End Game by Lisa Renee Jones
By late afternoon we’ve changed into jeans again, and Shane wants to show me the city. So we start walking, and the hours that follow include talking, eating, and just being together. The sun is starting to set when we arrive back at our building, and Shane suggests we stop in a wine bar in the second tower. We head that way and claim a table by a window that allows us a view of the horses and carriages lined up along Central Park.
“What kind of wine would you like?” he asks, glancing at the menu.
“Surprise me,” I say. “It will be fun to try something new.”
Those blue flecks in his gray eyes light with approval, but when the first glass of wine arrives, it’s dry and bitter, and my nose crinkles of its own accord. He laughs and motions for the waiter. “This time you sample first.”
I sample four wines to finally find one that I like, but once I receive the full glass, my stomach rumbles loudly before I ever take a sip. Shane grins and slides the bowl of candy-coated nuts that came on our table in front of me. “I’d say that’s a sign we should get the check, and we can either go somewhere to eat or order in.”
“Order in,” I say. “I’m kind of obsessed with that apartment.”
“Shane?”
I glance up to find a good-looking man with salt-and-pepper hair, in an obviously expensive brown suit with a hint of red plaid in it that matches his tie. “Freddy,” Shane says, standing to shake his hand.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were in town?” Freddy asks, unbuttoning his jacket to slide his hands to his lean waist. “You know the firm is a few floors up in this very building.”
My eyes go wide. “The firm is here?”
“It is,” Freddy says, eying Shane. “You told her about the firm but not that it’s in this building. Interesting. I repeat: Why didn’t you call? You know you wanted to call.”
“The location of the firm is irrelevant,” Shane says. “And you know why I didn’t call. Nothing has changed.”
“But it has.” Freddy looks in my direction. “You have a new companion, who is quite lovely, I might add.”
My cheeks heat. “Thank you.”
“Emily,” Shane says. “This is my ex-boss, Freddy Woods, but we call him Maverick in the courtroom. And Freddy, this is Emily Stevens, who is soon to be Emily Brandon.”
Freddy arches a brow at Shane. “Engaged. Another interesting development. Now I know who to plead my case to.” He shifts his gaze back to me. “Nice to meet you, Emily.” He grabs a chair and pulls it to the end of the table. “How do you feel about New York?”
“I love it,” I say, glancing at Shane, who reclaims his seat and says, “What he’s doing right now is why I didn’t call him.”
“How do you feel about living in New York?” Freddy asks, still focusing on me, ignoring Shane.
“Rein it in, Maverick,” Shane warns.
“You want him to come back to work for you?” I ask. “I mean, that’s the obvious message here, right?”
“I want him to do more than come back to work for us,” Freddy says. “I want him to be the youngest partner in our history.”
My gaze jerks to Shane’s, a question in my eyes.
“He knows I have a company to run,” Shane replies.
“And I also know,” Freddy interjects, “that you’re too damn good in a courtroom to stay away.” He looks between us. “I don’t want to interrupt your night out, but Shane,” he adds, refocusing on him, “let’s set a time to talk before you leave. Give me an hour to pitch an idea I have to make this work.”
“Why don’t you two talk now?” I suggest quickly, knowing that Shane wants to hear what Freddy has to say, even if he won’t admit it to himself. And what he wants I want, and I don’t see why he can’t have the best of both worlds anyway, past and present. Given the way things have unfolded.
“I don’t want to interrupt any more than I have,” Freddy says.
“Nonsense,” I say, glancing at the clock on my phone. “I have a lifetime with Shane, and I also have just enough time to sneak to the mall in the building.” I slide my purse to my shoulder and stand. Shane doesn’t look pleased, and I can almost see him sway, ready to stand and halt my departure. “There’s no reason to worry,” I say, trying to remind him we’re past our troubles. “I won’t torture you with shopping. I’ll be back at the apartment long before you two are done, I’m sure. I’ll text you so you don’t have to hunt me down.”
“Looks like you got yourself a keeper here, Shane,” Freddy says. “My wife expects me to grin and bear it.” He gives me a smile. “Thank you, Emily. I’ll try to make this worth your while.”
“Make it worth Shane’s,” I say. “Not mine.” I look at Shane, making sure he’s okay with my plan here, not because he’s the boss of me in some way, but because, the truth is, the loss of his brother is still too recent not to be raw. Shane is slow to respond, probably reminding himself of all the reasons danger is behind me, and us, but finally he nods. “The escalators will take you to the mall.”
“Got it,” I say. “I’ll text you,” I repeat, and turn away before he can change his mind.
Exiting the bar, I enter the main lobby of the building to find it busy, people hustling and bustling here and there. Scanning, I find the escalator and start walking, noting the coffee shop, gift shop, and mail store on the lower level with interest, considering it looks like we may be here often. I’ve just stepped onto the escalator when an odd sense of unease rolls through me, which I quickly attribute to being out on my own for the first time in months. Still, I find myself twisting around to look behind me, discovering the closest person to me to be a couple of teenagers who are chattering to themselves and have no interest in me.
