Читать книгу Swept Into The Tycoon's World - Cara Colter - Страница 11

CHAPTER THREE

YOU DIDN’T HAVE to use your influence for me.

After Brand had disconnected the phone and put it back in his pocket, he made his way through the rain-glittered streets. He had decided to walk home. Going back to the gala after being with Bree Evans would have felt like getting dumped onto an eight-lane freeway after being on a quiet path through the country.

Despite her new proficiency with high heels, and the way she filled out her trim white blouse, she was still sweet and smart. Definitely adorable. Totally earnest.

And completely refreshing.

Those words—you didn’t have to use your influence for me—just reinforced all those impressions of her.

Everybody wanted him to use his influence for them. Even the manager at Perks had approached him, not the other way around. He’d recognized him from that blasted City article.

Brand came to his house, and stood back for a second, gazing at it through the walkway opening in the neatly trimmed hedge. His architect had called it colonial, a saltbox, and, thankfully, it was less ostentatious than most of the mansions on his street.

Inside, Beau, who seemed to be largely telepathic, had figured out he was home, and gave a deep woof of welcome.

When people asked why he’d gone with a single-family house instead of a superglamorous condo, he said he’d purchased the Shaughnessy heritage home because it was close to his office tower in downtown Vancouver, his golf course and the VanDusen Botanical Garden.

That seemed much easier than admitting he had purchased the house because he thought his dog would prefer having a tree-shaded backyard to a condo balcony.

He opened the front door he never locked. Anyone with the nerve to try and get by his one-hundred-and-thirty-pound bullmastiff deserved a chance to grab what they could before dying.

The dog nearly knocked him over with his enthusiastic greeting, and Brand went down on his knees and put his arms around him. They wrestled playfully for a few minutes, until Brand pushed away Beau, stood up and brushed off his clothes.

“You stink.”

The dog sighed with pleasure.

“I met a woman tonight, Beau,” he told the dog. “More terrifying than you.”

Beau cocked his head at him, interested.

“And that was before she laughed.”

Since the events of this evening were about the furthest thing from what he had expected when he’d headed out the door, it occurred to him that life was indeed full of little surprises. He had the renegade—and entirely uncomfortable—thought that maybe her cookies held predictions in them after all.

And he had eaten that one.

Happily-Ever-After.

But one lesson he had carried from his hardscrabble childhood, left far behind, was an important one.

Fairy tales belonged to other people. People like her.

Except, from the stricken look on her face when he’d asked her about her happily-ever-after, somehow her great ending had evaded her. Or she thought it had. She was way too young to have given up on a dream.

And it was none of his business why it had, or why she had given up hope on it, but he felt curiously invested—as if that night he had taken her to the prom, he had made a promise to her father, a man who had been so good to him, that he would look out for her.

Brand also felt, irrationally perhaps, that he had given Bree a dream he couldn’t have and she had let him down.

She was, in many ways other than just the high heels, very different. All grown up, as he had noted earlier. Her hair had been very long, but now, once she had let it down, he’d noticed it was shoulder-length and very stylishly cut. She used makeup well, and it made her cheekbones stand out, high and fine. She hadn’t had on lipstick when he’d first seen her, but when she had sat down across from him at the coffee shop, her lips had the faintest pink-tinged gloss on them, shining just enough to make a man’s eyes linger there for a moment.

And yet her eyes, huge and brown with no makeup at all, were almost exactly, hauntingly, as he remembered them—owlish and earnest, behind spectacles.

Almost, because now there was a new layer there. Sorrow. For her father, of course, but maybe something deeper, too.

She had pegged it. He’d never dated a girl like her before her prom, and to be honest, never had again.

“And I’m not about to start now,” he told the dog. He took off his jacket and threw it in a heap on the floor, then undid his shirt and took off his shoes and socks. He padded barefoot through his house.

The architect had kept the outer footprint of the house, as the historical society demanded, but the inside had been stripped to the bones and rebuilt in a way that honored the home’s roots, yet still had a clean, modern aesthetic.

The kitchen was no exception. Except for the Elvis cookie jar in the center of a huge granite island, his kitchen was a modern mecca of stainless steel and white cabinets, photo-shoot ready.

The designer had convinced him to go with a commercial kitchen, both for resale value and for ease of catering large events at his home. So far, there had been no large events at his home. As good as it sounded on paper, he didn’t like the idea of boisterous gatherings in his space. Home, for him, was a landing strip between business trips, one that was intensely private. It was what it had never been when he was growing up—a place of quiet and predictability.

The cookie jar was stuffed with Girl Guide cookies. Brand shared a fondness for them with his dog, but he wondered if his enjoyment was now compromised for all time after sampling Bree’s wares. Not feeling ready to admit to that, Brand passed on the cookies, grabbed a beer from a fridge that could have stocked a cruise ship for a month and went to the media room.

