Jackson “How’d he take it?”
Jackson
“How'd he take it?”
I drape my suit jacket over the back of the chair and slide into the seat across from Rose.
She called twenty minutes ago asking me to meet her at Grato, a restaurant bar halfway across town, and my brain interpreted that as get your ass there immediately because I was out the door before she'd even told me why.
I was mid-meeting with our Singapore group when her ringtone, Barbie Girl, started blasting from my phone on the conference table.
I had to silence the call while twelve people watched me do it, which went over like a bag of bricks, although I caught a couple of smirks before everyone remembered we were supposed to be serious executives discussing serious executive shit.
I gave them some bullshit about needing to step away and ended the meeting.
No hesitation whatsoever.
One empty wineglass sits between Rose and me, a second already halfway gone. That's how I know it's bad. Rose doesn't drink like she's trying to empty the bottle unless her brother has made himself someone else's crisis, and lately that's become something of a full-time job.
“Better than I expected.” She turns the stem of her glass in slow circles, watching the wine climb the sides instead of looking at me. “Which means terribly.”
I take a moment to study her while she's avoiding my eyes.
She's still dressed for work, although the top few buttons of her blouse are undone and her hair has started escaping whatever neat arrangement it must have been in this morning.
There's a tiredness around her eyes that wasn't there a few weeks ago, and I fucking hate it because I know exactly who put it there.
A few seconds pass before she finally looks up.
“He said he'd call you.” Her gaze searches mine. “Has he?”
He hasn't.
Why would I think he had?
Bennet Sullivan, her brother, my best friend, business partner, and currently one of the most photographed men in the city for all the wrong reasons, doesn't call the people cleaning up his disasters until they've had sufficient time to ripen.
A few nights ago, he and a handful of the guys we went to university with decided the Pershing Square fountain would be greatly improved by the addition of several half-naked idiots.
Somebody with a phone happened to agree.
By breakfast, pictures were everywhere, and by lunch our communications team was trying to explain why one of the founders of Sullivan & Associates was trending online in his underwear.
I've been furious all weekend. Not because he went out and got drunk.
Fuck, we've all done stupid shit. I'm furious because this isn't one stupid night anymore.
It's becoming a pattern, and every time Bennet does something reckless, Rose ends up sitting somewhere like this, trying to figure out how to save him from himself.
Mostly, though, I'm grateful I had an excuse to skip it.
I spent the weekend fighting with the old man instead, which might be the first time in my life that particular shitshow has saved me from another one.
If I'd been there with Bennet, there's a decent chance I'd have ended up standing waist-deep in chlorinated misdemeanor beside him, and then Rose would be sitting here pissed at both of us.
Actually, no.
She'd be pissed at Bennet. She'd just give me that disappointed look, which is somehow worse.
“He'll surface,” I tell her. “He always does. Usually right around the time it stops being fixable.”
One corner of her mouth quirks up, and there she is. Just enough of Rose breaking through the worry to make something in my chest loosen.
The bartender approaches with my drink, takes one look at her face, sets the glass down without attempting conversation and wisely disappears.
“Smart man,” I mutter.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I heard you.”
“Then why'd you ask?”
She narrows her eyes at me over the rim of her wineglass before taking another sip, and I smile into mine.
That's better.
Rose watches me take my first drink, but I can tell something else is turning over in her head now. Her fingers stop moving around the stem of her glass, and when she looks at me again, some of the frustration with Bennet has been replaced by concern.
“And you?” she asks. “How'd you fare?”
I roll my sleeves to my forearms. “The board's treating me like Bennet's glorified babysitter. But what's new?”
“Join the club.” She lifts her glass an inch off the table in a toast to nobody, the patron saint of cleaning up after Bennet Sullivan.
I tip my glass back at her.
Rose has ten years on her brother, and she's been his keeper for most of them. Every fire I've put out, she put out one first, usually before I knew it was lit. So, when she says it, she's not complaining. She's reporting from a longer service than mine.
Which is exactly why the mood doesn't track.
Bennet being face-down in a scandal isn't new.
It's practically a season we observe. We've spent years two steps behind that man with a mop, a bucket and a statement ready for the press.
She's never once let it put a second glass in her hand before the first was finished.
