Two #2

“I dunno. She’s been swearing like a sailor since we talked earlier.”

“I raised you better than that,” he admonished.

“Did you?” She didn’t sound convinced.

I chuckled, Kurt laughed, and Thomasin was shaking her head.

“I’ll call you when we’re actually leaving,” he told her.

“I don’t suppose you two have booked a venue yet, have you?”

“We’re working on it,” he told her.

“You do want to marry him, don’t you?” she snarked at her brother.

“More than you can imagine.”

“It’s lucky he didn’t know you when you were in college.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I put my arm around his neck and eased him close so I could kiss his cheek.

“You were so different, so arrogant, George wouldn’t have looked twice at you.”

“Pardon me?”

“Plus, you know, you’re so much older than him.”

“He’s thirty,” he told her, sounding indignant. “You do know he’s thirty?”

“Yes, but you’re thirty-five,” she said with a grimace. “When you were a senior in high school, he wasn’t even there yet. He was in middle school.”

He glared at her. “You’re a terrible person, are you aware?”

She cackled, and the sound, so deliciously evil, so animated and fun, made Helene turn to us.

“Who are you talking to?”

“Our wedding planner,” Kurt answered. “I’m loving this restaurant.”

She laughed at him. Not with him. At him. “You would need to be marrying up for that, my friend, not down like you are.”

Thomasin gasped, I nearly choked on my drink, and Kurt’s face flushed as his fingers turned white on the sides of his phone with how tight he was clutching the case.

“No, no, no, come on,” I husked, waving a quick goodbye to Thomasin, hanging up, then twisting the phone out of his hand. “Love.”

He turned to me fast. “I’m so lucky. You know I’m so lucky.”

“And I feel the same,” I whispered in his ear.

Leaning into me, he put his head on my shoulder and sat there and breathed for a moment, his mind, I knew, going a million miles an hour.

“Talk to me.”

“I just… I have no idea why my mother even invited me,” he said, and I could tell his psychiatrist brain was fixated on getting to the answer.

“I have a guess.”

“You do?” He straightened up and leaned back so he could see my face.

“I do. And I think you do too.” I tipped my head and smiled at him.

“Yes.”

“Tell me.”

After a moment he said, “Maybe she was worried because she hasn’t seen me in so long.”

I nodded.

“And perhaps frightened of her welcome.”

“Go on.”

“I mean, from speaking to Thomasin for that short amount of time, there will be no happy homecoming on that front.”

“Not in the near future, no.” There was no sugarcoating the fact that Thomasin was still, even more than Kurt, very angry.

“But with me, being the oldest, having more memories of her, perhaps she thought that’s the better place to start.”

“Makes sense.”

“She’s probably thinking that I can pave the road between her and Sin.”

I shrugged.

“But then why?—”

“Imagine if you will?—”

“Oh God,” he groaned but couldn’t suppress a grin.

“Wait now,” I said seriously, with a glare. “I’m thinking like you right now.”

“And I’m here for that, so go ahead.”

“So let’s say her husband is coming for a business trip, and she thinks, yeah, I could go along, and when we’re there, I could invite Kurt out to dinner with us. I’ll pick a fancy place where I’m sure he won’t make a scene, and if he’s hateful?—”

“I’m never hateful.”

“If he’s been waiting to give it to me with both barrels, then I can make it through that if I have my family around me.”

His brows furrowed.

“I honestly don’t think you were an afterthought,” I told him, giving his mother the benefit of the doubt. “Why invite you at all if that was the case?”

“True.”

“I think all this, her husband, her kids, even the business, is a safety net.”

Sharp exhale from him. “Then why not excuse herself and come talk to me now that she knows I’m harmless?”

“You’re not harmless,” I reminded him. “You have a sharp mind, and you could eviscerate her with the truth about the part she did and didn’t play in your past.”

He was quiet, listening to me.

“And you can also figure out why she wouldn’t get up and come sit next to you.”

“Can I?”

“I suspect you learned this in Psychology 101,” I replied, holding his gaze.

