Chapter 8
8
I t'd been a while since he'd made a fool of himself. Brogan knocked lightly on Selena's apartment door and waited. He scanned the dark parking lot. He'd lived in Atlanta long enough to know there were worse places, shady areas of the town it wasn't safe to venture into after dark. The hair on the back of his arms stood up. Selena lived here. It was a step higher than a dump, really. Unsafe. He hated it.
He knocked again. Would she actually answer?
“Who is it? I'll call the cops.”
“Please don't.” He readjusted his grip on the wine as he heard several deadbolts and chains unlatching down the door. Her confused face appeared.
“Hi.” Lame opening, but he already doubted his sensibility for showing up unannounced.
And to do what?
He held up the wine. “Your text sounded like you might need some cheering up.”
She nodded, her eyes wide as she stepped back into her apartment .
“Is it alright I came over?” The insecurity rolling through his body didn't sit well. Only Selena made him feel that way. He couldn't separate it between the fear of rejection or the fear of making a big mistake when it came to trusting her—trusting his instinct. He would let down his guard, something he rarely did. He acknowledged that. But he had the wall built around him, keeping employees on one side, for a reason—a very sensible reason.
“Yes. Absolutely.” She smiled, and his muscles relaxed. “Sorry. I would never have thought you'd come over.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “And so late. You strike me as an early to bed, early to rise guy.”
“I am.” He scanned the small, cramped apartment. It wasn't dirty. Boxes of adult items, he guessed for her granny, were stacked in the corner. Selena's sneakers, the ones she wore when she worked, were underneath the coffee table.
Along with her flip flops. A few blankets and a pile of towels sat in one chair. And nothing matched. The furniture was old, maybe thirty or forty years.
“Did you bring that for me?” She tapped on the bottle.
“Yes. For us.” He searched her face. No make-up. No pretense.
“The kitchen is over here.” She turned and led the way. “I didn't think you drank. At least, I don't remember ever seeing you drink when your brothers do.”
He set the wine on the counter. “I don't. Typically.” He didn't like to lose control of himself. Enough embarrassing mornings after getting scuttered had developed the habit of only one or two drinks occasionally. But he needed one if he was going to keep pushing forward with Selena. He wanted to relax. Enjoy the moment.
She passed him a wine opener and pulled two glasses from the cabinets .
“Tell me about the insurance company,” he said.
“Nothing to tell, really. They'll put her in a general care facility—a nursing home. But she needs more than that. I'm trying to get them to cover the cost of a different facility, but they keep saying she doesn't qualify, and they won't pay. So then I took her back to the doctor. He tried another medication.” She made a circle in the air with her finger. “And the merry-go-round starts all over again. And I hate it when she changes meds. This one seemed to disorient her all over again, but it was just the first dose. That may change as her body adjusts.”
“I'm sorry. I know that's frustrating.” He poured them both a glass.
She stood there, waiting.
And he didn't know what to do. Should they stay in the kitchen and sit at the table? That's what a friend would do. Is that what she needed right then? A friend?
He ran a hand over his hair and looked around the kitchen. Worn furniture like the living room. He didn't expect a high class, chrome kitchen judging by the outside of the apartment complex, but he wished she had something a little better. He swallowed a sip of the wine as his next thought rammed into him. He wished he could give her better.
She smirked. “Would you like to go into the living room and sit down?”
“Sure.” Good. He'd let her take the lead on this. He didn't want to have misread her signals. He took a sip of the wine as he sat down beside her, hating Crissy had screwed up his ability to sit next to a beautiful woman and not feel like he was still in grade school. Selena wasn't Crissy.
But if they did give in, and kissed, what happens tomorrow? They'd have to keep it a secret. He'd just fired those two employees for their supply room antics. He drank his wine, hardly tasting it, and thought about the moment with Selena in the same room. He might need to take that door off the hinges. Supply rooms were trouble for him, too.
Selena sipped her wine, watching him over the rim. He set his wine on the table and folded his hands in his lap. “I'm not sure this is a good idea.” He could always leave. They hadn't crossed any line.
“Why did you come here?”
“I'm not sure.”
She leaned forward and sat her wine glass beside his. “Can I be honest with you?”
He chuckled, releasing a little bit of his nervous energy. “Are you not usually?” No other employee talked to him the way she did.
“I hold quite a lot back, actually.” She pursed her lips together. He'd give anything to know what thought ran through her mind. After a moment, she set her hand on his thigh.
His strong reaction to her confused the hell out of him. It wasn't something easy or simple between them. She was complicated in every way possible. With his job. With her granny. But right then, that disappeared.
“When we were in the supply room, and you held me if I'd kissed you, would you have kissed me back?”
He let go of his pride for a millisecond. “Yes.” And then Katie would have discovered them. “But you work for me. I...this....” He couldn't even get it out.
She shifted closer. His saving grace was the hesitancy he saw in her eyes—the small amount of insecurity about pushing things forward so similar to his relieved him.
Could he really blame her? He found stupid reasons to touch her when they were alone and then pushed her as far away as possible.
