On Dublin Street(71)

Just as my head descended Braden stopped me, grasping me by the upper arms to pull me back up. I frowned. I knew he wanted it. He was throbbing in my grip for it. “What?”


His expression had changed so quickly, his eyes dark, his features granite. “You go down on me because you want to, not because of the typewriter. It was just a gift, Jocelyn. Don’t go f*cking it up in your head and twisting it into something else.”


I let this sink in and finally I nodded. “Okay.” I squeezed him a little harder and his nostrils flared. “Then I’m going down on you in return for you going down on me.”


Slowly, he let me go and rested back on his elbows. “That I can work with.”


***


“The book is coming along then?” Dr. Pritchard asked, seeming pleased.


I nodded. “I’m getting there.”


“And the panic attacks?”


“I’ve had a few.”


“When did those occur?”


I told her and when I finished she lifted her gaze and there was something in it I didn’t understand. “You told Braden you were seeing me?”


Oh hell, was that the wrong thing to do? It had just slipped out. I don’t know why… “Yeah, I did.” I pretended like I didn’t care.


“I think that’s good.”


Wait. What? “You do?”


“I do.”


“Why?”


“Why do you think I do?”


I made a face. “Next question.”


***


I saw Braden nearly every day after that morning. We spent the next week hanging out. Ellie, Braden, Jenna and Adam, and some girl Adam had brought along as a date, stopped by the bar on Saturday night before dragging Braden to a nightclub. He seriously hated clubbing which had brought me to ask him the question ‘why he owned a nightclub?’ His reply was that it was good business. When he was being dragged out of the bar for the nightclub, I gave him a sympathetic smile. I was not at all surprised to find that he’d escaped the club to come pick me up. Sunday was dinner at Elodie’s and Clark’s, which consisted of Declan and Hannah bickering, Clark ignoring said bickering, and Elodie making the bickering worse. Ellie, in an effort to forget Adam’s date last night, was complaining constantly that she didn’t think the lenses in her glasses were right, and no one noticed anything different about me and Braden. Thank God. Elodie’s head would explode if she knew what was going on between us.


Monday night, Braden came over after he’d gone to the gym—we had memberships at different gyms for which I was thankful. I needed to focus when I was exercising—we’d hung out with Ellie, and Braden had stayed the night. Tuesday night I went on my first official required business dinner. A real one this time. What I hadn’t known was that Braden was selling his French restaurant and keeping the contemporary, upmarket Scottish seafood restaurant he owned down by the Shore. It was a private sale to a business friend. A private sale, but the local media had still found out and wrote a piece on the established La Cour changing hands, and speculating over the reason for Braden selling it.


“It’s too much,” Braden had explained after asking me to accompany him to the dinner, which was really just a celebratory thing between him and the guy who’d bought it. “The nightclub has become a much bigger success than I was expecting, the estate agency is always pulling me into some problem or another and away from the property development which is what I enjoy, and I’m just spread too thin. La Cour was my dad’s. There’s not anything about it that has my stamp on it. So I sold it.”


We met Thomas Prendergast and his wife Julie at Tigerlily. I wore a new dress and tried to be as charming as possible. Well, charming in the only way I know how. Thomas was older than Braden and much more serious, but he was friendly and clearly respected Braden. Julie was like her husband, sedate, quiet, but friendly. Friendly enough to ask personal questions. Personal questions Braden helped me deflect.


I rewarded him well for that later.


Overall, the dinner was nice. Braden seemed more relaxed now that he didn’t have La Cour resting on his shoulders, and for some reason I found that him being relaxed made me relaxed. We hung out at his apartment Wednesday night, mostly because we had to be quiet at my apartment, and that took some of the fun out of the sex. So we had sex loudly on the couch, on the floor and in his bed.


Replete, I lay in the tangled sheets of his bed, staring at his ceiling. His bedroom was as contemporary as the rest of the duplex. Low, Japanese bed, wardrobes built into the walls so they didn’t take up space. An armchair in the corner by the window. Two bedside cabinets. Nothing else. He needed some pictures at least.


“Why don’t you talk about your family?”


My whole body tensed, the breath whooshing out of me at the question I was completely unprepared for. My head twisted on my pillow to stare at him incredulously. He wasn’t looking at me warily, like he was waiting on me freaking out. He just looked determined. I sucked in my breath and looked away. “I just don’t.”


“That’s not really an answer, babe.”


I threw up my hands. “They’re gone. There’s nothing to talk about.”