Big Brother Billionaire (Part Three) (6 page)

“Nonsense,” I laughed. “You’re my special guest. I hope you understand that your money’s no good here. Not ever. You are my most ‘IP’ in the VIP section.”

“Well, if you’re buying, I guess I’ll take a gin and tonic,” he said.

“Coming right up,” I promised, and turned to go.

“Parker.”

The tone of his voice made me turn quicker than I normally did, and I caught him withdrawing his arm, as if he’d been about to snag my elbow.

I didn’t know how I’d react to him touching me, beyond the friendly hug we’d shared at the airport, when I insisted on meeting him. I wasn’t sure that I could handle it.

“I’d rather we kept a friendly professional demeanor while we’re in the club,” I said, smiling gently at him, looking to ward off the rising, inexplicable panic I felt in my throat. “I have kind of a reputation as an ice queen to uphold, and I don’t want to encourage rumors that I’m fraternizing with the VIP members. Then, everyone will want to do it.”

Marcus gave me a small smile back. “I completely understand,” he said. “You’re running a professional business here. Of course I’ll be professional. Do you mind me being here? If…if it doesn’t bother you, maybe I can stop by and see you every time I’m in Miami for business.”

“Perfect,” I said, nodding at him. “I’d love to catch up whenever you drift into town. And you always have a watering hole. Now, what were you going to say?”

“Just that it’s good to see you,” he said, a wistful look in his eyes. “I’ve always wanted this for you, you know. Not necessarily you owning a gentlemen’s club, but success. Happiness. Are you happy, Parker?”

I searched my heart. I was standing in a place of business that I ran and owned, dressed in expensive professional clothing, and Marcus was sitting right in front of me, telling me he was proud of me.

“I am happy,” I said. “This is what I’ve wanted to do.”

“I’m so glad,” he said, echoing the words in the letter he’d sent me. “After you get off from here, may I take you somewhere to celebrate? Somewhere maybe you wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught fraternizing?”

I laughed. “I don’t think you can stay up that late,” I said. “I stay here until the club closes, and then I do the books.”

“You don’t have people for that?” Marcus asked, raising his eyebrows.

“This is a small business, mister, not a corporation like you own,” I teased. “I don’t mind it. It gives me more of a sense of control and helps me determine the best course of action to improve things.”

“I wouldn’t mind a late-late-late dinner,” he insisted.

“There’s nowhere nice that’s open that late,” I said. “Could I recommend a dining partner for you?”

“If that’s what you think is best,” Marcus said, sounding a little resigned.

And that was how I started sending escorts my stepbrother’s way.

It was a double-edged sword, when I started doing it, as I suspected it might be. On the one hand, it was a relief that Marcus wasn’t sitting around, waiting for me. He could have fun on his own, and my employees could make a living. It also took a lot of pressure off of me wondering if he might try to reinitiate our various intimacies.

But then I found myself hating to see him having a good time with the dancers I sent him. I chose a different one each time, telling myself that I was spreading his wealth around my club, but secretly acknowledging the fact that I didn’t want him to get close to anyone. It was the same reason I pushed Faith in his direction, but she was such an ingénue and a bright light that I was truly afraid something would ignite between them.

Like it or not, I was still attracted to Marcus—just, I suspected, as he was attracted to me. And yet we held each other at arm’s length, closer than we had been in so many years, but still so far apart.

We didn’t know what we wanted with each other. I didn’t know if I was ready for a relationship again. It had gotten so good to be on my own. And I didn’t think it was fair for me to hide him away from the rest of the world. If he had wild oats to sow, he was more than welcome to do so.

When my craving for his touch got too deep, I took a lover. But in an effort not to get too close to anybody, I rarely slept with the same man twice. It was the first time in my life I’d done something like this, and it was oddly freeing. Most people did one-night stands in their early twenties, but I was just discovering them for completely different perks in my late thirties.

