“My brother, Robby,” he said. “When he was twenty. I’m trying to do it from memory, but I can’t quite get it right. I may turn to a photo reference soon.”
“Do all of you guys look alike?” I asked. Siblings absolutely fascinated me.
“I take after my dad. Most of us do. My sister, Annie, looks more like Mum,” he said, walking slowly beside me as we headed to the door. “The third floor is my bedroom—”
Nope. No way. It wasn’t that I thought I would pounce on him or something. Or that I thought he would take advantage of me or anything like that. We’d climbed the stairs to get to the studio, so I said, “No, I’m not used to your creepy stairs yet, and that’s way too high.”
It was such a bad excuse, with an elevator right there. He could have easily said, “Then we can take the elevator,” but he didn’t. He said, “We’ll take the elevator back down, then.”
And that was it. No pressure to get me into his bedroom. He just respected my gentle refusal, even though the reason I’d given him would have been easy to argue with. Despite being some kind of shambling human tragedy, he was unreasonably perfect.
When the food arrived, he said, “Let’s bring this with us,” and headed for the elevator.
“Where to?” I asked him, following after with silverware and a couple of the beers from his fridge.
He hit the button with his elbow. “Up to the deck.”
“The deck?” I’d seen a boxy structure on the peak of the tower on occasions when I’d passed by it, but I hadn’t been sure it was a roof access and not just a design feature.
“It’s more of a widow’s walk, but it has great views,” he promised.
As we ascended, I did catch a peek at the third floor, but the doors were closed. A giant, long-haired gray cat was slinking around the loft-style hallway. “Is that Ambrose?” I asked, pointing, but we passed through the ceiling too quickly for Ian to follow my direction.
“If it was a cat, and it was in my apartment, then I very much hope it was.”
The doors opened onto what had to be the very best view in Brooklyn. Three-hundred and sixty degrees of pure, purple twilight that stretched over the city like an amethyst blanket.
“This is amazing,” I whispered as we stepped out. There was a low-backed black chair with white linen upholstery, and a matching, blocky chaise longue around a square black coffee table that sat at knee level.
“Not an ideal dining arrangement, I know, but I think it’s worth it for the atmosphere,” he said, depositing our plastic containers of food onto the table.
I took the chair and left the chaise to Ian. “I think it’s fantastic. I eat a lot of meals sitting on the floor next to our coffee table at home, anyway.”
The bridges were lit up like diamond necklaces strung over the water, and lights from cars winked as they passed through the cross streets. We talked about easier things than we had the day before. I told Ian about what it had been like to move from Pennsylvania to New York, and he talked about the differences he’d found when he’d arrived from Scotland. We were both kind of introverted, in that we didn’t have many friends, and the ones we did have were extremely close.
Which made me wonder, “How do you know Sophie?”
He paused with a forkful of spaghetti bolognese hovering just above his plate. Then he said, “I went to university with her husband. Briefly.”
That was odd. Why did he hesitate to tell me that? I innocently pressed, “Oh really? Where was that?”
“Exeter. I went for fine art.” He took a bite and chewed, never looking up.
“And that turned into…architecture?” Not that I knew enough about architecture to know if that was an odd development.
He washed his food down with a long swallow of beer. “The two have a lot in common. But some personal circumstances arose that changed my career path, as it were.”
“Ah.” Something still seemed to be missing, not because his story was suspicious, but because he was acting so suspicious. “So, was Neil a fine arts major?”
I knew he hadn’t been. I’d read his Wikipedia article, because it was weird to know someone who was married to somebody famous.
“No, economics,” Ian said, and that checked out, so at least I knew he hadn’t lied to me. “We met through a club. I’m not sure I want to tell you which.”
If he was trying to hide the fact that he’d belonged to a math club or some kind of Star Trek fan club, it was unnecessary. I could already tell he was a nerd. “Well now you have to. You’ve piqued my interest.”
“It may change how you feel about me,” he warned.