He gave a barely there nod. “Because if she did that, she would have to explain who I am to these women who aren’t actually her friends.”

“That’s right.”

“Plus, she’s now in wife-of-business-mogul mode.”

“Exactly. She has to be as perfect as possible, as does the whole family. If they’re not flawless, that could be exploited.”

His sigh was long. “I’m really glad I don’t play at this level.”

“Me too.”

He leaned back into me, and I wrapped him in my arms. “I don’t get this from your boss.”

“What’s that?”

“The acting. Sutter doesn’t pretend to be perfect.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t have to. There’s no one he has to impress to make his business run. There’s no one higher up the food chain that he has to suck up to or that can hurt him with some piece of gossip. I mean, you’ve met Duncan Stiel. Flawless he’s not.”

“The way Sutter looks at him, you would think he is.”

“Which is pretty romantic, don’t you think?”

He grunted softly. “You look at me the same way.”

“Do I?”

His chuckle was nice to hear.

“Maybe you give your mother a second chance.”

“I don’t think it’s going to happen right now.”

“No, I agree. Not tonight. But down the road.”

“I promise to think about that,” he said, sitting up and turning to me. “But I don’t want to be here anymore, so I’m choosing to leave.”

“You want me to pretend to get a text and we have to go?”

“That’s not necessary. I don’t need to slink away, tail between my legs.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that.”

“No, you were trying to make it easy on me, which I appreciate. But I’m an adult, and as one I can say I simply don’t want to be here, as this is not at all what I thought it would be,” he clarified, gently putting down the butter knife I hadn’t noticed he’d picked up.

“What were you planning to do with that?”

“Put one of the pats of butter on the end and flick it across the table at what’s-her-name’s face.”

“Her name’s Helene.”

“What?” she asked, having stopped paying attention to us ages ago but now turning back at the mention of her name.

“Nothing,” Kurt said quickly before looking back at me. “I bet it would stick to her cheek and slowly slide off.”

God, he was cute. “C’mon, tell ’em you gotta go get laid.”

“Oh? Am I getting laid?”

My grin, I knew, was out of control. “Yes, you are.”

He sighed deeply. “You know, I feel so much better than I did a few hours ago.” Taking my hand in his, he stared into my face. “I mean, even if you were on a deployment right now, just thinking about you would make me feel better.”

“Good,” I said, pushing his hair back out of his eyes.

“I don’t ever want you to think I’m weak.”

“Why would I think that?”

“Like how you were going to think up an excuse for me so we could leave.”

“Only to make it easier, as you said.”

“That’s all?”

“I promise. And I will work harder at not thinking for you.”

“It’s okay. I know it’s done out of love, and I also know that with your job, both of them, the bodyguarding and the soldiering, you have to make split-second decisions for lots of people.”

“Yeah, but still, that’s not something you need from me.”

“No, but so you know, everything’s better when you’re with me.”

“Oh yeah? Even looking at wedding venues?”

He whimpered, and I laughed at him at the same time two things happened simultaneously. First, I noted that the entire table went silent, all eyes on us. Second, a hand came down on my shoulder, and when I looked up, there was my boss, Aaron Sutter.

What were the chances?

“Good evening, sir,” I greeted him.

“George,” he responded with that smile of his that graced all those magazine covers that had anything to do with money. Lots and lots of money. He immediately turned to Kurt and gripped his shoulder before patting it. “Nice to see you, Dr. Butler.”

“Kurt, please,” he prodded him, so at ease now, utterly radiating happiness.

“Kurt,” Sutter repeated warmly, still smiling, then turned to me. “What are you two doing here?”

“Oh, well, we were gonna have dinner, but we’re about to skip it,” I said, pushing back my chair, then getting up so I could pull out Kurt’s.

“Do you have a prior engagement?”

“No,” Kurt answered. “We’re just not eating with these people anymore.”

“That’s both excellent and fortuitous because now you can come with me upstairs to the loft, where the rest of us are. We’re celebrating an acquisition down in the loop.”

