Mr. Big

by Delancey Stewart

  Me: Aha. I’m so sorry, P. Can you call to check and see if he’s doing better now?

  Pamela: See? This is why I need you. That’s a good idea! Calling now. Thank you.

  Me: Anytime.

  If only my own problems were so easy to solve. I entered the coffee shop, squinting into the dim interior and settling at a table in front of the window. Hale wasn’t here. Still a chance he’d let me down. I waited.

  A few minutes later, he strode in, the sun shining through his messy blond hair and highlighting the broad muscular form of his body. He spotted me and came to sit down. He was wearing dark indigo jeans and a soft long-sleeved green T-shirt, and my visceral reaction to him surprised me again, sending blood rushing to my cheeks and making me sit up taller in my chair. He’d trimmed the beard to a two-day scruff that skimmed the planes of his jaw, and his wavy blond locks had been pushed back from his face. The result was worlds away from the broody, careless image he’d conveyed in the coffeehouse. He looked put-together, composed, and completely confident. Even the way he was standing was different. His body language made me feel immediately as if he was in charge, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. He was intimidating and I found myself feeling nervous, fighting to control my composure. He was also handsome. No, not handsome. He was hot. As. Fuck.

  This version of Hale was commanding, imperial. I wouldn’t have thought a shave and a shower could have such an impact. And I hadn’t expected to be thrown off so much by him. I took a deep breath and found my voice. “Thank you so much for this.”

  “I’m glad you called,” he said. He pulled his chair closer to mine so we were both facing the window.

  A waitress approached and we each ordered coffee. I drank my regular coffee with lots of cream, which Hale watched me stir in, his eyebrow raised. The air between us felt strangely formal away from the coffeehouse. We were together in a new and different venue, and the situation felt especially strange to me, since this was my neighborhood and my local café. Hale was in my world suddenly, and it was actually kind of nice. No one else ever came to see me here, spent time in my neighborhood. Delia had been here, but because of the girls it was usually easier for me to go to her.

  “Should we get to work?” I asked, trying to push whatever this odd sensation was firmly back into something I could understand, while ignoring the sense that I was sharing more than my idea for StrokeStat—that I was sharing something fundamental about me just by being here.

  Hale had been watching me, his big body relaxed against the back of his chair, the dark eyes thoughtful. “Sure,” he said, almost sounding disappointed, as if he’d been expecting me to say something else. “Have you put together the slides for your presentation?”

  “That’s what I’ve been working on,” I said, pulling up the slides. I hadn’t gotten far. “I got stuck. That’s why I called. I’m not sure how to talk about the tech side of the new application.”

  “Have you named it yet?”

  I looked up from the slides, my eyes meeting his again. “What?”

  “This isn’t StrokeStat anymore. Plus, that name carries a connotation of old technology. This is a completely new application. Give it a new name. Fastball or Speedstat or something.”

  I felt my eyebrows shoot up as I thought about this idea, and a smile crossed my lips as I considered it. “I like that idea. But it doesn’t feel right.”

  “Why not?”

  “What would the executives think?” I asked, dropping my hands into my lap. “I’m operating totally under the radar here. I don’t know how much you know about the way things work up there, but I’m not sure the bigwigs would appreciate me taking liberties with their technology and rebranding it for them.”

  That strange sadness flickered through his eyes again, but the gorgeous full lips smiled just before he said, “I think they’d be grateful.” There was a tone in his voice that made me think he knew something I didn’t, and I wondered again what Hale’s involvement at my company had been before he left. “Plus,” he said, “if you sell it, they’ll be too busy celebrating the ridiculous amounts of money this will bring in to care.”

  A spike of excitement sent my skin tingling as I considered that. “And if I fail…?”

  “They’ll never know, anyway.”

  I nodded as I sipped my coffee. “I guess the worst that could happen is I sell it and they change the name.”

  “You’ve led a pretty sheltered life if you think that’s the worst thing that could happen.” His voice was dark, and he said this staring into his cup. But he was way off target.