I laughed. Seriously, whatever he had to say couldn’t be that bad. “Ian. I’m pretty much sold on you at this point. Unless you were a Neo-Nazi skinhead, I won’t care.”
He nodded, looked down at his plate, then looked up and met my gaze directly. “It was a kink club.”
“A…oh.” Well. That was not the nerdy admission I’d been expecting. Not by half a mile.
“Yeah. It was an experimental time in my youth,” he said, looking away.
Ian had belonged to a kink club? I’d heard of them before. I wasn’t sure NYU had one, but Columbia did. Rosa’s ex, Amanda, had belonged to one. There hadn’t been any sex involved in the group, but she’d met people there and fooled around outside of it. Her experience, she’d been quick to inform people, wasn’t the norm. Most of them just showed up to talk about their sexuality and learn.
I didn’t like the idea of pain or humiliation during sex—it just wasn’t a turn on for me—but I didn’t want him to think I was judging his choices. “You don’t have to apologize. People are into all sorts of things. I might not be—”
“It isn’t a relationship requirement,” he hurried to assure me. “Besides, we’re not sleeping together.”
“But that doesn’t mean we won’t,” I reminded him, and I loved the way he visibly swallowed at that. “And it doesn’t mean I’d never try something a little risqué. What’s your kink?”
He took a breath that sounded like he was resigning himself to something unpleasant. My reaction, probably. “Well, I’m not into whips and chains, if that’s what you’re thinking. But in the past I’ve quite enjoyed swinging and group sex.”
“So, you like having sex with other people while you’re in a relationship?” That didn’t seem like something I would ever be comfortable with.
He nodded. “My ex-wife and I did, but together. Never in separate rooms. No individual dates with other people. It wasn’t an open relationship. More of a shared sexual experience.”
“If we were…together…” I didn’t want to phrase it in a way that seemed presumptuous.
“I wouldn’t be willing to share you with another boyfriend, no,” he said quickly as if that were going to be my concern. That I would want to see someone else.
“Ditto. I wouldn’t be comfortable in a long-term relationship with you while you were in a relationship with someone else. And I wouldn’t be comfortable having sex with someone else with you, or watching you have sex with someone.” Oh god, I’d just talked about watching him have sex with someone. I quickly added, “In the interest of full disclosure, is all I’m saying.”
His jaw went tight, and a muscle ticked in his neck. “In the interest of full disclosure, then, I should tell you something.”
A cold chill, incongruous with the warm August night, skated across my shoulders. “This sounds grim.”
“It may well be.” He looked me in the eye, again, though it was clear it was difficult for him to. “I’ve slept with Sophie.”
My voice froze in my throat. When I could respond, I had to have some serious clarification. “Sophie…my boss, Sophie.”
“Yes. Earlier this spring, before Gena and I split up.” He cleared his throat. “It was a—”
“A swinger thing,” I finished for him. Holy shit. Sophie had set me up with someone she’d slept with? Without telling me? That was extremely uncool. But at least he
hadn’t cheated on his wife with her, right?
“Penny?” he prompted gently.
I realized I’d been staring at him, wide-eyed and silent. “Look, I'm not going to say that this doesn't matter to me. It does. I kind of wish I'd known about this sooner.”
He nodded. “I wasn't sure what the appropriate time would be to address it.”
“I think Sophie should have told me when she set us up.”
“Would it have affected your decision to walk into that restaurant last week?” he asked, with a forced smile. “In spite of the fortune cookie?”
Had it only been one week? I felt like we’d been doing this for a while. In a good way. And that’s what made this harder.
“Honestly? Yes.” I knew it would hurt him to say it, but it was the truth. I didn’t want to make him feel bad, but I wasn’t a liar. “I probably wouldn’t have gone out with you.”
He twisted his fork on his plate but didn’t lift it for a bite. “And now? Does it make a difference?”