“The one for the adult education center?” Kurt asked, standing up beside him, knowing what my boss was talking about because Hannah had been filling him in about it for a while and he always listened to her.

“That’s right. It will be a skyscraper of health and human services. Because our job is always to build up our community and…” Quick glance at me.

“Find a way to make the difference we want to see,” I finished, because it was, after all, his motto. When the city said there wasn’t room for something new, Aaron Sutter merely bought something old and retrofitted it for what was most needed. His vision and commitment to change were unstoppable. I was proud to work for him.

“Excellent,” he said with a nod, his hand back on my shoulder. It was obvious he liked me. There was no hiding that. “Hannah and Jake are up there, and I ordered everything family-style, so honestly, there’s probably too much food.”

“We don’t want to horn in on your?—”

“No,” my boss stopped Kurt. “It would be my pleasure. I actually meant to invite you”—he directed this to me. “Miguel is starting to step back a bit, as you know, and, well, I’ve created a boatload of work for you.”

I knew he had.

“You’re going to have to hire a lot more people to help you coordinate and vet and…yeah. Lots more work. It would be good to feed you and your charming fiancé.”

“I told you I’m charming,” Kurt told me defensively.

I shook my head at him.

“And, Kurt,” Sutter began, “when I say I was going to invite George, you understand that I meant you as well. You should always presume that. Wherever I’m invited, I take for granted that they mean my husband as well unless it’s business, which a celebration is not.”

“Thank you, sir, for making that clear.”

“Well, George is very important to me, and so are you.”

Kurt nodded quickly, a bit overwhelmed, I was guessing. His mother hadn’t prioritized him, but my billionaire boss had. And yes, she had her reasons, but still, it was nice.

“Mr. Sutter,” Bennett Marcum rushed out, standing, as I noted now that I wasn’t focused solely on my electric boss. It happened a lot. He mesmerized people without meaning to. No one was immune. “It’s a pleasure to see you.”

I knew Sutter. Not as well as others did, but I’d spent enough time with the man in both personal and professional settings to know that all he wanted was to take me and Kurt and go. But he was in public, someone somewhere was likely taking video, so he slapped on his work smile and offered the man his hand.

“And you are?” he asked, and somehow it didn’t sound like he had gotten gum on the bottom of his shoe, even though his expression slipped a bit.

“Bennett Marcum. I’m bidding against you on the Giddings renewal project in Buffalo, Wyoming,” he announced. “These are my partners, Payton Ryerson and Jeffrey?—”

“Wolf, yes, I’m aware,” he said as he shook the hands of all three men.

“This is my son, Paul, who works with me at Marcum and Meade, and my soon-to-be son-in-law, Phillip Evanston, who?—”

“Nice to meet you all,” my boss interrupted, not wanting the names of everyone at the table. “My understanding was that Grant Meade was leaving.”

“He is, yes. He’s retiring, and I’m joining my friends. It will soon be Marcum, Ryerson, and Wolf.”

There was no doubt who the biggest fish was when Marcum’s name was going first on the letterhead of an established company in Chicago.

My boss nodded. “Great. Well, the first thing I need to tell you is the news I just shared with my assistant director of corporate security. We received the green light from the city this morning on the Crane Tower. We will be moving forward with our project, since clearly, Ryerson and Wolf”—he turned to the two men—“did not put in the winning bid.”

It suddenly got very quiet at the table.

“Also, this afternoon, Custos, a subsidiary of Sutter, bought the entire parcel your renewal project sat on outside of Buffalo. There won’t be any fracking done in that area.”

The table had been so animated, but suddenly no joy. Not at all.

“What are you doing here?” a husky, warm feminine voice asked.

My girl, Hannah Kage.

She was in some kind of piece of couture, and I only knew that from the awestruck looks of the women around us. I had no idea what it was other than it was deep forest green, asymmetrical, with spaghetti straps, and it came to slightly above her knees. With it, she was wearing four-inch faux alligator shiny black Mary Janes. I had no idea how she was walking in those. Her long, thick, straight brown hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail, showing off her lovely face, adorned with minimal makeup, and long emerald chandelier earrings hung from her ears. The ease with which she was put together and carried herself, combined with the piece of art she was wearing, made her look like a princess growing effortlessly into a queen. Of course I would die before I told her any of that.

