LOVING THE HEAD MAN (20 page)

       Robert hesitated.  She’d never know how hard he battled with that very decision.  “No,” he said.

       Bree looked away from him, the idea of working so hard, making a monumental mistake, and then turning up blanks still painful to her.  “Well then,” she said.  “What would have been the point?”

       “The point,” Robert said, “was that we still had unfinished business.”

       Bree immediately glanced at Malcolm when Robert spoke so personally.  She was mortified.  She didn’t want her personal business on display like this.  Malcolm, knowing Bree well enough to understand that, stood.  Although the idea of his Bree with Robert Colgate was still weirding him out.

       “I’d better take off,” he said as he stood.  “Take care of yourself, Bree.”

       “You, too, Mal, and thanks for putting in that word for me at your firm.”

       “I’m just sorry it didn’t work out.”

       “I know.  But thanks.”

       “Maybe we can catch a dinner and movie or something once you get settled in.”  Malcolm could see Colgate didn’t like even the suggestion of him going anywhere with Bree, which only made it clearer to him that that sugar daddy Francine was claiming Bree had in Chicago, despite Bree’s denial, was Robert Colgate himself.

       “Sure,” Bree said with a smile.  “I’ll like that.”  Although Malcolm had dumped up as a girlfriend, he still remained her closest friend.

       “Mr. Colgate,” Malcolm said, extending his hand.  Robert stood up and shook it.  “Nice meeting you.”

      
“Same here.”

       “And as for defending the VP,” Malcolm said, a smirk already on his face, “good luck with that.”

         Robert smiled.  “Just stay away from my jury pool,” he said and Malcolm laughed.

       “Have a good one,” Malcolm said as he headed down the steps toward his Ford Taurus, the children all stopping their play and walking him to his car.  What Bree always loved about Malcolm was his lack of pretentiousness, the fact that he practiced what he preached. 

       As soon as Robert sat back down, however, that unpretentious young Malcolm became the hot topic of their conversation.  “And you know him how?” Robert wanted to know.

       “I’ve known him for years.  We sort of grew up together.  Then we went to law school together.  That’s when we really became friends.”

      
“Only friends?”

       Bree looked at Robert.  “Excuse me?”

       “You heard me.  Were you and Mr. Burgess only friends?”

       “We are now.”

       “And back then?”

       “Robert, I really don’t see what this has to do with--”

       “It’s a simple question, Brianna.  Were you and Mr. Burgess only friends back in your college days?”

        Bree smiled.  “You talk as if they were years ago.  I only just graduated four months ago, remember?”

      
“My point entirely.
  And
those months before you graduated, which, as you point out, wasn’t
all that long ago, were you and Mr. Burgess only friends then?”

       What was the use, Bree
thought.
  “No.  We were lovers. 
All right?”

       Robert’s heart sank.  And now she was back, he thought, to continue to love affair.  “But you say not any longer?”

       “He dumped me in our last year at law school.  Said I just didn’t make the grade for the kind of wife he would require.”

       Robert looked at her.  “And what kind of wife did he require?”

       “A housewife,” she said without hesitation. 

       Robert smiled, and then laughed.  “I see,” he said.

       “What’s so funny?” Bree wanted to know.

       “I would have to agree with young Burgess.  I can’t see you in that housewife role.”

       Bree smiled and put her Coke up to her mouth.  “Me either,” she admitted.

       Robert’s arm on the back of the seat curved to where his hand was now touching Bree’s bare upper arm.  Bree immediately felt the heat when he touched her.

       “I’ve been thinking about you,” he said. 
“About us.”

       Bree didn’t know if she wanted to have this conversation, especially not after what
  had
happened the other night and the compromising position he had caught her in.  “What about us?” she asked him.

       Robert began to rub her upper arm.  “I’ve had so much on my plate lately,” he said.  “I feel like I’ve been neglectful.”

       Bree found herself leaning into his rub.  “How could you neglect me when we already had decided not to pursue
anything.
”

       “Correction, my dear,” Robert whispered in her ear.  “You had decided that.  I hadn’t decided a thing.”

