“How’s it going with the Santiago block?” Damian asked, referring to their latest project. “Any word yet on the tenants? How many have agreed?”
“Let’s see, I have it somewhere. Let me check,” Brandan replied and opened the black leather-bound notebook in his hand, flipping through it until he’d found the page he was looking for.
Though he really didn’t need to check. The project details, as well as Leila James, were firmly entrenched in his mind.
“It’s all good. Just waiting for one last tenant.”
“Same woman who sent us the letter protesting us ‘destroying her livelihood?’” Mateo asked and laughed.
“Yeah,” Brandan said, and ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “Leila James. Owner of Aunt Sadie’s Café. In fact, she’s taking it up a notch. Says she going to fight us. Going to the city’s Hall of Historical Records to stop us from buying the land.”
“How in hell is she going to do that?” Mateo asked, his good humor rapidly disintegrating.
“She says there’s some tree on her property that has historical significance.”
“Damn, if it’s not one thing, it’s something else. She’s the only one holding out on us, and holding up the project. The other owners were more than happy to sell and get five times what their businesses were worth!” he replied, a frown creasing his brow as he glanced over the document. “What the hell does she want? You’d think she’d be happy to get it off her hands. Didn’t she inherit it or something?”
“Let me see it,” Damian asked. With a sigh of disgust, Mateo handed the document over.
Just the mention of the woman—Leila James—caused conflicting emotions for Brandan. He’d been the one “assigned” to deal with her. Over the course of the last few months, the woman had raised his blood pressure to soaring levels. He didn’t know what would happen if he were to actually come face-to-face with the woman, but it was something that admittedly—embarrassingly—he inexplicably got hard just thinking about.
Damn. Yeah, he needed a woman.
“I’ll contact her again,” was all he said to his partners.
“So that’s it, right?”
“You got plans?” Damian asked, handing the document back to Brandan.
“Yeah. A date,” Brandan replied absentmindedly, and placed the document back in its file.
“With who, Serena?”
“No, broke it off a few weeks ago with her.”
“This makes what? The third new woman in as many weeks, amigo?” Mateo replied with an easy laugh.
“And the problem with that is…?”
They all laughed. Brandan knew he wasn’t known to keep dating one woman much longer than a few months, but even for him, this was a lot.
“Looking for Ms. Right?” Mateo asked, and a small smile lifted one corner of his mouth.
“About as much as you are.”
“Yeah…right.”
“You guys never know, stranger things have happened. The right woman could come along, and you’ll be trading your sports cars for minivans with built-in TVs to keep the kiddies occupied while you take a road trip to Disneyland,” Damian laughingly warned.
A look of indescribable horror flashed across Mateo’s face, and Brandan barked out a laugh, only to have Damian turn to him.
“What are you laughing at? Out of the two of you, I’d lay my kids’ college fund that you’re the first one to be picking out a beige tricked-out minivan!”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think Wanda would like you losing your kids’ tuition money on that one. I like the single life just fine.”
“Man, not every woman is the same.”
When his friend turned his dark-eyed gaze toward him, Brandan felt the slightest bit of discomfort, as though Damian was looking right through him.
He knew Damian was referring to his mother and their uncomfortable relationship. “The right woman comes along and man, it’s like BAM, that’s all she wrote. Tagged and bagged…the rest is history.”
“That would have to be one hell of a woman. And one big-ass bag,” Brandan replied nonchalantly.
Before Damian could respond, the office door flung open abruptly.
“Miss, I’m sorry, but you don’t have an appointment! You can’t just go in there—”
“I’m sorry Mr. Walters—gentlemen—I thought she’d left after I told her you were unavailable. I went to the restroom but when I came back, she was going inside! I tried to stop her but she—”
Surprised, all three men stared, each with varying expressions on their face, as a beautiful, tall, determined-looking woman stood towering behind Brandan’s small, very flustered assistant.
“Look, miss, I’ve told you—”
“No, that’s fine, Judith. She can come in. In fact, why don’t you head out for the day. I’ll lock up,” he said, never taking his eyes off the woman who’d moved from behind Judith, and was now watching all of them with an air of majestic expectancy. As though she had every right to barge into his office without notice.
It was the woman from the lobby.
Brandan barely noticed when Judith reluctantly took her leave. He saw both of his partners staring at the woman with just as much interest as he, and when he noticed a sly-ass grin cross Mateo’s face, something in him wanted to knock the man’s teeth down his throat.
He turned to the woman and asked, “We have an appointment, Ms…?”
5
Okay, so now that she’d barged inside, she had to do something.
She thought Brandan was alone, even though his assistant told her he was busy. After she’d come up earlier and had seen the amount of traffic going in and out of his office, she’d decided to retreat and figure out some sort of game plan.
So instead of going to his office, she’d left instead, done a bit of window shopping, absentmindedly strolling around the busy midtown area, her mind working through the puzzle of saving her restaurant.
She’d returned after a hour or so, wanting to catch him before he left for the day. She still didn’t exactly know what she was going to say to him.
Now she stood in the room, with three very interested pair of eyes staring at her, each with varying expressions on their faces.
As Judith firmly closed the door behind her, Leila in turn glanced at each of the men in the room.
She vaguely remembered the assistant telling her that Mr. Walters was leaving after the meeting with his partners. At the time, her only thought had been to catch him before he left for the weekend.
Leila quickly ran an assessing eye over each of them, her natural ability to sum up a man quickly coming to her aid.
Like Brandan, the two other men in the room were large, although neither had the breadth of shoulders and sheer overall intense masculine presence that Brandan did.
These were his partners, she assumed, and the one lounging in the chair closest to Brandan was probably Mateo Sanchez. His olive-colored skin and dark wavy hair suggested that he was.
His eyes, nearly black, ran over her in a lazy, very sexual manner, a look she was quite used to. And though he was gorgeous, with his dark coloring, classic features, and olive-colored complexion