  “My life hasn’t been sheltered,” I told him.

  “Tell me,” he said, inviting a complete change in topic.

  There were other people in the restaurant, but Hale was so close to my shoulder that our space by the window felt sheltered and intimate. He’d moved close so we could look at my laptop screen together, but it also served to create a shield between us and the rest of the customers. We could talk quietly without being overheard, and the dark soulful eyes staring at me now almost had me wanting to talk. I’d never really talked to anyone about my past, about how I’d grown up, how lonely I’d always been. Delia knew, and that had seemed like enough. But now I had an urge to talk, and it wasn’t a completely uncomfortable feeling.

  “Let’s just say my childhood wasn’t textbook,” I tried, watching his face. His eyes were intent on mine, and he leaned into me slightly. I could smell his soap—or his cologne—clean and woodsy. I had the fleeting feeling of being protected again, sheltered by his sheer size, by his dominating presence. I had never—not since I was at least ten years old—had the desire to be taken care of. Uncomfortable suddenly, I cleared my throat and pushed my chair away from him slightly.

  My quick movement broke the tension between us and Hale sat up straighter, his face clearing and retaking the passive mask he seemed to wear most of the time. “Fair enough,” he said. “We have that in common.” He didn’t offer anything else, just an edge of anger in his words that surprised me.

  “Should we focus, maybe?”

  “I’ve been trying,” he said, his voice suddenly lighter. “You keep distracting me, wanting to know everything there is to know about me. Not that I can blame you. I am delightful. And very interesting.” He pulled the laptop nearer in an exaggerated motion and I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Ha,” I laughed. “I’m distracting you?”

  He shot me an indignant look, wide-eyed with those incredible lips pressed primly together. “Yes,” he said. “And I have important work to do here.” He waved a hand at the screen and then turned his attention pointedly toward it.

  “Right,” I said, happy to have the air between us less serious suddenly. “Let’s get to it.” I leaned in and explained the first few slides, giving him an idea of the narrative I imagined myself putting with them as I presented. I let my brain turn as I talked, making notes as I thought of important points to hit as I introduced an old technology with a new twist, tried to build the anticipation for my idea. After a moment, I trailed off. Hale wasn’t looking at the screen, he was watching me, and his dark eyes were fixed intently on mine.

  “You really are distracting,” he murmured, his voice deep and low. “Everything about you,” he added.

  I wasn’t sure what to say. He was watching me, leaning toward me slightly, his eyes so intense it felt like everything else around us had faded away. I had a sense of his power again, his ability to control things, command them. The thing that surprised me was the desire I felt inside—to let him command me. I didn’t know what to make of it. Men didn’t have this effect on me. I’d never been the girl who wanted a strong, powerful man to take care of her, to protect her and keep her safe. I hadn’t wanted any of that since I’d been a little girl with unrealistic daddy dreams. But now here I was, sitting next to what felt like a force field of masculine power, and I felt myself drawn inexplicably toward it, my desire to lose myself growing by the second.

&n
bsp; I forced myself to pull my eyes from his before I climbed into his lap like some kind of mindless infatuated automaton. I’d analyze this reaction later. For now, I needed to focus.

  “So here,” I said, pointing to the screen, my voice urging Hale to focus on work. “What do you think the main point should be as I introduce the concept?”

  He took a deep breath and turned back to the screen. I got a sense of him realigning his intensity to focus on work. I was at once both relieved and oddly let down to be out from under his scrutiny as he stared at the laptop screen.

  For the next few hours, we talked through the slides, coming up with presentation points for each, and ruling out some of the ideas I’d had initially.

  “You don’t want to give them too much, too soon,” he said, sitting back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head to stretch. The movement made his biceps bulge in the cotton shirt, and his chest expanded as he inhaled. “Right, Holland?” My eyes were not staying where they belonged, and I snapped them back to Hale’s face too late to pretend I hadn’t been ogling him.