I thought getting older would mean something, but it didn’t. I wasn’t dancing anymore, so I didn’t have a time bomb inside of me, and I had no desire for children. I only started to worry, as I started to dye my hair to conceal the grays, smooth on expensive products every night, and seriously consider Botox, that maybe Marcus might see me someday and decide he wasted the best years of his life waiting on something that was never going to happen.

I knew that I still had it bad for Marcus, no matter how good I was at being by myself. I just was afraid I had waited too long. That it was too late for us.

Years go by, Parker, but love doesn’t fade. It’s never faded for me. Yes, I’ve been with other women physically, but no one has ever had my heart the way you have. I know you’ve been with other men, but you somehow always seem alone. Who are you saving yourself for? If not for me, then you have to find someone. You deserve to love someone and be loved in return.

Maybe there’s more than one person out there for you. I’ve searched high and low for mine, but I’m still convinced that it’s you.

Don’t let that stop you. Love, if you want. Love, if you can.

I never want there to be any question that I love you. I love you, now and always.

If you ever think you can let yourself love me, please let me be the first one to know. I’d give up everything for you. I’d give away every penny I’ve saved for the life I imagined for us if you just said the word. Don’t you understand that I am your slave?

I’m a slave to the love I have for you, Parker. I don’t know if it’s healthy. I don’t care.

I love you. Always have. Always will. It only grows stronger with each passing breath.

I love you.

That black box on top of the closet was calling to me. I could hear it over the sputter of the coffee pot, over the shot of bourbon I tossed in my first cup to try to mute it, over the morning news I turned on only for the noise.

That black box always called to me. It was just that some days I was better at ignoring it than others.

I tried to focus on tasks I needed to do, like the inexplicable way I pre-cleaned my condo before the cleaning service arrived. I thought, years ago, that hiring someone to clean my home would free me up to focus more on my business, but the opposite was true. The idea of people coming to my house and judging me—silently or not—on my tidiness was a nightmare. I picked up, made sure all clothes were in the hamper, and tried to collect my glasses and put them all in the sink. I would be at the club focusing on something when my subconscious would dredge up an embarrassing location—on the back of the toilet in the master bathroom—where I’d left a cocktail glass. It was good to unwind with a cold drink under a hot shower spray, but I didn’t need other people knowing that about me.

There was also the matter of going over the papers my lawyer had sent me—the very one I’d kept since hiring him to deal with Ron and the restraining order all those years ago. He’d drawn up papers about turning the club over to Sol. Reflecting on everything had shown me that I was going to do that sooner rather than later. There were places in this world I wanted to see while I could still walk, before the wrinkles completely took over my face. That was what I wanted to do—embrace the restlessness inside of me, put it to good use, wander all over this world until I was dead, or out of money, or satisfied on some forgotten island, existing by the water’s edge.

I was going to show Sol the papers today.

I thought that decision would keep me from the box, but I was wrong. If I showed Sol the papers today, then I’d have to tell Marcus. I didn’t want him showing up at the club, expecting to see me but learning that Sol was its new proprietress.

I would need to write Marcus a letter—still our preferred mode of contact—and that made me wonder what was in his last letter, if there were any quips I should respond to, any news of his I should follow up on. It would be easier if we called each other, but I believed that made us closer than I was comfortable with us being. I wanted to maintain the illusion that we were at arm’s length. Calling him, though I was well aware of what his number was, would shatter it.

I distracted myself a few moments more by writing a quick note:
Thought you’d like to know I’m handing the reins of the club over to Sol, who more than deserves them.
I tried to make those the only words that I needed to mention. Then, I dragged the stepladder out, carried it clunking painfully against my side, and set it up in my closet.

As I stood on it, reaching for the box of letters, part of me wished I would fall and twist my stupid neck instead of diving into this rabbit hole again. Each time I submerged myself in the years of letters from Marcus I’d kept, archived away, it was harder and harder to resurface.