I exit the escalator and discover brand-name stores left and right, as well as another escalator to stores up another level. Since I really have no specific item I’m looking for, I decide to just stroll and see what draws my attention. I wander in and out of stores and grab a couple small items: a T-shirt that catches my eye. A few toiletry items. An eye shadow palette I love, my mind already thinking of our makeup line, which I hope to launch right after the fashion line. Each time I enter a store, that weird feeling eases just a little. Each time I step back into the public area, it screams a little louder in my head.
It’s really crazy, though. The mall isn’t that busy. And I’m in jeans and a T-shirt, only my Chanel purse worthy of attention at all. The unease is really working me over, though, and I’m about to head to the apartment when I pass a Swarovski store and spot a gorgeous miniature crystal lion in the window. I immediately halt and then enter the store, and the instant I discover they also have an eagle, I break out the credit card in my wallet.
Excited about my gifts for Shane, I am done shopping and I make my way down the escalator, but as I step into the busy lobby, that uneasy feeling becomes almost tangible. With no easy connection from tower to tower to see, despite knowing it must exist, I cross to the front door and exit to the street, only to be rammed by someone. I gasp and stumble, a stranger catching my arm. “Are you okay?”
I blink up at the tall, muscular man with dark hair and eyes. “Yes,” I say. “Thank you.” But that uneasy feeling is back, and I pull my arm away, dart around him, and hurry several feet to enter the apartment building.
Once I’m in the lobby, I juggle the awkwardness of my bags and all but run to the elevators. I’m quickly inside a car on my way to our floor, choosing to ignore the view behind me to watch the doors, the time ticking by in what feels like slow motion. I pull my phone out of my purse, but I don’t text Shane yet. I just want to be in the apartment first. The doors open, and I rush into the hallway, wasting no time covering the distance to our door and keying in the code. The door pops right open, but I start thinking about the Geminis and how easy it would be for someone like my brother to hack that code. That thought makes it really hard for me to enter the apartment, but the hallway isn’t much better, and I’m just making myself crazy. Everyone in that
I think of the fear I wrote about in my journal and how easily it can consume those it has found. It can’t consume me. It can’t win. I text Shane: I’m walking into the apartment now. I shove open the door. Flipping on the light, I walk inside and lock the door. I stand there, listening for anything that sounds wrong, but I hear nothing. I feel nothing, I realize. That uneasy feeling is gone. I press my hand to my face. Have I developed some sort of paranoia? Please no. Tell me no. No! I have not. Shane and I are both just letting recent events control us. We have to talk about this and get over it together, or we’ll keep re-creating it in each other.
I push off the door and walk down the hallway, entering the living and dining area. Scanning to be safe, I see nothing odd and feel nothing odd. Tension uncurls in my belly and shoulders, and I head to my left and down the hallway. Entering the master bedroom, I flip on the lights, inhaling the familiar spice in the air that is so Shane, and walk to the bathroom to repeat the process. My final stop is the closet, where I deposit my bags. Retrieving the gifts for Shane from one of them, I remove them from the boxes and return to the bedroom to set them on the nightstand by his side of the bed.
Excited for the moment he spots them, I return to the bathroom, start running a hot bath, and add sweet floral bubbles I bought at the mall to the water. A few minutes later I am naked in the tub, my journal on the slender table that runs between the tub and the window. But instead of writing, I stare out at the city lights speckling the now dark sky, and I have this sense of being where I belong. Where Shane and I belong, which is why I hate that I had that mini freak-out while shopping. I don’t want to create worry in Shane. My brother is not an issue anymore. And Martina isn’t here. Mike Rogers isn’t here. Shane’s father isn’t here. This is our place.
The sound of the door opening and shutting fills the air, and I can hear Shane’s steady, confident footsteps. A full minute, maybe two, later, he appears in the doorway, his expression unreadable, heavy, dark, like his energy, those broken pieces I’d written about yesterday almost certainly cutting him, and deeply. He wants to be here in this city, doing the legal work he loves. He thinks he can’t, but never do I think this is about me holding him back. This is about him and, knowing him, I don’t ask questions. He’s not ready to talk.
As if driving home that point, his eyes glint and he pulls his shirt over his head. Adrenaline rushes through me, and in moments he’s naked too, his hard, long lean body perfection, his shaft jutting forward. I sit up, exposing my naked, wet breasts. His gaze rakes over them, hot and hungry, and before I know his intent, he’s pulling me to my feet, his arm wrapping around my waist, and he drags me to him and out of the tub. Water pools at our feet, but he doesn’t seem to care. His fingers are tangled in my hair. His hands cup my breasts, fingers teasing my nipples. And when his tongue licks into my mouth, I can taste the demand, the hunger that he needs to feed.
