Chapter 3 – Braxton
brAXTON
Ipush through the heavy glass doors of the boardroom, letting my smile do the talking before my mouth catches up. The muted December gloom filters through floor-to-ceiling windows, bringing a certain kind of coziness against the harsh overhead lights. I’m in a great fucking mood today.
I leave for Paris on Saturday night and will spend nearly two weeks in the city of lights, eating amazing food and drinking way too much, absorbing Ouest family holiday cheer, and when I return home, Waverly will be my new assistant.
A woman I’ve been low-level—okay, maybe not so low-level—pining over for the last two years since she started working for Tristan.
Tristan is already hunched over his tablet like it contains the secrets to eternal youth rather than quarterly projections from the Smithfield team. My perpetually disgruntled other half looks up at me, a harried expression on his face, likely because this acquisition is a bit of a motherfucker.
“Hello, Sunshine,” I chirp, dropping my leather portfolio onto the table with a satisfying smack.
In a heartbeat, he’s on his feet, grabs me by the front of my shirt, and hauls me over to the wall.
“Hey, it’s a bit early for office shenanigans, isn’t it?”
“Shut up. For once, I need you to keep your mouth closed and refrain from making any inappropriate or cheeky responses. Can you do that?”
I study him. He’s a man at his end. “Yes, I can do that. What’s wrong?”
He walks over to the door, glances out, and stiffens. “Waverly, the Smithfield people are going to be another fifteen minutes. Can you make us some coffee, please?”
“Um…” She trails off, uncertainty in her voice likely because Tristan just asked that as a question instead of stating it like a demand and added please on the end. A word I didn’t know was in his vocabulary. “Sure. Are you okay?”
“Just do it and stop asking questions.”
His sharp retort must mollify her that he’s fine, and I hear her shoes click-clacking on the floor, growing distant as she heads toward the kitchen.
Tristan shuts the door and comes racing back over me. “I fucked up.”
“What did you do? Did you fuck the Smithfield—”
“No, no, nothing like that. My mother and grandmother are trying to set me up when we come to Paris.”
I roll my eyes. “I know. They always do. I’m shocked they haven’t knocked you unconscious, had a doctor siphon your semen, and used it to impregnate a woman so you’ll be forced to marry her.”
He grimaces. “Don’t give them any ideas. She has three women scheduled as dates for me starting the moment I clear customs in Paris, and that’s only the beginning.”
“So either tell them no or go on the dates.”
“Except you know they’re not just dates. They’re marriage matches. Business arrangements. They’re determined this year because evidently my grandmother is dying and my father wants to retire.”
“She’s been dying for years, and he’s not that old.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. This year is different, or they’re simply out of patience, which is my thinking.”
“Okay. I still don’t see how that means you fucked up.”
He glances back toward the door before he turns on me. “I told my mother not to set me up because I have a girlfriend.”
I snort out a laugh. “Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know!” he yells. “I was flustered and annoyed and Waverly walked by and I had just been listening to her talk about how hard things are for her and I don’t know what happened. It just came out.”
“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “There are too many things there. What about Waverly having it hard?”
“Something about the nursing home her grandmother lives in increasing their rates and the debt she’s paying off for her. She’s been struggling, and I didn’t even know it.”
“Oh. I didn’t either.” A sour feeling hits my chest. “That’s awful. Hopefully the raise we’re giving her will help. Maybe we should increase it so it does. But what does that have to do with a girlfriend?”
“I saw her and she was wearing the new dress, and the idea of having a girlfriend sprang into my head, so I said it. But now my mother expects me to bring her home to Paris with me.”
I try to hold in my laugh. I really, seriously do. But it sneaks out anyway. “Yeah, you fucked up.”
He grunts and scrubs his hands up and down his face.
“I knew this would happen eventually. I knew they’d come down hard and really push for me to get remarried.
I can’t do that again. Not the way I did the first time.
They shoved Dianna down my throat, and that ended so horribly.
But I’m thirty-four and expected to marry and produce an heir and move back to Paris to take over Ouest Hotels, and that’s all there is to it. ”
I think about this long and hard for a moment. But the truth is, I’m ridiculously giddy.
“So bring home a girlfriend,” I state, squeezing my fists so I don’t smile.