“I’m coming up there to eat with you,” I informed her, almost angrily, before she slipped over to Kurt and looked up into his face.

“Yes?” he asked her.

“This is not one of my sessions,” she told him. “This is us, me and you, out in the world, meeting as friends.”

“Excellent announcement of boundaries,” he praised her before opening his arms.

She grinned crazily and leaped at him, her arms wrapping around his neck.

Everyone was stunned. Marcum, his new partners, their spouses, Vanessa, and of course, Kurt’s half-siblings and their significant others, could not stop staring. It was as if they hadn’t really seen Kurt until then.

It made sense. He’d been off-balance earlier, blindsided, as Thomasin had pointed out, by his mother’s reappearance, and as a result had gone quiet. I was betting that everyone thought him weak, maybe even a bit of a doormat, which he was not at all, evidenced by his decision for us to go. He’d been prepared to tell her we were leaving without excuses, no sugarcoating, only that he didn’t want to be there anymore. The appearance of my boss hadn’t saved us. It had saved his mother from Kurt explaining that we were out of there.

When I glanced at her now, I knew what she saw—a radiant young woman step back and gaze at Kurt like he was dear to her, which he was. Hannah liked him as a person and as her doctor.

Whirling around, she wrapped both arms around my left bicep, and I groaned like I was dying, rolling my eyes for good measure. Kurt shot me a warning look, and Hannah tugged gently.

“What’re you doing?” I complained.

“I’m still hungry, so come on. I want to make sure you’re moving, because I have to tell Uncle Aaron more about a redevelopment opportunity in Old Town Scottsdale.”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Marcum asked brusquely, sounding almost angry. I remembered then that he lived there.

“Oh, just some opportunities in Arizona we’re looking at,” she told him, smiling.

“And you are?”

“I’m Hannah.” She let me go, moving like the dancer and athlete she was and offering Marcum her hand. “Hannah Kage.”

He didn’t take her hand, which I saw Sutter notice even though he’d gotten stuck talking to some people from other tables, shaking hands and nodding.

I wished I could have warned Marcum that snubbing Hannah was a really terrible, really life-changing decision. “Well, I don’t know what you think you’re going to do in my neck of the?—”

“I’m also Aaron Sutter’s goddaughter,” she interrupted, still holding out her hand, long beats of time ticking by, like slow motion in a movie, before the man himself appeared beside her, putting his arm around her. His obvious display of both affection and pride, as Hannah looked down and then lifted her eyes, spoke volumes. Poor Marcum had thought he was in control. In reality, the power was hers. There was another noticeable silence from the table as Marcum finally took her hand.

“Nice to meet you all,” my boss lied, giving Hannah a last squeeze before he let her go, pointed at me and then the stairs. “Captain Hunt,” he announced, using my military credentials that time. “Let’s go.”

“Yessir,” I replied as Hannah darted after the billionaire real estate mogul.

“You’re in the military?” Nelson asked me, which was weird.

“I am.”

“And you’re the assistant director of corporate security for Aaron Sutter,” Marcum stated.

“I am, yes,” I said, taking hold of Kurt’s hand.

“You sort of buried the lead there.” Phillip was trying for jovial but didn’t quite make it.

I shook my head. “Not at all. I am a bodyguard, that’s it.”

“That’s not it,” Kurt said, and I could hear the swell of emotion in his voice. “You’re an Army Ranger and are called on again and again to serve your country. You’re a good man.”

As long as he thought so, I was happy.

I heard Marcum say Vanessa under his breath.

“Kurt,” his mother called over to him. “We would love to?—”

“Please do give me a call next time you’re in town,” he told her. “Perhaps we can have dinner then.”

“I heard you say you’re getting married soon?” Addison rushed out.

As if, even if I became lobotomized and Kurt still wanted to marry me, any of them would ever be welcome at my nuptials.

