When he returned to bed beside me, he lay on his side, pulling me to him, so we could spoon. He rubbed his hand over my chest, caressing and tweaking my nipples while he kissed my neck and shoulder.
“That was amazing,” he whispered, licking the shell of my ear.
“Yes,” I said in agreement with a lazy smile. I nestled against him, while he placed an arm around me, caressing my chest and continued kissing my shoulder. The way he kissed told me a lot about him. He was affectionate by nature and I liked that. It was something that was different about him and Keith who would have rolled out of bed already.
“Bryan, can I ask you something?” Tate asked hesitantly.
“Sure,” I replied and leaned back my head so he could kiss me which he did.
“Why did you really come up here in the mountains?” he enquired. “I know you’ve hinted at it but, doesn’t really explain why you’re alone.”
I sighed and resigned myself to the fact that I would have to explain the situation.
“I was persuaded into going hiking with my boss,” I started to say, then decided to come clean about it all. “My boss and boyfriend. It’s an annual thing he does with a group of friends from college. All four of them go hiking and relive the glory days but one of them fell ill and Keith asked me to go along with them.”
I felt him stiffen behind me. “You’ve a boyfriend?” he asked, his tone biting.
I turned in his arms to face him. “No, I broke things off,” I replied. “That’s why I was heading down the mountain alone.”
He was silent for a few seconds. “Do you love him?” I bit my bottom lip to prevent my smile. He sounded jealous the way he asked the question.
“I never loved him,” I answered honestly. “He doesn’t love me either. I think one thing just led to another. We work in the same building. In fact, I’m his Personal Assistant and well, things just happened. I need to find a new apartment as soon as I get back to San Diego.”
“You live with him but don’t love him?” Tate exploded in disbelief.
“Keith can be persuasive,” I answered on the defensive.
“Or maybe you’re just too easily persuaded,” he quipped.
“What does it matter now anyway?” I asked him.
“Because earlier you asked me what I wanted,” he returned, shifting away from me. “But it just occurred to me that you may not even have a clue what it is that you want. Why don’t you think about that?”
I stared in shock at his naked ass and broad back as he strolled from the bedroom. Where the hell had this serious conversation come from? And what did he mean that I didn’t know what I wanted? I wanted him but how the hell would that work out when we lived in two different realities? I could not give up my life as I knew it, to stay with a man I’d just met up in the mountains off San Diego.
He was right about one thing. I had been too hasty in shacking up with Keith and would not make the same mistake twice. No matter how good Tate made me feel when he pulled me into his arms for a kiss.
Chapter Eight
“Hey, feel up to fishing?” Tate asked, walking into the cabin. As always, when I glanced up at him, it caused a warm feeling to roil around in my belly. He looked gorgeous dressed in snug fitting faded blue jeans and T-shirt with the arms ripped out.
“I’m not sure,” I answered, reluctantly. He already knew I wasn’t into the outdoorsy activities.
“Come on, it’ll be fun,” he insisted, walking over to me. “I can see you’re bored.”
He was right about that. I didn’t understand how he could choose mountain life over the beauty of the city. I could see it as a retreat every now and again but to live permanently up here was a bust. There was nothing to do and I was already all movied out.
“I really don’t know anything about fishing,” I warned, although I felt myself capitulating.
“Don’t worry, I’m a good teacher.”
He winked at me and when he was playful like this, which was rare, he was irresistible.
So, I ended up walking beside him in the direction of the river. We went slowly so I didn’t have to put too much pressure on my ankle, although I could barely feel it hurting today. It hit me that I would be leaving soon. I had no more than two days to get off this mountain and to a work, I wasn’t sure I still had. I already knew what was going to happen. Keith would try to win me over, to manipulate me. Maybe when he realized I truly meant we were over, he wouldn’t want me working for him anymore. In the event this happened, I could always sue for sexual harassment in the workplace but I didn’t believe in stirring up drama so, I’d probably leave and just find a new start.
A pity Tate wouldn’t be around.
“Don’t you ever get bored up here on your own?” I asked to find out where his head was.
He shrugged. “I like my own company.”
“Is that so?” I asked, giving him a side-eye. “You don’t seem to mind having me around.”
“Well, you’re not as annoying as some,” he grumbled, then changed the subject. “You going back to your job when you leave?”
“I have to,” I answered. “It’s my job. Whether or not I still have a job, that’s the question.”
“You know he can’t just fire you because you refuse to sleep with him, right?”
“Yeah, but he can make my life a living nightmare.”
“Oh? Guy sounds like a douchebag.”
“He is,” I acknowledged because it was true. “Do you ever spend time back in the real world?”
He laughed in amusement. “And this isn’t the real world? This is more real than the city you live in. Here there is no pretense. Nature is what you see around you, stripped bare and exposed. In the city, people keep secrets, make judgments and discriminates.”
It was the most intense little speech I’d heard from him since I arrived on his doorstep. It also gave me much insight into the man that was Tate. Whatever he had faced in the city had left him broken and he still hurt because of it. I wished I was brave enough to ask him outright what had happened to the woman and girl in the picture but, I had only two days with him. I didn’t want argument between us. Not when I was trying to find a way to suggest he look me up if he ever did come to the city.