The thought was ludicrous. How could I entertain the idea of being with Marcus again? I was well in my forties, practically staring fifty in the face. This wasn’t an age that women usually pined from afar, looking to tie down something. This was an age for women to be counting their twentieth wedding anniversary, glowing with the knowledge that they’d kept a husband for this long.

I didn’t really want to marry Marcus, did I?

That was the ending all the fairy tales had, and my life had been anything but. Ugly things had happened to me, and I’d been stupid. I didn’t really have a fairy godmother, and nothing close to a genie in a lamp. I’d struggled and fallen down and failed.

If there was a happily ever after in all of this, I had no idea what it would look like. I thought it would be me, here in this condo, letting the club that had gifted me with my fortune and my lifestyle give security to someone else who deserved it more than I did. Was happily ever after reasonably anonymous sex—no strings attached, no emotions involved, just an orgasm as a promise in the end? Was happily ever after me traveling the world alone, experiencing new things by myself, as I had when I’d visited New York to try to get my life together?

I thought I was happy. I thought I had set myself up for happiness. I had an enormous nest egg, one that would send me around the world several times over. I’d built this life. Was it not the one I wanted?

Whenever I started questioning myself, questioning everything, my resolve completely melted away. I tossed the surprisingly heavy box on my bed before plopping down beside it and upending it, spreading the letters in a mess over the comforter.

I liked them this way, disjointed, out of order. I could drift through Marcus unabated by time, unrestricted by circumstance. Here, he was just a kid, writing to me not long after he’d been sent to military school. Marcus had found the letters our parents had kept from me after his father had died, sending them to me as a friendly laugh, as in, “hey, remember this time when we were apart and miserable but so in love?” I didn’t know whether they were a gift or a curse. The letters were full of angst and loathing for our parents. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I had received those letters. Maybe I would’ve stayed on the West Coast, eager for both of us to turn eighteen, for Marcus to leave school, for us to be together no matter what.

Here he was upon starting his business, getting in after a lucrative summer internship while he was in the military academy, eager to launch his career in the business world, away from the Armed Forces of his father. There was so much hope then, and the desire that I would be proud of him once he’d made it. He had to focus on everything right now, but we’d be together soon, just as soon as he started making money. Even back then, so young and driven, I doubted that Marcus at that point even dared to dream of how much money he’d have at this point of his life.

And here was a letter written soon after the debacle with Ron, when I was tentatively exploring the idea of it being easier to be friends with Marcus than it was to be romantically attracted to him. I thought that if I could shut down that portion of our relationship, it would be fine.

And it was. To a point. It had been easy to focus on myself, on getting myself to the place I needed to be after everything had gone so wrong. I didn’t need the added distraction of the unrequited relationship I had with my stepbrother. That wasn’t a point of drama I could address or mull over.

I’ll always be your friend,
Marcus had written.
You’re my very best friend, Parker. I hope that won’t change whatever you decide you want to do in life. Best friends last forever, I hear, and if it makes you smile, I hear that family never splits. Ha—probably shouldn’t joke about incest. And a reminder: We’re not related by blood. Never were, never will be. I love you deeply. Do what you need to do.

It wasn’t easier to just be friends with Marcus. It wasn’t easier to watch him smile and laugh with my escorts. It wasn’t easier to imagine what they did once they left my club, Marcus never making mention of it, my employees under no obligation to disclose what happened while they escorted. And yet it haunted me, my platonic relationship with the man I loved, the man I had always loved.

Here, another letter from military school.

Sometimes I can’t understand why things happen
, he’d written, his handwriting still round, sloppy, childish.
There’s nothing about life that’s fair. We should be together, and we aren’t. People who don’t understand us keep us apart. And then I remember how simple love is, how simple it is to love you. It’s all I have to know. I don’t give a shit about why people are idiots and why we’re apart. All that matters is that I love you. This isn’t the end of our story, Parker.