He turns us and sets me on the counter, his lips lifting from mine, his breath mingling with mine, but he doesn’t linger. His fingers stroke into my sex, and when I expect his urgency, him inside me, that’s not what happens. He’s suddenly on his knees, spreading my legs, his mouth on my clit like he needs to own my pleasure, to control me right now. But it’s not about me and I know this, though, oh God. The strokes of his tongue, his fingers inside me, feels … a lot about me right … now. I am so close to—
His mouth and fingers are suddenly gone, and he’s standing. “You come with me.” He presses inside me, filling me, stretching me, and he’s so damn hard, it’s brutal, sweet, bliss. He drives deep, tangling his fingers in my hair, and his mouth closes down on me, the taste of him now salty, sweet, me. It’s what he wants, I think. It’s about control, I think again, his hand splaying between my shoulder blades, his lips torn from mine as he cups my backside and lifts me. I think he will hold me, fuck me, right there, but instead he carries me to the bedroom, settling me on my back and him on top. He rolls and pulls me on top of him.
“Ride me, sweetheart,” he orders softly.
I sit up, his hands anchoring me at my hips, his gaze hot all over again. I’m hot all over again. He watches me. Every sway of my breasts. Every thrust of my hips. I lean back, my hands on his legs, and he sits up, cupping my breasts, stroking them. His hand is back between my shoulder blades, bracing me as his lips and tongue tease my nipples. Kissing them. Kissing me, and he tastes different now. Still dark, but more passionate in his demand. I wrap my arms around his neck and he buries his face in mine and we rock and sway into that place of no return. Until we are both trembling. Quaking. I collapse against him, and he holds me but doesn’t move. For a full minute we sit there, in the aftermath, and I think of what brought us here tonight and long before.
I push back, my hands on his shoulders, and look at him. “Talk to me. Tell me about the meeting with Freddy.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” He rolls me to my back. “He wants me back. I said no.” He glances at the nightstand. “The lion and the eagle.”
“You,” I say. “They’re both you. And you can be those things here.”
“I love the gift, Emily, and what you are trying to do, but I said no to his offer.” He pulls out of me. “I’ll get you a towel.” He walks to the bathroom, and I scramble to the nightstand, grab a tissue, quickly right myself, and pursue him.
I reach him as he appears in the doorway, his jeans back on, low-slung and unzipped, a towel in his hand. “We can live here. The company looks different now. It can work and work well with the fashion brand.”
“My father is still terminal. At any moment I can get pulled back there.”
“Not to run a company.”
“We have a board.”
“That just wants to make money. Keep the fashion brand. Make that Brandon Enterprises. And you take the partner role at your firm.”
“It’s not my firm, but Brandon Enterprises is my company. I can’t be an active partner in any firm and be CEO of ours.”
“We can find a way to make it work. I know we can.”
He picks me up, sets me on the counter, then grabs my robe from behind the door and slides it around me. I push my arms into the sleeves and he ties the sash. “Let’s order dinner.”
I want to push him to talk about this, more so to take this job, but I sense that’s not what he needs from me right now. “Let’s order dinner,” I agree instead, and not long after, we settle into the room where he proposed, his—now our—“thinking room,” and when we’re done stuffing our faces with Chinese food, we lie on our backs and stare at the sky, counting stars. Sensing the rough edges of his mood have softened, I dare to ask, “Why do you call Freddy ‘Maverick’?”
To my pleasure, he laughs and glances over at me. “Because it’s better than calling him ‘dumbass.’”
I laugh now too. “He didn’t seem dumb at all. He wants to hire you again and make you partner.”
“Because he needs someone to save his dumb ass.”
“Okay, tell me what that means.”
“He goes at cases in ways that make not one bit of fucking sense, and I’m always sure he’ll end up dead or at least bleeding. But he doesn’t break the law in the process and his unorthodox ways always work for him. I swear, the man has some voodoo magic working for him.”
“You admire him,” I observe.
He surprises me by saying, “He’s the man my father could have been but chose not to be.”
I reach up and stroke his jaw, and I want to push him again. I do. So very badly, but I still sense it’s not the right time. “Tell me more about this voodoo,” I say. “Maybe we can use it to make the fashion brand do magic of its own.”
I sense him relax with that question, and instead of struggling through his decision to leave his legal career behind a second time, we talk for hours, his stories of Freddy morphing into us talking about crazy things that happened to Shane in the courtroom and with clients. And he’s different when he talks about that worl
I think my brother said good-bye to me before he ever heard I was dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I go to bed that night with Shane wrapped around me, holding me almost too tight. He doesn’t sleep. I don’t sleep. For a long time we just lie there, listening to each other think without sharing our actual thoughts. I wake the next morning at sunrise to the same, Shane holding me, and us both in deep thought. And with the knowledge that we leave for Denver, for home, at two. Only it doesn’t feel like home. It feels like a necessary destination on our path to here.
“Let’s go run in Central Park,” Shane says, kissing my neck, and just like that we’re up, and within half an hour we’re running off the heaviness of our combined moods, engaged in the energy of the many other morning joggers.
We return to the apartment by nine, shower together to save time, and both of us throw on jeans and T-shirts for comfort; we’re packed by ten. I, of course, choose an I ♥ NEW YORK T-shirt and point it out to Shane as we head to the elevator, as if he can’t see it himself. “Because I love New York.”
“We’ll be back,” he promises, “but if you want to be a New Yorker, you can never, ever wear that shirt again. It’s a tourist shirt.”