Palm South University: Season 3 Box Set

by Kandi Steiner

  Frowning, I realize I haven’t checked my phone in a while, and I turn, grabbing it off the bar and clicking the home screen.

  No missed texts.

  No missed calls.

  My heart sinking, I drop the phone back to the bar with a sigh, turning back to Greg with what I’m sure is a pathetic smile. “You know what? Tag me.”

  “You sure?” he asks, eyeing my phone before finding my gaze again.

  “Positive.”

  He watches me a moment more, his eyes flicking to my lips, but he swallows and tears his gaze away and back to his phone. I watch him type out a caption, draining the last of my vodka tonic as the loading bar fills on his phone, and then the screen re-loads and he grins.

  “Posted.”

  “EVERYONE ALWAYS asks me, ‘Why Okay, Cool?’” Brandon starts, kicking off his keynote speech in front of a ballroom of at least a thousand people, all eyes fixed on him. “And it’s my favorite story to tell.”

  I’m seated just a few tables from the stage, my heel grazing the dance floor that stretches out in front of the stage, separating me from the tables on the other side of it. Looking up at Brandon in his deep red suit with golden accents, tie and pocket handkerchief popping as bright accents, he looks absolutely regal. But as handsome as he looks on that stage, I know the man beneath the suit now.

  I know the abs that stretch from his rib cage down to the deep V, cut at an angle that leads me right to eight inches of heaven. I know the striking compass tattoo that hugs his left tricep, the imprint his teeth leave on his lip when he bites it hard enough, and the sounds he makes when he’s on the brink of ecstasy.

  The last few days with Brandon have been pure bliss — from sneaking long, hot, passionate kisses in dark corners and hidden hallways during the conference to not even leaving our hotel room on Thanksgiving, we’ve both been making the most of our “no rules” weekend. I’m deliciously sore and satisfied, yet never truly sated, always wanting more of him. Even now, as I try to focus on his speech, I can’t wait to get him back to the room for our last night together before reality hits.

  “It’s no secret that growing up in foster care isn’t fun,” he continues, and a heavier weight settles over the room at his words. “It’s hard growing up not feeling valued, or important, or like you belong anywhere in the world. It’s even harder when you’re surrounded by opportunities to maybe find a sort of family, but you know those opportunities are bad — and likely to land you in jail.”

  My heart aches as I watch Brandon strip his soul bare in front of an entire crowd of people. I promised him I wouldn’t read his speech before he gave it tonight, and I kept my word. Now, I’m hanging on to everything he’s saying, wanting to know him more, even though I know I shouldn’t.

  “I won’t lie, I don’t know how much longer I would have been able to stay out of trouble had it not been for a young entrepreneur who found me by the grace of God and kept a steady head on my shoulder. His name was Darnell Cohen, and he owned a small but reputable catering company in the town I grew up in.” He clears his throat. “He was twenty-five when he offered me my first job. I was only fourteen.

  “Darnell didn’t have to take a chance on a kid with dirty shoes and a bad attitude, but he did. He gave me somewhere to be after school, a way to make money, and more than that, a brotherhood. He was my big brother in every sense of the word. And the more years I worked under him, the more I realized that he was exactly the kind of man I wanted to be — intelligent, humble, kind, and giving.”

  I smile at that, because in my mind, Brandon is all of those things to a T.

  “‘Okay, cool,’ was Darnell’s answer to everything,” Brandon continues with a smile. “When I had a new idea for the business? ‘Okay, cool. Let’s do it.’ When I was late for an event? ‘Okay, cool. Don’t let it happen again.’ When something went wrong and everyone else stressed out? ‘Okay, cool. Let me think for a second, I can fix this.’ Even when the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen gave me her number to give to him… ‘Okay, cool. I’ll call her later.’”

  The room laughs a little at that, and I cover my smile with my hand, completely enraptured with Brandon’s speech.

