Chasing His Brother's Bride
Chasing His Brother’s Bride – Chapter 19

She sat next to Brix on the bed and frowned. “You could have let me and Pia have this smaller bedroom. I didn’t realize the bed wasn’t quite as big as the other.”

“The other is a California King. This is still a king-sized bed and quite adequate for my frame. I’ll survive.” He pulled his laptop to his thighs and folded a pillow behind his head and leaned against the headboard. “Speaking of, you and I need to do quite a bit of furniture shopping tomorrow for the house. We’ll get everything sorted so by end of day Monday, when you pick Pia up from school, she will be going home to her new bedroom.”

“Fine but you bought too many toys today so let’s not go insane with the furniture. She doesn’t need a set of bunkbeds like she asked for this morning. She’ll be jumping off the top bunk.”

“She is a bit of an adrenaline junky, isn’t she?”

“Yes, and it’s why I have no nails left,” she held her fingers up. “One of her teachers talks about allowing children to engage in risky play but it freaks me out. Doing dangerous things safely is the best way to learn.” She made big eyes as she quoted the teacher. “I picked her up this week and she was on the monkey bars hanging upside down. She can’t talk to the kids in her class without stammering and stuttering most of the time but give her a jungle gym and she’s the first one to the top.”

“Is she really so shy?” Brix frowned at her as he opened the report again, he’d closed off when rushing to wake her.

“God yes,” she shook her head. “She has a select few she talks to. Me of course. Opal and her son, Axl.”

“Her son’s name is Axl” he cut her off.

“Her ex wanted his son to have a strong manly name. When he was two, he kept coloring with the pink crayons and so her ex smacked him in the face and told him no son of his would be a p***y and made him draw with the blue crayons only. As if picking crayon colors would make him gay. She moved out and fought for custody. Her son is now the gayest boy named Axl you could ever imagine. He’s so flamboyant he jokes he was a flamingo in another life. He hasn’t seen his father since he was five and the child support payments are sporadic but Opal has said more than once she’d rather the missing child support than to have to face his abusive a*s. Axl’s fourteen now. He’s in drama club because why not and very artistic. Opal worries about him all the time because of his sexuality.”

“Does he get bullied?”

“Ruthlessly. He says it doesn’t bother him but we know it does. She’s a good mom. She has his back. Went to the school one day and went toe-to-toe with his homophobic math teacher. I’ve known her three years and there hasn’t been a day which has gone by where she hasn’t shown me the love she has for her son.”

“You and she are close?”

“She is the only person in the world who knows I was running from the Cacciola family.” She felt him stiffen beside her. “She knows what Val did to me but she doesn’t know the other things. She saw the scars on my back one night when we were working late. I had a heavy sweater on and I pulled it off because I was too warm and my tank top underneath it rode up and she saw my back. I told her what I’d been through and then told her I should go. She said she’d never mention it again and would never tell anyone. Three years later her lips are still sealed and I have a best friend.”

He was quiet as he digested her information. “So, you didn’t tell her about Val’s stealing?”

“Not the stealing. Not the meetings he had at the kitchen table. Not the involvement of his mother. Not the people he murdered in front of me. I told her only about the beatings, the rapes, and the torture.”

“Kitchen table meetings?” he shot her a sideways glance as he pulled up a portion of the report he wanted her to comment on.

“There was a man he called Garcia who was there almost every Monday night,” she looked away. “About two weeks before I got out, Garcia asked if he could try me. Val beat him badly right in front of me. I got punished for turning Garcia on. It was the last time I saw him but he had been there every week for months. They talked about running drugs and guns all the time.” She watched as Brix leaned sideways, grabbed his phone, and sent Malik a text message. “You didn’t know?”

“Garcia’s family was one of Juan’s biggest competitors. We’re going to have to do a hell of a lot to avoid a full-on war with Juan.”

“s**t,” she whispered.

