Page 41 of Love by Design (Club Rapture: Risk Aware #1)

SILAS

O n my knees at the edge of the bed, I tied the knots on Marshall’s shoes, then rocked back onto my heels so he had enough room to stand.

Me helping him get dressed had become part of our morning routine, and even though I was getting ready to start my new job with Cory this morning, I stuck to it.

The only thing different from the mornings before was that instead of being in pajamas or naked, I was also dressed for work—casual, Cory had assured me—in navy blue chinos and a white, short-sleeved button-up.

Marshall was in slacks as usual, which had always felt over the top for our line of work, but I’d never complain about how he filled them out in every possible way.

“Text me when you can, and let me know how it’s going,” Marshall said, helping me to my feet. It wasn’t a question, but the command didn’t need saying. He was the first person I wanted to tell everything, even first over Lincoln now in some instances.

“I will, Sir.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled something out that was small enough to fit in his fist.

“Open,” he instructed, and at first I thought he meant my mouth, but then he moved his hand between our chests like whatever he was holding he meant to transfer into my hand.

I lifted my flat palm beneath his hand, not needing to look at the transfer to know he’d just dropped a key into my waiting hand.

“I am not asking you to move in,” he said quickly, almost regrettably, “but I want you to be here as often as it suits you.”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew a permanent key had been coming.

It made sense. It was logical. Marshall had a house all to himself, and I had a shared two-bedroom apartment.

I would have offered him a key in return, but this exchange wasn’t like the kind that happened between mid-twenty-somethings.

Marshall giving me a key to a home he’d bought with his own money was so much different than a copied key to a month-to-month rental.

“I don’t know what to say,” I whispered.

“You don’t have to say anything.” He curled my fingers toward my wrist, capturing the key in the palm of my hand. I slid my hand into my pocket, letting the key drop past my fingers. “You don’t have to call before you come over. You don’t have to text. Treat my home as if it was also yours.”

“Marshall.”

“The only thing you have to do is remember the rule.”

He slid his hands around my waist and pulled our bodies flush. Then both hands dipped lower, and he cupped my ass, fingers pressing gently at the seam of my pants.

How could I forget the rule?

“I remember, Sir,” I rasped.

“If you’re here more than one day in a row, you should just make a habit of it after you get home for the day. If that’s inconvenient or if I have you otherwise entangled, we’ll work something else out. Understand?”

“Yes, Sir. ”

Marshall smiled and tilted his head down, slanting our mouths together in a very chaste kiss—all things considered.

“I have to get to work.” A peck against the corner of my mouth. “I’ll talk with you soon. Do you want to celebrate tonight?”

“We celebrated last week.”

Marshall took a step back, mouth twisted into a moderately disappointed frown. “Do you not deserve more than one?”

My cheeks burned hot at the call-out, and I wanted to shake my head and tell him no, I didn’t deserve more than one.

What had I done besides get fired from my job and take a handout from a man I barely knew but had somehow fallen in love with?

Reducing the chain of the events of the past couple weeks felt unfair to everyone involved, but it was the truth of the matter.

“Whatever you want,” I said instead, blinking up at him and hoping my face conveyed the submission I meant it to.

He studied me quietly, head cocked to the side in the way I imagined he looked when he was forty percent of the way through a design and struggling to tie the ideas together to reach the middle.

“Do you remember the night you came over crying, and I made you write a copy of your Design Digest article?” he asked.

I swallowed hard and nodded. “And annotate it,” I muttered.

Marshall dragged his tongue across the front of his teeth and nodded back at me.

“Alright. Just wanted to make sure.”

I groaned inwardly at the embarrassment of that night as a whole, which stretched far beyond the forced attention to my design ideas.

“I love you,” I said, reaching for the key in my pocket. The sharp, freshly cut teeth bit into my palm, and the pain was grounding .

“I love you,” he said back, kissing me once more. “Don’t be late for your first day.”

“I won’t, Sir.”

He left in a rush of cologne and soft touches that promised more later. Once the door locked, I sat down on the edge of the bed and put on my own shoes—sneakers, again at Cory’s suggestion—then stared at the wall for a solid five minutes before heading for the kitchen.

I’d made Marshall coffee after getting out of the shower, and now with him gone, I prepared a mug for myself. He was still strict about the meals, which went without mention, so I grabbed a yogurt from the fridge and ate it while leaning against the kitchen counter.

When I’d come over the first time, Marshall hadn’t had yogurt in the fridge.

It had come up in conversation that it was what I normally ate, and after that, it appeared…

and stayed stocked. Same, I realized, with the other snacks I tended to favor.

Without request or fanfare, Marshall had stocked his house with the things I liked to eat, then he’d given me a key and asked me to make his home mine.

To make his home ours .

That level of commitment should have made me nervous, but instead, scooping the last bites of yogurt and fruit from the bottom of the container, I found myself comfortable with the idea of building a future with him.

There were maybe a handful of reasons it was a bad idea, the age difference between us being one, my dad’s never-ending hate for the man being another, but the pros definitely outweighed the cons.

Should it have been scary to think about packing up my bedroom and moving into his house?

Probably. Where would my things go? What would happen to my bed?

It all seemed trivial, which made Lincoln my biggest concern in the whole situation.

There were some months where he could afford all the rent on his own, but not all of them, and I didn’t want to leave him hanging.

I’d have to talk to him about it on Friday.

I finished the yogurt and tossed the empty container into the trash, then washed the spoon and my empty mug.

I washed Marshall’s mug too, then turned off all the lights in the house and locked the door behind me with my new key.

On the porch, I leaned against the wall to dig out my key ring, sliding his right alongside my apartment key and car key.

