I had Isaac drive me straight from my meeting with James back to the penthouse. Ann had already cleaned the bedroom, and the trash was long gone down into the bowels of the building’s incinerator most likely, so I couldn’t check the condoms I’d used last night. I went for the box and emptied it out onto the counter. The packages were black so it wasn’t easily noticeable, but when held to the light, there were holes dead center in about three-quarters of them. Not every condom had been pierced, but a lot of them had.
I started opening condoms and filling them with water from the sink. Drip, drip, drip, right through the tips of the ones that had been poked. Janice, you fiendish cunt.
Well, fuck.
This was not good news.
I should probably tell Brooke, and I was fucking livid at my freak of an ex-girlfriend.
The more I thought about it, though, the more certain I was about not telling Brooke. It was a sordid tale of the twisted person I’d been with right before I met her, as well as the sleazy life I’d been living. I knew Brooke would be repulsed by all of it. But most of all, I was ashamed for Brooke to see me in such a horrible light. She always thanked me for being a gentleman, and I loved that she thought well of me. I was afraid to lose that earned respect in her eyes.
I rationalized the facts. I’d used five of the condoms from this box—four last night and one this morning. If I went with the seventy percent rule, three point five of them were damaged when I used them. But my selection had been totally random when they were spilled around the bathroom and later returned to the box, so it could have been more like two damaged condoms out of the five. Without the actual ones to inspect, I couldn’t be sure. What were the odds Brooke was even in the fertile time of her cycle? She might already be on birth control for all I knew. We hadn’t discussed it yet.
So, if there was some leakage, it still wasn’t like I’d come inside her bare. A few drops max. I hadn’t noticed any leaks when I removed them, but then I didn’t pay too close attention, either, because sex is always messy, and you just want to get the damn thing off your cock as quickly as possible.
I hate this.
But I loved Brooke.
And I wanted her to love me back.
Telling her about Janice, and what she’d done, would poison the beauty of last night. I couldn’t allow that to happen. Thank fuck the locks had been switched out. I didn’t need Janice showing up and confronting Brooke, and something told me she might try it when she returned from Hong Kong. This proved just how unstable Janice was, and I needed to figure out how best to deal with her. Because I wasn’t just going to let this one go. She’d crossed way over the line with this shit.
I made a decision. I gathered up all of the mess and trashed the whole lot of it.
I went into my home office and logged on to Target.com. I ordered new condoms and selected the option to pick up in the store. I forwarded the confirmation to Victoria and told her to pick them up and bring them to the penthouse. I didn’t obsess over the awkwardness of my request, either. She was my personal assistant, and I paid her very well to do a job. If I needed her to pick up condoms, then her job that day was to pick up condoms—what I was fucking paying her to do.
Jesus, I was tense. I needed Brooke to de-stress me with her own particular brand of magic. X-rated images danced through my mind at the thought of exactly how she could accomplish it, too.
Aaaaaand that just led to wondering about what was happening tonight. We hadn’t discussed it, and I imagined she would want to go home to her own house. A fucking depressing thought. I didn’t want her on the Blackstone Island Ferry anymore. The weather was unpredictable and could sink a boat in minutes under bad conditions. The risk to her safety made me mental.
We needed to have a serious talk about a long list of things, but mostly I just wanted to be with her again tonight. I wanted to be with Brooke—pretty simple.
Now that I’d found her I couldn’t be without her.
Pussy. Pussy! PUSSY!
“And what is your point?” I said to my inner demons.
“I have a problem.” There’s something to be said for unburdening your true feelings to someone you care about, because the minute the words were out of my mouth, I felt instantly better. I knew Brooke’s beautiful voice would soothe me even if the building were in flames and crumbling down around me.
“Oh? Tell me about it.”
“Well, I met this beautiful girl, and she has completely captivated me in just a short time of knowing her. Last night . . . aaah, we shared the most amazing night together, and now I can’t stop thinking about her, or wondering when I can see her again.”
She laughed softly into the phone, and I pictured her lips as she did it. “You say this is a problem, but if you like her and she likes you, then why do you call it a problem?”
“Well, that is a very good question. Have I told you yet, how smart you are? If I haven’t, then I’ve been remiss, because I think you are very, very smart.”
“So do you have a problem or not?”
“Oh yes, I have an additional problem.”
“Will you share it with me, Caleb?” she asked with a hint of teasing.
“All right then. You won’t laugh at me?”
“Ahhh, I might possibly laugh, but not at you—only with you—because you are funny.”
“Back to my problem, Brooke.”