“Don’t worry about it,” he gave her a sad smile. “I don’t ever lose, Jolie. Even if it went full on, I don’t lose.”

“But you’ll both be safe right? You and Malik.” She was very aware of how odd it was she feared for their safety two days after knowing them.

“Definitely.” He said reassuringly, “now, help me figure out what the hell this s**t is.”

She grimaced as she realized the dates. “Those were before my time. Mordecai had another admin assistant before me and she was another one of Elaine’s uneducated friends. She always felt strongly education didn’t always mean the right person would be hired. I mean I get where she’s coming from because I know there are people with degrees who couldn’t do their job correctly but she would see someone working as a coffee barista with no experience in the realty world and because the girl would upsell her on a coffee, she would put her to work in sales. My predecessor was a lovely woman who watched too much Mad Men.”

“What?” he frowned at her comment.

“She thought she was coming to work in an organization where men were throwbacks to the fifties, drinking scotch, making deals, and f*****g around with their assistants. She slept with five of the eight lead realtors, ruined two marriages, and got caught by Mordecai being given oral s*x on Mordecai’s desk from one of the night janitors. He fired her on the spot. He was very much done with her.”

“Where did Elaine replace her and why was she working in accounting?”

“Mordecai’s version of events is they liked the admin assistant he had and moved her to the top floor and promised him they would get him a new one. He said he would get his own and put an ad out and the day he was going to interview for the position, Elaine showed up with the woman who was the bartender at the golf course. It seems the woman’s uncanny ability to remember everyone’s drinks without having to write it down impressed her so much she felt she could be the admin assistant to an accountant. The day he fired her, he came to the office I was working in and bitched to my boss about how over it he was. I heard the whole sordid thing.” She made wide eyes of glee earning her a chuckle. She was learning when Brix smiled, it was a transformative experience on his usually straight countenance. “My boss offered me up and said it was a win-win situation. He couldn’t pay me more and I was still paying off medical bills and was scouring the job ads for a part time position I could work evenings while trying to figure out how to keep Pia with me while I worked. Mordecai hired me on the spot but Elaine said I needed to be vetted. My old boss wrote a letter and Mordecai said if I didn’t get hired, he’d quit. She backed off. She never liked me.”

“Why?”

“I’m not flashy enough. The real estate sales profession is about presentation and selling yourself. She hated my clothing and my conservative demeanor at work. I also tend to talk back when I shouldn’t. She thought as a PA I should dress better and be silent. She always said in real estate it was about the presentation and mine was lackluster.”

“She’s not wrong,” Brix agreed, chuckling when she growled. “I’ve walked away from sales for no reason other than I didn’t like the way the realtor carried themselves. Your clothes are pretty thrifty.”

“Well, I like to be in the background. I can figure out the room faster watching from behind the scenes. Mordecai is one I learned to read really quickly. When he’s crunching numbers and he’s in the zone, it’s best to put a sandwich and a cupcake on his desk and back out quietly. He doesn’t love technology but he makes it work. However, if I’m in the room and I can get the equipment doing what it’s supposed to do, whether for a presentation or report, then he relaxes and he’s not so edgy and his presentations go by much better. He’s also very much about black and white matters so he doesn’t deal well with feelings and emotions. When he’s asking the departments for details and he’s getting excuses it grinds his gears. He doesn’t want the sob story; he wants only the numbers.”

“Man after my own heart,” Brix nudged her with his shoulder when she grimaced.

“When he’s pissed off at the guys for not turning in receipts for months or adding expenditures to a report without any documentation, he needs a cup of tea in his hand to calm his temper so he doesn’t quit.” She grinned, “he’s quit eight times in the last three years.”

“How bad are the guys with their receipts?”

“Last month one of the guys brought in a receipt for two grand from three years ago. Wanted it reimbursed. Said he’d found it in the bottom of his suitcase. It was for alcohol and dinner for a large client he was trying to bring in. He never got the client.”