Shocked that the chain didn’t somehow weigh a hundred more pounds from the addition, I gave the door one last check and headed to my first day of work.

The drive to Cory’s from Marshall’s took about as long as it took to get anywhere, but the typical traffic gave me more time to think. Not just about the invitation or about the changes it would bring, but also about the biggest change that I’d done a good job of ignoring up until that very moment.

For years, it had been me and my dad against the world.

And even when that wasn’t okay, it also was because it was all I had.

I’d known since college working with him wasn’t supposed to be a forever thing, but I’d always planned on him retiring sooner or later and handing me the reins.

The Cahuenga Pass project made it clear he never truly planned on giving up unless it suited him, even if the cost of his stubbornness was my future.

It was a shocking revelation to me, softened only by the very careful and kind way Marshall had helped me navigate through it.

Pulling into the parking garage at the address Cory had given me, I found a parking spot.

I tossed my cell phone from hand to hand, knowing that sooner or later I was going to have to talk to my dad again.

There was no way I could leave things the way they were: the firing, the tension, the things he’d said to me.

It had to be addressed, right? Marshall always talked about what I deserved, and I deserved peace with all that mess, didn’t I?

I sent him Marshall a quick message.

When is Cahuenga Pass decided?

His response came quickly, like he’d been staring at the phone and waiting for me to message him.

Marshall

They’re delayed, but before the end of the week I think.

Why?

Just thinking about my dad.

Instead of another message, the phone rang. Marshall’s face flashed across the screen, and I pressed the button to accept the call.

“I’m fine, I swear,” I said instead of hello.

He huffed out a laugh into my ear. “I know you are, but I want you to know that even though it hasn’t been announced yet, he knows he’s lost it. He knows you were his only chance at it. That’s why he reacted the way he did when you told him no.”

Sighing, I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “Okay.”

“Was that all?” he asked.

“For now.”

“Are you where you need to be, Silas?”

I dropped my head against the headrest and stared at the concrete wall in front of my car.

The elevator was at the end of the row and eight floors up my new boss waited for me.

I had ten minutes until I was due to report for my first day.

I was where I needed to be physically and mentally, Marshall’s low voice and steady presence .

“Yes, Sir.”

“Have a good day, sweetheart.”

My heart twisted, tight and expansive at the same time in the middle of my chest. I loved when he called me that but didn’t want to ask for more of it. The sparse use of the endearment made it that much more special when it did slip out. I tucked the sound of it away in my pocket—alongside my keys.

I sent a text to Lincoln for good luck, even though I knew he would be sound asleep, then forced my legs to carry me to the elevator.

The ride to the eighth floor was nowhere near long enough for the first day jitters to subside, and seeing Cory leaning against the wall in the elevator lobby as the doors slid open didn’t help much either.

He smiled down at his phone, then up at me and held out his hand for a quick shake.

“Silas,” he greeted, palm a thousand times less sweaty than mine. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Good to see you too, Mr. Callahan.”

His cheeks flushed and he shook his head. “Please remember, Cory is fine.”

“Cory,” I repeated.

“Marshall has done nothing but speak highly of you since we met last.” He gestured toward the office. “Want to follow me and we can get you caught up?”

“Yeah. Yes.”

Following him through the maze of desks gave me a few moments to school my expression, to fight down the nervous bile that kept trying to force its way up and out of my stomach.

Instead of taking me to an office, Cory walked me to a conference room, blueprints spread across the entirety of the table, his laptop open and a drafting program up on screen.

“I’d love your help with this.” He tapped his finger against something on his laptop, and I sat down, pulling the computer in front of me. Immediately, I recognized the schematics, and I blinked up at him .

“What…what do you mean?”

He cocked his head to the side. “You don’t have a non-compete with your father, do you?”

I shook my head and glanced back at what was definitely a design for the Cahuenga Pass project I was ninety-nine percent sure Marshall was expecting to be awarded before the end of the week.

“I was called in at the last minute to consult over it, which has turned into a more formal bid than I’d planned.

I’m capable, but a little out of my element with some of it.

” Cory sat down beside me and tapped the tip of a pencil against the edge of the desk.

“Was hoping you could help smooth out some details so I can get it submitted before Wednesday.”

“That’s two days,” I croaked.

“End of day.”

I forced a laugh. “Three. You know Marshall is?—”

He cut me off. “It wouldn’t be the first bid I stole out from under him, and it wouldn’t be the first I lost to him either. We’ve known each other for years, Silas. Business has always been business.”

I exhaled, the jitters from my first day of work turning into jitters about stealing a seven figure payday from the man I’d only recently admitted to being in love with.

“Are you uncomfortable with the idea of it?” he asked, mouth angled up into a smirk. “I was of the impression you were already bidding against him for it before you quit working with your father.”

“That was different,” I muttered.

“Was it?”

I swallowed hard, knowing in my bones that Marshall would be infinitely disappointed in me if I didn’t put my all into what Cory was asking of me.

He wouldn’t want me to take his feelings into consideration when it came to work.

From the last meeting at my dad’s office to the night at his dining room table, Marshall had done everything he could to remind me of my talent and my worth in the design space.

“Three days,” I repeated.

“You’re young.” Cory slid some paper around on the desk, erasing something before writing a different series of numbers on top of the shavings. “Younger than me, and you’re full of the ideas this kind of project needs. I know I’m kind of throwing you in the deep end, but you’re up for it, right?”

I thought about my dad.

Thought about Marshall.

And then for the first time in a very long time, I thought about myself.

“Yeah,” I agreed, getting a feel for the mouse and the keyboard. “I’m definitely up for it.”