Olly
There was absolutely no chance in hell that I was going to let Keaton Dunbar out of my sight.
Go work for Ace? He might as well have asked me to let Ace fuck him. That was the inevitable conclusion. The two of them would work long hours together. Get dinner and lunch together. Keaton would learn all of Ace’s quirks and foibles.
They would fuck.
Maybe even fall in love.
I wasn’t having it.
I stubbornly ignored the voice at the back of my head.
The one that asked what I thought was going to happen if I let Keaton stay working for me.
That asked what I thought would happen if he learned my quirks and foibles.
If he got dinner with me. Stayed long hours.
Bent over my desk to retrieve some papers…
Nope. I wasn’t listening to that voice at all.
“Thank you,” I said as Keaton put the cup down in front of me. I thought I was being pretty gracious. It wasn’t easy to thank someone when your mouth was burning and your system going haywire thanks to the downing of a full cup of fresh coffee.
“Sir, I –” Keaton started. I would never get to find out what he wanted to say. My phone started to ring at exactly the same time.
I looked down at it. I looked at Keaton. I looked down at the phone again and raised an eyebrow.
Keaton sighed and leaned over my desk to grab it. His hand brushed close by my arm where I rested on the desk. I felt a light gust of air as he breathed out to reach further.
He smelled like fresh linen.
“Hello, you’ve reached the Harvey Agency.
Oliver Harvey’s desk. How may I direct your call?
” Keaton said into the receiver. He stood up straight again and looked away from me as he listened.
The sound of my name on his lips made my eyes shoot straight to them.
He nodded silently and then his eyes widened in alarm.
“There’s a fight in the lobby?” he repeated. “… Ace Park?”
It was my turn to widen my eyes. Within the course of a second, I already knew what I had to do. I sprang to my feet and burst through the doors of my office. There was no time to hesitate. Waiting for the elevator would take too long. I ran for the stairs.
I could hear Keaton’s dress shoes clattering across the steps behind me as I plummeted downwards.
Three dizzying stairwell turns deposited us out into the lobby. The problem was immediately obvious. Ace and Brody Driver were on the floor. Ace was straddling Brody. His fist was raised in the air. Both of them already had bloody faces. Bloody knuckles.
“No!” I thundered. I marched across and caught Ace’s arm just as he intended to make his downswing. He looked up at me in outraged surprise.
“Harvey,” he hissed. “He said –”
“I don’t care what he said,” I told him coldly. “Get up off the floor and go back to your office. Now.”
Ace resisted. I saw it in his eyes. He wasn’t even paying attention to me. I was no longer his boss. No longer someone who could tell him what to do.
He was too angry. Brody was his target and he wasn’t going to let him out of his sights. Not before he had a chance to pull the trigger.
I hauled him up by his arm. He found himself in the air with a shout of surprise. I deposited him on his feet single-handed. There was a moment of scrabbling before he found his balance again. I shoved him towards the elevator. “Go!”
Ace stumbled a couple of steps in the right direction. His eyes remained on the floor. On Brody. He reached up to smear the back of his hand across the cut in his split lip. I watched the message pass through his eyes. This isn’t over.
He squared his shoulders and walked away straight and tall.
I turned my attention to the object of offense. There was a cut and swelling above Brody’s eye that was quite obviously going to leave him with a nice shiner tomorrow. He scrambled backward slightly when he saw me looking at him. It seemed like most of the fight had gone out of him with Ace’s exit.
“Get off my floor,” I snarled at him.
He huffed and got up as if it was a great imposition for me to ask that of him. He was less submissive when he was back on his feet. A surly look dropped over his face.
“Whatever,” he said. “This place is for losers, anyway.”
I snorted. Maybe Ace and I were a good fit to work together. We must have had something in common – because I couldn’t resist getting one jab in. “Doesn’t look to me like you’re any kind of winner.”
He wanted to retort something back at me. I could see it in the way his mouth worked for a second. He must have decided I was more of a risk to antagonize than Ace. He closed his mouth and stalked out of the lobby and back onto the street.
The tension audibly and visibly drained from the people who had come to watch. I waved a dismissive hand in a circle above my head and made direct eye contact with a few of the key personnel. Within seconds they were dissipating back to their proper departments.
All except one.
Keaton Dunbar.
He had seen all of it. He must have been right behind me. He saw how strong and powerful I was. How I was the only person able to wade in between them. How I could lift Ace with one hand.
I was not a vain man. But at this moment I was proud of my body. Proud that I continued to work on it even after my sports career was over. Proud that I could show it off right there in front of the one man I wanted to impress.
And when had that happened?
“I can’t believe they fought,” Keaton said. He cleared his throat a little and pushed his glasses up his nose.
I felt myself deflate just slightly. I was holding out for a wow or a that was amazing. Maybe even a Mr. Harvey you’re so strong do you think you could lift me like that?
Yes, Keaton Dunbar. I could lift you like that and fuck you with one hand around your waist and carry you around the room. Would you like to see me try?
