Rachel Haimowitz & Cat Grant - [Power Play 1] (8 page)

sat down across from him. For all of Brandon’s apparent nonchalance,

he really had made an effort tonight.

Maybe he really
does
like me.

“So . . . how was your week?”

“Fine, until your damn flower came,” he groused, but without any

real rancor. “The guys are still ribbing me about it.”

“Yet here you are.”

“Well, it was
a very
pretty
flower.”

They finished their drinks and drifted into the dining room.

Brandon stilled, his gaze captured by the view of the Golden Gate

Bridge through the floor-to-ceiling windows, lights shimmering in

the evening fog. Jonathan couldn’t resist stepping up beside him and

laying a hand on the back of his neck, fingering the soft hair there.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Brandon nodded and leaned ever so slightly into Jonathan’s side.

They stood there in silence a few moments longer, and then

Brandon turned, leaned in, brought his own hand to Jonathan’s

cheek—

Jonathan clasped gentle fingers around Brandon’s wrist and took

one step back. If he let the man kiss him now, they’d never get around

to dinner. But he brought Brandon’s hand to his lips, pressed them

there, long and soft. “Later,” he promised. “I spent hours on dinner.

Please, come enjoy it.”

Brandon nodded, smiling gently—no sign of those teeth—and

let Jonathan lead him to the dining room table.

His eyebrows rose at the sight of the table: white linen cloth,

real silverware, beeswax candles, and two courses laid out in polished

wooden dishes.

“Please, sit,” Jonathan said, then draped a napkin over Brandon’s

lap and served him a bowl of salad.

Brandon rolled his sleeves halfway up his forearms, and it was

all Jonathan could do not to stare at the casual reveal of lean muscle

and tendons and veins, the light scatter of pale ginger hair on tanned,

freckled skin. “Um.” He gestured with the salad tongs. “Mixed

baby greens; I grow them on the balcony. And I made the dressing

myself.”

“Of course you did.” Now the teeth were back. “Did you butcher

your own tofu, too?”

Jonathan laughed. “Actually now that you mention it, I did grow

the mushrooms”—he pointed to the portabellas on the chafing

dish—“and stuff them myself, but I’m afraid the tofu’s from Whole

Foods.”

“Cheater,” Brandon said around a mouthful of salad. Then,

“Mmm, this is really good.”

“Thank you.” Jonathan served himself and sat down. “So . . . any

luck with your loan application?”

Brandon froze mid-chew, eyes narrowed. “Why do you care?”

Jonathan put his hands up. “Just making conversation. In a

roundabout way, it is how we met, after al . I’d love to hear more

about it. It’s a construction business you’d like to buy?”

“Yeah.” Brandon poked at his salad, ate a cherry tomato. “Sort

of an architectural firm, project management firm, and construction

business all rolled into one, actually. My boss does custom designs

for people like you. I help figure out what we need and how to make

it happen, then supervise the day crew on-site when we go out and

build it.”

“You have an architecture degree?”

Brandon’s eyes narrowed once more. “Did your investigators fall

down again?”

“Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to hear it from you.”

“I’ve taken some classes, got my associate’s at City College.

Wanted to keep going, transfer over to UC Berkeley, but I haven’t

managed to scrape the money together yet.” He shrugged. “Even if I

did, it’s tough to make the time. I’m salaried, no overtime, so the boss

pushes me pretty hard; most weeks I put in sixty hours. Don’t always

get evenings or weekends off.”

“Well, good to hear the business is doing well, even in this

economy. Sounds like a wise investment.”

Another shrug. “I’ve crunched the numbers. Honestly, the

margins are pretty slim, but it’s been good before and it’ll be good

again. Thing is, my boss is a nice guy, but half his profitability comes

out of our pockets. All those long hours, and the work doesn’t pay for

shit. It doesn’t even have to, because where are we gonna go? It’s not

like there are construction jobs out the wazoo right now.”

