AllFreeNovel
Share Us
3
EMILIA
Several weeks later, I woke suddenly and looked over at the fancy alarm clock that sat on my bedside table. It was just after one and I’d been having a bad dream. I had them from time to time, and they were always the same. Me wandering around the foster home in Kansas as an adult, looking for Jase but never being able to find him.
They always rattled me, those dreams about losing him. I didn’t know what they meant—I was too afraid to ask—but the only thing that would soothe me back to sleep was my best friend. Being close to him. Being able to touch him, to reassure myself he wasn’t truly gone.
I climbed out of bed after my heartbeat slowed a little, not bothering to change out of my silk pajamas. He wouldn’t care what I had on, and it wasn’t as though he’d never seen me in pajamas before.
I padded down the stairs with only socks on my feet and wasn’t the least bit surprised to see the lights in our home office were burning brightly. Seemed I wasn’t the only one awake in the early hours of the morning, and I wondered if Jase had also awoken for the same reason.
Pushing open the door, I found him sitting back in his chair. He hadn’t bothered to change either, clad in pajama bottoms, a tee, and socks, just like me. His eyes were closed, and he just looked exhausted. My heart ached because I knew he was exhausted. We both were. We worked long hours and sleep was an elusive beast neither of us got much of.
“Bad dream?” I kept my voice quiet.
One eye opened as he peered over at me. “No. You’ve got to fall asleep to have one of those.”
My brows furrowed and I crossed the room to his side. Without a word, he pushed his chair back and I perched myself on his lap, placing an arm around his shoulders. “What’s troubling you enough that you can’t sleep?”
His arms snaked around me, holding me close. It was only in moments like this, when we were alone and able to let down our guard, that we were affectionate in such a manner. “There’s something about Wells I don’t like.”
Samuel Wells was a property developer who’d approached us recently about purchasing some real estate from him in Little Italy. We’d checked it out and had liked what we’d seen, but no deal had yet to be confirmed. I hadn’t noticed anything about the man that was different from every other property developer out there; he was loud and pushy, but men like him were a dime a dozen. Nothing we couldn’t handle.
I brushed back a stray lock of hair from Jase’s face. “Okay, so we’ll pass on the property.”
He frowned, his expression serious. “Just like that?”
“Just like that. If he gives you a bad vibe, then we don’t do business with him. It’s not like this deal will make or break us. There’s plenty of real estate out there.”
“You liked the property.”
“Sure, but there’s other property out there I’ll like just as much.” I grasped his face in my hands. “Jase, we’re lucky enough that we can pick and choose who we work with now. We’re partners, remember? Either we’re both all in or there’s no deal at all. End of story.”
I gave him a smile and rested my head on his shoulder. We sat together in silence as he brought up a financial website with stock prices. We both looked over the figures, scoping out our business rivals on the stock market.
Although others had tried to persuade us in the past, we’d never listed our company on the stock exchange and never would. It wasn’t something we knew enough about and we agreed the idea of giving up any sort of control made us both uncomfortable. We’d busted our asses for years to build the empire we owned now, and we weren’t giving that up for any amount of money.
A loud growling sound broke the silence, and Jase laughed. “Hungry?”
I hadn’t realized until that moment the growl came from my stomach. “Guess I must be. Could you eat?”
“How about our usual from the diner?”
His smile made one of my own appear. “Sounds like a plan.”
He picked up his phone and ordered us a meal from the little diner located on the corner of our block. We’d been patronizing it since we’d moved to New York all those years ago. The food was good and cheap. It was a family-run business that’d been around for decades, and they’d always been good about delivering our order to us, so we tipped them well.
Twenty minutes later, we were tucking into burgers, fries, and chocolate milkshakes. The early morning meal of champions. Neither of us talked as we ate. Jase got his burger with maple bacon, egg, onion rings, and cheddar cheese, while I favored bacon, avocado, Swiss cheese, and ranch dressing. Both burgers were gone within minutes.
Jase wiped his hands on a napkin while I picked up a fry and dipped it into my milkshake. It was something I used to do as a kid on the rare occasion I got to eat fast food. My grandmother, Lucille, would spoil me as a treat, but she was an excellent cook and always insisted I eat well. Dipping my fries had always made her smile, and I suddenly, fiercely missed her as I ate the milkshake-covered fry.
After the drug-addicted hooker who’d birthed me had abandoned me at the age of four, her mother gained custody of me and I’d lived with my grandmother until her death from a heart attack when I was eleven. I’d entered the foster system after that and had been shuttled from one foster home to another until I’d landed with the Johnsons at fourteen.
And had met the boy who would change my life in every way imaginable.
Blinking rapidly, I concentrated on the computer screen and watched the financial reports being broadcast. Apart from a small company going under as we’d predicted months previously, there was nothing of interest.
We talked business for a little while after we were done with our meals, and I smothered a yawn as I stood and stretched.
