Page 32 of Broken Brothers

Still, I reminded myself that every time I had fallen for a girl like this, it had ended in heartbreak and disappointment. Thecocky Chance that loved to make women giggle was at times propelled by a dark acceptance that all things ended in grief and pain. Just because Layla had much more going for her than any girl I had been with didn’t mean much of anything.

As I moved closer and kissed her, though, those thoughts completely vanished. Funny how that worked.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Sushi O’Three,” I said. “It’s about three blocks down. Come on.”

“Come on?” she said, befuddled. “Like, we’re walking? It’s close?”

I had forgotten this little detail that she had requested, knowing what kind of a power sushi had. Fortunately, not only was it not a marked restaurant, it didn’t even show up on official website listings. The odds of her bumping into a coworker or friend at this place was minuscule—I only knew of it because of dinners the Hunts had there.

“Do you trust me?” I said.

“I’ve only known you for a couple of weeks now,” she said.

“True,” I said, drawing out the word a bit. “But think of all that we’ve done. You don’t trust me to take you to a dinner place, but you trust me to make love to you in the office?”

I said it all with the kind of charming grin that had pulled in so many women before, the kind that leaves them laughing and shaking their head; whether at me or at themselves, I could never know and I never really cared.

And sure enough, after a couple of seconds, Layla did as I expected. She could just chuckle, sigh, and shrug.

“Touche, sir,” she said.

“Look at it this way, it’ll be just as nice as the bar.”

“Oh, well, in that case, should I run back up and get some baby wipes?”

Now it was my turn for the joke to dawn on me and for me to laugh, sigh, and shrug.

“Touche right back at you, madam,” I said with a sarcastic bow. “Just try and keep your hands to yourself. I know that will be difficult being around me.”

“Oh, please,” she said, squeezing my arm tightly.

We headed down the street, bantering back and forth, our conversation flowing as easily as anything in life ever had. When we got to SO3—as I liked to call it with Morgan—the dialogue continued with as much ease.

We talked about everything except the business in our work lives, which was perfect. She talked about life at Princeton; I told her tales of going to school in Columbia. We talked about our future ambitions—her with her father’s company, mine with opening my own firm and, I had to secretly admit, making more money than Edwin and Morgan Hunt.

Such a plan required probably too much luck for me to think it would work without some sort of divine intervention, but honestly, who cared? The point wasn’t to actually make more money—it was to show that I belonged in the same class as the real Hunts, and that I could make money without having a ten-figure inheritance waiting for me on Mr. Hunt’s death bed.

The dialogue only got hotter and more intense as the appetizer turned into sake, which turned into liquor drinks, which turned into more liquor drinks. Soon, we were whispering to each other about our favorite things to do between the sheets; we wouldn’t say out loud what those were, of course, but by the end of the night, I became convinced that Layla’s sex with me in the office was not only in character for her, it was rather tame.

Boy, it was going to be hard to bite my tongue. But it sure would be easy to bite a few things along the way.

Finally, the desert came, and it got devoured so quickly that I got brain freeze. It was an impressively surprising feeling,considering that I had gotten drunk to the point that I didn’t think I would even notice brain freeze. But when it happened, Layla just teased and said she thought the conversation was hot enough to make up for the brain freeze.

“I guess not,” I said as I slowly came back. “Oh, shit. You might be hot enough, though.”

“Oh, are you needing those baby wipes?” she said as her hand came dangerously close to my crotch.

“Hah, you naughty girl,” I said. “No, not at all. Well, not here, at least.”

I pondered for half a second. There was only a momentary pause before I decided to do something that I really almost never did despite the number of women I got.

“Let’s go back to my place.”

Almost universally, I went over to the girl’s place. My place was my sanctuary, my nest—I didn’t want anything interfering with it, women included. I could be a bit particular about it, I admit it.

What I did not expect was for Layla to seem surprised by the request.