Page 21 of Broken Brothers

“Layla!” I shouted.

I again ran forward, my speed picking up. The figure stood still.

I came into view. Thank God, it was Layla Taylor.

“Layla, what’s going on?”

She looked me up and down for a second, paused, and turned and heeled.

“Oh, hell no,” I said.

I got in front of her and began walking backwards, practically a suicidal move in New York City but one I was willing to make for the sake of understanding what the hell was going on.

“At least let me know what’s going on,” I said.

“Chance, this whole thing is just… I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Shouldn’t have done what?”

I let a sly grin form on my face, even though internally I was more than a little bit nervous. The only solace I took was knowing if she truly did push me away, it would not take long for me to get over it… but in the interim, it was going to suck if she did.

“You know what,” she said, but she did not walk as fast as she had before.

“I don’t, actually,” I said. “I know you shouldn’t have abruptly walked out on me like you did just now.”

Now she locked eyes with me and I saw that fire. Granted, it looked more like the fire of a little bit of anger and aggravation, but I knew from experience how to kindle that fire in the direction of passion and sex. I didn’t necessarily need the right kind of emotion at the start, I just needed some degree of any emotion present.

“And I also knew you should have called me as you said you would.”

“I said I would see,” Layla said, but I could see in her eyes a losing effort, one that she knew she was losing.

“Well, you have seen, and now you are here,” I said. “I know a girl like you is a girl of her word. She keeps her promises. She is sweet and kind. She is funny. And she wants to grab a drink with me.”

“Oh, is that so?” Layla said, laughing.

Once again, I had to thank my subconscious for spouting off the words before I could think of them. It helped to be a charming person, but it also helped to have experience and a brother who liked to womanize as much as, well, I did.

“That is quite so,” I said. “You can pretend like you don’t. Oh, I don’t expect you to grab five dozen drinks with me. I don’t expect you to even grab two drinks with me. But I know what you want—you want to grab a single drink with me, just to live up to the promise you made. You want to see what one drink might do for tonight. You want to see if one drink might remind you of what we had, or if one drink might make you decide you should walk away. But I think you know what one drink will do for you.”

And there it was.

That laugh turning nearly seductive, the way her eyes narrowed and her lips curled and her chest protruded forward a hair.

“And where will I get this one drink, Chance Hunt?”

Bingo.

I had everything I needed. Now I just had to not fuck it up.

“Oh, that easy, huh?” I said, teasingly turning around before suddenly whirling back and grabbing her arm, leading her from the direction we came. She made no move to fight it, and in fact moved in closer to me. “I am taking you to one of the best bars in town. Oh, it won’t look like one of the best bars when you firstwalk in. But you know the saying, appearances can be deceiving? Well, no one ever said deception always had to be bad.”

Strangely, Layla did not laugh as hard as I would have expected. But perhaps my joke had just not landed as well as I could have had it; regardless, though, she did not make any effort to move away, and I felt like the king of the world.

I just had to hope no one from either of our companies saw us, but even if they did, it was hard for me to give a shit. I was in a great place, with a great girl, and I was feeling like I had ten years ago before my soul got broken. I wasn’t about to fall into that hole again.

The lounge I took her to, M Grace, was as promised—a hole in the wall, or rather, a hole in the ground. We descended some stairs and then another flight of stairs and came to a dark, mostly empty place. There was a corner table that I instructed her to sit at and I sat quite next to her. I made no bones about what I was going for, and I think Layla didn’t want to either.

The waiter came over and I ordered each of us a shot of tequila.