Did it? Was I going to think about him and Sophie together every time I spoke to her? That would make my job excruciating. Did I like the idea that someone I knew had, in effect, had something I wanted before I’d gotten there?
The thought stopped me. I wanted Ian, in a way I hadn’t wanted any of the handful of boyfriends I’d been with before. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been attracted to those guys or tempted to sleep with them, but I’d been on two official dates with Ian, and if he’d offered tonight, I might have said yes. And now?
“No,” I said after a deep breath. “It doesn’t change anything.”
It would slow me down, hormone wise, but that wasn’t a bad thing.
“Well, that’s a relief.” His tone shocked me; I’d never heard him sound so serious. “Because I really do like you, Penny. And I would hate to do anything to hurt you.”
“I would hate that, too.” My ribs ached, pressed from the inside out by the intense jumble of conflicted feelings in my heart. This was so much heavier than third date talk. “Look, I’ll talk to Sophie. I want to be on the right page with her. But I don’t have any problem with what’s happening here.”
“Good.” He paused. “And I’m certainly not going to be sleeping with Sophie again. That was a particular set of circumstances that occurred one time. And please don’t think I’m out sleeping with a new woman every night. This may be too forward, but I’m not interested in seeing anyone else, at the moment.”
“You don’t have to apologize for your past,” I said firmly. There wasn’t a reason to feel guilty. It wasn’t like he’d known I would be coming along. “The delivery of the news could have been… Well, strike that. Everything happens for a reason.”
“That it does.” One corner of his mouth lifted in a half-attempt at a smile.
I took a drink from my beer and looked out over the water. Whether it changed anything between us or not, I’d still just gotten some unsettling news. I wanted reassurance somehow, stupid, silly reassurance that he liked me and not Sophie. Which made no sense; Sophie was obnoxiously in love with her husband and lived like a real-life Cinderella. She wasn’t in the market for boyfriend.
But I still wanted to hear it. And there was no way to ask and not sound like the most insecure woman in uncertainty-ville. It sucked.
“Hey, Doll,” Ian said softly, and I turned to face him. His expression was caught somewhere between resignation and optimism. He held out his arms a little. “Come here?”
I put my beer on to the table and got up, sliding my hands into my back pockets as I walked to him. I stopped at the end of chaise. “I’m not interested in seeing anyone else right now, either. I’m kind of concentrating on, like, one guy.”
Ian looked up at me with tired, glazed eyes but an adorable smirk, and melted me completely. “Well, he’s a lucky bastard, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, leaning down to smile against his mouth. “He is.”
Chapter Eight
Though I’d been super cool about it at the time, Ian’s revelation about Sophie had thrown me for a loop. It genuinely hadn’t bothered me when he’d told me, but when I saw Sophie on Monday morning, the knowledge that she’d slept with the guy I liked burrowed under my skin like a horrible parasite you’d see removed from somebody’s foot on a gross YouTube video.
I had to do something to stop myself from irrationally hating my boss.
“Hey, Soph?” I asked, leaning around her open door.
She flicked her gaze up from the computer screen she was leaning far too close to. She needed glasses, but Deja and I had decided we weren’t going to tell her that. “Yeah?”
“I noticed that you have lunch free today, on your schedule, at least. I was wondering if we could go grab something together. Not as a boss/employee thing, but a people who know each other and have people in common…thing,” I rambled. It was hard to stay coherent when all I could think about was the fact that her hands had been all over my soon-to-be boyfriend. I tried very hard not to imagine her smooth, spray-tanned thighs wrapping around his waist.
She frowned a little. “I assume this is about Ian?”
I nodded. “Things are going really well, and I just needed some outside input. If you wouldn’t mind?”
I’d been prepared in case of refusal. I wasn’t going to be put off about this; if she declined, I would just say I needed to talk to her about the fact that she’d had sex with the guy I wanted to be my boyfriend and potential future husband and father of our three beautiful children.
Slow down there, Penelope.
“Um…yeah,” she cautiously agreed. “I wouldn’t mind hitting that bistro on Fifth and Prospect.”
