This time I laughed. “You’re not serious.”
“I’m very serious. He has sushi for lunch every day, and I swear every time he opens his mouth, it smells like dead fish.”
I chuckled again and closed my eyes, letting myself enjoy him. He was so charming and funny, exactly like I remembered him. But over all the years when I’d thought about him, when I’d wondered about him, he’d never been the one to make me orgasm in the dark.
I had to go.
I opened my eyes. “Weston.”
“Sabrina.”
“I need to leave.”
A beat passed. “I know.”
I tried to stand up, but his grip on me tightened. “You have to let me go first.”
“If I must,” he sighed and let me go.
I stood and smoothed my skirt. Then I turned back to him as I put on my camisole.
Weston sat forward and draped his arms around his propped up knees. “Seriously, though. Come work for me.”
“Seriously, though.” I turned around to peek in his dresser mirror and ran my fingers through my hair. “You haven’t even seen my resume.” He’d take one look and offer me an entry-level position, and then I’d just be another one of those women who’d fucked their way into a job. Not what I was looking for.
“You graduated a year early from high school. You were at Harvard on full scholarship,” he said, repeating things I’d told him over the weekend. Then he told me something new. “Donovan said you were by far the person with the most potential in any of his classes.”
My hand slowed at the mention of the one person who could always get my attention. Like I was a paper clip buried in the ground, and his name was the most powerful metal detector around. “Donovan talked about me?”
“Once.” Weston climbed out of bed while he spoke. “The day you and I had lunch, I think. He gave me shit about hanging out with you because you were the brightest student with the most potential, and you didn’t need to be dragged down and distracted by the likes of me.”
Donovan had been Weston’s friend and roommate, but he was older than us and had also been the teacher’s assistant for our business ethics class. And he’d been so much more to me.
But that hadn’t given him the right to try to keep Weston and me apart. It was ten years ago, and the mention of it now irked me. It also made me a little bit smug, and that made me even more irked.
“That doesn’t seem like something that was any of his concern,” I said as Weston reached in front of me to open a dresser drawer and pull out a pair of red boxer briefs. “What did you say to him?”
“That it didn’t seem like something that was any of his concern.” He stepped into his underwear, tucking his cock into place. “As your teacher, he seemed to think it was. If I remember right, it caused one of our bigger arguments back then. In the end, we agreed to disagree. His mention of it in the first place made me all the more eager to see you. And that made me all the more disappointed when you didn’t show up.”
Weston began gathering his clothes from around the room, and I sank onto the edge of the bed, taking this in. I’d had lunch with Weston and then he and Donovan had argued about me. After which, Donovan had given me an F that I hadn’t deserved leading to our own fight, and before I knew it, I’d ended up losing my virginity to a man who’d been both a hero and a demon to me.
It remained the single most erotic moment of my life.
But the whole thing had been fucked up. And, afterward, he’d turned cold. From then on, I stayed away from men like him. Every man I’d dated had been fun and kind and good. Like Weston. Good guys who never worked out. Every relationship felt lacking, and if it was a sign that I needed to have a fucked up sex life to feel truly complete, then I was prepared to never be whole.
Because I didn’t think I could get swept into a cyclone like Donovan again and survive.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find a way to get a hold of you back then,” I said, watching Weston straighten the room. My date with him had been the last thing on my mind after my father’s death, but I could have tried harder. I probably could have tried harder with any of the good guys I’d dated.
“I’m just glad you found me now.” He winked. “Come work for me.”
I let out a huff of exasperation. “You never quit, do you?”
“I’m tenacious. It’s one of my best qualities.”
What if he really was serious? Not about a relationship, but about a job? Could I come work for him? Entry-level was at least a start. I was years behind, but I could gain some ground, couldn’t I? Still end up where I was meant to be, playing hardball in the big league.
It was something to consider…
From where I was seated, I spotted the heel of my shoe poking out from behind the window curtain. “What made you and Donovan decide to go into advertising together?” I asked as I headed over to grab it. “Why didn’t you join your father’s investment firm?” King-Kincaid was one of the biggest investment firms in the world. Both Weston and Donovan were wealthier than I could ever imagine. Neither of them had to work at all, and they’d started a business in a completely different field.
“There were a lot of reasons. We wanted something that was just ours, you know? Something that we built ourselves. I didn’t want to be handed everything. I wanted to know if I could do it on my own. Donovan also had a problem with some of the ethical choices that our fathers’ firm has made in order to increase profits.”
“Really?” That had been the topic we’d argued about in my class assignment. “The Donovan that I remember had little regard for ethics.”
“He changed his mind about a few things since college for whatever reason.”
Was it vain of me to wonder if I had contributed to his change of mind?
“As for advertising, that was Donovan’s idea. We knew Nate, who was also interested, so he came on board. Then we found Dylan Locke and Cade Warren and we had a team. At first, we planned to all stay in New York, each of us running a different department, but after our first year, we decided to go international. Donovan volunteered to open the Tokyo office with Cade. Dylan went to London, and we’ve been operating like that for the last four years.”
I found my other shoe at the bottom of the bed and slipped it on while I thought about Donovan all the way on the other side of the world. I felt safer, somehow, knowing that that’s where he was. Far away. Far from me.
Yet, even from that distance, I could feel his pull. Did he have that same pull on Weston?
Slipping a foot into my shoe, I studied the man who’d given me an incredible weekend. “It must be hard to be so far from Donovan. You thought of him like a brother back in college.”