  But when the laughter dies down, his eyes soften, and he smooths his hands over the podium. “And when I came to him on my eighteenth birthday, not able to stay even one more day in my foster home, and asked him for a place to stay… he didn’t even hesitate.” Brandon lifts his eyes to the audience again. “‘Okay, cool. Let’s get you into college.’”

  I swallow, my throat thick with emotion, my hands aching to reach out to him.

  “And, he did,” Brandon continues. “He helped me get into college, and helped me realize that just because I’d come from nothing didn’t mean I had nothing to become.” He pauses. “Darnell was thirty-two when he was murdered.”

  The entire room inhales a breath, none of us letting go of it as we watch Brandon on stage.

  “He was just in the wrong gas station at the wrong time, trying to save the life of a young cashier. And, he did…by sacrificing his own.”

  Silence.

  “So,” he continues after a moment, sniffing. “Okay, Cool is just one of the many ways I honor Darnell with my life, trying to hold onto his memory for as long as I can and show the world who he was, and who he helped me become.”

  Brandon continues on to talk about chasing dreams despite obstacles, and rising above the circumstances life hands you, and eventually finishes with his final words of advice for event industry entrepreneurs like himself. It’s a moving speech, one that earns him a standing ovation at the end, and his eyes are on me as he smiles and exits the stage to the sound of the string quartet band starting up again.

  I’m still standing when he finally reaches our table again, which isn’t until after he’s stopped by nearly every person he passes, all wanting to shake his hand and tell him how wonderful his speech was. He blows out a long breath when he makes it to his seat, dropping his notecards onto the table and kissing my cheek before we both sit.

  “At the risk of repeating what everyone else just said, your speech was… beautiful, Brandon.”

  He reaches for his drink — a Manhattan — and takes a quick sip. “Thank you. But I’m glad it’s over,” he adds with a laugh. “Now I can finally enjoy myself.”

  “You were nervous?” I ask, surprised.

  “Always. Speaking in front of a large crowd is not my idea of a good time.”

  I laugh, placing the delicate white linen napkin over my lap just as the first course of dinner is served. “Well, I would have never guessed. You looked casual and comfortable up there.” I pause. “Did you picture everyone in their underwear?”

  “Just you,” he fires back with a wink.

  Brandon is the center of attention all through dinner, the three other couples seated with us asking him question after question that lead to story after story. By the time dessert is finished and our drinks are refilled, I can tell he’s ready for a break, so I take a longer sip from my champagne glass and stand.

  “Dance with me?” I ask.

  His eyes fire up with a mix of relief and hunger, and he wipes the corners of his mouth with his napkin before laying it gently beside his plate. “It would be my honor. Excuse me,” he says to the rest of the table, and they all lift their glasses or offer us polite smiles and nods as I take his arm.

  “Thank you,” he says when we take our places on the dance floor, one of his large hands finding the bare skin at the small of my back as he takes my hand in the other. “I’m going to need a solid week of introverting when we get back to South Florida.”

  I smile as we start to dance, not even surprised that he moves so smoothly with me in his arms. The man is astounding. “I’ll need a week of recovery, myself,” I tease.

  Brandon’s eyes spark, a devilish grin spreading on his face. “I won’t apologize for that.” His eyes sweep over me, landing on mine just as he twirls me out and pulls me back into his ar
ms. “You look absolutely stunning tonight, by the way.”

  “This old thing?” I tease, gesturing to the floor-length gold dress I’d picked out for the evening. The high neckline is conservative, my simple earrings and natural makeup complementing the look, but the back of the dress is virtually non-existent, the fabric sweeping wide and low before meeting in a V just above my tailbone. The dress hugs my curves all the way down to the middle of my thigh before sweeping out just slightly, a low slit revealing my left leg and heel when I walk.

  “I’ve been imagining all the ways I can strip you out of it,” Brandon admits.

  “Even while on stage?”

  “Especially while on stage.”

  I laugh, spinning under his arm again before wrapping my arm back around his shoulders. “Our last night,” I remind him, eyes searching his for a sign of… well, anything — sadness, excitement, regret, fear, hope.

