Sense of Place Page 2

  “Am I being officially reprimanded?” I asked him outright.

  He smiled a little more genuinely this time. “Heavens, no,” he said, though I didn’t believe him. “Though I am curious about one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why didn’t you recommend we hire him?”

  There were two ways I could answer that question. I could tell him I hadn’t wanted him to work here because then we couldn’t date, and basically admit that I was seeing him while he worked here. Or I could lie and tell him I didn’t think Cooper was good enough.

  Instead, I answered his question with a question. A conversational trait I knew Robert detested. Maybe that was why I did it. Sure, Robert had mentored me when I started at Brackett and Golding, and I admired him professionally. But as employees in this company, we were on an equal footing, so the words fuck you echoed in my mind.

  Cooper was starting to wear off on me.

  “Why are you bringing this up now?” I asked. “One month after my father’s funeral, where you saw Cooper and me together. Why now? Why not the day I came back to work?” Then it dawned on me. It had taken a month for him to find out information. “Did it honestly take you that long to find out anything on him? Because really, Robert, you just could have asked me.”

  “A little defensive, don’t you think, Tom?” he asked dismissively.

  “Not at all,” I said. “But tell me this, Robert. You’ve known I am gay for five years. Why act all homophobic and discriminatory now?”

  That stopped him. Two very carefully chosen words, with a lawsuit ring to them. Not that I would go down that route, but he didn’t know that.

  “Tom, that’s not what this is about,” he replied. “That’s not why I wanted to speak to you at all.”

  He had made me so damn angry, I wanted to let him have a piece of my mind. I’d probably already said too much, but I needed to play his game. “I’m glad to hear that, Robert,” I said. “Because we wouldn’t want to have a conversation one might deem inappropriate.”

  “No, we wouldn’t,” he replied with a knowing smile.

  “Robert, if you’re alluding to an official reprimand, please, by all means, have it on my desk by lunchtime and I’ll have my lawyer look it over. But just so you know, I first met Cooper through my son, Ryan. Not Brackett and Golding. I chose him to be my intern because he was the most talented one there.” Then I added, “But you’re right about one thing. I didn’t want him to work here. I called Louisa Arlington and lined up an interview for him, but he got the job on his own merit. And she has since thanked me for suggesting he work with her.”

  I stood up and walked to the door. “And if you want to know the reason why I didn’t want him to work here, it wasn’t because I wanted to be with him and couldn’t because of company policy.” I took a breath to make sure my voice was steady when I spoke. “I didn’t want him to work here because the staunch traditionalism and lack of free thinking would have suffocated him.”

  And with that, I walked out.

  I walked back to my office, past Jennifer, who had the grace to leave me alone long enough to calm down.

  I waited for an official letter to come from the Chairman of the Board, upon recommendation from Robert. But it never came.

  By the time I got home, I was calmer and had let most of the residual anger go. I knew Cooper had wanted me to cook, but I really wasn’t in the mood. I had dinner ordered by the time he got home. “I ordered you the Thai fish you wanted,” I told him.

  He finished putting his work satchel on the table and pulled his tie off, then he gave me a proper kiss. “If I hadn’t come home right now, would you have pretended you cooked it thinking I’d be all impressed and love struck?” he asked, batting his eyelashes.

  I snorted. “There’s no way I could fake that kind of cooking skill.”

  “You cook just fine,” he said, opening the fridge and pulling out two bottled waters and handing me one. “I went to see your doctor today,” he said casually. “I called to make an appointment, he had a vacancy, so I went. Had all the usual screening tests done.” Then he sighed dramatically. “No prostate exam, though.”

  I laughed. “Did you ask for one?”

  He pretended to be offended. “Not on the first date! I’m not that kind of guy.”

  Still smiling, I took a sip of water. “What else did he say?”

  “That you were handsome and dreamy.”

  “He did not,” I said flatly. “He’s a straight man.”

  “Oh,” Cooper said with a grin. “Maybe that was me who said that.”

  “You’re such a dork.”

  “Dork?” he replied. “Really, Tom? No one’s used the word ‘dork’ since the nineties.”