“You think you can run the business better than he can?”

Brandon looked right at him. “Yes. I know I can. I’m halfway

doing it already.”

Nothing sexier than confidence. And well-muscled forearms.

Jonathan’s gaze lingered on the latter while he pondered the former.

“So,” Brandon said, scraping up the last of his salad, “How about

you? How’d you get into computers?”

“I had a bit of an unconventional upbringing, you might say.

Home schooled.” He chuckled. “Even spent three years on a commune,

believe it or not, and then nearly as many on a research vessel with my

parents—they were marine biologists, you see. Anyway, everywhere

we went, I saw problems I thought could be fixed if only there was an

opportunity for education, for bringing the knowledge of the world

into all those pockets of poverty. I knew by the time I was twelve

that I wanted to bring a computer to every classroom in the world. I

went off to college at fourteen, and four years later, I’d built a $100

computer for my master’s thesis. The idea kind of took off from there.

So many of the software and hardware principles were applicable to

mainstream consumer culture, so I got my MBA on my way to my

PhD, and—” He looked up, realized Brandon was staring at him,

empty fork held aloft. “Look at me, I’m rambling. And I’ve neglected

to serve the main course.”

He stood to do exactly that, scooping stuffed mushrooms onto

polished wood plates and putting one before each of them.

“Wow,” Brandon said, but whether to the food or to Jonathan’s

life story, Jonathan had no idea.

He waited for Brandon to take a bite of the mushroom. The

ecstatic look on his face as he started to chew made all that time in

the kitchen completely worthwhile.

Brandon swallowed, forked up another bite and peered at it, then

looked at Jonathan, delight giving way to utter incredulity. “There’s

really no meat in this?”

“Not a morsel.”

“Wow,” he said again. “Learn how to cook on the commune?”

“And out at sea. Although I haven’t eaten fish in years.”

“Didn’t like chowing down on your friends?”

“We’re fishing the oceans to death. I want no part of that.”

Well, that answer went over about as well as it usually did.

Brandon looked more uncomfortable than normal as he went back

to his food. They ate in silence for a bit, but at last the awkwardness

faded, and Brandon said, “You know, you and I might have more in

common than I realized.”

“Oh?” Jonathan asked when Brandon took another bite of stuffed

mushroom instead of expanding on his thought.

“Mmhm,” he said round a mouthful of food. Swallowed, and

added, “One of the things I’ve been focusing on at work is green

development. Not just solar panels and geothermal heat pumps—

though,” he added, “those too. But building to the climate, you

know? Skylights and south-facing windows up north, close-planted

shade trees and white pavement down south, xenoscaping in the

desert, vertical gardening and low-maintenance grass roofs, mycelium

insulation and drywal —”

“Mycelium?” Jonathan asked, almost loath to interrupt Brandon

when he was clearly so enthused. “Do you mean mushrooms?”

Brandon forked up more stuffed mushroom with a gleeful grin

and nodded. “Not the parts you eat, of course, but the root systems.

They can be grown into, essentially, foam blocks that insulate better

than fiberglass. Plus they’re stronger than concrete, totally fireproof

and nontoxic, hundreds of times more mold- and water-resistant than

standard insulation and drywal , and can be built on the super-cheap

because mushrooms eat the empty husks from rice and cotton seed,

which, by the way, you can’t even use as feed for farm animals—pure

agricultural waste.”

“Huh. And this mycelium, can it be grown anywhere?”

“Sure. In fact, there’s a company right here in California growing

them in old shipping containers. And I can’t help but think, you

know, how much of a difference building design like that could make

in people’s lives.”

Jonathan nodded; he’d seen firsthand how sometimes the simplest

innovations could exponentially raise someone’s standard of living.

