon and I haven’t known each other very long, Jared.”

  “Didn’t you intern at his firm?”

  I could feel the flush rising up my neck at the question. I didn’t know how he knew that—I hadn’t mentioned the internship to him—but these sorts of connections were always going to be made by people eventually. I just wasn’t ready for it to happen quite yet. Especially by a guy I’d just blown off for coursework less than two weeks ago.

  “I don’t have much to do with interns,” Brandon stepped in gracefully. He released my waist and captured my hand instead, giving it a comforting squeeze. “We actually didn’t meet until after she finished up and refused a job there.” He looked down at me and smiled. “Lucky me.”

  “Lucky you,” Jared replied blandly as his eyes darted between us. He cleared his throat. “Well. I guess I’d better be going.” He stared back to me, his brown eyes sharp and unforgiving. “I’ll be seeing you, Skylar.”

  “See you, Jared,” I replied weakly, giving a pathetic wave as he turned to make his way back to his parents, who stood waiting for him by the entrance.

  “I’ll have to find out for what dates the Rounsavilles’ tickets are,” Brandon remarked dryly as he watched Jared and his family leave. “Otherwise we are never coming here again.”

  I sighed, although not without relief. If that meant we were less likely to run into Jared in social situations again, I wasn’t going to fight it. Brandon looked down at me to confirm, but his wry expression quickly morphed into one of overt lust as his eyes traced the curves of my body outlined in clingy velvet. His gaze was so explicit that I fought the urge to yank my coat away from him and throw it over my head in response.

  Brandon sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, baby,” he said as he draped my coat over my shoulders and then pulled on his own. “If you’re not making me want to have my way with you in front of my driver, you’re making me want to punch the lights out of all the other men who want to do it too.”

  “Hey, now,” I protested. “You can’t blame me when you asked for the damn thing in the first place. I thought you liked my dress.”

  Brandon only shook his head and blew a long sigh as he perused my body again, making me feel naked even with the added layer of my overcoat. “Nope. It’s a lost cause.” He grabbed my hand and pulling me toward the curb, where David stood dutifully next to the Mercedes. “Come on, Red. Let’s go back to the house before I get arrested for public indecency.”

  ~

  Chapter 27

  We pulled up to the house on Beacon Street some time past eleven after lingering over an amazing dinner at the new French-American restaurant a few blocks from Symphony Hall. I was stuffed with a five-course meal of oysters, endive salad, roasted quail, some kind of chocolate confection, and a post-meal digestif following several glasses of wine. It had been an incredible evening, to say the least, and I was more than ready to continue it somewhere private. If the constant looks and increasingly suggestive pinches were any indication, so was Brandon.

  “Am I already a foregone conclusion?” I teased as we stepped out of the car.

  David pulled away from the curb, presumably to park the car in the garage below the house. Brandon took my hand and led me up the stone steps to the grand double doors of the house. He smirked as he took out his keys.

  “Well, I could have tried to angle my way up to your place for a night cap. Could we actually fit into that bed of yours?”

  I giggled as I followed him inside. His long legs would probably hang about six inches off the end of my small double mattress. The door shut tightly behind us, and he helped me remove my coat, trailing his fingers down my bare back as he did.

  “Where’s Ana tonight?” I asked over my shoulder.

  “I told her to take the night off after she was done here.” Brandon traced his fingertips over the fabric that fell just below the small of my back. I hummed in response and arched slightly into his touch.

  The living room, with its bright fire characteristically shining a warm light over the plush white interior, looked even more inviting than I remembered. On a wine-addled whim, I slipped off my shoes and padded in my stockinged feet to the center of the room in front of the couch, where I sank into floor and lay flat to feel the buttery softness of the sheepskin rug on my naked back

  “Mmmm,” I purred, twisting on the skin like a cat on warm concrete. “I’ve been wanting to do this since I first saw this room.”

  There was no immediate response, so I tipped my head up to finding Brandon leaning against one of the big wood beam foundations that guarded the entrance of the room, rubbing his chin meditatively as he stared down at me. I pressed my lips together in a sly smile.

  “Cat got your tongue?” I asked, propping myself up on my elbows.

  He opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if he couldn’t quite get out what he wanted to say. I waited patiently, my sense of mischief fading as I watched him clearly struggle so much to find the correct words for…whatever was on his mind.

  “You just…in the firelight,” he spoke quietly at last. “In that dress, with your hair all glowing all around you. You look like some kind of…I don’t know…primeval fire goddess.” He looked up, tapping his chin thoughtfully with one finger. “Wasn’t Hestia the Greek goddess of fire? Of hearth and home, right?” His glance flickered to the crackling hearth and then back to me, and he smiled. “It fits.”

