“Silly.” His hair fell into his eyes, and with an impatient brush of his hand, he pushed it off his face. “I didn’t ask you here to blame or scold you. I want to discuss something with you. An idea that’s been brewing in my head for a while now, but one I can’t pull off unless you’re on board.”
“Me?” What could James possibly want to discuss with me? I hitched my chair closer. “I have no clue what I can do, but shoot.”
Before he had a chance to answer, the phone rang. “James Rutledge.…Yes?…Excellent. I’ll send the paperwork over by close of business. Thank you.” He made a few notes on the pad in front of him.
“So. For over a year now I’ve been looking to diversify my business holdings. I purchased a percentage of Sparks to get more into the mainstream entertainment industry, but it is still entertainment. My financial advisor suggested I look outside the nightclub industry completely.”
“Okay.” I assumed eventually James would get to the part where I figured into the discussion.
“I thought to myself…what are some of the things that people love to do? Eat. Have sex. Watch television. Read.” A smile curved his lips. “I have the sex aspect covered as best as I can legally. I have zero desire to own a restaurant, and television is cluttered with banal shows of sniping couples, pregnant teenagers, or home-design shows, none of which interest me. That leaves reading.”
“Reading and books never go out of style. What I’ve seen is that if you give people books as children, they grow up loving to read.”
“All of you have used Man Up as a stepping-stone to find yourselves and your passions, and I’m proud of that. I recognized it in Austin, then Frankie. Now it’s your time. I love your enthusiasm whenever you talk about working at the bookstore. Excitement lights up your eyes in the same way it does for Austin when he talks about home design, or Frankie when he is scheduling events at the clubs. That’s why I want to buy the bookstore. I need people I trust around me. I’d be a sixty percent silent partner, and I want you to be my partner. You’d own forty percent, work there full-time, and be the face of the store.”
“Buy the bookstore? What about Race?”
“He can’t run it anymore. His back isn’t healing as well as they’d hoped after the operation, and he may need more surgeries. Plus, the doctor told him he needs to get out of the cold weather before the winter here starts, and he’s ready to do that.”
My head spun. “Wait, what? You wantme? I can’t afford to buy the business. I don’t have that kind of money and probably couldn’t get a loan from the bank at a good interest rate.”
“You can,” James said with a smile, “if I lend you the money. I wouldn’t take advantage of you.”
“I…I don’t know what to say.”
“‘Yes, James. I’d love to be your business partner’ would be a good start.”
His pale blue eyes twinkled, and I gawked at him, unable to convince myself I wasn’t in an alternative universe, where up was down, right was left, and I was just offered a partnership deal with James to own a bookstore.
“Me?” I still couldn’t process it, but that didn’t keep a smile from breaking out across my face as I imagined working at the bookstore as my permanent job. With Harlan.
“You,” James said softly, growing serious. “You’ve moved beyond Man Up. I could see it building for months. You struggled to hide your unhappiness here, but I could tell.”
“It wasn’t that I was unhappy.” I was swift to answer James, not wanting to seem ungrateful. “More like dissatisfied with myself. I love the dancing, and I’m not ashamed of what I’ve done, but I think I’ve moved on.”
“I know you have. That’s why I want you. You carry an unbreakable spirit within you, a good-natured joy that I don’t want to see you lose by becoming bogged down in a job you’ll eventually resent and end up hating.”
“I could never hate working for you.”
“Oh, I know. I didn’t say you’d hate working for me. I’m the best boss you’ll ever have.”
Looking back on the past year and all that James had done for Austin and Frankie, I had to agree.
“I think I’d want to talk to Race first. Not that I don’t believe you, but I owe it to him. He gave me the chance to work at my dream.”
“Not many people can say that. And it’s another quality about you I admire—your dedication to friends and the people in your life. Take the time you need to talk to Race and to Harlan, but I have faith in you. I trust you and I believe in you. Not qualities I can ascribe to many people I come in contact with.”
Later that nightwhen I got home, I found Harlan sleeping on my side of the bed, curled into my pillow. My heart squeezed tight, thinking how fucking lucky I was.
“Hey.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I gotta talk to you.”
He rolled over and threw an arm around my neck, holding me near. He looked adorably disheveled with his hair all messy and blue eyes heavy-lidded with sleep, and I became distracted by his warm lips on mine and his hand wandering down my back to cup my ass.
“It’s too late for talking.”
“Oh?” I sighed as he stroked my hard-on. “Is there a rule?”
“Mmmhmm.” His thumb teased over the wet tip of my dick, and the rough pressure nearly blew the top of my head off. “Straight in my mouth after midnight.” He yanked down my sweats and briefs to let my dick bob free for a second before taking me to the back of his throat.