“This is a good spot,” he mentioned and dropped his sack with the tackle box he’d brought along.
“I’ll just watch,” I told him as he began to line up his fishing rod.
He glanced up at me. “I told you I’ll teach you,” he replied. “I promise, it’s not as hard as it looks. I’ll outfit the line with the bait.”
I really wanted to get it right, so I watched him, paying attention to every single thing. I was grossed out a bit that he chose to use live bait but I should have known Tate wouldn’t be a plastic worm kind of guy. He spoke while he added the line, telling me at the same time he showed me what to do.
He made it look as easy as he said it was when he caught his first two fishes, and then passed me the hook. I didn’t really want to but something inside me wanted his approval. He moved me in front of him and couldn’t resist copping a feel of my ass. I gave him a mock glare but inside I was pleased he found me to be so irresistible.
“It’s just fishing, Bry,” he said with a chuckle. “Don’t be so tense about it.”
After a few casting errors, I finally landed the bait.
“Now what?” I asked Tate.
“Now watch the bobbers,” he explained. “If the bobber sinks, you’re getting bites from a fish and should get ready to reel in.”
My tongue peeked out the corner of my mouth as I concentrated and relaxed. This didn’t seem so bad after all.
“Do you ever get into the city?” I asked Tate as I watched the handmade cork bobber religiously.
“From time to time,” he answered. “I’ve business in the city.”
I remembered the financial magazines in the living room and inclined my head towards him. “Really? What business?”
“Just business,”
he replied with no further explanation.
“And how do you get into the city?” I prodded.
“A spaceship,” he remarked sarcastically. “A car. What do you expect?”
I frowned at his waspish tone. Why did he always get so abrasive sometimes when the questions became personal? I decided to push him, get him out of his comfort zone.
“If you own a car, how comes you didn’t just drop me off instead of making me wait for my ankle to heal?” I quipped.
“There’s still the little thing called making it down the mountains first,” he answered. “I couldn’t drive this far up the trail even with a four-wheeler.”
“Oh.” I tried not to make my disappointment show that he simply just wanted me around for as long as I could stay.
“Your bobber’s sinking,” he announced, pulling me from my thoughts.
He was right and I could feel a tug on the other end of the line, small jerking motions. I reeled in the fish as I’d watched Tate do but, when the fish broke the surface and I saw how big it was, not to mention its squirming, I promptly dropped the line.
“Shit,” I muttered, my heart pounding at the way the fish had been battering to stay alive.
I heard Tate’s loud guffaw as he came to the rescue and grabbed the fishing line and reeled the fish the rest of the way in. With expert ease, he unhooked the fish and threw it into the igloo with the others.
I was irritated at him laughing at me, the situation too familiar with what had happened with Keith and his friends. Hadn’t they laughed too and mocked how inept I was at this ‘manly’ stuff? Wasn’t that what I had been running from when I ran into Tate? Deep down, I knew he didn’t mean any harm, but I just kept hearing Keith and his friends jeering, making fun of me and pushing me to my limit.
“Fuck you!” I grumbled in disgust and stalked away.
“Shit, Bry, where are you going?” he called after me, but I didn’t respond. Neither did I look back.
I was hurt at him laughing at me because the fish had startled me for a minute. I should have never gone along with him, knowing this would happen. I was a walking-talking joke for whatever man I ended up in the sack with.
“Will you wait up!” Tate hollered and hurried to overtake me. He grabbed me by the arm to halt me. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me!” I snapped. “Just because someone isn’t nearly an expert at this hiking and living in the wilderness shit as you are, doesn’t mean anything is wrong with them.”
“You’re acting rather childish,” he said crossly. “We were having fun.”
“No, you were having fun!” I exclaimed and tried to tug away from him. “At my expense. Isn’t that what all you macho men always do? Can’t miss the opportunity you can use to make fun of other men who aren’t like you.”
“You’re making way too a big deal of this. So, I laughed. Maybe I shouldn’t have but you need to lighten up.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
He pulled me into him, his hands on my hips. “Chill. Out.” He punctuated the words for emphasis. “I swear sometimes you’re even more wound-up than I am. If it makes you feel better, then I apologize, okay? I didn’t mean to offend you. I’ve no idea what the hell your ex did, but I’m not him. Okay?”
The fact that he apologized only made me feel I had overreacted. I felt a little embarrassed that I had compared him to Keith who would have never apologized to me for something. Even if the evidence was slapped into his face that he was wrong. So, Tate laughed. He’d found the situation funny. At least he hadn’t derided me about it. There was joke and then there was derision. I had been exposed to the latter with Keith’s friends.
“Fine,” I mumbled.
“Doesn’t sound fine,” he observed aloud and his hands slipped around my waist to cup my backside. “But I can make it fine.”
It started with his lips pressed against mine but by the time he was finished with me there on the river, I’d forgotten what I was mad about.
Chapter Nine
Tate sank his teeth into my shoulder, nipping me gently and I gave a sigh. It was so nice just to lie like this, spooned against each other after some intense minutes of kissing that didn’t lead to anything else but a cuddle. I wasn’t in the mood for sex tonight anyway, as I had too much on my mind.
