if there was no point in having bothered him with such a self-evident question.
“That’s what I thought. I’m putting on my big-brother shirt.”
He remembered the refreshing innocence about her. Crystal Silvers had been walking toward her, the chance of a lifetime, possibly, and she focused on the no-clothes-on part.
Innocent in a world that was fast. Old-fashioned in a world that could be slick. Real in a world that distracted with shock.
So, she needed a bit of coaching. His offer to get her under contract to supply his office was perfect. Of course, he could have left the details up to his office manager, but this way he would be able to check up on her a little bit, and make sure some great business opportunities came her way. And maybe, subtly, move her in the direction of happiness, which she so richly deserved.
“Not that I’m any expert on happily-ever-after,” he muttered.
The dog wagged his stump of a tail in approval. One thing that both Brand and Beau knew was that Brand was not cut out for relationships. Brand’s father had abandoned him and his mother. At six he had become the man of the family. He’d been there for his mom, and he still was, but he was pretty damn sure that his father’s genetics ran strong through his blood.
“Ask Wendy,” he said out loud.
The dog’s tail stopped thumping, no doubt a coincidence, but still Beau and Wendy had never seen eye-to-eye. It had been okay when Brand was just seeing her, as he had been exclusively for two years.
But then, she’d moved in. You thought you knew a person until they took down your Elvis posters and replaced them with original works of abstract art. He’d had to rescue the cookie jar from the garbage. People as svelte as Wendy did not let cookies touch their lips.
Within twenty-four hours, she was planning a Christmas extravaganza. Here. In their home. In their private space. She thought they could easily host two hundred people!
Thankfully, in short order, Beau had chewed through the sofa she had brought with her, a ridiculous antique thing that wasn’t even comfortable. Next on the menu had been three pairs of her shoes, imported from Italy. For dessert, Beau had eaten her Gucci wallet, with her credit cards in it. All that had been left was three gooey strands of leather and one slimy half of her Gold card.
She had said, “It’s the dog or me.”
He’d paid for the wallet and shoes and sofa, and chosen the dog. But in his heart he knew it wasn’t really about the dog. It was about being unsuitable for the kind of cozy domestic future she was envisioning. It had all been great when he could pick her up at her house, and take her out to dinner or a function, without her cosmetics and hair products all over his bathroom counter.
Something in him had already been itching to move on, three days after she’d moved in. He was pretty sure he would have got out of it, one way or another, way before the Christmas extravaganza, just as his father had done.
After Wendy’s departure from his home and his life, Brand put the Elvis posters back up. The Elvis memorabilia had been his mother’s pride and joy. Her suite in the seniors home had not been able to accommodate even a fraction of her collection. Always emotionally fragile, she’d gone into hysterics trying to decide what she could keep and what she could part with.
Another reason for a rather large house in Shaughnessy.
Okay, it wasn’t the most pragmatic reason to buy a house. But when he picked up his mother on Sunday afternoons and brought her to his home, she was so happy to see it. Somehow, having them around him, reminded him of exactly what he came from. And that might be the most important lesson not to forget.
As if on cue, his phone went off—it was the quacking ringtone he reserved for his mom, a private joke between them. He glanced at the clock. Late. He could feel himself tensing ever so slightly.
“Hi, Mom.”
“There was a movie tonight,” she told him. “Abracadabra. Have you seen it?”
“No, I heard it was good, though. Tell me about it.” The tension left him as her happy voice described the movie.
* * *
It was, Bree told herself firmly as she glanced at her wavering image in the polished steel elevator cage that was whisking her up to the forty-third floor, a second chance to make a first impression. Technically, her third chance, if she counted the prom.
Even though she was going to pitch a cookie contract to Brand’s office, there was no cookie beret today and no quilted apron.
Something in his voice when he had called her offering her the contract had given her pause. It was why she had hesitated. Did he consider her a charity that would benefit from his generosity? It was as if he had relegated her to a perpetual little-sister position in his life. No doubt he had done the same the night of the prom! No wonder he had refused her lips that night. Not that she was offering her lips today. Or even letting her mind wander in that direction.
No, today, Breanna Evans was erasing cute from his impression of her, erasing a cookie beret and a quilted apron. Today, she was going to be one-hundred-percent professional. Polished. Pure business.
And grown up!
Even the night of the gala, when he had pronounced her all grown up, it seemed to her now, in retrospect, it was something said to a thirteen-year-old that you had last seen when she was ten.
Toward this goal, Bree had dug deep into her resources and purchased a stunning deep red, bordering on burgundy, Chloë Angus hooded cloak to wear over her one and only business suit, a nondescript pantsuit in a color that might be best described as oatmeal. The cloak made her hair, piled up on top of her head in an ultrasophisticated look, seem like sun-kissed sand.
Then, to compound the insanity, she had bought a matching pair of heels. The shoes made her look quite a bit taller than she really was, and hopefully, more powerful, somehow, like a busy CEO. She wasn’t quite as graceful in them as she wanted to be, but she wasn’t planning on running a marathon wearing them, either—she just wanted to make a crucial impression.
The one to erase all other impressions.
“CEO,” she muttered to herself in the elevator, and then more firmly said, “Chief executive officer. Who got a contract to provide Crystal Silvers with five thousand cookies for her birthday blow-out? You! That’s who!”
She hoped the elevator didn’t have security cameras that recorded sound. A security guard somewhere would be having a good laugh at her expense.
She was carrying two large, rectangular white bakery boxes of cookie samples, which she always took, as a gift, when she was pitching an office contract. Unfortunately, the samples would not fit into a briefcase. Or maybe that was fortunate: who knows what kind of money she would have spent on that power item?
The elevator stopped. Despite her pep talk to herself, her heart fell to the pointy toes of her new red shoes. She considered just riding back down. She felt overcome by nerves, despite all the money she had spent trying to shore up her confidence with the beautiful, subtle raven-imprinted cloak.
But when the doors whispered open on the penthouse floor of one of Vancouver’s most exclusive downtown office towers, Bree took a deep breath and forced herself
