Brett Walker is many things to many different people. And he, like everyone else, has a side not many people know about.
You may know him for being a brilliant quarterback whose passion to play the game died the day he graduated Whiskey Key high, but his AP math professor knows him for being the kid who got almost one hundred percent on every test he ever gave him.
Yes, his advanced placement math professor.
One little known fact about Brett Walker is that he is, for all intents and purposes, somewhat of a mathematical genius.
Unfortunately for him, his outward behavior—rumored or true—hides who he is inside. Someone who is bright and brilliant where numbers are concerned.
Just recently his father appointed him as his in-house financial assistant after a string of accounting disasters courtesy of his team of personal assistants. After several instances where Brett fixed all the documents, his father gave him what, I suppose, you could call a promotion.
Now, the financial logging of the entire Walker empire is in twenty-five-year-old Brett’s hands. The responsibility is huge, but he already has a steady system in place that works for him.
In terms of checking his list and its accuracy, Santa Claus could stand to learn a thing or two from him.
If Brett Walker truly were a flaky, disrespectful, irresponsible failure, would his father have given him such an important position—one he created just for him?
That’s for you to decide, but for me, the answer is no. I believe it makes him strong, capable, and smarter than people give him credit for.
Well, fuck.
She turned that right around, didn’t she? And pulling the AP math card—she was right. It was a fact a lot of people either didn’t know or forgot. I might have passed English classes by the skin of my teeth, but I flew through every math class.
Genius was probably an exaggeration, but like words were clearly Lani’s thing, numbers were mine.
I took a deep breath and closed down the PDF reader. The click of the mouse as I tapped ‘reply’ echoed through my silent bedroom, and when it loaded, I clicked on the text box.
From: Brett Walker
To: William Walker
Subject: Re: Fw: Re: Article One
Is that what you’re going to publish?
Dad’s response came in seconds, the tune from the browser pinging through the speakers.
From: William Walker
To: Brett Walker
Subject: Article One
Yes. That’s what’s going to be published. She was much nicer than she needed to be, given the NDA is still sitting on my desk.
Unsigned.
I winced at that. He did have a point.
From: Brett Walker
To: William Walker
Subject: Re: Article One
Point taken. I’ll apologize tomorrow with some sort of grand gesture.
From: William Walker
To: Brett Walker
Subject: Re: Article One
Good luck... You’ll need it.
CHAPTER NINE
LANI
Waking up from a wet dream for the first time in my life wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
It wasn’t the post-orgasmic bliss I’d read about in sexy romance novels or the satiation commonly seen in my movies.
No.
It couldn’t be further from it.
It was, in fact, the painfully uncomfortable ache of hovering on the brink of an orgasm you know will never come.
That’s right. Last night, I’d emailed my article to Brett’s dad and went to bed ragingly pissed off at his audacity and behavior earlier in the day. Then, for some incredibly unfair reason, my subconscious happily turned that anger into arousal.
Three times. Three times I’d woken up on the brink of an orgasm after dreaming about that sexy son of a bitch screwing me into next week.
Bullshit. That’s what it all was. Bullshit. I couldn’t believe for a second that my mind had taken that one kiss and assumed I wanted more. So what if I was turned on after? That was a natural response. If a man kisses me until my head spins like he did, it’s completely reasonable to assume I would be turned on when he was done kissing me.
Natural. Normal. Hormonal.
Those were my reasons, and by god, I was sure as hell going to stick to them.
There was no way that subconscious arousal could become anything more, because if I thought I hated Brett before, I was wrong.
Now? Now I hated him. Not only for the way he spoke to me, but for that damn kiss. Because once upon a time, I’d dreamed of kissing him the way little girls dream of becoming a princess. The idea of it and all the ways I’d thought it would one day happen had consumed my silly little teenage brain.
Yesterday, not only did he curse me forever with the memory of it, he shattered every illusion I’d ever entertained of how it would be. And I didn’t even want him to kiss me.
But when he did, I didn’t want him to stop.
Now, I didn’t know how to stop thinking about it. Every time I looked in the mirror as I got ready for my meeting with Mr. Reeves, all I could focus on was my lips. All I could think about was how tender they were after we broke apart yesterday, and every time I brushed my hair and the brush bristles caught on a tangle, the feeling of his fingers tugging on my hair and my scalp stinging swamped me.
I didn’t want this. I didn’t want any of this.
Yes, I’d pushed him. I knew what I was doing when I all but goaded him into showing me who he really was, but I didn’t know he was...well. That. I didn’t know his mouth was that filthy. I didn’t know he was capable of putting such horribly enticing scenarios into words.
I didn’t know he was capable of making me want him in all the ways he said he wanted me. Just for a moment though. I locked those feelings away the moment I left through the front door and went out to my car. I still needed to get rid of the rental and go and buy something, but only now I’d sent the first article—as short as it was—to William did I feel like I could cash the check.
I still didn’t want to do this, but the money helped. Ten thousand dollars would go so far in helping Connie, and that was before the second check for another ten thousand.
I didn’t know what was really happening in the Walker family, but I knew they were desperate.
I shook all thoughts of Brett out of my head and pulled into the empty space outside the newspaper office. It was still too early for most people to be awake and on the road, so the journey from the house to here had taken mere minutes. It helped that both places were on the same side of town, of course, but still.
The gentle buzz of voices from a TV filled the air the moment I opened the door. Mr. Reeves was sitting at his desk, opposite the TV, with a take-out cup of coffee on a coaster next to his computer.
He glanced up when I walked in. “Morning, Lani. I ran that article on the details of the upcoming paint run you rewrote. It’s going down great on the website.”