First Glance (A Steamy Series-Starter Anthology), page 34
I’m onto something. I feel it. Griff is going big, bold, loud—and he’s in deep with that strategy. Somehow, I know that’s so wrong and I’m completely right. I’m going to find a way to win. I just need one more advantage to get it done.
Keeley. I look at the clock and I smile.
Now it’s time to go.
Game on.
When I enter the condo, I find all the doors and windows open. Ocean salt mixes in the air with ginger and sizzling sesame oil that smells like one of my favorite restaurants.
Keeley is cooking. More than my stomach jumps with excitement.
“Hi.” I set my keys and laptop on the bar and peer at her behind the stove. “What are you making?” And what are you wearing under that little sundress?
She turns with a distracted glance. “Asian.”
I peer closer. “I had a wok?”
“No.” She huffs out a breath that says she doesn’t want to speak to me but knows she has to. “When I finished school, I came back here to start homework. The groceries arrived on time, but you have almost no pots, pans, utensils… How did you think I would cook the food?”
That might be a fair question. “I had, um…a couple of saucepans, didn’t I? A skillet, a cookie sheet, and some other stuff.”
She rolls her eyes. “And how long have you lived here? Never mind. I already know your excuse. You’re not home much.”
“Right. So, the wok came from where? Did you have one in your boxes?”
“No, I used my homework time to run to the Target in Kahului to buy a few things I’ll need if we’re going to eat reasonably in this place for the next month.” She reaches into her pocket, pulls out a strip of paper, and slaps it on the bar. “Here’s the receipt.”
I glance at it. She managed to fill my kitchen with stuff for less than a hundred and fifty dollars. Frugal. I would have ordered a bunch of crap from Williams Sonoma and paid the exorbitant shipping fee for the convenience. But the fact that she stopped what she was doing to take care of me…
Well, probably not all for me. She’s feeding herself, too. But she’s including me, so that counts. And it smells spectacular.
“I’ll give you cash,” I promise her. “I didn’t consider that my kitchen wouldn’t be stocked. Sorry.”
She softens and shrugs. “I know. But you’re on dish patrol. I’ll finish my homework then, so we can get started on…whatever.”
“Sure.”
“Thanks for laying out my yoga mat, by the way. I really enjoyed my morning workout. What time did you leave?”
“Six thirty. The usual.”
“You put in a twelve-hour day?” She frowns like she’s worried.
Does that mean she cares a little?
“Eleven. I worked out first. Actually, I cut today a little short, but coming home to these smells makes it worthwhile. What’s in there?” I try to peer across the space between us and into the wok.
“Not telling. You have to try it first and let me know whether you like it. I set some placemats and silverware out on the lanai. And some wine. This will be ready in two. Go change.”
“You’re bossy.”
“You need it,” she tosses back without missing a beat.
I laugh, relieved that she’s giving me more than clipped, one-word answers today.
After a quick change into shorts, I come out of my bedroom to find her carrying two plates outside. The evening is warm, pleasant. Sunset beckons over the glittering blue water, filling the sky with shades of pink, orange, and yellow. I pour wine as the sultry breeze grazes my skin. It’s nice out here. Why didn’t I ever spend time outside before? I can’t really remember a reason. Just…busy.
But I’ll change that to savor every moment I can with Keeley.
She sits beside me, staring out at the water and sipping her wine. “Good day?”
“Interesting. Britta sends her apologies for yelling at you. She’s got a lot going on.” Vaguely, I worry about whether Makaio will propose to Britta and how she might answer. The idea of my parents divorcing niggles at me, too. But I can’t borrow any more trouble now. I need to focus on prepping Keeley to become the distraction Griff can’t afford…while figuring out how to bend her no-sex rule—a lot. “I might be making some progress on the big deal I was telling you about.”
“Yeah?”
