That morning I parked in my usual spot, but instead of heading right into the office building, I started across the complex. I wanted to check in on Darren and Greg and see how they were feeling. Now that the initial adrenaline and thrill of the first and third place wins were gone, it was time to get back to business and start thinking strategically about the next race. All the other teams had now seen the modifications and improvements made to the bikes, and the new techniques the guys had come up with for the race itself. They would be better prepared the next time to counteract those efforts to try to secure the win for themselves. That meant we had to stay a step ahead and keep improving.
As I walked across the complex, I caught sight of Merry sitting in the sun with her tablet propped on her lap. She’d attached it to a small keyboard, and her fingers flew across the keys as she worked. The sun glittered on her hair where it was tied up away from her neck, revealing the delicate, graceful slope and her soft, smooth skin. At one point she closed her eyes and tilted her face up to get some of the light and warmth. It was a gesture I’d seen her do before when she was outside, but usually she followed it up with the satisfied, happy smile of someone who truly loved the sun and being outside to enjoy it. Only this time, she didn’t get that smile. Instead, she let out a sigh that made her shoulders drop and looked back at the screen.
The expression on her face was tense. I couldn’t really read the emotion, and that made me curious. I wanted to go up to her and ask her what was up but held myself back. She was obviously engrossed in her work, and I didn’t want to bother her. If it did have something to do with work, I was sure she would make a point to tell me. We’d already discussed having regular meetings to talk about the social media campaign and how it was working out. I might not fully understand it, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to be involved with it. This was my company, my legacy, and I didn’t want anything happening without me being a part of it and having my say.
Moving on without disrupting her, I continued further into the complex. The practice track was empty, but I could hear voices coming from the shop. When I walked around to the back, I found the bay doors standing open and Darren and Dad inside. They stood in the middle of the floor surrounded by the pieces of a dismantled bike. I laughed.
“That bike got you to a first-place win in the first race of the season, and that’s the thanks it gets?” I teased.
Darren looked up and smiled.
“I’m hoping it’s going to get me to a bunch more first-place wins, but I have to make sure it stays in top shape for that to happen. I figured we could break it down and look at all the individual components again to see if there’s anywhere else I could make improvements,” he said.
“Haven’t you been doing that for the last couple of months?” I asked, walking further into the workshop so I could survey how they had the elements of the bike laid out.
This was far from the first time I’d seen the two of them break apart a bike into each of its individual parts and scrutinize it. The same thing would happen several more times throughout the season as they made repairs, cleaned, and tuned the machine to keep it in its best condition until the very last race.
“In a way. A lot of the time I’ve been evaluating the whole bike or entire systems of it. Which is important, obviously, but doesn’t give me the whole picture. It’s been a while since I’ve actually broken it all the way down and looked at the individual parts. It performed really well last night, but I think it could be better. I want to tweak a few things and see what happens,” he said.
“What are you looking at doing?” I asked.
I stood back and listened as my brother pointed out various parts of the bike and made comments about what he thought could be better about each. Though I was extremely familiar with the construction of the bike and how it worked, just knowing the mechanics wasn’t comparable to his experience and knowledge of it. As the one who actually raced the bike, he had much more insight into how every component interacted with the others to perform in different situations. He was the one who could feel how the bike accelerated and responded to his commands when he was going through the turns or along the straightaways, how easily it could be used to pass other racers, and how stable it felt so he it was secure and safe in each stage of the race.
I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with riding bikes. Of course, I spent my fair share of time on the backs of the machines. But I was never one to race them and didn’t have the same level of connection to a bike that came from those experiences. Listening to him talk about what he felt and experienced during the race the night before and comparing that with the structural and functional knowledge I had of the bike let me give him suggestions for changes that could be made.
I spent the better part of the early afternoon there in the workshop with my brother and father, then headed over to the second workshop to check in with Greg. He was reviewing his own bike and making some modifications as well. It was interesting to see how differently he operated than Darren did. Both were skilled racers, but Greg was much more inward thinking. He liked to do things on his own, and while he was open to hearing suggestions and input from others, he rarely carried on brainstorming sessions with us.
Greg talked to me a bit about what he was doing with his bike and asked for my input on a few things he’d noticed during the race the night before. After another hour spent helping him, I realized I was completely exhausted. Breaking down everything after the bar the night before took longer than I expected it to, and even when I did finally get home, I didn’t get much sleep. Despite being happy and tired, by the time I took a shower and dropped into bed, my brain wouldn’t calm down. Thoughts of Merry had played in my head over and over again. Instead, I tossed and turned for a couple of hours before finally dropping off for a short stretch of sleep.