  He swallows. “We’ll have to make it count.”

  “Back to reality tomorrow.”

  He nods as the band finishes the song, still holding me in his arms when the last note plays. “Indeed.”

  The room claps politely, the band smiling in thanks before striking up the next melody, but time is frozen where Brandon holds me in the middle of the dance floor. The way his hand grips the skin on my lower back — just slightly, enough to send a wave of chills over my arms — has me anxious to get back to the room.

  If we really only have one more night together, I don’t want to waste a single second more of it here.

  “I’m suddenly very tired,” I breathe, my eyes flashing over his lips.

  Brandon grins. “Then let’s get you to bed, Miss Daniels.”

  That night, Brandon touches me slower, longer, with more intent and purpose than before. It’s as if he’s memorizing the way every inch of my body feels beneath his, the way my breaths enter and exit my lungs, the way my lips move over the moans and whispers of his name.

  And I memorize him, too — wondering how I’ll ever let him go once our jet lands back in South Florida.

  We knew the game we were playing was dangerous before we even dealt the cards, and now here we are, nearing the end, both of us winners and losers in equal measure. It’s time to pack up. Time to go home. Time to keep our promises, leaving our brief time together in the past, in a memory, never to be relived.

  But with Brandon’s lips on my skin, his hands on my waist, his breaths in my ear — I can’t help but feel like this game is far from over.

  I KNEW AFTER THANKSGIVING, the rest of the semester would fly by. There were only a few weeks left, after all, and now here I am, packing up the last of my belongings in the little cube I’ve called home all semester.

  The Monday after the holiday had started off with a bang, the entire team full on mashed potatoes and drive to make the Bare•ly event successful. We’d all joined forces and thrown our all into it, and two weeks later, we’d rocked that event like I knew we would all along. It was chic, elegant, modern and classy — everything our clients had asked for. And for the first time, I’d been in charge of an event from beginning to end, handling the crises as they came and putting out fires left and right, all while never dropping the illusion that everything was going exactly as planned. It was a perfect launch party, and Mrs. Delure had assured me I had a high recommendation letter coming from her whenever I graduated and set out looking for my first job.

  “I knew you’d be the last intern out of here,” Mykayla says, propping her hip against the wall of my cube as she watches me pack up. “But then again, I knew you’d be different from the other interns the moment I met you.”

  I toss my sticky notepads into the box, the contents now threatening to spill over the top, and pause to face her. “Aw, Mykayla. I’m going to miss you.”

  “Same here, girly. But,” she clarifies, stepping into my cube with outstretched arms. “I’m serious about you coming to Happy Hour with us every now and then. Your sorority sisters can share.”

  I laugh, hugging her tight. “Absolutely. You have my number. I’m there anytime.”

  She sighs, squeezing me once before letting me go. “I’m going to finish up some emails and then we can walk out together, if you’re finished?” she asks, eyes on my now very empty desk.

  Picking up the last highlighter and tossing it into a vacant corner of the box, I nod. “Yep. I guess this is it…” I swallow, glancing at the office down the hall with the door still open. “I just need to say my goodbyes to Mr. Church and I’ll be ready.”

  Saying his name out loud makes my stomach lurch, though Mykayla is oblivious, taking my box from the desk. “I’ll hold this for you. Poor Mr. Church, hope you don’t make him cry. He’s already going to be here working all weekend long. Add that to the fact that his favorite intern is leaving?” She smiles, nudging me. “You were everyone’s favorite, truthfully.”

  “Oh, stop.” I laugh. “Why is he working all weekend?”

  She shrugs. “I dunno, last minute event or something. He mentioned it in passing and I told him to let me know if he needed anything, but you know him. He’ll work his weekend alone in quiet, suffering, and leave the rest of us alone.”

  “Yeah…” My eyes find his office again, his face hidden but hands visible as they type away on his keyboard. “Sounds like him.”

  “Anyway, let me go send these emails and you go say goodbye. See you in a sec!” And with that, she trots off.