I shovel the first bite into my mouth. My taste buds are ready to declare undying love. This is probably more vegetables than I’ve eaten in the last month, but everything is so crisp and fresh. I’m devouring it with my eyes and my mouth—and I’m loving it. Maybe she’s right about dining out too much. Nothing at a restaurant ever tastes like this. “Hmm. This is amazing.”
She smiles proudly. “Now you can say you like tofu.”
I choke and try not to spit it out. “What the fuck?”
“Don’t think about it. Keep chewing. Tell me about your deal.”
We talk a bit. As long as I don’t think about the fact that I’m eating soy milk that’s coagulated into curds, I enjoy the flavor. I show her some pictures of the estate and walk her through what I’ve learned about the sellers.
“I think panoramic pictures and big parties and streaming a live YouTube event is the wrong plan,” I muse aloud. “On paper, it should be right. This is a really unique, breathtaking estate. But to convince these sellers, I think less is more.”
She looks at the pictures on my phone, then takes another sip of wine. “Absolutely. Flaunting this estate and celebrating it for these two syrup heirs who may never understand their mother’s decision to leave them even before she died will be a losing strategy.”
There. Keeley put into words exactly what my instinct was telling me.
“So it stands to reason that the approach I use for sheiks, European business moguls, Asian dignitaries, and assorted royalty around the world isn’t the one I should take now.”
She shakes her head. “Not for two grieving, salt-of-the-earth siblings.”
I send her a challenging stare. “I thought you didn’t know anything about business.”
“I don’t. But I know people. And from everything you’ve said, those two want this over and they want top dollar for their mom’s place. I’ll bet they want to put the funds back into the business and honor their family’s legacy.”
What she says makes a lot of sense. I should have thought of that sooner. I know business…but I never thought people mattered that much. I’m marketing houses. I’m making money. None of that is about individuals.
But maybe that’s why Griff is more successful at selling. He’s good at reading folks. He watches, listens, pays attention. Which is why I could never understand how he completely misunderstood my intentions when he walked off without saying a fucking word. How did he not get that I loved him and I would never have betrayed him? Why did he think I was capable of such deceit? Not that I’m not a bastard. I am. But if I wanted to mess with a loved one, I’m not the kind of coward to stab them in the back. I’d punch them in the face.
“You’re right. That makes so much sense. I need to tell Rob and Britta.” I reach for my phone.
“Finish your dinner first. Nothing worse than cold snow peas.”
“And tofu,” I grouse.
She laughs at me. The sound sparkles. The waning light of the day makes her fair skin shimmer with a warm glow. I’m drawn to her as if I’m the dark daring to peer into the light.
“All right.” I take another bite. “Thanks for listening, by the way.”
She nods. “So…I guess if I’m going to tempt your brother into losing his mind, I need to know about him.”
I nod. Down to business. I can respect that, even if I’d rather keep things between us personal. “Griff—Griffin, which he hates—is three years younger than me. He’s almost my doppelgänger. But of course I’m way more awesome.” I flash her a cheesy grin.
“I had no doubt.” She rolls her eyes. “What is he like?”
The fact that I’m not good at reading people does not help me with this question. “Um…”
“What does he like to do? What are his hobbies? What does he value? What are his goals?”
I frown. Three years is a long time, and I don’t know how much his interests might have changed. After he left, I tried to close my memories of him away into a little box and nail that sucker shut. The knowledge feels rusty.
“He likes to succeed as much as I do. He’s better at socializing, so he’ll put on a gregarious face and act like your best fucking friend. But under the facade, he’s a ruthless bastard, too. Like me, he’ll crush anyone in his way. He values hard work and everything that comes with it—money, success, beauty… If I had to guess, his number one goal is to beat me.”
“So how is he different than you?”
Good question. We had roughly the same upbringing, with a mother who didn’t know how to control two rambunctious boys, so she gave up trying, and the same asshole of a father, who didn’t mind doing whatever it took to squeeze the most out of us.