  He grinned at me. “Maybe we’ve done enough for today?”

  “We haven’t even gotten into the application.” My frustration was clear in my voice.

  “Break for lunch, then? There are a million restaurants nearby. We could walk down to Ocean.” He raised an eyebrow.

  I looked around, surprised to find the sun high above the street as afternoon overtook Santa Monica. “Sure,” I said, acknowledging that I was actually hungry.

  It was strange walking down Ocean Avenue with Hale, the Pacific spooling out to one side of us. Without the excuse of work between us, things felt awkward, and I didn’t know where to look, what to do with my hands, how to be. Was this a date?

  “Hey,” Hale said, leaning close.

  My eyes caught his, which didn’t help the sudden nerves I’d developed. God, his eyes were dark. And what color was in them now? Flecks of amber, some green? I could spend hours searching those dark eyes…

  “It’s just lunch,” he said, sensing my confusion.

  “Right,” I agreed. Needing to remove his intent gaze from my face, where it felt like he was somehow uncovering my deepest secrets without my consent, I decided to focus the conversation on him. “Tell me about your time with Cody Tech,” I suggested. Maybe it was the wrong thing to ask. His face shuttered, and he looked hurt for a moment before regaining himself.

  “Sure,” he agreed. But something in the guarded tone of his voice told me I wasn’t going to get the whole story.

  I waited for him to start talking, but he was silent as we strolled side by side. It occurred to me that we looked like any other couple out for a walk near the ocean. I hadn’t been part of a couple in so long the thought was unsettling. “Start at the beginning,” I suggested, pulling my jacket around me.

  “I started working at Cody Tech early,” he said, his words slow, thoughtful. “Right at the beginning, really. That’s how I know StrokeStat so well.”

  “Right,” I said, encouraging him.

  “I loved it there. It was everything I wanted in a job, a company. The people were smart, driven…and while I was there, it felt like I had a place. Like I fit.” He was silent a long moment as we walked. “And I was there a long time, until about eight months ago. And then I kind of realized I hadn’t ever really made a choice to be there. It had kind of just happened,” he said, his words speeding up as he talked. “Look, can we talk about something else?” He’d started walking faster, as if he was trying to escape the conversation. Talking about Cody Tech made him uncomfortable—even sad, maybe. I just wasn’t sure why.

  “Of course.” I found myself wanting to reach for his hand, to smooth his brow, to do something to comfort him. But I kept my hands to myself. It would have been too forward to touch him. And that wasn’t what this was about, this thing between us. It was about work, wasn’t it?

  We didn’t talk after that. We just walked, and eventually we found ourselves taking a table on the sidewalk outside a trendy hotel, with a soundtrack of Ocean Avenue traffic, tourists, and the steadfast Pacific filling the air around us, making conversation unnecessary as we stared down at our menus. Once the waitress had come and gone, when it was just us again, I found Hale staring at me. His dark eyes carried that sadness I’d seen before, glowing and deep. He was watching me with his head slightly cocked to one side, like he was trying to figure something out.

  “Where did you come from, Holland?”

  “That’s a good question.” I wasn’t trying to dodge, but I didn’t have an answer. Plus, I wasn’t sure he was speaking geographically.

  “Were you born and raised in Los Angeles?”

  So he was speaking geographically. “Maybe,” I said. “I was raised here. I don’t know where I was born, actually.”

  He raised an eyebrow in question.

  I took a deep breath. “I was abandoned. They found me in a cardboard box at a hospital in Long Beach when I was a couple weeks old.”

  I watched his eyes, waiting for the predictable sorrow, the sympathy most people offered when they heard about my inauspicious beginnings. Hale’s eyes reflected something else, though—they flashed with anger.

  “I grew up in foster homes.” I shrugged.

  “You were adopted?” He whispered the words, as if he couldn’t believe what he was saying.

