Bruce knocked on the door to Valerie’s apartment and waited. I rocked on my heels and laughed a little nervously. “Wonder what she’ll think when she sees me, huh?”
“If I know Valerie, you won’t have to wonder for long.”
The door opened to reveal a woman I assumed was Valerie. She was a little taller than me with hair dyed a platinum blonde from the looks of it. She was gorgeous, and I hated that the realization sent a spike of jealousy through me. I tried not to imagine her and Bruce together, or how I must’ve seemed so plain by comparison. She had the perfect, perky little pixie nose, lush lips, big eyes with thick, elegant eyelashes, and a wide forehead with a narrow chin that almost came to a point. She also looked like she probably had a personal trainer and never ate anything but vegetables and chicken.
She looked straight past Bruce to size me up. Her eyes moved from my feet to my hair and then flicked away. It was a cold dismissal. She had been assessing whether I was a threat or not, and had decided just as quickly that I wasn’t. I’d never been the competitive, catty type, but part of me wanted to blurt out that I was more of a threat than she seemed to think since Bruce seemed to have a great time between my legs.
It was stupid though. Immature, even. I forced the thought down and tried to be an adult. She was his ex for a reason, and I didn’t need to compete with her.
“Come on. The papers are in the kitchen,” she said.
Bruce and I followed her, and I spotted a young girl lounging on the couch with big headphones on and a tablet in her hands. She must’ve been Caitlyn. I searched her features for similarities to Bruce for a few seconds before remembering she wasn’t his. It was evident, too. Her biological father must’ve had some Latino blood in him, because Caitlyn looked like a budding, more exotic version of her mother with tanned skin and a beautiful auburn color in her hair.
Her eyes darted up when she saw Bruce, and her little face spread into a huge smile as she tossed off her headphones and ran to hug him. Bruce laughed as he pulled her up into a tight hug so they were ear to ear. “I missed you,” he said quietly.
Valerie watched this with folded arms and a plainly annoyed expression.
“Why are you here?” she asked as he put her down. “Are you staying?”
“I’m sorry, bud,” he said, kneeling to push her hair behind her ears. “Not this time.”
I saw a different side of Bruce in those few, quick gestures and words. I saw his heartbreaking before my eyes, and I realized why the breakup had been so hard on him. He loved that little girl like his own daughter, and Valerie hadn't just ripped him away from her. She'd used her like a human shield between him and the justice he deserved to take.
Caitlyn lowered her eyes, but nodded.
“Come on,” said Valerie. “I have an appointment in half an hour.”
I expected Bruce to stand up to her or give her some of the sarcastic, biting remarks I’d come to expect from him, but he just followed her. It was hard seeing him like this. I guessed he must have known the leverage she held over him. It didn’t matter if what she was doing was right or wrong. She held Caitlyn’s well-being against his throat like a knife. If he gave her reason to, I could definitely picture Valerie doing something to hurt Caitlyn. Not physically, I thought, but something told me Valerie was more than capable of emotional warfare.
I tried to sneak a look at what it was Bruce was being forced to sign. It was a thick packet of documents and he was flipping from page to page, signing without more than cursory glances at the pages. Valerie only stood and watched with a kind of satisfied confidence. It wasn’t the first time, I could tell, and she was so sure he’d do what she wanted that it made me want to punch her in her perfect little nose.
He signed the last page, set the pen down, and pushed the papers away before giving her a questioning look. “That all?” he asked.
“For now. See yourself out.”
There was such a coldness between them that I found myself crossing my arms and fighting back shivers. Valerie walked off with high-heeled clicks on the expensive marble floors, leaving us to find our own way out.
When we turned to leave, I saw Caitlyn standing in the doorway with drawn eyebrows. “You don’t have to let her do this to you, Bruce.”
“I know,” he said, brushing her cheek with his thumb and giving her a smile. “It’s just money, though, bud. I have more than I need. If it keeps your mom happy and keeps you out of trouble, I don’t mind it.”
