Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

Brandon

I knew I shouldn’t have come here. You take your finger off the pulse for a second, and the heart dies. Rookie mistake, and one I’ve managed to avoid until now.

The insider trading allegations will blow over—I won’t lose any sleep over them. The SEC will have a tough time trying to pin anything on me and make it stick, but the photographs are a problem. This kind of leak at the same time as the SEC investigation isn’t a coincidence—information like that doesn’t seep through cracks like water. It always has a source, and the source is always someone with a grudge.

Sam has done some digging and—surprise, surprise—found the connection between the Russo family and Wren. It turns out, Julia’s little sister is married to Carlos Russo’s youngest son. She wasn’t moving into that apartment, the place was a setup, and she didn’t even bother to hide the camera.

I trust Sam to work his magic and make the allegations go away, but the photographs… They’ll be all over the media by now if what Sam said was correct and Carlos Russo is behind the leak. Can I even trust Julia? No matter which way I look at this, I can’t help thinking that Julia was in on it all along. Who better to drip-feed information to a business rival than a personal assistant?

Seems Carlos Russo decided to scrap our mutual agreement to stay out of each other’s way without informing the other party.

So, why am I more worried about Rose seeing the pictures online before I have a chance to speak to her? I pushed her too far in the pantry—what is it these days with me and confined spaces? —and now she’s avoiding me. Or has she already seen the pictures?

When I spot Rose and Damon heading back to the house together, it all clicks into place. Damon told her about the photographs. He’d have gotten immense pleasure from watching her reaction and all because of a pointless wager.

Rose delivers my mother’s request for my presence at Small beach and scurries away with an excuse that she needs to fetch towels for the girls, as if my mother wouldn’t have catered for that eventuality.

The birthday meal drags.

Exquisite crystal bowls filled with crushed ice hold tiny dishes of caviar, crumbled egg yolk and egg white, finely chopped onion, and lemon slices. There’s a smoked salmon and prawn mousse decorated with sprigs of dill, snail croustades, and triangles of smoked eel. The main course is breast of quail on wild rice served with a julienne salad, and dessert is a Grand Marnier sabayon served with paper-fine tuiles decorated with edible flowers grown on Ruby Island.

No attention to detail has been spared. The décor in the dining room, in complete contrast to the flawlessly delicate food, is centered around the window focal point dressed in heavy velvet swags to replicate the stage curtains in a Broadway theater.

Rose sits with the children at a smaller table, where the food has been simplified to appeal to three children of kindergarten age. She keeps her back to the table. The pose might’ve gone unnoticed were it not for the straight spine and the lack of laughter we’ve already come to expect from the children when they’re in her company.

Damon, on the other hand, is in fine form.

“I was convinced the snow globe would win us the treasure hunt,” he says to April, who has a spot of caviar on her chin that no one has told her about. Including my charming brother.

Jennifer raises her glass to me in a private toast. She’s an art connoisseur—she would’ve recognized the snow globe’s tackiness in a heartbeat, and Damon’s over-inflated ego wouldn’t have allowed him to see through her enthusiastic encouragement.

“Never mind,” April says. “You’ll save yourself some money staying away from Vegas.”

Damon turns his back on her just enough to deter any further conversation, but not enough for our mother to comment on his lack of manners. “Are you a betting kind of gal?” he asks Jennifer, leaning a fraction too close to her low-cut neckline and the string of black pearls around her neck.

Across the table, Kelly swallows a mouthful of wine and pushes the food around her plate.

“Only if I’m guaranteed to win.”

Damon aims a sly glance in my direction. “A thousand bucks says my brother will get drunk in Vegas and conned into marrying some gold-digger in a Madonna outfit.”

Jennifer sets her glass down on the table and offers Damon her hand. “This is your brother you’re talking about, right?”

Damon shrugs and shakes her hand. “It’s gonna happen one day.”

“Oh no.” Jennifer’s fingertips barely brush his before she snatches them away. “Open-ended bets are a no-go. Put your money where your mouth is and set a time limit.”

“Two weeks,” Damon says without wasting a beat.

I sit through the opening of gifts ceremony, smiling in all the right places, and accepting my father’s thanks when he realizes that he’ll get to be the laird of a real Scottish castle for a few days. The conversation veers from there to my parents’ introduction to Scottish actor Alan Cumming at a charity event, and I zone out when Uncle Bill mentions that they must visit the whiskey distillery during their visit.

The wristwatch barely makes it in time for the big event—probably not the greatest advertisement for one of the world’s most expensive timepieces, being late for its own unveiling. Damon and Kelly gift my father a pure white Arabian horse. My mother and Kelly exchange glances, and it’s obvious that this was my mother’s idea.