  I shook my head, a little confused at his reaction. For a moment I wondered if the revelation made him think less of me. It had certainly made me think less of myself for a lot of years. “Nope. Never adopted. Just fostered.” My salad came and I was thankful for the distraction.

  Hale watched me intently, a crease between his dark eyes. He seemed about to say something, but then turned his head and stared out at the ocean instead. The sun was flashing on its surface, glittering like cellophane ribbons. I waited for him to ask more questions, but he seemed lost in thought.

  We ate in relative silence, me enjoying the sunlight and warmth, and the entire avocado I’d convinced the waitress to bring me. Hale appeared to be focused on something inside his mind, something he didn’t seem apt to share. I decided to push. “What about you?”

  His eyes snapped back to mine and then he shook his head, saying nothing.

  “Seriously? I share but you don’t?” After spending most of the morning being thoughtful and kind, Mr. Big Dick was back. His face was closed and anger bubbled in his eyes as he turned his focus to his burger. “I see how it is,” I pressed.

  He paused, a fry partway to his mouth, and then his hand lowered again, his shoulder slumping. “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you.”

  “Okay…”

  He dropped the fry and leaned back in his chair, a deep sigh escaping his lips. “It’s more that I don’t really know.” He stared down at his plate as he said, “I was adopted, actually. But I’ve only found that out recently.” His voice was cold, almost clinical, like this was a distant fact to be examined, not something integral to who he was.

  “And you’re upset?” It was a stupid question. A dark frown had crept over his face and he looked much more like the broody asshole I’d met at Cody Tech than like the almost sweet man who’d been helping me since then. He was clearly upset.

  A smile flickered over those incredible lips, but it did nothing to tamp down the sadness in his eyes. “I don’t know. Yes. It’s complicated.”

  Without stopping myself this time, I reached for his hand, my own fingers covering the long square tips of his where they rested on the table. He started slightly, as if I’d shocked him, and then relaxed, his thumb reaching around to rub a line across the top of my fingertips. I suppressed the shiver that ran through me. The pain in his eyes had ebbed, and he looked up at me with something that felt a bit like wonder.

  And then the moment passed, and I pulled my hand back, busying myself with my drink, my napkin. It had felt natural to touch him, but also strange—like reaching into a dark closet, not knowing what would be i
nside. His hand had been warm, electric. I fought to bring my thoughts back to the present. Hale was speaking again.

  “Does it bother you?” he asked, leaning forward. “Not knowing where you’re really from?”

  “It used to,” I said, realizing I wasn’t prepared to be completely truthful. “When I was a kid I wondered about it a lot. But that’s my reality. It doesn’t help to obsess about it. Besides, I had good foster families, especially the last one.” I had the sense that it wouldn’t help Hale at all to tell him how much it bothered me—not knowing anyone who carried my blood, not having any real connections in this world. I went with this lesser version of the truth.

  He was quiet a minute. “What made the last home good?”

  “Mama Gi—that’s what we called our foster mom—she really cared about us. She talked to us, taught us about life. She made sure we studied, that we were ready for college. She gave Delia and me the preparation to be successful, to take care of ourselves.” I felt a pang of sadness thinking about Mama Gi’s sweet round face, her sharp sarcastic wit. “Plus, I had Delia.”

  “Delia?”

  “My foster sister. She’s three years older. We’re still close.” Sharing so much and touching him felt like opening a door that had been closed a long time. The parts of me that hid behind that door couldn’t handle too much glaring light at once.

  I told him a little more about life with Mama Gi, and he watched me speak, his face intent as I talked, and when we’d paid the bill and risen from our table, he held the little gate on the patio open for me to exit back to the sidewalk. He shot me a sideways glance, and then quietly said, “I’m sorry if your childhood was ever hard. I hate to think of you sad.” The words were so quiet, and his tone so low and tender, something in my heart skipped and I had to do a double take to make sure this was the same arrogant ass I’d met in the coffeehouse. Hale flipped so quickly between arrogance and bravado, sweetness and vulnerability, I got the sense he might be struggling with himself.