  “If you say so,” I said as I laid back down on the rug and stretched my arms over my head, eager to unwind after hours of sitting. “But I think Hestia was also an incorruptible virgin. I am definitely not.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  Brandon slipped off his shoes next to mine, then removed his coat and jacket. His big shoulders rose and fell with each step as he stalked toward me and then gracefully stretched his body alongside mine. He lay on his side, head propped up by his elbow while the other arm slipped comfortably over my waist. His face was now lit by the fire too, which rendered his mussed waves gold, his own primordial halo.

  “So,” he said. “Good Valentine’s Day?”

  I grinned. “The best. Really, Brandon, it was amazing. Thank you so much.”

  He nodded bashfully. “I know, I know. You haven’t stopped thanking me all evening. I’m glad you had a good time, Red. I did too.” His fingers traced absent circles over my stomach. “I wasn’t sure, you know, how it would measure up.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean, measure up?”

  Brandon shrugged, unwilling to meet my eyes. He was suddenly very occupied with smoothing out the wrinkled texture of my dress.

  “Well…you haven’t really mentioned anyone else,” he said slowly, affecting a completely transparent nonchalance. “Like, for instance, Mike Seaver back there at the symphony?”

  I smirked. “Did you just reference Growing Pains?”

  He shrugged again and offered a casual grin. “I liked that show when I was a kid.”

  “So did
my dad. God, you’re old,” I joked, earning a quick pinch at my waist. I jumped, but the hand at my waist kept me from moving too far.

  “So you guys dated?” Brandon prompted, suddenly engrossed with removing an imaginary piece of lint off my hip. I slipped my hand down to still fingers, prompting him to look back up at me.

  “We went on one date. A few weeks ago. Then…”

  “I came along?” he suggested with an impishly raised brow.

  “You could say that.” I shrugged and leaned in to kiss him briefly, but the hand at my waist pulled me in for something more involved. A few moments later we separated, both breathing significantly harder. His fingers resumed their lingering strokes over my waist and hip.

  “But you did live in Paris for a year, right?” he asked. “City of love…I’m sure you had a few frogs put the moves on you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Hardly. Well, it’s not that no one did, but that year…well, most of that year I spent either alone in museums or trying and failing to have a relationship with my mother.” I looked up at him, where he was not watching me intently. “She lives just outside of Paris with her family. And, like I told you, they were, um, busy most of the time I was there.”

  I didn’t add that she had only managed to make one of our scheduled dinner dates the entire time I’d lived there and hadn’t once invited me to her house to meet my siblings. I had spent most of the year moping around museums and practicing the piano, playing the occasional performance with other NYU Paris music students. My mother never came to any of them. I was miserable in Paris, and had taken the first plane back to New York as soon as my finals were over.

  Brandon watched me carefully, obviously reading in between the lines of my statements. I was actually surprised myself that he didn’t know about my estranged relationship from Janette from all of his research. It seemed he’d been good on his word and thrown it away.

  “So whisking you off to Paris really wasn’t the best idea,” he finally muttered.

  I raised my shoulders in response. What could I say?

  “And so, there’s never been anyone else…special?” he wondered, returning to the subject of my romantic history yet again. “I find that hard to believe.”

  Now it was my turn to avoid his gaze. “Ah…I wouldn’t say that. There was one…guy.”

  “Tell me.”

  The command was quiet, but unmistakable. I sighed. I didn’t really like talking about Patrick, but Brandon deserved to know what he was getting into. Apparently Valentine’s Day was over.

  “His name was Patrick Harlow,” I relented, ready to get the story over with as quickly as I could. “I met him while I was an intern at Goldman Sachs. He worked there too. We used to hook up casually, and then we started dating after I graduated and came on as a junior associate. We worked a lot of long hours together, so it developed…naturally, I guess.”

  I squirmed uneasily at the word—it didn’t come close to describing how I’d felt with Patrick. He’d had the ability that some men have to make a woman feel like she’s the center of his world in one breath, and completely inconsequential the next. I was constantly chasing his wavering approval and attention, the pursuit of which had led me into a lot of situations I regretted.

  “Was he good to you?”

  I looked up. “No,” I said quietly. “He was not.”

  The hand on my stomach paused, its fingertips clenching slightly at the fabric.

  “How?” It was amazing how one small word could carry so much vitriol.

  I exhaled roughly through my nose and looked away. “Brandon, you really don’t want to hear this—”

  “Skylar,” he said gently. His hand slipped up the rest of my side and stroked my cheek lightly. “I do. I promise I won’t be mad. Well, not at you, anyway. But I want to know everything about you, just like you want to know about me. So please just tell me what that shit head did, if you can.”

  I sighed again, and gave in. The story, for all that I had rarely told it to anyone, came relatively easy. I told him about how it had started sweetly, with flirtatious instant messages and late night drinks while we worked on deals together, and eventually a few casual hookups. It seemed like a natural progression from our work life when it turned into something more. He was a good Jewish boy from New Jersey, which endeared him to my grandmother while he gained my dad’s favor with nice bottles of whiskey and Mets tickets. I recounted how Patrick had introduced me to all his family and friends too, paraded me around Montclair like I was a model, called me his “little firefly” and his good luck charm when his career really started to take off. I was, in his words, “his most precious possession.”

