THIRTY-THREE
STILL ON HER BACK beneath him, her love for the position didn’t totally cloud her mind.
“Wait…” she said, playing through Julius’s words. “Who was in my panties today?”
“Tripp,” Julius answered.
Shock loosened her jaw. He honestly thought… She shoved at Brogan to get him off her.
Sitting up, she tossed her hair from her face. “You think I slept with Tripp?”
“I prefer that visual to the one of you with Gault,” he said. “Though neither are as appealing as you right here.”
Swatting his hand away when he reached for her, Gia shifted further up the bed.
“We’ve been broken up for five days and you think I’m shopping for replacements? Geez, Mister, we were together five weeks and more comfortable kissing than breathing. You think I’d fall into bed with a new guy overnight? You’re just like my father.”
Driving her fists into the mattress, she pushed up to get off the bed. “Babe,” he called out and tried to catch her. Not a chance. She swerved and went to swipe her robe from the floor. “Irish, come on, don’t storm out of here upset… Speak to me. Why did you knock on my door?”
Tying her robe, she put her own emotions aside to be pragmatic. “I have to go to Mexico.”
“Okay,” he said, sliding to the end of the bed to put his feet flat on the floor. “When do we leave?”
“Brogan,” Julius warned.
Politeness won out, so she stayed civil. “Me. Not we. I have to go to Mexico.”
“You think I’d let you go to Mexico alone?
The jet is sitting doing nothing. I have a friend with a resort down there.
” Leaning forward, he snagged her hand and steered her forward to stand between his knees.
“Is this trip time-sensitive? We could sail to Cancun from right here… and this isn’t an extravagant show of wealth, it’s about trapping you out on the water and us sharing nothing but time. ”
He’d never been much of a charmer, not until he’d put on his complete honesty hat.
“Don’t you have a company to buy?”
“Thank God somebody’s smart enough to remember that,” Julius said somewhere in the background.
Gia sank onto her knees in front of Brogan, sliding her splayed fingers up the front of his thighs. “Why would I want to be trapped with you? You broke up with me.”
“Julius told me to do it,” he said, touching her face.
“Uh…” the older man didn’t accept that. “I said if you weren’t going to marry her, it was unfair to string her along.”
“You broke up with me because you didn’t want to marry me?
” she asked and cocked her head. “Who said I wanted to get married? You told me your views on marriage on our first date. I know who you are, Brogan Spurn, every infuriating, generous, aggravating, precious inch of you. And you broke my heart.”
His hands opened, scooping up beneath her chin to her jaw.
Cupping her face, he tipped her head back. “Which I wouldn’t have been able to do if this was fake.”
And those were the words. The magic words that tilted the world on its axis.
“Do you want me to fake it, Mister?” she murmured.
“Have you ever faked it with me?”
Her eyes drifted shut and he drew her higher as she shook her head. “Never.”
“Let’s keep it that way.”
When his lips touched hers, she dug her nails in deep. If she let them wander all on their own…
“I don’t mind admitting that I’m confused,” Julius said. “Are you getting back together? Were you ever together? Is this more of the same? What about Gault and Tripp?”
As far as she could tell, it was one of Julius’s questions that led to their break-up. Brogan drew back and she could only read admiration in his worshipping eyes.
“I can answer one of your questions,” Brogan said.
“Which one?” Julius asked.
“The thing I’m most looking forward to today is this beautiful creature right here.”
Her smile grew and his nose brushed across hers. “That was a question from several hours ago,” Julius said. “Want to field any of the new ones?”
A knock on the door didn’t distract her or Brogan.
Julius groaned and went toward it. “How many women were you trying to squeeze into my absence?”
“Do you have a date tonight?” Gia asked. “Is that who’s knocking?”
“No. It’ll be Jenna,” he said. “And there’s nothing going on here she hasn’t seen before.”
“I’m not sure if we have a plan,” Julius said, his voice returning to the room.
“No worries,” Tripp replied. “I can go with the flow.”
Ah, Tripp, not Jenna.
“Hi,” she said.
“Guess now I know why you didn’t answer your door, Gia,” Tripp said. “Everything okay?”
“I have to go to Mexico,” she said, rising to full height.
His eyes traveled down her. “In your robe? Not judging, I’m a fan. Press shouldn’t be around. Let’s do it.”
“I got unexpected news,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking about clothes when I left my room, I had to get to my father and—”
“You were doing the rounds, saying goodbye. Have you spoken to Gault?”
“No,” she said, chewing her lip. The news could cause a kink or two. “You remember what we talked about, right?”
Tripp nodded once.