       Bree looked at him.  She wasn’t about to get hopeful, not after the other night, not after her own decision to not go down that relationship road with him.  But she needed him to be clear.  “So what are you saying?” she asked.

       He hesitated, which, to Bree, wasn’t exactly the sign of a man with a plan.  “I was very angry with you when I saw you in that condo with DeFrame.”  Bree’s heart dropped.  “I was so angry that I had considered kicking you out of the program right then and there, without even allowing you to show up for the last day.”

       “We, Alan and me, didn’t do anything.”

       “I know that,” he said.  When he had put his penis inside of her that night, and felt that wondrously juicy warmth that only she could make him feel, somehow he knew instinctively that no one else had penetrated her since the last time he had that privilege.  And somehow he also instinctively knew that no one else ever would.  “But I couldn’t get past the fact that you had considered it.  That you had allowed yourself to even dream of it.”

       Anger and defensiveness overtook Bree and she quickly snatched his hand from her arm and stood to her feet.  She at first thought to pace the porch, but thought again and leaned against the porch rail, her siblings and their friends arguing over a call and not even noticing her agitation.  She stared at Robert.  “What do you expect from me?” she asked him, a frown of anger and confusion and regret piercing her face. 
“Hun?
 
Some kind of perfection?
  I’m supposed to be some angel or something?  My mother was about to lose a home my father had entrusted to me, to keep his children safe, to keep his children from begging in the streets or depending on any government anything, and hell yeah I was desperate!  I needed forty-two thousand and I needed it within days and Alan was dangling fifty.  So yes I decided to take it.  I wasn’t willing to let my younger siblings go homeless to prove some point.  So judge me all you please, but I did what I had to do.”

       “But you changed your mind,” Robert said, studying her, pleased with her passion.

       Bree just stood there.  “Yes,” she said.  “I changed my mind.”

       Robert stood up, walked over by the rail, and leaned against it too, folding his arms.  “And nothing’s changed regarding your family home,” he said.

       Bree frowned, looked down, the mere thought of what was to transpire in a matter of days weighing heavily on her.  “No.  Nothing’s changed.”

       Robert exhaled.  Then he reached into his breast pocket, pulled out an envelope, and handed it to Bree. 

       “What is it?” she asked him.

       “Open it and see.”

       Bree opened the envelope.  To her shock, it was the deed to her father’s home, a deed that showed paid in full and Brianna Hudson’s name as sole owner.  She looked at Robert. 
Stunned speechless.

       “Now that you don’t have to worry about any roof over your siblings head,” he said, “I want you back in Chicago with me.”

       “But . . . You paid it off?”

       Robert smiled.  He thought they were beyond that obvious point.  “That’s correct.”

       “
But.
. . but why?  I thought you said you were so angry with me, so disappointed in me?”

       “And in that anger, in that disappointment, I realized a simple truth, Brianna.”  He looked at her, found it too impersonal.  He therefore took it upon himself to remove her sunglasses off of her beautiful eyes, eyes that radiated a soft glow against the natural light.  He then put his hand on the banister behind her, effectively locking her into his space.  “I realized that I didn’t want to, that I couldn’t live without you.  And that kind of reality, that kind of love, Brianna, can’t be shaken by doing nothing.”

       As soon as he said it, as soon as he so much as mentioned the word love, Bree fell into his arms.  She didn’t care that her siblings were now watching, and were laughing and pointing as if they’d never seen anything like it.  She didn’t care that her mother had come to the screen door wondering what all the fuss was about, only to see her daughter locked in an embrace with some white man driving some fancy Mercedes.  She didn’t even care that what she was doing went completely against all of her prior big talk, about not being ready for any hot and heavy romance with Robert, about not falling into any one-sided relationship.  She just didn’t care.  All she cared about, at this moment in time, was the man who held her so lovingly in his arms, who rescued her family from certain catastrophe, who judged her just as harshly as she had judged herself, but regained his faith in her.  And a man like that, as her father once said about something totally unrelated, don’t grow on
no
trees.