My lips furl into a smirk, but before it reaches its full potential, Brandon steals the limelight for the third time today. He’s exiting the office building I recently discovered he shares with Isabelle. A frigid breeze is blowing off the ocean today, so the redness of his cheeks isn’t on par with the cool conditions, not to mention the whiteness of his hands from how tightly he is balling his fists. Something has his panties in a twist. Or should I say, someone?
“Isaac…” Hugo grumbles out in warning when I commence pacing toward Brandon.
If he continues talking, I don’t hear anything he says. I’m too busy drinking in every word leaking from Brandon’s mouth during his persistent ramblings. A female has him hot and bothered as he mutters ‘she’ multiple times under his breath, but he seems to be more talking in past tense than present.
“Sorry,” I mutter in a gruff tone when I use the thickness of the foot traffic to bump shoulders with Brandon. It doesn’t knock out the cell phone he’s clutching to near death, but it does spin him around enough for me to catch the quickest glimpse of the face on the screen of his phone.
It is a picture of Ophelia.
I’m certain of it.
“What did you see?” Hugo says, stepping in front of me before I can stop Brandon from sliding in behind the steering wheel of a compact blue BMW.
Too confused as to why Brandon is snooping into my private life and not in the right mind frame to explain myself to Hugo, I mutter, “Nothing.”
He screws his nose up. “You saw nothing?” When I jerk up my chin, he pushes out, “Then why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I lock my eyes with Hugo’s. They’re brimming with unnecessary worry. I can take care of myself, and Brandon is about to learn that the hard way. “Because I’m looking at one.”
Having no defense for my accurate claim, he steps back with his hands held in the air. I’d rather he keep retreating without issuing what he wrongly believes is a pearl of wisdom, but that isn’t Hugo. “You once said trust is earned when actions meet words. Perhaps it’s time for you to remember that.”
He misses half my growl by sliding into the driver’s seat of one of my many town cars and gliding up the tinted window. To anyone passing by, he looks like he’s conducting surveillance on a target in the opposite direction of Isabelle’s office building. I know that isn’t the case because a second after he fans a newspaper across the steering wheel, his eyes stray to the side mirror.
He watches me with concern marring his face for a couple of seconds before he glances past me. I return his stare for almost as long before I weave through the foot traffic clogging the sidewalk to my car I left unattended.
With parking in Ravenshoe as uncommon as a block of land under half a million, I’m not shocked when my wish to burn off some excess testosterone is thwarted by a boot being placed onto the back wheel of my car.
“For fuck’s sake,” I grumble while ripping the citation off the windscreen. It states the boot will remain until I pay my fine. If that doesn’t occur within the next seven days, my car will be towed to a police impound yard.
“I’ll have Roger return your car before the close of business today,” Hugo shouts when he spots my angry march across the street. Even from a distance, you can’t miss the bright orange lock on my rear tire.
My nightclub is only one block over, but my stomps would have you convinced it’s a seven-mile hike. I’ve worked up a sweat by the time I enter my office, and my perspiration worsens when I interrupt Roger scanning my office for bugs. I appreciate what he’s doing, even more so after spotting the picture on Brandon’s phone, but in a world of constant noise, sometimes the only thing you need is a bit of solitude.
And perhaps to caress and nurture the silky-smooth skin of a lady who challenges you as much as she intrigues you.
Maybe that’s why I’m so worked up? Not Isabelle standing me up—her sorrow was abundantly clear—but the possibility Brandon’s snooping has more to do with Isabelle than himself. I’ve said previously that I’m usually unforgiving when it comes to combing through a person’s background before inviting them to be a part of my inner circle, so it would be unwise to expect any different from Isabelle. Several conversations we had the past thirty-six hours would have made her curious, but I was hopeful my openness would have seen her coming to me for answers instead of inviting scrutiny from a stranger.
I’m being watched enough as it is.
But I guess that should be expected. You’ll never achieve the success I have without facing a bunch of critics on the way. Tall poppy syndrome is real, and regretfully, I’ve been experiencing it more often in my personal life than my business endeavors the past couple of months.
50
My pen falls to my desk with a clatter when Hunter’s deep timbre sounds down the line. “I can’t find any connection between Ophelia and Brandon.”
“Because there are no details of a Brandon?”
I hear him scrub at his chin before he discloses, “There was a handful of Brandon’s at her university but none matching this Brandon’s description.”
“So, Isabelle is snooping?” I try to keep my tone neutral. I miserably fail. Today has been one clusterfuck after another, and I’m more than ready to call it a day.
“That isn’t what I said.”
“Then what are you saying, Hunter?” I snap out, my mood as hostile as the anger in my voice. “Because to me, it sounds like you have nothing but excuses. I don’t know this. You can’t have that. Nothing but a bunch of fucking loose threads that lead nowhere.”
Like he always does when I’m pinning my frustrations on the wrong person, he reminds me he can’t work miracles, especially when it comes to a man as stubborn as me. “I gave you a file of information on the real cause of your anger. You decided not to read it.”
“Because I want to know her as a person, not statistics on a piece of paper,” I bark out before I can stop myself.
