Chapter 3
It was another gloriously sunny day filled with hard work, sweat and tears.
Brierley's back was aching after leaning over her desk for so many hours, twisting and turning beads into shapes along thin metal wires.
After their impromptu pep-talk the previous day, Brierley was glad to get back behind her desk, making bracelets with renewed gusto.
Tori had been fussing with one of the displays, trying to make it shine in the brilliant daylight and coming up short as the sun moved across the shop floor.
When Brierley stood up and carried one of her finished pieces over and put it down, her friend gave her a look that told her to drop dead, “Don’t put it there!” Tori shrieked, “It’ll mess up the whole ambience!”
She quickly snaffled the small box up as Tori continued to fuss.
A small pair of stud earrings glittered up at her, and she marvelled at their simplicity.
They were small, shell shapes made from the vibrant-coloured paua shell, which would sparkle in the ears of a beautiful blonde-haired lady.
If only that beautiful blonde would walk through the door and whisk them away!
They were only a cheap pair, too, so someone would get a bargain.
The familiar jingling of the doorbell caught her attention, and she put on her best and brightest smile for the customer, secretly hoping for blonde and beautiful.
Instead, she got broad, green and handsome.
Swept back, dark hair. Side shaved scalp.
Deep eyes that all her favourite romance stories said you could get lost in.
An expertly groomed beard across a strong, chiselled jaw.
All matched with a rebellious streak in the form of a septum piercing dangling beneath broad nostrils.
Her chest suddenly hurt as her heart skipped a beat.
He was a feast for her appreciative eyes, and for the longest moment, she just stared, losing herself in a wistful moment of wishful thinking.
“Good morning,” she finally found her voice. He wasn’t even looking in her direction, but at her wares. That was a good thing, surely? An orc as good-looking as him undoubtedly had a beautiful blonde wife to buy a present for.
“Hi, I’m looking for,” his eyes fell on her for the first time, and she simply gazed up at him, “Brierley!?”
The cadence of his gruff tones did things to her. She firmly filed that reaction away for later. The baritone pitch of his voice was so deep and exotic, right until the last.
Did he just speak my name?
Suddenly, she realised he’d spoken her name with every inch of familiarity.
Her brows knitted together as she struggled to get a sense of rationality into her brain. “Breht?”
The handsome orc was nodding at her with a wide smile plastered behind his sharp tusks. Clearly overjoyed that he’d been recognised.
“It’s good to see you again,” she said.
She could barely acknowledge that the man before her was the young kid from high school, always getting himself into scraps.
There was no mistaking him, though. Rather than the scrawny, bruise-covered kid from the year below, there was a broad, well-built businessman.
Brierley was at a loss for words for the rapid change in the lad who had been on the outskirts of her friend clique at school.
“And you,” he replied, “I didn’t make the connection.”
“What do you mean?” Brierley asked, not understanding what the orc was talking about.
She watched as he dug into his jacket pocket and pulled out a business card.
His suit had been made by the hand of an experienced tailor, and it radiated nothing but pure affluence.
He was an orc of good taste, for the grey suit fitted his muscular frame perfectly.
The sparkle of cufflinks at his wrists captured her attention, and she had the brisk thought of trying to sell him the pair of abalone-covered links that were displayed behind her.
The gesture for her to take his card was reissued. She took it eagerly from his hands and saw the dreaded embossed columns of the logo Merloft in the top corner. “I’m here from Merloft Corp.”
“Of course,” she said, tapping the card on her fingers. Talking with gestures of her hands as she always did when she started to become agitated.
She should have known that the orc hadn’t just come into her shop dressed to the nines to sweep her off her feet.
Fixing all her problems and making life instantly work out for the better!
But, in that fleeting moment, where she’d recognised him, somehow she had wanted to believe he was here to do just that.
He paused, clearing his throat. "I—" He smiled, self-conscious. "I had this whole speech planned on the drive over." He shook his head slightly. "It's completely gone."
He took a breath, collecting himself. Mouthing a few words before he started.
"As you know, we've recently acquired this block of buildings. Which means increasing demands."
"Rent," Brierley interjected. All thought of endearment towards him vanished the instant he started speaking corporate at her.
"On your business, and I'm here to offer my assistance in bolstering your profit margins and, ultimately, helping you survive the storm ahead."
In terms of pitches, it wasn’t much to go on and, in truth, came across as a bit arrogant.
But Brierley had been distracted when Tori had come up behind the broad-shouldered orc and made inappropriate gestures with her hand and mouth towards him.
She tried her absolute best to keep a straight face in light of her friend's foolishness, regardless of her agreement.
