Chapter 7
Brandon went to the office after the ballet opening, and such was the tone for the entire week again. She didn’t see him or talk to him. She went to work, was aware when he got home late, too tired to spend time with her, and fell into a deep sleep. She heard from him Friday, though.
Brandon Cates was having a rough week at work. Madison, his assistant, had quit suddenly and HR managed to find a replacement, perfectly competent but distressingly, well, perfect. Holly, the new personal assistant to the CEO, looked like she belonged on the cover of Vogue, not in an office. Her mirror-shiny pin straight flaxen hair trailed behind her as she hurried down hallways, clutching file folders to her ample bosom. She looked, in short, like a porn director’s idea of a secretary—luscious and a little brainy as evidenced by her tight blouses and her glasses. She once took off her glasses and bit the end of the arm, her full plummy lips parted around the glasses she chewed thoughtfully, and he had to squirm in his seat.
They chatted and talked over the next couple of days. Aside from being distracting, she was the perfect secretary. She was even a workaholic like him. And didn’t complain when she worked twelve hours to catch up on everything that had gotten backed up. She straightened everything out and smoothed out every problem. It was like she was some kind of miracle worker.
The third day she worked, Holly rushed in to answer his page in a Princeton t-shirt and yoga pants, apparently fresh from her workout.
“Sorry, I didn’t have time to change yet. If I don’t go for my run first thing, my day just swallows up all my time,” she’d said, adorably apologetic. Wearing a shirt from his alma mater. Saying exactly what he’d said a hundred times—working out first thing in the morning was the only way to fit it in.
He’d asked how long she’d been a runner, and she showed him pictures on her phone from her half-marathon last month. She’d started running with her mom, she said, when she was a teenager. And after her mom died of cancer, she ran to stay close to her memory. She had turned away then, had hurried to go change clothes, not wanting to impose on him with her sadness. He had wanted to take her hand, to tell her that he always attended the ballet opening for the same reason—that his mother had always taken him there, and it was a way to keep her memory alive for him. Thankfully, he’d remembered his professionalism in time to avoid making such a gaffe, but he’d looked at her differently after that. Like she was a fellow orphan, another lost soul. Which complicated things because she also looked like a filthy fantasy.
So on Friday, when Holly offered to bring him sushi so they could go over what work needed to be done over the weekend, he told her he had to run home. And he had fled. Because the sushi she suggested was his favorite and he didn’t think closeting himself in an office with Holly, the ‘perfect woman’, was a great idea. Because he felt—vulnerable. He needed to be away from her, to reconnect with his wife so his marriage wouldn’t be over before it began.
He was tempted. Ridiculously tempted like devils in pitchforks were prodding him toward Holly. He felt drawn to her, not just her beauty and her shared love of running and sushi and Princeton, but to her sadness, her quiet courage. So he went home to the townhouse, only to find that Marj was at work. Of course, she was at work. She had a job, for Power Regions. So he had Rafael drive him to her office, and he called from right outside, to offer to take her to lunch or to take her right there in the parking lot. The call went to voice mail. He messaged and got no response. He called three more times, increasingly frantic, and got voice mail each time. Frustrated, he had Rafael drive him home so he could get his trainers on and go for a run to clear his head.
He was furious, with Marj for being unavailable, with himself for assuming she should be available any time he had a whim to see her. Furious with himself for being attracted to Holly and even angrier at Holly for showing up and being so infuriatingly delicious and ideal two weeks after he tied the knot with someone else.
If he had it to do over again, would he have said his vows to Holly in the Vegas chapel? He wanted to be able to say no definitively, to be certain that Marj was what he had chosen and would continue to choose. To be sure he wasn’t like his father, taking off after any piece of ass that walked by at the office. Because a hefty bit of his anguish was revulsion at himself for the attraction he felt for Holly which made him no better than his sleazy opportunist dad.
When he got home that night, he wasn’t sure if he was eager to see Marj or pissed off at her. She wasn’t in her bedroom. He found her in the kitchen, barefoot and stirring something on the stove.