“In the fall,” Kurt said with a sigh. “I can’t wait. We’re having a small intimate wedding.”

“But Mr. Sutter will be there?” Marcum asked.

“He’s my fiancé’s boss, and he agreed to be there as soon as we can pin down a damn venue,” he said, chuckling to himself. “I’m this close to having it in our backyard.”

“With the dogs?” I pretended to groan, tugging him after me.

“Thank you for the drink,” Kurt called back.

Vanessa got up then, and I was very pleased with her. She rushed around the table to reach him before I took him away.

I let go of his hand so he could hug her, as she’d stepped in close and wrapped him in her arms, her head on his shoulder.

It was nice, though shorter than I would have liked. But she reiterated that she would certainly return soon and they could sit down, just the two of them.

“That would be good,” he told her, and his smile was genuine and warm.

Once she let go of Kurt, she glanced at me, and I gave her a head tip. She nodded and then turned for her chair, and I took hold of Kurt’s hand again.

“You didn’t hug her,” he said as I led him across the floor.

“You can count more or less on one hand the number of people I hug,” I reminded him. “I have to really like you, and if me looking at you keeps you away…c’mon. That’s not gonna happen.”

“Yes, that death stare of yours is quite terrifying.”

I rounded on him, and he almost walked into me but stopped himself in time.

“That was abrupt.”

“Death stare?”

“It’s dark, inky blue,” he told me.

“What?”

“Your lovely eyes,” he whispered, staring at me. “Your fixed regard is not for the faint of heart.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes, dear,” he breathed out, and I saw how big his pupils were, like he was drugged, lips parted, cheeks flushed, looking like he absolutely needed to be kissed.

“You wanna go to the bathroom with me?”

“Classy,” he grumbled, scowling as he followed me upstairs.

“You’re the one who looks like you’re into me.”

“Yes, well, it seems like it’s going to be a lifelong affliction.”

“That sounds pretty good,” I said with a sigh, walking him to the seat next to Hannah’s boyfriend, Jake, and pulling out the chair for him.

Everyone at the long table greeted us happily, several of the executives getting up to come around the table to shake my hand and say hello to Kurt. It was such a warm welcome, so very different from the lukewarm, barely tolerable one I received downstairs.

Hannah returned then from downstairs, where I was guessing she had diverted to the ladies’ room. As she came up the stairs, she waved at Kurt’s acquaintances—I couldn’t even say estranged family, as other than his mother, they were nothing to him—and I was surprised that they waved back. But then, when I thought about it a moment, that made sense. She was Aaron Sutter’s goddaughter, so of course they returned her gesture.

To me, it was different. To me, Hannah was irresistible. I didn’t see her as an extension of anyone. She was simply her.

I had made every effort to keep her at arm’s length. I had been cold, aloof, responding to only yes-or-no questions, and yet…nothing worked. There was no fighting the warm draw of her compassion and charisma once you were taken by the current. I had told Finn that, my friend and colleague, the guy who protected her when I was deployed. I said, you’re going to like her, you’ll see.

“She’s annoying and bossy, and by the way, I don’t carry boxes. I’m her bodyguard.”

I had kept quiet as he vented, pacing in front of me in my office.

“This is all your fault,” he assured me. “You treat her like a princess, and now she expects that from everyone!”

He had no idea when he started what he was talking about. He didn’t know that someday we’d all be working for her.

It turned out that didn’t matter because he fell head over heels in love with her brother. Like, all the way. Like gone. And so seeing Hannah through her brother’s eyes, and those of her family, that was it. The thaw had begun, and now suddenly he looked forward to spending time with her as well. He still didn’t schlep packages, but that was okay. I did it. He didn’t have to.

Taking a seat next to me, she did what she always did when we were sitting side by side—she leaned in and rested her chin on my shoulder.

“Stop that,” I insisted.

But she didn’t. She never did. And when I turned to check on Kurt, I noted his smile was back.

“Don’t encourage her,” I warned him.

He didn’t listen.