“I want to live with you,” she blurted.
From Bruce’s reaction, it wasn’t the first time she’d brought this up. “Hey. I know it can be hard to understand her sometimes, but Valerie is your mom. She does love you in her own way.” He lowered his voice and leaned a little closer. “I’d obviously adopt you in a heartbeat though, but I’d have almost no chance at all of getting you from your mom legally. If anything, I’d end up getting you yanked by child protective services, even if there was enough of a case for that, which I doubt there is, and then we’d have to hope I was allowed to be the one to adopt you from there.”
“She doesn’t even talk to me. She just gives me this stupid debit card with a ton of money on it and thinks she’s the best mom in the world. I hate her.”
“Hey,” said Bruce. “Don’t say that.” He paused, and a grin spread slowly on his face. “Not so loud, at least.”
Caitlyn smiled back at him, and it broke my heart seeing the two of them. No wonder Bruce was so guarded. Losing this little girl must have felt like having his heart ripped out and stomped on. His coldness was probably just a defense mechanism. No one could hurt you if you pushed everyone away, after all.
“Please try something,” she said. “I don’t care if I have to go to court or—”
“You’re still here!” shouted Valerie from another room. “See. Yourself. Out.”
I noticed the way she had pointedly denied my existence after her once-over of me, and I stashed that away as fuel for my desire to see the woman get what she deserved. I had no idea how I’d do it, but my dislike of Valerie had woken up a kind of protectiveness in me. It was strange to think of Bruce as someone who needed my protection in any sense of the word, but he had been hurt, and while he might still be a mega-star of the business world and in absolute control of his business, this was an area of his life where he wasn’t on top. He’d been walked over.
Once he had given Caitlyn a quick hug goodbye and promised to keep in touch, we made our way back to the street outside.
“I’m with Caitlyn,” I said. “I hate her.”
Bruce gave me a half-grin. Some of his normal self seemed to be creeping back in already, as if there was an aura over that place that drained all the fight out of him, but outside it could safely come back. “Want to get lunch before we go back to the office?” he asked suddenly.
I looked at him in surprise. “What, like a date?”
“Business meeting,” he said quickly.
“You don’t pay me and you don’t let me do anything remotely important. I’m going to call it a date if you won’t.”
He grunted, but didn’t argue the point.
Bruce managed to find a store with a banana that was up to his specifications on our way to a restaurant. He ate it as we walked.
I glanced down at the time on my phone. “Wow. We’re at least half an hour past your normal banana time, Bruce. I don’t know how you made it.”
He gave me a dry look. “I have a routine I prefer to stick to, yes. But I’m capable of adapting.”
“That’s exactly what a robot would say.”
We were seated for lunch a little while later. Bruce sat across from me at the small metal table, and we were given a tray of buttery, fluffy bread rolls and a simple salad bowl to split when the waitress brought our drinks.
I ordered water, because I didn’t want a repeat of the last meal we’d shared where I got so drunk he had to carry me home. “I’m sorry, by the way,” I said.
“For what? I c
an call up a pretty long list of things you’ve done wrong, so you’ll need to be more specific.”
“Very funny. But I’m sorry for today. It wasn’t my place to butt in on your life like that. You tried to get me to stay home and I should’ve listened.”
“I could’ve made you stay in the car. It was fine. For some reason, I wanted you to meet them.”
“Honestly,” I said. “Meeting them did help me to see why you’re such an asshole all the time. I would be too, if I had to deal with that woman.”
He nodded, and he still hadn’t touched the bread, but he was serving some of the salad up on his plate. “I just hate that Caitlyn got stuck in the middle. She deserves so much better.”
“She seems really sweet.”
He nodded. “She plays piano, and she’s really good at it. I still sneak into her recitals, but I probably don’t need to bother with the hiding. I haven’t seen Valerie at one in months.”