“What?” Brogan asked. “What did you talk about?”
With no idea how to answer, she could only look to Tripp. Luckily, he did the talking for her.
“Gia and I are on the inside of the negotiation and decision process,” Tripp said. “We can’t discuss anything with those on the outside.”
“On the outside?” Julius said. “Gault met Gia for the first time yesterday.”
“Yeah,” Tripp said, turning to him. “And he was pumping her for business advice… bad choice of words, he was… appealing to her for business advice.”
“He thought I’d be able to advise him given my family and most recent boyfriend,” she said. “I couldn’t really offer much without the collaboration of someone I’d trust to make smart choices.”
She opened a hand toward Tripp who smiled.
“Gia’s a smart woman, she’s kept me close.
” Tripp looked at Julius and Brogan in turn.
“One of your best friends who’ll help Gault make this decision, just five days after you broke her heart.
The words you’re looking for are, ‘thank you, Gianna. You’re smart and beautiful and we’re forever beholden to you’ need me to say it again? ”
“We don’t have to get into that,” Gia said. The last thing she wanted was Brogan thinking she’d still hankered after him even while they were over… though what they’d just done on the bed might have given that away. “Can I trust you to hold this together?”
“What’s in Mexico?” Tripp asked. “Mom is in Chile if you have a sudden desire to travel, she’d love to have you. Take Brogan’s jet, it’s just sitting there.”
“She knows the jet is at her disposal,” Brogan said.
Tripp bobbed his head.
With her eyes closed, she held out her hands, desperate to stop the madness. “I don’t need anyone’s jet, and I have no desire for anything. I have to meet a man who may or may not know the whereabouts of my best friend’s boyfriend.”
“Jarrod,” Brogan muttered.
“Yes,” she said and turned herself toward him. “And in the spirit of that, I know I said I didn’t want charity, but I’m stuck. I need ten thousand dollars.” After a few seconds of processing, he looked up at her. “I swear I’ll make this right with you, whatever it takes, I—”
“No.”
Brogan? This was Brogan and he’d just… he’d never denied her. While he had every right to, the word felt odd on her ears coming from his tongue.
“Anything… name your quid, whatever you want, I—”
“No quid,” he said and rose so close that she had to sway backward.
“There’s no chance of me sending you to Mexico alone with nothing but loose change and a vague hope.
” Putting an arm around her, he prevented her from backing away.
“Julius, send one of our people. Have him get in touch with the PI…” he paused to look down at her. “This is coming from him, right?”
She nodded. “He, uh… he’s already in Mexico, he has leads.”
“Okay, whatever,” Brogan said, pulling her close again. “Send our people, have them liaise with him. If this is genuine, they won’t care who they’re dealing with and if it costs more money to have them deal with men as opposed to women, compensate them.”
“The PI thinks Jarrod will be more comfortable trusting someone he knows.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to be you,” Brogan said. “This has gone on long enough, figure it out. Get the idiot back to Manhattan.”
“Sure thing,” Julius said.
“If he’s looking for a familiar face…” Tripp said. “I’ve got one of those.”
Brogan nodded once, authorizing Julius. A few seconds later the door closed and there was nothing but silence left.
For half a minute, she just breathed. “Figure it out,” she muttered. “If it was as easy as that, why didn’t you say it six weeks ago?”
“If I’d said it six weeks ago, I wouldn’t have had an excuse to get close to you, would I?”
Tipping her head back, she tried to decide if he was joking or making fun of her. “Shanna’s expecting to go down there.”
Kissing the top of her head, he took his arm from around her and went to the nightstand.
Picking up his cellphone, he tossed it to the foot of the bed. “Call her and tell her I’m handling it.”
“She thinks we’re broken up,” Gia said, picking up the phone, paying little attention to Brogan opening his nightstand drawer.
He came back to her with a pile of things. What was he—he dumped her checkbook, credit card, and SG security pass in her hands with the phone.
“You can straighten her out on that too,” he said, putting a hand to the back of her neck to pull her up for a kiss. “I’ll take care of this, baby, I promise. Trust me?”
She put a hand on his chest to ease him away. “This is complicated, Mister,” she said. “My family, Gault, Julius told you to finish with me if we weren’t going to get married.”
“Yeah, he did,” he said and squeezed her ass.
“So, what?” she asked. “We’re back to what we were?”
If he was paying for Shanna’s crusade, she was obliged to keep up her end of the deal and chalk their break-up to a blip.
“Go put on your pretty dress and let me show you off.”
A little nervous, she was subtle about wetting her lips, but he could probably sense her anxiety when she dropped eye contact. “Brogan, Gault—”