We took Sophie’s car—and driver, because billionaires could pay people to just hang around all day waiting for them—and talked about normal, non-Ian stuff on the way over. The whole time, I kept wondering horrible things, like if she was better at sex than I would be, if Ian would compare us, if he would like her better than me…
It wasn’t that I’d already decided I was going to sleep with Ian. Brad and I had dated for two years, and I’d never made up my mind. But the numbers didn’t lie, and fortune cookies had never steered me wrong. It felt like destiny had flung us together, when we would have probably never met before.
The restaurant Sophie had picked was a bit pricier than I would have normally eaten at, but ultimately, it wouldn’t matter because she always picked up the check and called it a business expense. It was small, dark and pretty much empty, which was a blessing. I didn’t necessarily need strangers overhearing our conversation.
“So…” Sophie said, leaning forward slightly after the waiter took our drink orders. Her eyes lit up in clear anticipation of some girl talk. “How are things with Ian?”
I knew she’d been cautiously trying to not pry all morning. “Good. Really fast but good. We’ve gone out three times, I’ve had dinner over at his place—”
“Oh my god, isn’t it amazing? He had Neil and I over for dinner not too long ago and I got such apartment envy,” she gushed, and every jealous hackle I had raised. It wasn’t enough that she’d already slept with him, but she’d seen his apartment first, too?
Oh god, what if it had happened in his apartment?
It was really difficult to keep talking, because I disliked unpleasant confrontations, and I really disliked the topic. “Yeah. But we’re getting way ahead of ourselves, so I’m trying to be cautious about all of this. There are a lot of factors in play here, and it’s like we’re getting instantly serious. I’m examining a lot of my concerns.”
“Which is a totally smart thing to do,” she agreed. “When I started falling for Neil, I was a mess. I think we’d only been seeing each other for like a month before I was completely in love with him. It was ridiculous.”
“One of my concerns is that Ian has slept with you.” There.
She blinked. “Wow. Okay, I have to admit, I’m glad he told you—”
“Why didn’t you
tell me?” I demanded. “You set me up with a guy you’d slept with, and you didn’t even bother to mention it in passing?”
“When you put it that way, it does sound really bad.” She pressed her fingertips to her forehead and looked down. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know if it was my place to tell you, because I assume he told you the whole story?”
“He did,” I admitted. “And I’m not going to tell anyone about it, so please don’t worry about that. I guess I can see why you wouldn’t want to tell me, ‘by the way, here’s an extremely personal detail about a stranger’s sex life.’ I just need to get this off my chest, because I’m a really jealous person, and if I started hating you, life would get complicated quick.”
“I hope it doesn’t complicate our working relationship. Or our personal one.” She shook her head. “Is there anything I can do to make it easier? I mean, I have no intention of ever sleeping with him again.”
“Would you tell me how it happened? Because, right now, all I can do is imagine you and him together, and it gets more and more… It’s bugging the hell out of me.” I didn’t mean it to sound as harsh as it came out. The amount of hurt that had surged up surprised me.
“When I met Ian,” she began, in a tone that suggested she was about to tell me a full story, rather than a simple answer, “it was at Neil’s birthday party. Ian’s ex-wife was this beautiful redhead—”
Something in my expression must have changed to make her stop short and clear her throat.
She went on, “And Neil has this major thing for redheads, so about a year later, we got together, had dinner, and one thing lead to another. Do you want other details?”
Did I? Sick curiosity drove me to say, “Yes.”
“Well, we were all in the same room. There was nothing romantic between us. It was actually more about having the experience with your partner than…well, cheating on them, for lack of a better word.” She shrugged. “Neil fucked Gena, I fucked Ian, then Gena and I had sex while Neil and Ian watched.”
“Holy…” My jaw dropped. Now that I knew the exact details, I was way more fascinated with Sophie’s spirit of adventure than I was concerned about her and Ian.
First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) Page 10