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I shook my head and finished my bite of food before answering. “No. But I feel like he worries about not being seen as capable in this job. He’s young and I think he lets it get into his head. So signing a client like this gives him some street credibility, in a way.”
“How did you guys end up going into business together?”
“Chase was getting pressure from his dad to go into law, but he really didn’t want to. He’d always been fascinated by communications and public relations. The summer after his sophomore year in college, he got an internship with the advertising agency I worked for. I was an account director overseeing marketing and PR for a few big clients, and my boss let Chase help me with a PR project during his internship. He fell totally in love with it. I could tell the minute he got brave enough to contribute during the team brainstorming session that he had a passion for it. And that was all she wrote. He went back to school and focused his communications degree on PR. Once he was out of school, we decided to start the agency together.”
Ash’s lips turned up in a sweet smile. “Why did you decide to go into business together instead of just trying to get him hired on at the ad agency?”
I took a deep breath and let it out. “This is going to sound so cheesy and biased,” I admitted a little sheepishly.
We’d finished eating and pushed our plates to the other side of the table. Ash crawled awkwardly onto my lap until he was straddling me with his arms around my neck.
“You’re his brother, Aid. You’re allowed to be cheesy and biased.”
My hands roamed around under his shirt to find as much Ash skin as they could. He felt amazing all the damned time.
“If Chase had started at the ad agency, it would have taken him several years to work his way up to doing the fun stuff. With our own agency, he could do the fun stuff right away,” I said. “I didn’t want him to have to wait. Life’s too short.”
Ash leaned closer, eyes sparkling in a knowing way. “You wanted him to love it.”
I returned his smile. “Yes.”
“You wanted him to succeed,” Ash continued gently.
“Of course.”
“You’re a good man, Aiden Vale.” His lips came down to reward me with a kiss and I knew if I didn’t stop it soon, we’d never leave the apartment.
“Ice cream,” I mumbled against his lips. “It’ll help cool the burn.”
“What burn?” he asked in a daze.
I dumped him off my lap so he had to stand on the kitchen floor to keep from tumbling onto his ass.
“The lava. Move your ass or you’ll turn into…”
He barked out a laugh. “Don’t say it.”
I grabbed my shoes and keys before turning back to him.
“Ash.”
He was still rolling his eyes when we walked out of the apartment a minute later.
Later that week I went behind his back and conspired with Emily to host a quasi-amateur musician night at the coffee house. Her boyfriend Lamont played the stand-up bass with a friend who accompanied him on the sax, and Emily herself was supposedly pretty sick on vocals when she joined them. My hope was that the smaller group of familiar faces would make a good audience for Ash’s first public performance.
Emily had been enthusiastic about the music night and had advertised it all week at the shop, even though none of us had mentioned anything about Ash playing in it. When Friday evening rolled around, Ash was helping set out trays of snacks Emily had arranged, and I showed up with his guitar case.
As soon as he saw me come in with the case, he froze in place, eyes widening and head beginning to shake in answer to the question I hadn’t asked.
I quickly approached him and set the case down beside us, taking him into my arms and leaning my lips against his ear in a way I knew he couldn’t resist. I saw Emily shoot me a wink from across the room, and Lamont gave me a thumbs-up from where he was setting up in front of the windows.
“Playing dirty,” Ash muttered softly into my hair. “Not fair.”
“Please, baby. Just one song. For me.”
“I hate you,” he said stubbornly.
“You don’t.” My lips sucked in his earlobe, and I felt his legs wobble a little bit. “Surely you can’t be any worse than that little old lady who just walked in with a harmonica.”
Ash’s head snapped around to the door where a seriously elderly woman was walking in with a harmonica, tambourine, and some kind of textured sticks in her hands.
“Dude, surely if she can get up there, you can too,” I challenged. “Didn’t you tell me recently that you weren’t a delicate flower?”