I’ve never suffered with paranoia, and overthinking is for other, less well-balanced people, but I’m not imagining Ron’s deliberate attempts to avoid getting drawn into conversation with either me or my mother. So, as soon as the dessert is finished, I head to the living room, grab a bottle of brandy, and slip out of the house unnoticed, following the primitive signs to Swimming Beach.

I toe off my shoes and sit on the sand with the ocean licking my bare ankles. The liquor burns on its way down, but it has the desired effect and blurs the edges of the thoughts raging around inside my head while the cold water keeps me grounded.

Until it doesn’t.

What is it about Rose Carter that has gotten me so addled? The news Sam flew in by private jet to deliver personally would ordinarily have had me packing a carryon and heading straight back to New York, a list of calls on standby for the moment we landed. But instead, I’m sitting on a beach appropriately named Swimming Beach like it was named for the children rather than the adults, with a bottle of my father’s finest liquor and a head filled with thoughts of the temporary housekeeper.

I thump my forehead with the palm of my hand as though that might knock some sense into me.

It was only a kiss. Like sixteen-year-olds playing spin the bottle and ending up in a cupboard for sixty seconds to make out. Was that all it was—sixty seconds? One minute out of a lifetime of experiences, and here I am wondering where I went wrong.

She kissed me back. She wanted it too, or I’d have never crossed the line in the first place, would I? Or have I grown so accustomed to the quick fix that I no longer see, expect, or hope for a repeat performance?

What does that even make me?

I slug back the whiskey and try to drown out the words knocking against my skull like a sledgehammer. It makes me as bad as Damon.

I raise the bottle to my lips again and tilt my head back, surprised when the back of my skull hits the sand and no liquid trickles into my mouth. I tip the bottle and give it a shake. Empty.

How did that happen?

There’s nothing else in it—I’ll have to go back to the house for more and hope that no one notices me. Especially my mother. If my mother notices me, she’ll expect me to chat with her friends about gala events and interior designers and the great fundraising work she’s doing for whatever charity she’s involved in right now.

The world spins out from under me and when I open my eyes, water is splashing my face, and the sledgehammer has increased its output to include a razor-sharp edge to the inside of my skull.

“Get off.” I shove away whoever is trying to wake me up and roll over, cold water lapping inside my ears and filling my nostrils.

I can’t breathe.

I try hauling myself into a sitting position, but my head has swollen to the size and weight of a bowling ball and keeps dragging me back down into the water.

I open my mouth and it fills with salt water. “Whiskey,” I mumble. But they must not hear me because the water keeps coming, and I close my eyes as the world goes black.

“Brandon.”

Something stings my cheek, and I turn my head away. I would swat the wasp away, but my arms are tangled up in the comforter, and my entire body feels heavy with sleep. How much did I drink last night?

The pounding in my head answers the question.

“Brandon, can you hear me?”

That voice… Where is it coming from?

“Brandon, please, blink if you can hear me.”

Panic. It’s unmistakable even through my wooly brain cells. Something bad has happened while I’ve been asleep, and I need to get up, only I’m so comfortable…

“Brandon!” A woman’s voice. “I can’t carry you back to the house on my own. I really need you to open your eyes.”

Carry me? I form the words inside my brain, but I don’t hear them come out of my mouth. I can hear something though. Water. Has there been a flood?

It takes all my willpower and a great deal of fist-clenching to open my eyes.

“Oh, thank god.” The woman’s shoulders slump, but I can feel her warm hand on my chest. Come to think of it, my ribs hurt too. “I didn’t want to leave you here and run back to the house.”

My throat is raw when I try to speak, and my tongue is too big for the inside of my mouth.

“I think you have a concussion, Brandon,” she says. “You hit your head on a rock.”

“Rose?” The name comes to me fully formed, and it feels like it’s one of my greatest achievements when I hear the word hanging in the air between us.

“Yes.” She leans over me and smiles, and I raise a hand to touch her cheek. Rose grabs my hand and holds onto it, my icy fingers soaking up her warmth. “How do you feel?”

“Silly question.” My voice sounds like I swallowed a whole bunch of glass splinters.

“You weren’t breathing when I found you.”

Tears trickle from the corners of my eyes. This must be how it feels to be vulnerable, to be exposed to danger with no lifeline. I feel the world sliding away from me again, and then Rose’s lips are on mine, and she’s sharing her oxygen with me.

I focus on her mouth and almost cry out when she takes it away from me and places her head on my chest. “Rose.”

She comes back to me, and the way the moonlight casts a silver glow across her cheeks, she looks like an angel. I must say the word out loud because she smiles again. “No. Not an angel. Just Rose.”