“Up until he walked out, I would have told you Griff was the most loyal bastard imaginable. The one time I saw him love, he went full throttle—hard and open. He didn’t care what anyone thought.” Well, except our dad.
“And that bothered you?”
I shrug as I finish the last of my dinner. “I didn’t think about it. I didn’t love. Too much of a weakness, so I overcame it. I don’t know if Griff ever did.”
Keeley looks totally horrified by my answer. “Who told you love was a weakness?”
“Dear old Dad. If you think I’m a raving son of a bitch, you ought to meet him.”
She frowns as if she would rather not. “So you think Griff loved Britta?”
“I would have sworn he did, but it didn’t matter in the end. I’m sure he thought that, as my assistant, Britta was in on the secret deal I was working at the time, the one he thought I took to undercut him. But she didn’t know about it, either. I gave her some tasks associated with the purchase, but I never told her the client’s name or the address of the residence. She was totally in the dark.”
“You’re right. He should have asked questions, but if your father only taught you disdain for love…”
“That might be an understatement. He told us both from the time we were kids to learn from his mistake and to marry only if a woman upped our stock. If she brought cash or a pedigree to the marriage, that was logical. But love did nothing except give a man an Achilles’ heel enemies could use against us.”
At her look of horror, I’m almost embarrassed by my upbringing. Most people would be jealous. Big house, gated community, the best schools, all the new toys and gadgets, trips, money, opportunities. I was full of first-world problems.
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“It doesn’t sound good,” she contradicts. “So his marriage to your mom isn’t…happy.”
I scoff, then snag a swig of wine. “No. Dad has had more mistresses than new ties over the years.”
“Do you resent him for it?”
Interesting question. “I don’t know. It just is. I don’t like him for it. I think…” I sigh, grappling for a way to explain my family. “I first found out about his extracurricular sex life when I was eight. I’d done really well on a math test he had warned me not to fail. After school, instead of going home, I convinced a friend’s mom we carpooled with that I had to go to my dad’s office. I pleaded some emergency. When I got there, I barged in and found his secretary on her knees in front of his massive office chair, her head bobbing in his lap. They jumped apart guiltily.” I close my eyes, still remembering how much that day shattered the boy I once was. “He wore a ring of her lipstick around his dick.”
Keeley holds her breath. “What did you do?”
“My friend’s mom dropped me off in front of my house, but I ran to the nearby park instead and hid. I didn’t make it home until almost midnight.”
She braces a hand over her heart, and I can almost feel her worry. “Your parents must have been worried sick.”
“I was too pissed to care. A neighbor finally found me.” I’d been hiding between two bushes, dry eyed and hungry and confused as hell. At that age, I wasn’t precisely sure what my father was doing with that other woman, but I knew it was wrong. “When I got home, my mother screamed out her anger that I worried her for nothing before she retreated to bed. Once we were alone, my father sat me down and told me not to be a righteous little pussy about what I’d seen that afternoon. Then he took a conference call with someone in China. We never spoke about it again.”
“Did you ever tell your mom what you saw?”
I shake my head. “You have to understand… I was a kid who wanted to please the father who never seemed to have time for me. I thought keeping his secret—and a lot of the others I learned about over the years—might make him care more. Besides, I think my mom knew and tattling would have been merely rubbing her face in all her misery.”
“Does Griff know what kind of man your father is?”
“Of course,” I assure her. “He figured it out a few years later when he discovered Dad banging his third-grade teacher.”
Keeley pushes her bowl away, shaken. “I can’t imagine… My father loved us with all his heart. The day he passed away, he squeezed my mother’s hand in his hospital bed, kissed my forehead, and promised her that his love for us was deathless, even if he wasn’t. He was a good man. Despite having remarried a few years ago, my mom still wears a locket with his picture around her neck. I miss him.”
Tears shimmer in her eyes. The memory is one she holds close to her heart. She’s proud to wear the emotion on her face.