The media room was bachelor heaven: deep reclining leather seats, set up theater style, and a wall-to-wall television set with surround sound. There were Elvis posters on every wall. He flopped into one of the chairs, while Beau took up guard in his dog bed at his feet. He turned on the TV set, and let the comforting rumble of sound fill the room. He flipped through to the hockey game that had been recorded in his absence.

“This is the life,” he told Beau, a little too forcefully.

Beau moaned, and he was aware of an echo, as if this room, filled with everything any man could ever want, was empty.

Bree had done that, made him aware of emptiness, in one single encounter.

If there was one thing Brand was really good at, in the business world and wherever else it mattered, it was heeding the subtle first tingles of a warning.

She was the kind of woman that would require more of a man.

No doubt most men would find her quite terrifying. That included him.

So, he knew what he had to do. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Disengage. He’d already done way too much. In a moment of madness he’d actually given her his phone number. She had already shown she wasn’t afraid to use it.

Or maybe she had been afraid, and used it anyway, which was much, much worse.

See? That’s the kind of woman she was. Simple things could become complicated way too fast.

He thought of the new layer of sadness in her eyes. Was that from the death of her dad, or had something else happened to her? He thought of her trying to get that business off the ground by herself. He thought of her not having an answer about having fun. He thought of her assistant letting it slip that Bree was on a dating site, and was meeting losers who stiffed her with the bill. He thought about how good her father had been to him.

He took her business card out of his pocket. It was a well-done card. Glossy. Colorful. Professional. Memorable. Kookies for all occasions. Her number was already in his phone, because she had called him.

He took a deep breath, scrolled through to her information and added it to his contact information. He hesitated and pressed the green phone symbol.

She wouldn’t answer. She was in the middle of—

“Hello?” Her voice was breathless.

He had the renegade thought he would like to make her breathless in quite a different way. It nearly made him end the call, because what the hell did a thought like that have to do with honoring her father by helping her out a bit? But there was no placing an anonymous call these days, so he sucked it up.

“Can’t get the taste of your cookies out of my head,” he said.

Funny that thinking about taste made a vision of her lips pop into his mind.

“I try to warn people,” she said. “Spells and enchantment.”

He thought of her lips again! That must be it. He was spellbound. Now would be a great time to tell her he had pocket-dialed.

“Aside from my charity function, I thought we should talk about the possibility of you supplying my office staff room. And meetings.”

She was silent.

“Bree?”

“It’s very kind, but—”

There was suddenly a great deal of noise.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “it’s intermission. I’m going to have to—”

“Meet with me next week.”

“Um—”

Geez! He was offering her a huge opportunity here. What was the problem? While the rest of the world was yapping at his heels wanting things from him, she was resistant—the lone exception.

“I’ll be in the office all day Wednesday,” he said smoothly, “if you want to drop by and we’ll figure out the details.”

Again there was hesitation, and then she asked, “Around ten a.m.?”

“Perfect. My office is—”

“I know. It’s in the article.”

“The damn article,” he said.

She rewarded him with that laugh, soft, like a brook gurgling over rocks. “Okay. Wednesday at ten. Dear Lord.”

“What?”

“Crystal Silvers is walking toward me. Good grief. She hardly has any clothes on.”

And then she was gone. Brand stared at his phone. “Beau?”

The dog lifted his head and gave him a watery-eyed look.

“You’re an expert on all things stinky. I stink at relationships, right?”

The dog laid his head back down with a groan as if there was no point in having bothered him with such a self-evident question.

“That’s what I thought. I’m putting on my big-brother shirt.”

He remembered the refreshing innocence about her. Crystal Silvers had been walking toward her, the chance of a lifetime, possibly, and she focused on the no-clothes-on part.

Innocent in a world that was fast. Old-fashioned in a world that could be slick. Real in a world that distracted with shock.

So, she needed a bit of coaching. His offer to get her under contract to supply his office was perfect. Of course, he could have left the details up to his office manager, but this way he would be able to check up on her a little bit, and make sure some great business opportunities came her way. And maybe, subtly, move her in the direction of happiness, which she so richly deserved.

“Not that I’m any expert on happily-ever-after,” he muttered.

The dog wagged his stump of a tail in approval. One thing that both Brand and Beau knew was that Brand was not cut out for relationships. Brand’s father had abandoned him and his mother. At six he had become the man of the family. He’d been there for his mom, and he still was, but he was pretty damn sure that his father’s genetics ran strong through his blood.

“Ask Wendy,” he said out loud.

The dog’s tail stopped thumping, no doubt a coincidence, but still Beau and Wendy had never seen eye-to-eye. It had been okay when Brand was just seeing her, as he had been exclusively for two years.

But then, she’d moved in. You thought you knew a person until they took down your Elvis posters and replaced them with original works of abstract art. He’d had to rescue the cookie jar from the garbage. People as svelte as Wendy did not let cookies touch their lips.

Within twenty-four hours, she was planning a Christmas extravaganza. Here. In their home. In their private space. She thought they could easily host two hundred people!