I cleared my own throat. “Back to work,” I said. I didn’t care how abrupt it sounded. The elevator was full so I turned back towards the stairs.
It was a mistake.
Step by agonizing step of listening to his footsteps right behind me.
But there was one saving grace – that I hadn’t made him go first.
For the hundredth time, I wondered whether it was smart to let him carry on working for me. Temptation at literal arm’s length. And for the hundredth time, my baser nature won out against my logic and reason.
Keaton Dunbar would stay.
And maybe one of these days I’d get a wow.
I stalked directly to Ace’s office. He hadn’t bothered to close his door. I marched in with Keaton in tow.
“What the hell were you thinking?” I asked.
Ace was pacing up and down the front of the room. He had his arms folded across his chest and his shoulders bent forward as if he was trying to hug himself. He was starting to look miserable. The adrenaline was no doubt fading and he was realizing what he had done.
“He was so fucking annoying,” he said without missing a step in his pacing.
“He just kept talking and talking and talking. About how we couldn’t even get a sponsorship deal for the best athlete in the world and did we even have the right to call ourselves a sports agency if that was the case and couldn’t I afford a nicer suit.
Just needling. Needle, needle, needle. And I – I wanted to shut him up but we can’t tell him that we know.
We know, Harvey. It’s him. Did Keaton tell you, yet?
It was him who delivered the contract and I just kept looking into his smug fucking face and thinking, you fucking fuck, you might have killed my career, and I… ”
“You punched him.” This was bad news. Ace striking first left us without a leg to stand on. Brody Driver would be within his rights to press charges for assault. The hits on his side would be self-defense.
“I just…” Ace stopped talking and pacing and threw both of his hands up in the air. “I need a cigarette.”
“You stopped smoking six years ago,” I pointed out. I was in the position to know. It had been one of my stipulations if he was going to start working for me. I didn’t want him blowing second-hand smoke into the lungs of my athletes.
“I fucking know!” he exploded.
Ace Park was a lucky man. We had been working together for longer than anyone else. He had spent more time with me over the last six years than anyone else. I had grown to somewhat like him. He had become someone I considered part of my inner circle.
That was the only thing that saved him.
“This happens again and you’re fired,” I told him.
Ace shot a furious look at me. “He started it.”
“You escalated it,” I said. “If you were anyone else then I would have fired you already.”
Ace opened his mouth to reply and then bit his tongue. I watched him retract whatever wounded statement he had wanted to make. He dropped his arms to hug himself again and started pacing.
Keaton cleared his throat. “Do you want me to go get an ice pack for your lip?”
“No,” Ace said.
At the exact same time that I said, “Yes.”
Ace glared at me.
“I am not having my top agent walking around looking like he got into a bar brawl,” I said. “Not when we already have one drunken scandal on our hands.”
Keaton fled the room behind me. I didn’t have to turn to know he was gone. The warmth in the atmosphere dropped and the smell of fresh linen stirred on the breeze and was gone.
“I’m sorry,” Ace said at length. He stopped pacing and dropped into a chair.
“It’s that asshole. He just gets right under my skin.
He knows exactly how to fucking rile me up, every single time.
It’s kind of a miracle I’ve lasted this long.
Why does Coleman keep that fucking asshole working for him? ”
I shrugged with one shoulder. “Why do we keep Quijada on staff?”
Ace paused. Then took a breath. Then choked out a laugh.
I surprised myself by chuckling along with him.
“I mean it,” I said when the mirth had died away. “That was strike one. I don’t give strikes. I give pink slips. Don’t make me regret letting you have a strike.”
“You know I’m not like this,” Ace said miserably.
“Mm.” I left one beat. The topic was done. “Have you and Keaton exhausted your research?”
He shrugged. “For now. Brody will slip up. The fact he came here today proves it. He’s too much of an asshole to just pull something off – he has to go and brag about it, too.
He’s going to fuck up and we’ll be there.
I’m going to speak to the staff at O’Finlays tomorrow and try to see the security footage. Maybe they caught something.”
I didn’t think it likely that he would succeed.
The bar was known for having top-level athletes among its customers.
They wouldn’t hand over tapes to just anyone.
This would likely have to be a police matter first. I wasn’t getting the law involved.
We could work on Ridley’s reputation a thousand ways.
Police reports would drag the story out longer in the press.
He had a big game coming up. First of the season.
Everyone was going to be watching his performance.
Judging his age and his capabilities. Whispering about the hint of a drinking problem.
He had to overcome this scandal so he could play well.
He had to play well so he could beat the rumors that he was aging out of the game.
He had to beat the rumors so he could keep his job – and he had to keep his job so I could keep mine.
“Keaton is mine once he’s fixed your mouth,” I said as I walked out of the door. “Stop trying to steal him from me.”
“I wasn’t…” Ace began.
I turned and gave him a glare that shut him up immediately.
And I walked back to my office to wait for my secretary to come back to me.