“Did it get paid?”

“Not at first but then Solomon said to pay it so he did.”

She watched with interest as he made a notation on a task list, he had pinned to the desktop of his computer screen. “To do list?”

“Yeah. I’ve taken over one hundred and eight companies in my lifetime and every one of them I need to streamline to the processes of mine. It can take days, months, or years depending on the company and the state it was in before I took it. This one,” he grimaced, “may take years if I don’t hire a bulldozer and plough it under.”

“You can’t plough it under. Mordecai is close to retirement and Opal needs this job.”

“Consider it my wedding gift to you,” he made big eyes. “I won’t plough it under but you’re going to help me clean up this mess.”

She felt a weird frisson of excitement at his words. What was wrong with her? She settled against the pillow he’d propped up for her and for the next two hours they went through the report for the first two years of the five-year history line by line. Eventually Jolie’s eyes were getting heavy. She felt two blinks merging into one and he caught the movement.

“Go to sleep, Jolie.” He tugged a blanket up from the bottom of the bed.

“I can’t sleep here.”

“If you go crawl in with Pia and have another nightmare, you’re going to wake her up. This way I can make sure you’re not going to scream in your sleep and wake you if you do.”

“But –” she stifled a yawn as her exhaustion took over. “I don’t want to take over your bed.”

“It’s fine. If you’re really uncomfortable I’ll move to the sofa when I’m done here. I’m going to be awhile.”

“I’m not making you sleep on the sofa. Your feet will hang off the end while your neck dangles off the other end.”

“Stop arguing and go to sleep.” He used a stylus to circle a part of the report and made a notation beside it. He saw her frowning at him and shook his head. “Sleep, Jolie.”

“Ugh, fine,” she grabbed the pillow which had been behind her back and curled into it and snuggled in.

She could still hear the clicking of his fingers on the keyboard as he made notes and then occasionally his exasperated huff as he tried to figure out why the budget was so unbalanced. She rolled over and faced him. “You breath through your mouth when you’re annoyed.” Why was she so damn comfortable with him?

He narrowed his brows at her. “What?”

“When you’re irritated, you turn into a mouth breather. It’s as if your giant nose forgets how to function when you’re frustrated and so you start huffing and puffing and breathing through your mouth.” She tucked her hands under her cheek as she watched him scowling at the screen before her words filtered and he heard the insult about his nose. She giggled.

He rubbed his nose while grimacing at her, “You’ve observed this about me, huh?”

“I did. You also don’t like coffee but you like the smell of it. You always take a couple of sips and then keep it handy but you don’t actually drink it. You are a control freak and instead of letting the heads of your divisions do this,” she waved at the computer, “you’re doing it yourself.”

“You think because I want to personally review the files it makes me a control freak?”

“Well, this and the fact you have at least four cousins you could have married me off to in order for Pia to have the Cacciola name and to keep me safe but you don’t trust anyone else to do the job the way you want it done. Control freak.”

“I’m keeping you cuffed to my wrist because you’re a runner and if I married you off to one of my cousins, they’d lose track of you in ten minutes, twenty tops.”

“Admit it. You don’t trust anyone not to do the job to your satisfaction.”

“You aren’t wrong,” he chuckled.

“Told you so,” she mumbled.

He shook his head, “you know what I’ve observed?”

“What?”

“When you’re this tired, you’re very brave and you’ve lost all your fear of me. Go to sleep, brat.”

“Not a brat.”

“Acting like a brat.”

“You’re not so scary,” she whispered as sleep started to claim her.

“You don’t think so?”

“Nope. Your dad said you and Malik are wrapped around my finger,” she sighed as sleep drew her downward. “I should make you k**s in front of me.” She gave a sleepy giggle. “I’d pay to watch that.”

She heard his snort and let the silly thought carry her to dreamland where images of Brix and Malik making out with her in the middle flitted through her imagination. Dreaming was never so good.