“Was Valerie always… that way?”
“A cold-hearted bitch?” he asked. “No. She did a good job of making me look like an idiot for years. She had me convinced she cared about me and wanted a future together. I never knew if I had it in me to settle down and start a family, but Caitlyn was such a sweet kid. Valerie and I got along, even if there weren’t sparks and fireworks when we touched or anything like that. It seemed good enough, I guess.”
“And you’ve experienced that before?” I asked. “The sparks and fireworks thing?”
He studied his plate for a moment before lifting his eyes to mine. “Not at the time. No. I’d heard others talk about it but never felt it for myself. I had begun to think people were exaggerating.”
“Until?” I prompted as my throat felt like it was rapidly drying out.
He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a low rasp. “Until I kissed you in the break room. All over.”
I shivered and took a long sip of my water. “I liked it, too.”
“That’s a ringing endorsement.”
I chewed my lip and jabbed at the melting ice cubes with my straw. “I liked it a lot,” I said quietly.
“Okay. You’re blushing. I’ll accept that.”
I covered my eyes with my hands, but couldn’t help peeking back out at him and sighing. “I swear. I’m not usually the blushing virgin type. You just have a talent for embarrassing me.”
I chose that precise moment to bump my water and splash all the rolls and most of the tablecloth. I set my now-empty cup back upright and looked at the ceiling like I could expect some angel to come down and reverse time for me. Maybe they could go ahead and rewind about a week while they were at it.
Bruce didn’t even flinch. “You know. I think that was the longest you’ve gone without some kind of act of supreme clumsiness since we’ve met. It has been at least half a day.”
"And I think this is the most off your routine I've ever seen you," I added. "I think we're rubbing off on each other."
Bruce raised his eyebrows. “That could be arranged.”
I didn’t understand immediately, and when I did, I felt a rush of warmth. “What if I don’t want to be your plaything?” I asked.
“Then you had better put in your resignation soon, because I can’t promise I’ll be able to keep my hands to myself after last night.”
I checked in at Business Insights after Bruce let me off early for the day. It was my first time seeing Hank and Candace in close to a week, and it already felt strange being back here. More than anything, it was a reminder that I was failing miserably when it came to my actual job. I sidestepped most of Hank’s questions about how things were going with Bruce and pretended I was making headway. Candace knew me too well for the same tricks to work.
“So?” she asked. “You getting dirt yet? Or are you just getting dirty.”
I was leaning against her desk and she was twirling a lock of her short-cropped hair in her finger.
“Something might have happened. But now I’m having second thoughts.”
“About what?”
“Everything. The piece I’m supposed to write. Whether or not there’s even anything to write about. What the hell I’m doing having feelings for Bruce Chamberson? Should I go on?”
“Just ask Hank to reassign you if you’re not feeling comfortable about the piece.”
“And prove to him and everyone else that I deserve all the crappy assignments he has been giving me until now?”
“Is that your biggest concern with getting reassigned?”
I sighed. “No. It should be, but I’m more worried about the fact that I’d probably never see Bruce again.”
“Then tell Hank there is no story. You wouldn’t be failing. You just did your job and there was nothing to dig up.”
“Maybe, but if he decides to send someone in after I give up the piece and they find something? I look even more incompetent.”
“So… figure out if you are serious about Bruce or not. If you are, you give up the piece and you’re back to where you started here, but you are poor and working crappy pieces with a billionaire boyfriend. Or, if you decide it’s not going to work, you dig and dig until you find something nasty to write your piece about. There. Problem solved!”
I smiled. “You do make it sound pretty simple. But what happens if it won’t work out and I still don’t want to make him look bad because he’s not as bad a guy as I thought?”
“Well, then you’re just up shit creek, I guess. You give up the piece and you go back to how things were minus the sexy billionaire boyfriend?”
12
Bruce
I had a routine. Exercise. Breakfast. Work. Banana. Lunch. Work. It had almost become a religion to me. I made life work around my routine, and not the other way around.