This isn't about him.
She's been off all day.
And when she called me Marcus on the phone this morning, it stung worse than it had any right to. That's the name she reaches for when she's sealing herself off, bricking up a wall nobody gets a hand into, and I hate it every single time. Hate being on the outside of her.
But I let it go because between the fountain, the firm and whatever else she's carrying, she's already holding more than most people could. I've never been selfish enough to ask her to carry my feelings too.
“What is it?” I ask, tilting my head.
She looks up and studies me for a few seconds. Doesn't say anything, just gives me that long Rose stare that usually means she's deciding how much bullshit I'm feeding her.
“Don't do that.” She shakes her head and takes another drink.
“Don't do what?”
“Act like you can read my mind.”
A smile tugs at one corner of my mouth. “Can't I?”
For half a second something in her shoulders gives, the smallest concession, there and gone. Then she reaches for the bottle and pours herself more wine, concentrating way too fucking hard on not spilling it.
“I found David in my bed cheating on me this morning. When I got home.”
The pour keeps going. She says it to the glass, not to me, as if she keeps her eyes down it'll hurt less.
I'm going to snap that motherfucker's neck. I'm going to find out where he is right now. I'm going to do it slowly, and I'm going to enjoy the snap, crackle, and pop.
“I'm sorry, Rose.”
That's what comes out. But nothing in my tone matches the rage in my bones.
“That fucker.”
“Oh, he was absolutely doing that.”
A giggle slips out of her, then a hiccup right behind it, and she presses her hands to her mouth like she's surprised at herself.
“How long were you here drinking before you called me?”
Her face goes shy.
Actually shy.
Her eyes duck, and there's a little curl at the corner of her mouth she's trying to hide.
Fuck me. Vulnerable Rose has always been my kryptonite.
She's sitting there drunk and embarrassed, trying to hide that little smile, and all I want to do is scoop her out of the chair and take her home.
Unfortunately, my dick has interpreted the situation very differently and I'm hard as a goddamn rail under the table.
Compassion and erections, it turns out, aren't mutually exclusive.
“A while.” She lifts one shoulder. “I knew you'd be in the area at the Singapore meeting. And I needed a safe ride home.”
Safe.
Right. That's me.
The safe friend. The best friend. The brother's-best-friend, nothing-can-ever-happen-here friend. I signed that contract the day Bennet and I graduated eight years ago, and I've honored every line of it since. Doesn't mean a word like safe in her mouth doesn't go in like a goddamn splinter.
“Of course.” I give her a gentle nod. “I'll take you home. Drink as much as you want. I've got you.”
She smiles and tilts her head slightly, taking another sip of her wine while she watches me over the rim. There's something playful in her eyes now, something I don't entirely trust, and the longer she looks at me without saying anything, the more I start to shift in my seat.
“I meant your home.”
Well.
And just like that, the contract's got a fucking crack in it, and she's the one holding the pen.
Her words haven't even finished settling before she's digging through her purse. I watch her rummage around for a few seconds, completely lost as to where this is going, until she finds whatever she's looking for and drops it onto the table between us.
A condom.
I stare at it.
Then at her.
“What do you say, Jackoftrades20?”
The handle throws me for a complete fucking loop.
She remembers it.
Not only does she remember it, she's using it on purpose, and somewhere beneath all that wine she's delighted with herself. I can see it in the little curl of her mouth as she waits for me to respond.
Jesus Christ.
I slap my palm over the condom and sweep the bar in a single glance. Booths, bartender, couple by the window. Nobody seems to be paying us any attention.
Good.
I've never given a damn what a room thinks of me, but I will not let Rosalie Bennett hand some stranger a story about herself because a man eons out of her league broke her heart this morning. She doesn't get to be careless with her own name on my watch.
Not even with me.
Especially not with me.
I slide the condom off the table and into my pocket. The flash in her eyes follows my hand the whole way, and I take a quiet second to have a very serious conversation with the part of me that has already reviewed her proposal and voted yes.
It's not happening.
Stand down.
Don't get happy, motherfucker.
“I'll get you home, Rosalie.” I pull a breath through my teeth and internally kick the selfless idiot I become every single time this woman gets within arm's reach. “But the other part's a no-go, sweetheart.”