AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I looked from him to Jeremy.
“Could we really do this? I mean share her?”
“I think we could. We’re grown men, most of the time we even act like it,” Jeremy said.
“Why not?” Darren agreed.
“Julie won’t have a problem telling us if she hates the idea and thinks we’re a bunch of horny punks that watched too much porn as teenagers,” Jeremy said.
“You’re right about that,” I said.
We chatted a little longer. All of us seemed pretty comfortable with the idea. All we had to do was broach the matter with Julie and see what she thought. She didn’t seem uptight to me, but it was an unconventional ask. I was a little nervous about how she’d react. And as for that, how would Kendall feel about her big brothers sharing her best friend like that? I wondered if I was setting us all up for something way too complicated, but it was too late to take it back now.
19
DARREN
Did it make me a hypocrite to stand there thinking there was nothing in the world more boring than rich people? When I worked security at a benefit wearing a custom designer suit and grew up in a family that had a massive vacation home in the Hamptons on top of the other benefits of our dad’s money? But standing around looking both stern and expensive was very profitable. One of my dad’s longtime clients hired me to set up the security around the perimeter and inside the charity event as well as supervising the private firm he hired to provide surveillance and guards.
“They come highly recommended, Darren, but they’re strangers. I’ve known you since you were a boy, and I was about as proud as your dad every time you earned an honor in the Marines. I’d feel better if you were running the show, keeping an eye on these boys that call themselves pros but got their start as bouncers in New Jersey,” Don had said to me.
Then he started suggesting a sum of money that more than doubled my usual fee for working private security. “You’ll be handling the logistics and acting as a manager. It’s a more complex role than simply being the guard,” he protested.
I couldn’t help thinking about the fact that I’d gone so far as to take an online course in security management and had been kicking around the idea of starting my own firm instead of working for my dad for a while now. Not only was this a step up jobwise, Don would be a hell of a reference for my own service. Not to mention the fact that the fee he offered would make a sweet top-off to the investment account I had earmarked for startup costs. I had agreed.
It amounted to about three days of work in the lead-up to the event which was the crown jewel in the children’s hospital’s foundation fundraising calendar. Don’s granddaughter had been treated there a few years ago after a near-drowning, and her recovery had sparked a passion in him to do everything possible for the facility and employees that had saved her. Since he owned the hotel where the function was held, I had carte blanche to tweak everything from the angles of their installed cameras to an area of landscaping that obstructed the sightline from where the guards would be stationed. Catering worked with me on setup indoors and out for traffic flow and a clear line of sight for my men. It was a big job, but I loved it. That part at least. As far as standing around looking big and vigilant, which came naturally to me, and looking vaguely pissed off which also came naturally to me, I’d rather watch fucking cereal go soggy in a bowl of milk.
Rich people were stood around, mostly posing and trying to one-up each other on their investments, vacations, acquisitions. By the time the silent auction was underway, I was bored senseless. Alert and keeping my head on the swivel, but bored. I checked in with my point man on the opposite side of the event near the entrance, and all was well there. We’d had one incident early in the evening when a man tried to get in to speak to the board of directors. He was ranting about something to do with the hospital, and a couple of my guys escorted him off property, took his photo and his information and informed him that law enforcement would be involved if he returned to disturb anyone at the benefit. He’d been fired from his job at the hospital and wasn’t armed, so it was after running his info, just a rando grandstanding, not an active threat. That had been the only excitement, not that I wanted any on a job like this. I reminded myself the hospital foundation was raising hundreds of thousands of dollars tonight, that I was helping with that. A woman had spoken about the fund for the new dialysis machines and necessary repairs to the generator, and when she talked about the patients there, I thought of Julie. How she’d be amazing working at a place like that with her warm, compassionate demeanor and her hard-won nursing credentials. Everything reminded me of her since we slept together, to be honest.