Thankfully, in short order, Beau had chewed through the sofa she had brought with her, a ridiculous antique thing that wasn’t even comfortable. Next on the menu had been three pairs of her shoes, imported from Italy. For dessert, Beau had eaten her Gucci wallet, with her credit cards in it. All that had been left was three gooey strands of leather and one slimy half of her Gold card.

She had said, “It’s the dog or me.”

He’d paid for the wallet and shoes and sofa, and chosen the dog. But in his heart he knew it wasn’t really about the dog. It was about being unsuitable for the kind of cozy domestic future she was envisioning. It had all been great when he could pick her up at her house, and take her out to dinner or a function, without her cosmetics and hair products all over his bathroom counter.

Something in him had already been itching to move on, three days after she’d moved in. He was pretty sure he would have got out of it, one way or another, way before the Christmas extravaganza, just as his father had done.

After Wendy’s departure from his home and his life, Brand put the Elvis posters back up. The Elvis memorabilia had been his mother’s pride and joy. Her suite in the seniors home had not been able to accommodate even a fraction of her collection. Always emotionally fragile, she’d gone into hysterics trying to decide what she could keep and what she could part with.

Another reason for a rather large house in Shaughnessy.

Okay, it wasn’t the most pragmatic reason to buy a house. But when he picked up his mother on Sunday afternoons and brought her to his home, she was so happy to see it. Somehow, having them around him, reminded him of exactly what he came from. And that might be the most important lesson not to forget.

As if on cue, his phone went off—it was the quacking ringtone he reserved for his mom, a private joke between them. He glanced at the clock. Late. He could feel himself tensing ever so slightly.

“Hi, Mom.”

“There was a movie tonight,” she told him. “Abracadabra. Have you seen it?”

“No, I heard it was good, though. Tell me about it.” The tension left him as her happy voice described the movie.

* * *

It was, Bree told herself firmly as she glanced at her wavering image in the polished steel elevator cage that was whisking her up to the forty-third floor, a second chance to make a first impression. Technically, her third chance, if she counted the prom.

Even though she was going to pitch a cookie contract to Brand’s office, there was no cookie beret today and no quilted apron.

Something in his voice when he had called her offering her the contract had given her pause. It was why she had hesitated. Did he consider her a charity that would benefit from his generosity? It was as if he had relegated her to a perpetual little-sister position in his life. No doubt he had done the same the night of the prom! No wonder he had refused her lips that night. Not that she was offering her lips today. Or even letting her mind wander in that direction.

No, today, Breanna Evans was erasing cute from his impression of her, erasing a cookie beret and a quilted apron. Today, she was going to be one-hundred-percent professional. Polished. Pure business.

And grown up!

Even the night of the gala, when he had pronounced her all grown up, it seemed to her now, in retrospect, it was something said to a thirteen-year-old that you had last seen when she was ten.

Toward this goal, Bree had dug deep into her resources and purchased a stunning deep red, bordering on burgundy, Chloë Angus hooded cloak to wear over her one and only business suit, a nondescript pantsuit in a color that might be best described as oatmeal. The cloak made her hair, piled up on top of her head in an ultrasophisticated look, seem like sun-kissed sand.

Then, to compound the insanity, she had bought a matching pair of heels. The shoes made her look quite a bit taller than she really was, and hopefully, more powerful, somehow, like a busy CEO. She wasn’t quite as graceful in them as she wanted to be, but she wasn’t planning on running a marathon wearing them, either—she just wanted to make a crucial impression.

The one to erase all other impressions.

“CEO,” she muttered to herself in the elevator, and then more firmly said, “Chief executive officer. Who got a contract to provide Crystal Silvers with five thousand cookies for her birthday blow-out? You! That’s who!”

She hoped the elevator didn’t have security cameras that recorded sound. A security guard somewhere would be having a good laugh at her expense.

She was carrying two large, rectangular white bakery boxes of cookie samples, which she always took, as a gift, when she was pitching an office contract. Unfortunately, the samples would not fit into a briefcase. Or maybe that was fortunate: who knows what kind of money she would have spent on that power item?

The elevator stopped. Despite her pep talk to herself, her heart fell to the pointy toes of her new red shoes. She considered just riding back down. She felt overcome by nerves, despite all the money she had spent trying to shore up her confidence with the beautiful, subtle raven-imprinted cloak.

But when the doors whispered open on the penthouse floor of one of Vancouver’s most exclusive downtown office towers, Bree took a deep breath and forced herself to be brave. The world did not reward cowardice after all!

She stepped out into a gorgeous foyer, and her feet sank into a deep carpet. Hard surfaces would have been so much better for the heels! The lighting was low, and she noted two white leather sofas facing each other. Beyond them was a receptionist desk, currently empty of a receptionist, in some kind of exotic wood. On the far wall, to the right of the elevator, a stone wall had water trickling down its face, and was embossed with shining, wet gold letters that announced she was at the right place, BSW Solutions.