Seventeen #5
I had been there once before on a date with Rafael Soto.
He liked to dress me up and take me out, show me off and then drive me home.
After the third date when he wouldn’t even touch me because he didn’t want me to wrinkle, I told him to get lost. What I had found charming and slow-moving had actually been run-of-the-mill crazy.
But I knew where the lounge was because of it, so everything did in fact always happen for a reason.
Sometimes it took a long time to figure out the why.
Dane was sitting almost in the middle of the place on a couch surrounded by people.
They were his friends, but there were two women I didn’t know, one on either side of him.
When he saw me, he made the gesture with his hand for me to hurry, and I moved as fast as I could.
I felt stupid standing there with my hands shoved into the pockets of my jeans, looking kind of out of it, I was sure.
He stood and grabbed a handful of the front of my shirt and tugged me forward into his arms. I went stiff because he never hugged me, but the hand in my hair holding me against him, the other rubbing circles on my back was too much.
I shivered hard and wrapped my arms around his waist. He gave me a last hard squeeze and pushed me out to look me over.
“Dane?” one of the women asked. “Who’s—”
“That’s his brother, Jory,” Jude offered, and I turned to look at him. He smiled and nodded, and I looked up into Dane’s eyes.
“This is what we’re going to talk about,” he said gruffly, hand on the back of my neck as he led me a few feet away from the others.
When he turned, both hands went to my shoulders.
“I was going to have a long talk with you in the office, but for one, you might not make it to Monday at the rate you’re going, so I have to step in now, and two, there’s no formality between us anymore, so I might as well tell you my plan here at the lounge. ”
I was silent, waiting.
“Jory, we’re going to change your last name from Keyes to Harcourt. I’m going to make you the beneficiary of my estate, and you’re going to have access to a lot of things you don’t have now.”
I was silent, and he just stared into my eyes. “What?” I said finally.
“I’m not adopting you. I’m not taking care of you. You still have to work and make your own way and everything else, but you don’t need the last name Keyes, and you don’t need to say no to me.”
“I can’t live with you or off of you or—”
“Who’s asking you to? I wouldn’t live with you on a bet,” he snapped at me. “You’d be dead in a week because I’d throw you off the balcony of my place.”
“But—”
“And, by the way, you’re fired.”
I was stunned as I stared up at him.
“Your eyes are huge,” he said with a grin.
“You can’t fire me.”
“Oh no?”
“But—”
“Just…be still.”
I went silent and waited.
He took a deep breath. “You’ve worked for me for nearly five years, and in that time you’ve gone from my assistant to my friend, to the person, along with some of my best friends, who I imagine in my life always.
I want to take care of you. I think of you, always, as the little brother I never had and always wanted.
And for that reason, I can’t work with you.
I got you an interview, Monday morning at nine, at Barrington with David O’Shea, for a position in their graphic design department.
It’s very entry level, and you’re going to make less than you do now, so if you run short, you come hit me up for a loan that you’ll have to pay back.
That’s what family does. You can keep your American Express card as well. It’s got your name on it already.”
“Dane, I—”
“That’s what got me thinking about all this.
That day we went to Macy’s, I was getting my card out and you paid with yours.
I thought, he’s got a credit card that I pay for with his name on it.
And I know it’s just for work, but still, it’s like we’re attached somehow.
” He sighed and stared into my eyes. “I thought, this is how I want it to be. I don’t just want to run your life at work, I want a say in it all the time.
And even as a friend, I don’t have enough power…
so I started to think, and this is what I came up with. You’re going to be my brother.”
“You can’t just—”
“I spoke to my lawyer, and I can do it all. Tomorrow morning you sign papers with me at brunch, which we’ll have together with my lawyer, and you’ll go from Jory Keyes to Jory Harcourt.
You need to get a new driver’s license and a new Social Security card, but other than that, it’s done.
Jory Keyes will cease and Jory Harcourt will begin. ”
“I don’t wanna be a—”
“Yes, you do—”
“I don’t mean I don’t wanna be a Harcourt. I don’t wanna be a graphic—”
“Yes, you do,” he said like he was really bored.