“Habitat for Humanity builds homes for folks in need, but then

they’re stuck with electric bills and water bills every month that might

mean the difference between, you know, buying their kids clothes

that year or not. If they just started applying some of these principles,

they could design almost entirely self-sufficient homes—places that

could literally function off the grid, cutting energy use by up to 90%

and water waste by over 50% and—” Brandon blushed, looked down

at his cooling food. “And now
I’m
rambling, aren’t I.”

Jonathan shook his head. He’d have smiled at Brandon, but he was

already grinning like an idiot. “No, it’s fascinating. My foundation’s

been supporting green housing development for years, but I had no

idea it was so rife with innovation.”

Brandon shrugged, wouldn’t meet Jonathan’s eyes of a sudden.

“Well, that’s all for the future anyway, I guess. My boss is perfectly

happy to listen to me ramble, but he’s not so interested in actually

making these things happen. ‘Why mess with a good thing,’ he says.

Guess I can’t blame him.”

For a moment, Jonathan felt terribly sorry for Brandon—so much

passion, so many ideas, and no power at all to make it happen—but

he shook it off, knowing how much Brandon would hate his pity.

They both went back to eating, but at least the silence didn’t feel

strained this time.

When Brandon scraped the last bite of stuffed mushroom from

his plate, Jonathan said, “Want more?”

Brandon thought about it for a moment, then shook his head.

“Dessert? I made mousse.”

Brandon’s foot touched Jonathan’s under the table. “Not the

dessert I had in mind.”

Beautiful
and
smart
and
passionate? Oh God, give me strength . . .

“Look, about that.” He leaned in, laid his hand over Brandon’s

where it rested on the table. “You’ve probably realized by now that I

have certain . . . proclivities.”

Brandon snorted. “Is that a fancy word for ‘likes to handcuff guys

to the bedpost and fuck them raw?’”

Jonathan chuckled and nodded. “That, among other things.” He

paused, gauging Brandon’s reaction. No surprise or fear—not yet, at

least. “And I think that you too have certain proclivities.”

Brandon yanked his hand out from under Jonathan’s, threw it up

like a traffic cop. “Hey, wait a minute, pal. That kinky shit? Was all

you, not me.”

“True,” Jonathan conceded, “but you enjoyed it. Very much

so, in fact; I seem to recall cleaning cum off your chin. And you

didn’t free yourself when given the chance. You
stayed
.” Brandon

scowled but said nothing. “There’s no shame in it, Brandon. Quite

to the contrary; embracing your sexuality—a sexuality as deep and

delicious as yours—that’s a gift. A treasure. It’s one I’d like to help

you explore.”

Brandon looked a little sullen when he said, “That’s what I was

suggesting a minute ago.”

“Not exactly what I had in mind.”

“What, so you invited me over here just to
talk
?”

Jonathan laid his hand atop Brandon’s again, quirked a smile. “I

realize that might come as something of a shock to you, but yes. It’s

not that I don’t want you”—he eyed Brandon up and down and up

again just for good measure—“
believe
me. Rather the opposite, in

fact. I want you terribly. And I thought . . .” He paused, bit his lip.

This wasn’t going to go well—
couldn’t
go well, not with a man this

proud—and yet he had to try. “I thought perhaps I could help you

achieve your business goals while pursuing some mutual pleasures.”

Brandon’s fingers curled into a fist beneath Jonathan’s hand. “You

mean ‘helping me to explore my
proclivities
?’”

“Yes.”

“While
paying me
?”

“I never said—”

“No, but what else could it be? God, you fucker!” Brandon

shoved his chair back, jumped to his feet. “Just because you picked

me up in a bar doesn’t make me a whore.”

He grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair, turned and

stomped away. “I’ll mail the suit back, you slimy son of a bitch.”

Jonathan winced; this was even worse than he’d anticipated. Still,

Brandon wasn’t gone yet. One more chance to turn this around. He

jumped to his feet and followed Brandon into the living room. “I

don’t think you’re a whore,” he said. “In fact, I admire you a great deal.

Look how far you’ve come under your own steam. Taking nothing