As much as I wanted to be a part of the post-race enthusiasm on the complex, I couldn’t put in a whole day. My exhaustion would render me useless to anyone who needed anything from me. As I passed through the complex, I saw Merry still sitting in the same spot. It seemed like she hadn’t gone anywhere all day, but I realized she must have moved at some point. There was now a large iced coffee sitting on the ground beside her, and on the other side, a piece of butcher paper spread across the grass held the remnants of a sandwich and a small paper cup that was probably once potato salad.
I recognized the food as coming from the small boxed lunch shop located up the road from the complex. She reached down and picked up the sandwich, taking a bite and setting it back down. My stomach tightened as she licked the tip of one of her fingers, and I tried to shove away the feeling, not wanting to acknowledge it. Her expression didn’t look as distracted as before, which was a relief. She glanced up as I walked past, and I waved.
“Heading into the office?” she called.
I shook my head. “Calling it a day. I need some sleep.”
She nodded. “Have a good one.”
Those words took on a whole new meaning when I got home. I hoped I could just strip down to my boxers, stretch out across my bed, and have a solid nap. Maybe I’d get up feeling better and have a swim before dinner. But that didn’t happen. Sleep continued to evade me when I lay down, and I found my mind wandering to images of Merry. The thought of her sitting there in the sun in her little sundress, her fingers in her mouth, made my body respond. I got hard just imagining her, and when my mind started conjuring new thoughts of her, images of her sexy body without the dress, and her mouth wrapped around my cock rather than her fingertip, I couldn’t take the tension anymore.
I was at home. Alone. No one was going to judge me for what I was thinking. Closing my eyes and letting out a sigh, I slipped my hand down my shorts and wrapped it around my erection. Letting the thoughts of her dancing across my mind fuel me, I rubbed out a powerful orgasm and finally fell asleep.
14
Merry
For the second day in a row, I woke up to the sound of banging around in my kitchen
. My big brother and I were very close and always had been. We frequently visited each other and spent holidays staying either at his house or with our parents. I felt awful that he had been displaced from his home and was grateful that I had a place he could come to and lick his wounds.
I couldn’t even imagine what he was going through. He and Evelyn had been married for five years and were together for a long time before that. He wasn’t just dealing with knowing his wife had betrayed him and broken his heart and his trust. He was also having to wrap his head around a completely different life moving forward.
Right now, what we had to think about was how he was going to do that. I’d already given him the room and told him he could have it for as long as he needed, no rent required. It didn’t seem right to ask him to pay rent right now. Not only was his career totally up in the air, but I had been going right along in the apartment by myself without a problem. Unless he started attempting to drown his sorrows in four-hour showers every day, I didn’t need the money to pay for the apartment. He planned on contributing by buying groceries, and that was plenty for me.
Dressed and ready for work, I walked out to the kitchen and poured my customary cup of coffee. Brandon stood at the stove flipping pancakes on a griddle. I made a mental note to check out the fitness room in the apartment complex. If he was going to continue to express his emotions through fat and carbs, I was going to need to get out ahead of it fast. I wasn’t about to turn down any of the food he cooked, but there needed to be a bit of balance.
“So, I was thinking,” I said after the first few sips of coffee gave my brain a caffeine boost. I was still learning to be functional enough to carry on a conversation first thing in the morning. “You were saying you didn’t want to keep going at the firm.”
“Not happening,” he said. “Jim and Karen are perfectly nice, and I feel bad leaving them in a lurch, but I can’t stroll in there like nothing happened knowing they are getting every detail of the divorce from Evelyn’s perspective. Not to mention if she came in with him, I might not be able to control what I do.”
“And that’s totally understandable. So, that means we start looking for a new position for you. How is your resume?” I asked.
“Not updated. I didn’t really think I was ever going to have to look for another job,” he admitted. “I figured that was going to be my career right up until I retired. Jim even talked about Evelyn and me taking over when he was ready to retire in a few years.”
“Okay. Then there’s a place to start. Today while I’m at the office, start putting together your resume. We’ll take it from there,” I told him.
He agreed and brought over the platter of pancakes. As we ate, I thought about his future and how much I wished I could do something more to help him. I wished I could bring him along with me so he could work for Freeman. The family was great, the rest of the team was amazing, and I knew he would fit right in. But I hadn’t been working there long enough to ask them to hire my brother. That seemed like I was overreaching my place in the company. Besides, with that type of organization, I was sure they probably had an established accountant already.
When we were finished with breakfast, I gathered everything I needed for work, then stopped by to see him again.
“You already have your extra key. I’m going to talk to the landlord at lunch and let her know you’re staying here. I’ll get you added to the lease,” I told him.
“You don’t need to go out of your way to do that,” he said. “I’m going to get out of your hair soon.”
“You’re not in my hair, and it’s not going out of my way. You’ll stay here. It’s good to have you around, and you don’t need to be dealing with trying to find your own place and everything while all this is going on. Stick around until everything is more settled and you’re on your feet again. Besides, getting you on the lease is just so she doesn’t freak out if she’s in the complex and sees some guy on the patio. I don’t want her to think I’d been invaded or anything,” I said.