  But then he started to turn more hot and cold. There were always those moments where I thought he might have been unfaithful—he’d forget to call me for an entire weekend, then show up on Monday with a Tiffany box. He was angry at my decision to leave the world of finance for law school, and accused me of wanting to whore it up with strange men in Boston, and he’d often punish me with passive aggressive comments in front of friends and family, or more unexplained absences. And yet I couldn’t quite let go.

  My attempts to regain his affections became increasingly desperate as I agreed to more and more outlandish escapades, far outside of my comfort zone, to appease him. The week after I gave notice at Goldman, his friends caught us having sex in a supply closet. The way it happened, with preemptive laughter echoing before the door even opened, made me suspect he had planned the whole thing. After all, Patrick had wanted to continue while they watched. When he’d visit me at Harvard, I’d often go with him to strip clubs in an attempt to “spice things up”; he wanted me to watch the strippers give him a lap dance so I could “practice the moves at home.” As a last resort to save our ailing relationship, I even tried a threesome once, only to be pushed off the bed while a two-bit barfly gave my soon-to-be ex blowjob. Less than a month later, we were through for good. I hadn’t spoken to him since.

  “That was two years ago,” I concluded.

  Brandon was silent for a moment, staring into the flames behind me as he digested all the details. I waited nervously for his reaction. Would he think me disgusting now? Slutty? Pitiful? I had thought all of those things about myself once too; it had taken Jane a long time to convince me otherwise.

  “I…don’t understand,” he said finally, running his hand back through his hair.

  I looked away in shame. “I know. It’s hard to explain. None of it’s that bad, really. I stayed. It’s hard to explain why it was so hard to just leave him.” I couldn’t even explain that to myself most of the time.

  “No, Red, that’s not it.” A large finger tugged my chin back up so I could see his face. He looked at me kindly, without pity, but there was a trace of fire behind the sweet expression. “It’s not you,” he clarified. “It was him. Shit head doesn’t even begin to cover it. God, he’s lucky he’s not here right now; I want to punch his manipulative fuckin’ lights out.”

  His tone was calm, but I could hear the slight lilt of Brandon’s accent, betraying his underlying rage.

  “Does he still work at Goldman?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I think he got in trouble when the subprime market collapsed last year, so maybe not. I honestly don’t care anymore.” I blanched, concentrating instead on twisting the soft hair of the sheepskin with my fingers. “Please don’t go looking, all right? I don’t need a white knight with a vendetta. I’ve already been with someone that possessive, and it was awful.”

  Brandon exhaled through his nose multiple times, clearly doing what he could to calm himself down. “I just don’t understand how a man—if you can even call him that—could not see what he has in front of him. How he could fuck up the best thing—the best person—he could ever hope for in his pathetic excuse for a life.”

  “Things change,” I replied weakly, rolling to my back to look up at the ceiling. The firelight flickered unpredictably against the shadows of the wide beams. “You c
an be in love in the beginning, but it can always turn to shit. I learned that the hard way.”

  “Then it wasn’t really love to begin with.”

  We laid there for a few more moments, watching each other’s faces silently in the golden reflections of the fire. Far removed from the frustrated lust he had obviously felt at the beginning of the evening, Brandon’s expression was no less fierce, perhaps even more potent.

  “You’re hard to read tonight,” I said finally, not so much to break the silence, but to break up the runaway nature of my own thoughts. I was running dangerously close to putting cart before the horse.

  “I just…I want you to know something. And I don’t want you to freak out about it.” He blinked down at me, his blue eyes wide and scared. “I…I don’t know how to do this slow with you, Skylar. But I’m trying. I just want you to know…that with whatever we’re doing here, I’m all in.”

  He took a deep breath and opened his mouth, as if he wanted to say something more. In the end, though, he just exhaled and repeated himself, like a mantra. “I’m all in.”

  I said nothing as he watched closely for my reaction. About a million thoughts skittered through my mind. I wanted to shout that I felt the exact same way. I wanted to say that his touch made my skin feel like it was as alight as the flames next to us, that I’d never felt a connection so powerful, so immediate. Not with Patrick; not with anyone. I wanted to tell Brandon he could have my heart and soul if he wanted those too—that maybe he already did, despite my fears. But a small voice in my head—the one who remembered the way the last fire I’d engaged had burned me so badly—screamed the obvious. It was too soon. We barely knew each other. There was plenty of time for things to progress naturally.

  So instead, I lifted a hand up and threaded my fingers through his thick hair, urging him close so I could say to him with my kiss what I couldn’t yet express out loud.

  It appeared to be all the encouragement he needed. His lips pressed delicately at first, but the kiss soon deepened as I begged entry with my tongue, meeting his with the same urgency. I wanted him closer. I wanted to swallow him whole.