Natasha had been in my life for just over a week now, and she was already finding ways to change that. It was ten in the morning. In other words, it was banana time, and I wasn’t at work and there wasn’t a banana in my hand.
Instead, I was holding a dog’s leash in the middle of Central Park. Natasha’s dog, to be exact. I had recently learned the chubby little thing’s name was Charlie. For some reason, Charlie had decided he liked me. I grudgingly scratched his wrinkly head while he sat by my leg.
We were watching as Natasha knelt by a guy maybe in his late twenties or thirties who was sleeping on a bench. He looked pretty worse for wear with a few day’s stubble that didn’t look like a fashion statement and stained clothes. The guy sat up, said a few things, and then hugged Natasha tight.
Apparently, he was her brother. She'd gotten a call and suddenly asked me to leave for a few hours in the middle of my workday. I pressed her for details, but all she'd tell me was that her brother needed her.
Oddly enough, coming with her hadn’t felt like a choice. Natasha was accident prone and unlucky. She sometimes overlooked common sense in frightening ways, and the more I got to know her, the more I felt I needed to be by her side at all times just to keep her alive. But coming along didn’t feel like it was just about that. I wanted to be there for her when I saw how upset she was.
I scratched Charlie’s head while I worked through my thoughts. Somewhere along the way, I had stopped hating Natasha, I thought. I don’t know when it happened or how. The idea of us in some kind of relationship was obviously ridiculous, but I’d slowly come to want to tease her instead of punish her. I liked the way she fired back when I poked fun at her. I liked the way she managed to carry so much sexual energy in the smallest facial expressions, and I especially enjoyed the fact that she had no idea how transparent she was.
She was dying to give herself to me again, and frankly, I was dying to take her. The only thing holding me back now was the confusion about what I really wanted. But why should I let that stop me? We were both adults. I’d made myself perfectly clear the other night after we shared the banana split. I didn’t know where we were going and I wasn’t going to make promises. All I knew was that I craved another taste of her.
I
was also still paranoid about the possibility that any woman who showed interest in me was just another Valerie. They would play nice and put on a brilliant acting job until I made a fool of myself and fell for them. They’d sink their claws into me and my accounts inch by inch, and then once they had enough leverage, they’d snatch their share and leave me.
I could survive the frustration and the betrayal. I really could. Had it not been for Caitlyn, I would’ve been over Valerie in weeks, if not less. I would’ve given a law firm unlimited funds and made her regret she ever thought she could get the better of me.
What I couldn’t stand was the idea that I was playing into someone’s game.
I was a winner. It wasn’t a point of pride or a source of cockiness. It was a business strategy, and it was one that bled over into my personal life.
Some people thought winning was about knowing a business or having talent. Others said it was hard work. I thought it was about self-discipline. Self-discipline had always been my talent. It was a weapon I spent time honing every day. Each time I worked out when I was tired or got out of bed before the sun rose. Every time I stayed late at work when I would rather be home. All the times I forced myself to stay focused and study instead of goofing off. Every single time made my self-discipline stronger, until it was a perfect tool I could use at will.
Except with Natasha.
She was an anomaly. It didn’t matter how strong my will was. Eventually, the desire to have her and joke with her and enjoy her won out. I could fight it, and I could delay it, but I couldn’t win.
“Here she comes,” I said to Charlie, who was grunting in a way that was mildly disturbing as I rubbed behind his ears.
Natasha was holding her brother’s shoulder like she was worried he might fall as she approached. “Braeden, this is Bruce. Bruce, this is Braeden.”
I looked at his dirt-stained hand and extended my own for him to shake.
He took mine tentatively with the kind of grip that always made me want to cringe away, like his hand was a loose sack of blood with no bones in it. His eyes didn’t leave the ground, and I read shame in his body language as clear as day.
His Banana Page 9