I’m not the enemy, but if I was, she just exposed a big chink in her armor. Does she know that? Or does she trust me enough not to use her feelings against her?
I like that idea.
“And mine is a selfish, womanizing pig. Griff and I saw a thousand instances of that as teenagers. When we were little kids, he seemed to take delight in watching us twist and contort, trying to please him. But when we interned with him a few summers, we bonded over our dislike of the way he treated us. We swore we’d never be anything like him.”
Yet I fear he’s exactly who we’ve both become.
Our shared boyhood crap held us together until three years ago, when that goddamn deal with the freaking Middle Eastern prince splintered our pact into a thousand pieces. If I’m being really honest, I’ve been somewhat lost since.
“I’m getting the picture,” she murmured. “Did you try to talk to your brother after he left?”
“Sure. I thought someone had stolen money from our bank and broken into our office at first. I called him that morning he didn’t show up for work. He answered with ‘Fuck off, you backstabbing shitbag’ and hung up. So I went to his place. He lives in a guarded complex. He told the guard there to advise me that I was no longer welcome.”
That’s one memory I would rather forget, driving over to Griff’s building and trying to reason with security as the pounding rain soaked my freshly starched shirt thirty minutes before I was supposed to FaceTime this royal prick every square inch of the property he was signing for later that day. Security wouldn’t budge, and I drove away soaked and confused and fucking sad.
“That’s it?”
“What else did you want me to do? He wouldn’t see me. He wouldn’t see Britta, even when she sent a letter to his house to tell him that he would be a father in seven months. He just cut us cold.”
Keeley pauses, and I see the wheels in her head turning. “Then came his nasty e-mail with the pictures of him and Tiffanii naked?”
“Yeah, and there was nothing to say after that.”
She nods. It’s a lot to absorb, and it sounds as if she had a really awesome childhood with parents who loved her. No wonder she’s not really grasping all the baggage from mine.
“It’s safe to say that your dad’s behavior affected Griff, too?”
I never thought about it quite like that. I mean, we were both warped. That’s a fact. Emotion never entered into our decisions. Showing weakness was the worst thing we could do. I thought I had feelings for Tiffanii, but lifelong commitment to one woman was something I shied away from because, of course, why pluck a single flower when I would always want to plow the whole field? I really thought that until recently. Griff’s departure had me examining the past. Keeley’s perspective makes me reevaluate my attitude. No doubt about it…filtered through her lens, my life looks fucked up.
“It must have. I’ve wondered for years if he left Britta and Jamie without blinking because the responsibility scared him or, like Dad, he was just incapable of caring. I don’t know.”
“What do you think he saw in Britta? I mean, you said he has a ‘type’?”
“And she’s the epitome of what trips Griff’s trigger.”
“Blonde?”
I shake my head. I can accuse Griff of a lot of shallow shit because I know he’s screwed hordes of willing women. Hell, in college he used to love the tourist hangouts because the ladies were drunk and easy and looking for a good time. Britta seemed to change all that. Or I’d thought so until the day he left.
“Smart. Sharp. Someone with attitude and verve. Good tits help.”
Keeley swats my arm. “Seriously?”
“What?”
“Tits?” she challenges with a cock of her head.
“Do you like breastsss better?” I intentionally stumble over the word because, really, it’s not the easiest word to say.
“Yes, especially when you’re not being an ass about it.”
I try not to roll my eyes. “Don’t make me call your girl parts a vagina,” I warn. “That’s a pussy. Yours is a really pretty one.”
Her expression turns tart. “Mine is off-limits to you. We’re talking about your brother.”
“But not in the same sentence as your pussy.”
In all honesty, I’m poking at her. I don’t know why exactly. To lighten the mood? So she stops feeling sorry for me? So things seem less heavy? Probably all that. When I’m with her, I have so many thoughts. But they’re more than thoughts when they make my chest squishy. They’re feelings.