He laughed. The sound wasn’t completely full like I was used to, but it was something. I would take any little flashes of him that showed he was gradually climbing out of the gloom. It would take time. This wasn’t something he was just going to get over in the snap of his fingers. It didn’t matter what she’d done and how much she’d hurt him. My brother loved Evelyn, and it was going to hurt for a long time. But I was going to be there for him in every way I could, and eventually he would have life in his control again.
“I’m going to go by the house today and get some stuff,” he told me.
“You’re sure you don’t want to wait so I can go with you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine. She’s going to be at work, so I won’t run into her. It will be easier for me to just go in, get it done, and have it over with.”
“Well, if you change your mind, call me. I can meet you there after work.”
“I will.”
I hugged him and left, knowing that was going to be much harder for Brandon than he was letting on. He wasn’t just going back to the house he shared with her to get clothes and personal belongings. He was facing off against the life he’d left behind and extracting himself from it piece by piece. That was going to be tough, and I started to think of ways I could make him feel better when I got home. A round of some of the board games we used to play when we were younger might be in order.
I was at my desk a couple of hours later going over some of the early reports when Quentin leaned in through the open door. He rapped his knuckles on the doorframe and smiled at me when I looked up at him.
“How’s it going, Stats?” he asked.
I stared at him for a few silent seconds. There was something different about him. He’d been more pleasant toward me the last few times we’d interacted, but not like this. And what was that “stats” business? I didn’t know if he had just given me a nickname or if that word meant something else to him.
“It’s going fine,” I finally answered. “Just checking the hashtags to see which have been the most effective ones. I’ll keep tracing them for a few days and then decide which ones to swap out with different ones that may be more appealing. All part of the process.”
He nodded, his smile seeming stuck across his face and his eyes just a little too wide.
“You looked a little off yesterday, like you were angry or upset about something. Is everything okay?” he asked.
This took me aback. Not only did I not realize I’d been showing any kind of signs of what might be going through my head, but I was surprised he’d noticed it. I didn’t think my mood was something that would even register to Quentin in the normal course of a day, much less stick with him enough to have him ask me about it. Especially as awkwardly as he was.
“Um, yeah. Family stuff,” I told him. “My brother is going through a tough time, and I’m trying to help him out.”
I didn’t want to go into a bunch of detail and make it uncomfortable, but I figured that was vague enough to be appropriate for the work environment. Quentin looked at me for another silent stretch, like he was waiting for more, then realized I wasn’t going to tell him anything else. He grinned a little wider and patted his hand against the doorframe like he was telling a driver to go.
“Well, we like to think of everybody around here as a big family, so if you need something, just give me a holler.”
He said it like he didn’t sound for all the world like an after-school special and walked away. I watched him until long after I couldn’t hear his footsteps going down the hall anymore. The thought flickered through my mind wondering if this could possibly be the same man I met on my first day, or if he’d somehow gotten replaced by an awkwardly smiley clone.
15
Quentin
With the first race done and won, it left us fully in the thick of the season. Even with the high of doing well, the pressure around the complex was elevated. It might even be higher because of the win. Performing so well meant
we had a precedent we had to uphold. We were at the top, which meant the only way Darren had to go was down. Greg’s performance could only improve slightly but getting us up to the first two places would be extremely impressive. We couldn’t get complacent and just expect to keep doing well. The other teams weren’t sitting on their laurels, so we couldn’t, either.
Dad had been more involved since the race than he had been in months, spending all day in the workshops with the mechanics. Darren could do a lot of the work on his own bike, but when it came to the most intricate of changes and repairs, as well as the basic maintenance that kept the machines in top shape, we relied on a team of skilled mechanics. They had been working with us for years, which I always thought gave us an advantage over teams that had frequent turnover in their crews.
We, on the other hand, had the same mechanics we’d been using for more than a decade. They knew all of us well, and we knew them just as well. Understanding each other translated to a better understanding of the work that needed to be done. Because they were familiar with how Darren rode, they could recommend alterations to the bike that would enhance his skills while compensating for weaknesses. For those on the outside of the racing industry, it seemed like a massive amount of work and effort just to try to squeeze a fraction of a second more speed out of the bike. But for those in the race, that fraction of a second could make all the difference.
I expected to find Darren in the workshop working with the mechanics, but instead, it was only Dad.
“Where’s Darren?” I asked. “With Greg?”
Dad shook his head. “No. Greg spent the morning making some tweaks with the guys, and now he’s running some tests rides on the track. Darren is off with Victor.”
Millionaire Boss: A Secret Baby Romance (Freeman Brothers Book 1) Page 8