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“Hi, David,” I said to Brandon’s driver as he opened the back door for me.
“Ms. Crosby,” he replied.
I slid into the back seat, and he closed the door behind me. As soon as I saw Brandon, I wondered how I had forgotten in six short days just how gorgeous he was. Immediately, my libido went from simmering to almost boiling over. Was it going to be like this every time I saw him?
Brandon was only slightly more dressed up than the last time I saw him, wearing a light-gray button-down instead of a Henley over dark jeans, his dirty-blond hair combed back in soft waves instead of mussed around his face. Finished with a navy wool pea coat and his brown boots, he looked sexy, polished, and relaxed all at the same time.
“Red.”
His deep voice rumbled in greeting as he kissed me gently on the cheek. The combination of men’s aftershave, a slightly almond scent, and that something else that was entirely just Brandon made my toes curl in my boots as his nose lingered. With a sharp intake of breath, he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
“Gorgeous as always,” he murmured.
We stared, suddenly caught in the spell of each other’s presence. The longer I looked into those bright blue eyes, the more the memory of his last kiss burned. Was he thinking about the same thing? Just as I was about to launch myself at Brandon, David awkwardly cleared his throat from the front seat.
“Where to, sir?” he asked.
Brandon jerked his head toward the front as if he had also forgotten about David. “Ah, Mass Ave to Albany, please. Thanks, David.”
As the car moved, I turned to the window to recompose myself. If this were a normal date, we could have enjoyed each other along the way to the T in dark corners made for kissing. Did dating someone with this much money mean there would always be someone to witness our intimate moments?
Brandon touched my fingers. I turned back to him, and the crooked smile on his face wiped away all negative thoughts. He was clearly so glad to be there with me, and truthfully, I felt the same. It was better to take it somewhat slow. Wasn’t it?
* * *
Brandon had promised earlierthat he’d planned things out, but hadn’t said much more—just that we’d be going someplace important to him, that it would be casual, and that we’d definitely stay in Boston. So, when the car stopped on a familiar road off Kendall Square, I turned to Brandon curiously.
“You’re taking me to MIT for our first date?”
“I got it, David,” he said before getting out from his side and jogging around to open my door. Brandon told David he would call when we needed a ride again and then helped me out with a smile.
“You wanted to know me,” he said as the Mercedes sped off down the campus road. “Well, this is where I spent most of my time between the ages of twelve and eighteen.”
Brandon tucked my hand into the crook of his elbow. As we walked down the street, he gave me a mini-tour of the unusual architecture. There were few students on campus this time of night, although more than one light burned in a few of the strange, mish-mashed buildings.
“Right there is the student shop where I used to mess around with leftover equipment while my foster dad taught his labs. And over there is the auditorium where he lectured. I’d sit in the back and do homework. My high school let me take some MIT courses as a non-matriculated student before I graduated. I finished the high school curriculum kind of early.”
I snapped my head to look at him. “You were taking math classes at the best technical college in the world when you were in high school? Why didn’t they just skip you a few grades and let you finish early?”
“Well, ah, they did.” Brandon gave a bashful half shrug. “I graduated when I was sixteen.”
I gawked. Brandon was a genius. Like, a legitimate, Einstein-level genius.
“And you went here after too?”
He nodded. “Ray—that’s my foster dad’s name—pulled some strings and got me into the Electrical Engineering program.”
“Is that what you majored in?” At this point, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Brandon had a degree in astrophysics besides being one of the most powerful lawyers in Boston.
“I thought about it,” he admitted. “But no. The stuff they work on is really cool, but I wanted to do more than just work on unsolvable equations and fiddle with wires all day long. I ended up majoring in Economics.”
“Because that isn’t a numbers-heavy field,” I remarked dryly.
Brandon snorted, but squeezed my hand. “I know. Ray still thought it was a joke. It was a major beef between us back then. But it seemed more…practical at the time. I wanted to make some money, and I wanted to do it as quickly as possible.”
It wasn’t hard to understand what drove him. Brandon had grown up with little in the way of stability. Middle-class academia had probably seemed like a waste when he knew he could make a lot more money using his skills in the finance sector. His original plan, he told me, was to game the stock market using an algorithm he’d developed at MIT.
“I’m surprised you didn’t go to New York,” I said. Wall Street was the center of the universe as far as finance was concerned. I would know.