Christ, this letter had been written thirty years ago. If the story hadn’t ended between us then, it had surely ended years back. Maybe when I told him that he should move on, that he shouldn’t be writing letters to me anymore. Or maybe after the Ron incident. Maybe I didn’t repay Marcus the way he’d imagined I would. Maybe when I told him all I wanted was his friendship was when I slammed the book shut on our story.

Maybe our story was never meant to be at all. Our parents had been so against the idea of us being together for a reason. Maybe they had known best all along and I had just been hurting myself, struggling against that logic.

And yet, could it be so simple? Could love be simple?

In my experience, it never was. Love was messy, difficult, painful, and treacherous—if you placed your heart in the wrong person’s hands. I’d learned that the hard way, the bad way, with Ron. He’d perhaps harmed me irrevocably. Maybe I wasn’t capable of being with Marcus or anyone else in a committed, long-term relationship. There was a reason I rotated my sexual partners, a thought process behind seriously considering jettisoning my regular lover, Armando, because he was getting too attached to me. Maybe I had been rendered incapable of being in a loving relationship with anyone.

And maybe I would spare Marcus the pain of being with someone who was obviously so broken.

I looked at the pages upon pages of letters covering my bed. For the hundredth time, I considered burning all of them and never looking back. For the hundredth time, I gathered them all back up, stacking them haphazardly until the box’s top fit snugly again, and returned it all to the closet.

How long would it take for me to revisit that ever-present box, a box that contained the past, futures imagined that had never come to pass, and feelings I had no way of knowing were real anymore. It was such a dangerous thing. Could I go a week without it? A month? A year?

Or, after gifting the club to Sol this afternoon, would I simply come back home, drag the stepladder back across the condo, and immerse myself in impossible things?

I glanced at the clock and cringed. It was past time to get ready. I wanted to be out of here by the time the cleaning crew arrived, which gave me limited time to finish dressing and putting on my face.

I slipped the papers for the club into a manila envelope, securing it into my purse as the doorbell rang. I slid out the back, into the garage, as the cleaning crew let themselves in the front. A purr of my car’s engine and I was gone, greeting the afternoon, the Miami sun glinting off of every surface. I dropped the quick, simple note to Marcus in the mail before zipping off to the club.

Unlock the doors, turn on the lights. Open the supply cabinet, check the list of chores to complete. Greet the opening crew, check the DJ equipment. Eye the slow trickle of dancers arriving, wonder if I should call more to deepen the rotation. Check the liquor supply, note any maintenance that needed to be scheduled, open the office, and go over the mail. See to the music and lighting, fill in any cogs of the machine that were still missing, welcome the first few customers. Watch the tables slowly fill, watch the dancers to give out advice. Confer with dancers wanting to talk about shifts, concerns, or questions. Scan the customers for problems. Inform the bouncer to watch certain tables.

It was a routine, working at the club, something familiar and delightful. My list of tasks was always long, always all-consuming. It could be a grind, but it was my grind. For the longest time, I wouldn’t give it up for anything or anybody. It was what kept me going, keeping this place going.

But now, all of that was going to change.

“Sol.”

I barely had to raise my voice over the music and she could hear me call her name. She left the table of customers she’d been chatting up with a warm smile, a well-placed hand on each shoulder, letting these men know they were important to us—also parts of the machine and needed to keep it running smoothly. She was going to take to this like a fish to water.

“What can I help you with?” she asked, her dark eyes wide, ready to do whatever was required of her.

“Let’s meet in the office,” I said, turning and walking briskly away, knowing without glancing over my shoulder that she was following. Employees you could trust were hard to find. I’d been lucky with Sol. I’d been lucky with a lot of the people who’d worked here.

“Is everything all right?” Sol asked, turning as I shut the door behind me. Her voice was concerned. We usually settled all our business outside, on the club floor, so we could keep an eye on operations.