“So our job, that's the only thing that's bothering you?”
“What else would it be?”
She looked away for a moment, and he wished he knew what thoughts ran through her head.
“Brogan.” She said his name and then sighed. Slowly, she reached up and skimmed her fingertips along the edge of his jaw. “I want to kiss you.” Her eyes dropped to his lips. “And I'll make the first move, so you have no doubt that I want this as much as you do.” Her bottom lip trembled slightly before she caught it with her teeth. “At least I hope that you do.”
She leaned closer.
He did stop her, with a hand on her shoulder. “Selena.” When he got his first taste of her, it wouldn't be with trepidation in her eyes. He'd bear the weight of it for both of them. He wanted this, and he'd make sure she knew it. “You're fired.”
She blinked and started to pull away. “What?”
Then he kissed her, his lips taking away whatever question she started to ask. His hand slipped from her shoulder, along the slender curve of her neck and into her hair.
He tried to stay in control, but the heat kept slipping through with each little moan or movement she made to get closer.
Her hand gripped his wrist as if she had to hold on. The sweet wine on her tongue gave him a buzz, his head spinning with the effect.
Why had he even questioned this? The world clicked together. And that had never happened before. Not with any other woman. A first kiss shouldn't have this much power. Or significance.
“Mama?”
The word broke them apart. Selena closed her eyes a brief second before standing up from the sofa. There, her granny stood, in her faded nightgown looking disoriented. Her white hair stuck out at an odd angle, and she braced herself up on the wall.
“Give me a second, Brogan.” Selena turned her granny around and helped her back to the room adjacent from them.
Selena’s reality slammed into him. She didn't need this complication in her life. He wasn't a good bet, not being her boss. He could never give her anything more than this, secret meetings, only to treat her “normal” during the day. That would be torture. A distraction from his responsibilities to his brothers and their business. Unfair to her.
He rose and pulled his keys from his pocket. He'd wait until she came out, but then he'd leave before he messed their relationship up further.
It was hard as hell to walk away from that feeling of perfection.
“Selena?” Mimi's eyes were unfocused, and she looked around the room wildly as she slipped back into reality. Selena would have to call the doctor in the morning and tell him.
“Yes. You're having a dream, Mimi. C'mon, I'll help you to the restroom and then back to bed.” She walked Mimi back into the bedroom and to the bathroom. By the time she got her a drink of water, Mimi was fully coherent but tired. She climbed back into bed and rolled to face the wall.
Selena waited until she heard the light, steady breathing before leaving the room again. Only when she spotted Brogan, waiting by the front door, did she realize that she'd just up and left him.
“I'm sorry. You won't be the first guy to cut out when they see the reality of what I handle.” She'd just hoped Brogan was different. Because, if he'd felt a quarter of the impact from their kiss, then he couldn't walk away.
His eyebrows shot down tight. “Cut out because of your granny? You think that's what I'm doing?”
“I don't know what you're doing.” She didn't know what she was doing. She crossed her arms, feeling exposed. They'd shared an incredible kiss, one that'd been weeks in the making.
Sweet with a little edge underneath. As she'd expected, Brogan controlled it. For once, his need to be in charge had been precisely what she needed. She'd kissed men before, made the first move. Put herself out there. But not with someone like Brogan. God, she'd been nervous. Until their lips touched.
He sighed and ran a hand over his hair, disheveled. “I admire you for taking care of her this way.”
“But? There's always a but.”
“No buts. It's late. I was going to leave you to it, so you didn't feel the need to rush back out here to me.”
“It's fine. I know having her here changes things.” She hugged herself tighter, hating how petty she felt. Her voice sounded harsh in her ears. “We can just forget this happened if you want.”
“Forget?” He blinked, his blue eyes cautious. “Is that what you want? ”
She knew she didn't want a man that couldn't handle the fact this was her life at the moment. He took another step toward the door. Her heart fell to her stomach.
Better she found out now that he couldn’t handle it than once her heart was really tangled up.
He paused and changed direction, taking three long steps to get to her.
Without warning, he tugged her head back by her hair as his lips met hers. His kiss struck through her body, straight to her toes.
Deep and sensual. Dominating.
She rose on her toes, wrapping her arms around his neck and craving as much as he'd give.
And he gave her plenty to remember him by.
She felt the frustration in his tense body. God, kissing this way, outside of marriage, was probably outlawed in at least twenty-seven countries.
His other hand, splayed across the small of her back, pressed their bodies tight, amping up the intensity of his control over the powerful kiss. Nothing resembled the controlled kiss on the sofa a few minutes earlier.
How was it the same man?
Brogan ended it with the same savagery that he'd started with. He released her hair and stepped away.
They were both out of breath, staring at one another, eyes wide. Part of her wished he'd toss her over his shoulder and cart her off to her bedroom, finish the caveman routine and end the misery.
Instead, he straightened his shoulders and took a solid, deep breath. “You're hired, again.” He turned and walked out of the apartment, leaving her to put the pieces together that he'd shattered with that epic kiss. How had her life changed so dramatically in twenty minutes?