“Ha,” Nate laughs sarcastically. “There’s no way I’d give up Brooke for meaningless sex with bimbos. Going to sleep with her every night and waking up to her every morning? No fucking way would I trade that for anything.”
“Yeah, well, you did snap up the one perfect woman we know. Not many like Brooke around,” I say to him with laughter in my voice, even though he knows I’m serious.
“Fucking right I did,” he says without a trace of humour. “I’m sure you’ll find your Brooke one day, and when you do she’ll knock you on your fucking ass, and you won’t know which way is up.”
If only I knew then, that day would be today.
Three months later
I can’t believe how much my life has changed. I have gone from spending my days volunteering at the gallery, working on charity committees, and lunching with girlfriends to working sixty-hour weeks, running a staff, overseeing financials, and making huge decisions regarding issues I never even knew existed in the business world.
It has definitely taken a lot longer than I’d thought to get the grasp of everything I need to do. Not that I have the grasp of everything yet, but I’m getting there.
Saxon has been my right arm, and I have no idea how I could have done this without him. How I will do it without him. As much as I’ve learnt I could no way run this business by myself. I could go and get my degree and I still wouldn’t run this place as well as he does.
He has a natural way of doing things and takes running the company in his stride, like it requires no effort at all. He commands the place and everyone here, and most times I feel like a timid staff member when he enters the room. Watching him walk the halls and seeing people react to him, watching him on the phone or in a business meeting—it’s a beautiful thing, the way he controls everything in such a calm and precise way.
Saxon and I have built quite the routine during the last three months. Spending at least four nights a week together, either eating late in the office while we work or attending business functions. He has become my go-to, and I’m constantly calling him, searching the office for him or sitting behind the computer with him.
Neither of us have brought up him leaving again and hope furls in me that he might stay. The thought of not seeing him every day makes me oddly anxious, but I push it down and choose to not question it.
By working with him every day I think I know the real Saxon—well, most of him anyway. I see glimpses of the Saxon I knew in college and glimpses of the Saxon who Nate constantly talked about. There’s also this other side of him. It’s a side I’ve never seen and still can’t really work out. It’s there, hidden in the recesses where I know he wishes he could keep it.
He doesn’t talk much about his private life or his childhood, no matter how many times I’ve tried to steer the conversation into that subject. I know he can’t have much of a personal life as he spends all his time in the office. Many nights he’s walked me to my car only to ride the elevator back up and continue on working.
I have no doubt I’ve been the main reason for him being behind on his work and needing to be in the office more, but he has never complained. Every morning when I see him he still has a faint smile on his face, like he can’t believe I’ve shown up for another day. Sometimes he acts like I might crack at any moment and run, but he’s always mentioning how proud Nate would be, and how I can take it easy and do things at my own pace.
He’s wrong; I won’t be cracking. I haven’t felt this strong or content since losing Nate more than six months ago. Don’t get me wrong. I still miss him like crazy, still think of him every day, and still find it hard to breathe at times. Yet being so busy with the business, feeling like I’m achieving something, feeling like I finally belong somewhere, has made it easier to accept he is gone.
Saxon, Rachel, and everyone else were right. Coming to Argo was the best thing I could have done and now I’m more attached to it than I ever thought I would be.
The office phone rings next to me and I’m startled back to reality. I reach to pick it up.
“Hello?”
“Brooke, I have Amber here, and she was wondering if she could see you?” Ruth asks.
Who the hell is Amber? Ruth can obviously hear my question in the silence because she answers without me having to ask the question. “She is waiting for Saxon to get off the phone but wanted to see you while she waits.”
Saxon’s Amber? Is he still with her? I haven’t heard much about her during the past month or so, and she has never come into the office before. I wonder what she is doing here, and why she wants to see me.