  When she’s gone, I blow out a long, shaky breath, flattening my palms over the skirt of the same dress I wore on day one. Flashes of Brandon in the elevator, of our first exchange, mingle with the intimate way I came to know him over Thanksgiving break as I walk slowly down the hall toward his office. It’s after five on a Friday, leaving only a handful of associates in the office. Usually he’s gone by now, but something tells me he was waiting for me to come say goodbye.

  True to our word, we haven’t crossed any lines since the jet touched down back in Miami that Sunday after the holiday. He’s kept his gaze neutral in meetings, just like I asked, and with so much of my focus being on the Bare•ly event, I only really had time to pine over him in the privacy of mine and Erin’s room at the sorority house.

  But I’m not immune to him. My breath still hitches when our hands brush, my heart still skips when he calls my name at an event or in the office, and my body still aches with need for him every night when I lie down in my empty bed.

  I wonder if he aches for me, too.

  He seems so unfazed by me now, like he truly did itch his scratch and has no want or need for me anymore other than to be a good intern. His gaze never lingers over mine longer than it should, he never winks when no one is looking, he never texts me late at night with wistful thoughts. He has kept his word, and I never thought that would hurt as much as it has.

  “Mr. Church?” I rap my knuckles on the doorframe to his office, causing him to pause mid-type and look at me. Just that glance alone nearly has me doubling over. “Sorry to bother you, I’m just… I’m about to head out, and I wanted to say goodbye.”

  His expression is blank, completely void of emotion. He watches me for a moment before standing, fastening the button at the bottom of his suit jacket and stepping around his desk. “It’s been a pleasure having you on the team, Miss Daniels,” he says, extending his hand for mine. “If you ever need a reference — or anything at all — don’t hesitate to give us a call.”

  My heart sinks, pulling my smile with it as I let him take my hand. He shakes it firmly, like he would anyone else, and I try not to let it show just how badly that hurts. “The pleasure has been mine. I can’t thank you enough for the opportunity.”

  His jaw ticks, like he’s biting back the words he can’t say — the words I long to hear. I try to hold onto his hand longer, try to feel connected to him for as long as I can, but he pulls back after our handshake, sliding his hands into the pockets of his slacks with his eyes still on me.

  “Bye, then,” I say, excusing m
yself. When I’m just past the door, he calls out my name.

  “Miss Daniels?”

  I turn, finding just a hint of longing in his dark eyes, like he’s fighting with every ounce of power he has to keep his hands in his pockets and off of me. It was the look I asked him not to give me, the one I missed, the one I wasn’t sure still existed.

  “Keep in touch, okay?”

  Smiling, I nod, holding his gaze for as long as he’ll let me before finally turning for good. I walk slowly down the hallway, hoping he’s watching, and when I reach Mykayla’s desk, she’s already waiting and holding my box for me.

  “Ready?”

  On an exhale, I nod, looking around the office with an ache in my chest. “Ready.”

  As we wait for the elevators, I feel his eyes on me, but I wait until Mykayla steps in and it’s my turn to let him know it. My eyes find his down the hall, and without any words exchanged, I finally feel it.

  He’s going to miss me, too.

  He smiles, offering me a slight wave, and I smile in return before stepping onto the elevator, all the while wondering if that’s the last time I’ll ever see Mr. Church.

  “UGH, THIS SUCKS,” I say to my empty room, scrolling through the list of classes still available for spring semester. After filling my schedule with a whole array of classes this semester, I still haven’t found anything I’m passionate about — nothing I would want to make a career of, at least — and so here I am, on a Friday night, throwing darts at a spinning wheel again and hoping something sticks.

  This semester has been hard.

  Classes have been weird, none of them meshing together which, surprisingly, made studying even more difficult than usual. Poker has been consuming my life, especially since I officially decided to enter the big tournament next May. I haven’t paid my entry fee yet, but I did give an exclusive interview to one of my favorite poker blogs. Now the poker world is buzzing about my entry, and it’s crunch time.