My mouth moves, and she comes closer, still trying to catch my words. Her long hair provides a curtain around us, shutting us off from the rest of the world, and I raise my hand again, entwining her hair around my fingers.

I pull her face close to mine, and my lips are on hers. Everything else is forgotten. The fuzziness in my brain, the bone-splitting pain in the back of my skull. It all disappears when I feel her lips on mine, her tongue pushing back against mine.

She pulls back, her eyes gazing into mine in the moonlight. “Brandon, we should get back.” She doesn’t move. She’s still leaning over me, and I know that she feels it too, gravity pulling us together. If she wanted to get back, she’d stand up right now, and walk away.

Our kisses taste of salt, and I already know that nothing else will ever taste as good. I cup her face gently in both hands and kiss her tenderly, my tongue tracing her lips, her jawline, her neck.

My shirt is already unbuttoned, and the need to feel her naked against me is overwhelming. We’re way past preserving shirt buttons. I rip the material apart and expose her pink nipples, squashing her breasts together so that my mouth can take them both at the same time.

Rose gasps. She peers down at her naked breasts, silver in the glow from above and the reflection of the ocean, as if she’s never looked at herself in this way before.

“Rose, you’re beautiful.” My voice is swallowed by the water lapping the shore behind us. “Come here.” I tug her collar, bringing her closer so that her lips are touching mine and slide the shirt over her shoulders.

“Your head,” she whispers.

“Fuck my head.”

It hurts like hell, but I slide her upwards so that I don’t have to raise my head off the sand and unzip her pants. Ripping them open, I slide a finger inside her panties , and explore her slowly, my fingertip instantly wet.

“I want to taste you, Rose.”

“I…” She swallows, her breath gentle on my face. “What do you want me to do?”

“Take them off.”

She peers behind her, the veil of her hair feather-soft on my cheeks, heightening all my senses. “Okay.”

She stands, turns away, and slides her pants over her hips, stepping out of them so that she’s completely naked. When she faces me again, she almost looks worried that I won’t like what I see.

I reach out for her, and she slips her hand into mine.

I pull her down on top of me. She straddles my chest and I shuffle her hips forward until she’s almost sitting on my face. I grope her breasts, pinching her nipples, causing her to cry out with surprise, but she doesn’t stop me.

Feeling my way down her body with my hands, I watch her watching me, wishing I knew what she was thinking. I’m thinking that I need to fuck this woman, but I’m drunk, the inside of my skull feels like someone is chipping away at it, and I know I’m going to explode the instant I’m inside her. I don’t want that.

I want this. I spread her thighs and gently insert my tongue between her legs, loving the way her breathing becomes shallow as she tips her head back.

I probe her with the length of my tongue, feeling my way around until I hear her panting growing more desperate. Slowly, gently, I take my time, the brandy numbing the pain a little as I concentrate every fiber of my being into making Rose come.

And she does—she explodes on my tongue, her body juddering. As she leans forward, unable to control the orgasm, I grab her breasts and suck her nipples, nibbling them between my teeth.

I unzip my pants, springing my erection free. I’m going to wake up in the morning, and this will all have been a dream, but some tiny part of my consciousness is telling me to hang onto it tightly and never let it go.

My blood is pumping through my veins. I grab handfuls of Rose’s hair and pull her back to me. Then, when our tongues are dancing around each other, I roll over, pinning her underneath me on the sand.

The world lurches away from me, but Rose groans softly and spreads her legs wide—grounding me with an invitation I’m not about to refuse. I use the tip of my cock to feel her wetness, sliding it all around her pussy, teasing her with it.

Rose arches her back, clawing at the damp sand with her fingers. I slide the end of my cock inside her, and her eyes fly open. “Is that okay?” I whisper?

She nods, panting.

I push harder, further, slower, my own orgasm too close.

She’s tight. So tight, I’m worried I’m hurting her. It takes every ounce of strength my pulsating brain will allow not to ram into her. There’s a warning light flickering somewhere inside my gut as my cock throbs inside her.

She’s watching me, her gaze intense, fingers buried in the sand.

“Rose? Am I hurting you?”

“A little.” She gasps like I’m filling her up and she can’t draw a breath. “That’s … normal … right?”

“Normal?” I don’t know how long I can hold it in.

“The … first time…”

And suddenly it hits me like a blow to the gut, and for the first time in as long as I can remember, I want this to last. I want Rose to want me as desperately as I want her.

I want her to enjoy this.

“I’m sorry, Rose,” I manage, scrunching up my eyes and trying so hard to stop myself from exploding in her right now.

“Sorry for what?” Her expression is unfathomable—I said the wrong thing.

“I can’t hold back.”

“I don’t want you to,” she whispers, wrapping her arms around my neck and kissing me until I explode inside her.