I still couldn’t get over the way I had overreacted today because Tate had laughed when I dropped the fishing rod. I knew that it was all Keith’s treatment added to his friends, that had made me so sensitive. I could never date a guy again like Keith but Tate wasn’t like that at all. Sure, he had laughed, and thinking about it now, it might have been funny. What he hadn’t done though, was to mock me about it.
“You’re thinking,” he said softly as we lay in the semi-darkness of the room. He kissed my neck, his soft lips sending shivers down my spine. Maybe I did want sex after all.
“Hmm,” I hummed.
“You’re not still mad at me, are you Bry?”
“No,” I answered honestly and turned in his arms, laying my head onto his arm. “Truth is, I might not have even been mad at you.”
“Really? Because I’d say you were pretty upset.”
“Keith would say that I acted like a diva sometimes.”
He peered at me. “I guess I shouldn’t agree with that?” he asked. “Or can I agree to a certain uff!”
I elbowed him in his stomach hard enough to startle him but not to actually hurt him. “I wasn’t mad at you,” I said then started to explain. “I didn’t fully explain why I left the other guys and struck out on my own. After Keith convinced me to tag along, I thought it might be fun. It was more fun for them than me. You can see based on today that I am not the type who does this man-in-the-wild kind of thing. They derided me because of it, constantly taking jabs at me.”
“And he didn’t stick up for you?”
“Nope, he didn’t. So, I broke things off with him and left.”
“So, you had a lover’s spat?” he asked a bit hesitantly. “Maybe when you get off the mountain, he’ll convince you to forgive him.”
I shook my head and leaned forward to rub my lips against his. “Not since I met you.”
I heard his breath hitch and he captured my lips into one of his passionately, arousing kisses. When I would have thought it would lead to more, he released my lips.
“I had a wife,” he remarked and I could barely breathe for fear of interrupting him, then he wouldn’t fully explain. “And a daughter. Rachel and Kathleen, from the picture you saw.”
I stroked his arm comfortingly, hearing the pain in his voice and the effort it took him to say what he was.
“You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want,” I told him, deciding that if it was going to hurt him, I didn’t care to know. “It hardly mattered what he had done in his past. The man who he was now, standing before me was all that mattered.
“I want to tell you,” he stated. “Maybe then you’ll understand. I wasn’t always like this. I had what you’d call a normal life. You’ve heard of Rosenbaum Holdings?”
“Yes,” I answered, wondering what he was getting at. Rosenbaum was a successful multi-million dollar company that dabbled in everything real estate. They specialized in hotels, condos, golf clubs and townhomes.
“I’m Tate Rosenbaum,” he said.
“No way!” I exclaimed, staring at him in shock. “You’re the C.E.O of Rosenbaum Holdings.”
“Yes, I took over the major share in the company when my father died,” he explained. “Anyway, long story short is that I had it all, it seemed; money, a beautiful wife and, daughter but I wasn’t satisfied. I loved them both, don’t get me wrong. Rachel and I grew up as friends so I asked her to marry me, but the truth is that I wasn’t satisfied with my life. My father was a traditional man and there was no way I was going to come out with him alive. So, I tried to settle into a normal life.”
“You can never deny who you are for long,” I whispered.
“Yeah, I told my wife shortly after dad died. I didn’t tell her to leave her or even have an affair or anything like that. I just told her because I thought she deserved to know the truth. She was upset and wanted to leave me. She took our daughter and left in haste and that was the last time I saw both of them. They were hit by a truck and died on the spot.”
“God Tate, I’m so sorry,” I told him, wrapping my arms around him.
“I keep thinking if I hadn’t said anything they would both still be alive,” he said on a shudder and I felt his tears against my skin where he had buried his head into the crook of my neck.
“No, it’s not your fault,” I soothed him, kneading his back. “You have a right to be who you are. It’s tragic what happened but you can’t look back on it and think of it as your fault.”
“She’d been on the phone telling her sister about it when she ran the light,” he remarked on a shudder. “Her sister blamed me and didn’t give me a choice to come out to the public. Suddenly I was the bad guy in all this, being bombarded by journalists. I couldn’t even grieve properly so I eventually put someone else in charge of the company and secluded myself from everyone.”
“I understand,” I stated, running my fingers through his hair. “It’s understandable that you’d want to get away. But at some point, you’ll have to face it. You can’t hide forever.”
“Maybe not but I’ll hide for as long as I can.”
I held him to me, my arms wrapped around him while he cried silently. I rubbed his back until eventually. he fell asleep but it took me a to find the same solace he did. When I eventually drifted into sleep as well, it was to be haunted by dreams of Tate and Keith metamorphosing, one into the other until I couldn’t make them out differently.
I woke up sweating, my heart pounding in my chest. Tate was still fast asleep in his favorite position, his stomach. He still had his arm around me though. My heart clenched with affection for this man I barely knew, and it made me panic. I removed his hand from my waist and slid from the bed, without waking him.
Falling for Mr Corporate Page 4