“No, I don’t!”
“Yes. You do. I know you do. I watch you, and being my assistant is not fulfilling. You need a career, not a job, and this way you get to keep me and find the job of your dreams. We both know the only reason you haven’t left is because you were worried about losing me. Worry solved.”
“Could you be any more conceited?”
“How so?”
“You think the only reason I stay is to be close to you?”
“Yes. I know it is. You think if you leave, I’ll disappear from your life.”
I could only stare at him.
“I won’t.”
I cleared my throat. “Who are you going to get to be your assistant?”
“I hired a wonderful woman this morning. She’s older than me and seems very warm and extremely professional. I liked her the minute I met her.”
I looked at him. “You replaced me.”
“I hired a new assistant. I’m keeping you.”
I tried to wrap my brain around everything he’d just said.
“For starters, that place you live…from now on you make the payments to yourself. You’re buying it from me. Once you own it, you can sell it or do whatever.”
It was hard. I wasn’t a charity case. “I don’t deserve all this.”
“You deserve every bit of it,” he said softly. “And who’s to say what a person deserves or doesn’t? We fit together, and I want you to be my family. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. We’re still us, you’re still you—you just have me now to look out for you.”
I scowled at him. “You wanna run my life.”
“Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?”
My mind was racing. “How can you just give me your name?”
“I was adopted and received my name. My parents are gone, you know that, and there was only my father; he had no brothers or sisters, and his parents both passed before I was even born. There is no other Harcourt that I’m related to, so there’s just going to be me…
and now you. We’ll make our own history. ”
I stared up into the gray eyes I knew so well. Funny that earlier I was thinking he was home. Turned out he really was.
“And I will get married one of these days, and you’ll stand up with me. After I have children, you’ll be an uncle and come every Thanksgiving and Christmas and have dinner with your family on Sunday nights. You’ll bring your partner along with you, and someday, I’m sure, kids of your own.”
The air had been sucked from the room, and I felt my heart pounding in my chest.
“This is what I want.” He smiled down at me, hand on the side of my neck. “All right?”
I couldn’t speak.
He let out a quick breath. “This one time,” he whispered hoarsely, and I saw the muscles in his jaw working as I inhaled sharply. “I want you to be my brother. I—you know. I want you to stay. Just agree.”
All at once I understood, and the simplicity of it was staggering.
He loved me. He couldn’t say it because the words were too much, they would weigh too heavily between us, but I saw it there in the steady gaze, felt it in the warmth of the hand on my cheek, and heard it in the way he was holding his breath.
Waiting for me. He would wait forever if I asked. I nodded because I couldn’t speak.
His arm slipped around my neck as he drew me close, hugging me tight, his chin resting on the top of my head as he thanked me.
“I should thank you,” I croaked out.
“No,” he said, shoving me away. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we—”
“I’m taking you home to my place. I don’t trust you to be safe anywhere else.”
“But you don’t hafta leave all your—”
“Do you have anything we need to pick up?”
“I left my duffel with the hostess.”
“Excellent.” He kept his hand on the back of my neck. “Let’s retrieve your things and head home. You’re crashing so hard you’re barely standing.”
“That’s not—” I began even as I almost tripped over my own feet. “Shit.”
He chuckled as he steered me back to the others. When he announced that he had to leave—family emergency—the delight in his tone was not to be missed. His friend Jude smiled at me, and I was congratulated on a choice well made.
Dane lived in a very exclusive building downtown, close to the water tower.
There was a security guard who sat behind the desk when you came in and another who hung out by the elevators.
They were medium-sized guys, really nice, nothing menacing about them, which was somehow spookier than if they had been big and scary.
You got the idea that they could become dangerous very quickly.
The fact that they were both packing didn’t change the image.
If you tried to hurt someone in Dane’s building, you could be shot.
It had to be comforting for the residents, even if it gave visitors the willies. That was probably the whole point.
Inside Dane’s apartment were two floors. The bottom was an open concept, the living room, dining room, and kitchen all sort of blending together. There was a half bath on the first floor as well.