“What if I say, ‘No, thank you?” Brierley asked. “Will I be kicked out?”
“I can’t say what the future of these buildings will be, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Surely, the chance of making more than two hundred a month net profit would be beneficial?”
Brierley felt her face fall. Clearly, the little scamp from school was still in there, pushing for a fight, and he wouldn’t back down just because she’d insinuated she wasn’t interested. She felt her defensive walls rise and say, “How about I give you a call?” She indicated the card in her hand.
“I’d like that very much.”
She could taste the emphasis in his words, and the purr with which they were delivered, and a sudden flush came over her.
She laughed, a childish, nervous giggle that she hadn’t meant.
She held the business card a little tighter in her fingers as he waved with a flick of the hand as he exited the door.
To say that she was intrigued by the return of her old friend was an understatement.
The confidence with which he spoke attracted her, despite the circumstances.
Underneath the pressing matters of her business, there was something else.
The sweet, inappropriate lure of attraction.
Brierley stood there long after he had gone.
Lost in a swirling sea of her own thoughts.
Somehow, the atrocious state of her business wasn’t at the forefront.
It was only when Tori came at her with a slide across the wooden floor the word, “Sooooo,” was dragged out across her mouth. “What do you think?”
Brierley looked at the card still in her hands, “I don’t know.
Do we really need additional help? It feels so invasive.
What if he tries to change everything? My heart and soul are in this place, I’d hate for it to become all corporate and impersonal,” she answered her friend’s inquiry.
Believing she meant to ask what she thought about his business proposition.
Tori quirked a grin and added, “I was thinking he had a mighty fine ass, but that’s just me!”
Brierley flicked the card at her friend and sounded a non-committal agreement. But, she wasn’t going to argue. Every girl was crazy about a sharp-dressed man! Especially one that radiated confidence. Even if they dished out the dirty secrets she’d been trying to hide about her store.
“Are you seriously only making two hundred a month from this place?” Tori said, reclining against the edge of one of the tables.
“Yeah, and that’s on a good month,” Brierley admitted.
There was no point in denying the take-home anymore.
Not now that the truth was out of the bag.
After all the expenses, rent and lack of customers willing to part with their money, Ohpaua was in dire straits and, if she admitted it, needed some sort of divine intervention in getting it back on its own two feet again.
“Then you have got to give him a call. I don’t get all that business pitch talk, but if he’s saying he could help you, then you grab that guy with both hands and don’t let go, you hear me?”
Her fingers took the card as it was offered to her once again, and she rapped it on her knuckles.
“I’ll think about it,” she gave the same answer to her friend as she had to the businessman.
Sure, he looked good. But, she couldn’t get the image of the young scamp out of her head.
Could she trust someone who’d been so wild in school to have all the answers now?
She shook her head, he wouldn’t be dressed so fine and hold such a prestigious position in a company like Merloft Corp on good faith alone.
So, what was it that was really making her reluctant to jump in and make changes?
The attachments she had to her business and the fear that she could lose everything she had ever built up.
She’d worked so hard, put everything she had into the jewellery business, and if it faltered and lost its way now, she’d be crushed.
But she couldn’t survive on the low income for much longer.
Her savings were dwindling due to the everyday cost of living.
The touch of Tori’s hand rubbing her shoulder came on the wave of welcome comfort. Brierley placed her own fingers across her friends in gratitude.
“And, you know, spending more time with Mr Orc might be good fun. How do you know him anyway?”
“School,” Brierley replied. “He was in the year below…”
“Oooh, toy boy!” Tori grinned.
“But, he sorta clung to my group of friends. We were the alternative crowd at school, and he was just there,” Brierley explained. “I didn’t know him well, though; he was always getting into trouble and picking fights. I guess things came good for him in the end.”
“That’s what happens when your Mummy-Dearest is CEO of Merloft Corp,” Tori said, looking at her phone as Brierley was explaining. Already looking on the internet for a sliver of gossip about the orc that had just fallen in her friend's lap.
Brierley looked at the screen as it was shoved under her nose, grabbing hold of Tori’s wrist so that she could see it properly. The photograph was an uncomfortable-looking family portrait.
They were gathered outside the front of their corporate headquarters, with none of them looking in the same direction.
Dura, Merloft Corps CEO, was looking dutifully into the camera without a trace of a smile on her small tusked mouth.
Standing smartly in an immaculately pressed skirt suit.
Breht was distracted by something in the middle distance, but looked glorious in his dark-blue suit jacket.
At his side, looking up at him, with her hand wrapped around his waist, was a beautiful, blonde woman.
Brierley's smile faded. She passed the phone back to Tori without a word.