Sometimes I get a bit overexcited like a puppy and have trouble reining it in.
It comes from not having a lot of happiness as a kid, so when I do find happiness in things, they tend to overwhelm me, and I react a bit too strongly.
It’s never bothered me before, but right now, I can’t show my hand too soon.
His hands drop to his sides, and his head tilts as his eyebrows take a nosedive. “A girlfriend? You want me to bring home a girlfriend to meet my parents? My grand-mère?”
I shrug. “Yeah.
He half-laughs and challenges me with, “Okay. Who?”
“You just said it, didn’t you? You saw Waverly and developed this whole plan.”
“Waverly?” he all but chokes out. “I can’t bring Waverly home as my girlfriend?”
“Why not?”
He blinks at me about ten thousand times.
I can see he’s mounting an argument, so I continue with mine. “She’s beautiful, smart, sweet, and friendly, but she hates you, right?”
Now he scowls. She doesn’t hate him. And he certainly doesn’t hate her.
That’s partially why he’s such a growly son of a bitch.
He’s secretly crazy about Waverly, though he’d rather offer himself up as a mouse in a clinical trial than admit it.
But instead of bringing sunshine and rainbows and fucking smiles back into his life, it’s made him more of a moody, scowling, cantankerous bastard than he was before.
Why? He’s a bit sour on love. Okay, fine. I get that. He has his reasons.
But also, he doesn’t think he can be with Waverly because of that old saying, never dip your pen in the company’s ink.
Or more to the point, never fuck your employees, especially your assistant, who you don’t know how to live without.
Plus, there is the whole Ouest Hotels and producing heirs and being required to marry a certain sort of woman and eventually move back to Paris.
He doesn’t think he can have Waverly, so he won’t even try.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s perfect for this. If she comes with us, it’ll get your mom and grandmother off your back because they’ll think Waverly is your girlfriend and that you’re finally happy and in love.
Plus, we’ve got the acquisition going on there, and with her, we’ll be able to get more work done.
In fact, if we weren’t staying with your family, we likely would have brought her along for that purpose anyway.
But you also said Waverly is in a bit of financial trouble.
You can help with that. As a bonus of being a billionaire several times over, you can pay off her debt—how much can that be anyway?
—and even give her a cushion to get her back on track if she needs it.
In exchange, she’ll play your girlfriend in front of your family and work with us over the break to finalize this deal. ”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m dead serious actually.”
“But… I can’t… how could I… it’s Waverly.”
“And?”
“And she’d stay there with me, and I’d have to be in love with her. I’d have to know things I don’t and lie. I’d be lying to my family.”
He’s not thinking about all the logistics the way I am.
He’s too busy freaking out over having to bring home a fake girlfriend to his family.
I’m thinking about the two-bedroom flat that will be all ours and what can happen when the lights go out.
I’m thinking about the possibility of finally being able to make a move on Waverly and hopefully dragging Tristan out of his hermit crab shell to do the same.
I know, I know, that’s complicated. He and I have been best friends since our freshman year of college, where I was the lab nerd and he was the confident business guy from old money.
It’s why our senior year, when I discovered a broad-spectrum antibiotic that so far hasn’t had any issues combating bacteria that are otherwise antibiotic resistant, Tristan was the natural guy to help me turn it into a business and make it a success.
Twelve years later, here we are, spearheading antibiotic research and development, saving the lives of millions, and generally making the world a healthier, safer place.
We’re opposites in almost every way, except when it comes to our taste in women. And that we like to fuck them together.
We’d find a willing woman and give her the night or weekend of her life, and then move on.
There was never any anger or jealousy or resentment.
It just… worked for us. I want that again.
I want it with Waverly and Tristan. It’s been my fantasy for two years to have that with them, and that’s where Paris comes in.
At least that’s my hope.
My tone turns bored and indifferent. “Well, it was just a suggestion. I guess you’ll just have to meet the women they’re setting you up with. I’m sure they’re fine. Nothing like Dianna was.”
His left eyebrow twitches. It’s his tell when he’s overly stressed about something.
“Waverly would never say yes to it. She hates me. She calls me Satan and an asshole.”
“Who can blame her for that?”
“I don’t think I’d know how to lie like that. Besides, we’d have to pretend to, you know, like each other.”