  “Oh my God,” I cried sarcastically. “They should archive it with Olde English. The nineties were sooooo long ago.”

  Cooper rolled his eyes at me. “So how was your day, anyway?”

  “Well,” I said slowly, “I had a very interesting conversation with Robert Chandler this morning.”

  “The old fogey with the grey helmet hair?”

  I snorted again. “Yes, that’s him.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  I nodded, then relayed the entire conversation to him.

  “An official reprimand, Tom!” he cried. “Jesus Christ!”

  “I never got one,” I said, trying to calm him down. “I think he was just trying to gauge my reaction, that’s all. So in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have lost my temper.”

  “That wasn’t losing your temper,” Cooper said, shaking his head. “Telling him to mind his own fucking business would be losing your temper.”

  I smiled. “Actually, I thought of you and almost told him fuck off.”

  “I would have,” Cooper replied. “What we do is none of his fucking business.”

  “Well, technically it was when you were my intern,” I amended. “I knew I was breaking company policy by seeing you.” Then I shrugged. “And I did it anyway.”

  “Ugh,” he groaned. “That’s so not fair.”

  Then dinner arrived, and he spent the entire meal stabbing his fish with his fork, or pointing it at me while he ranted about the fucking politics of fascist corporate leaders who should have retired in the Middle Ages.

  All I could do was smile at him.

  “Why doesn’t it bother you?” he asked.

  “It did when it first happened this morning,” I said. “I was livid. But at the end of the day, it’s just one reprimand. We don’t work together anymore. I’m not bringing any disrepute onto the Brackett and Golding reputation with a sexual harassment case or anything. He’s got nothing else on me.”

  “Yeah,” Cooper agreed. “But what’s he really after?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been friends with this guy for years,” he answered. “He went to your father’s funeral, and now this? It doesn’t seem right.”

  “Maybe he’s not as tolerant of same-sex couples as he thought he was,” I answered.

  Cooper almost growled. “Well, maybe someone should suggest the old fart retires and lets the rest of the twenty-first century get on with their work.”

  I picked up his plate and gave him a kiss. “I love the way you think.”

  “What if you get to work tomorrow and there’s a letter on your desk?”

  “Then I’ll deal with that tomorrow,” I said, walking into the kitchen. He followed me, so I said, “But let’s not worry about it anymore tonight. What’s done is done.” He didn’t seem exactly happy with the idea, but with a pout and a sigh, he let it go.

  Later that night when I was getting ready for bed, a naked Cooper snuggled down on my side of the mattress. “The doctor said something else,” he said quietly.

  I threw our dirty underwear into the hamper. “What’s that?”

  “He said he’d spoken to you about the possibility of unprotected
sex.”

  Oh.

  Cooper smiled. “It’s okay, Tom. He never told me what you said or anything. Just that it’s something we should talk about, if it’s something we might want to do.”

  “I, um…” I said, then climbed onto the bed and took his hand. “I didn’t mention it to you yesterday, because I don’t know how I feel about it.”

  Cooper nodded thoughtfully. “It’s weird, huh? Condoms are just something I assumed I’d always need.” He shrugged one shoulder. “It’s not just a safety thing, but it’s a security thing. I’m not sure if I’m explaining that correctly…”

  I snuggled in beside him and kissed him softly. “I understand exactly what you mean. And when he first mentioned it to me, I was like no way, it’s condoms or nothing.” Then I exhaled slowly. “But the more I thought about it…”

  Cooper leaned up on his arm so he could look at me. “The more you thought about it, what?”

  “Well, I’m not opposed to sharing that experience with you,” I hedged. “As long as we’re both given the all-clear and we both want it.”

  He bit his lip. “I’m not sure.”

  “Truthfully, neither am I,” I said honestly. “But we have a few weeks before you get your test results, and even then we don’t have to agree to it. We can wait a year, or ten years before we need to decide.”

  Cooper smiled and settled down into the crook of my arm. “Thank you for understanding.”

  I kissed the top of his head. “Thank you for understanding, too.”

  He sighed contentedly, and after a long moment, he said, “What do you think Robert will say to you at work tomorrow?”

  I tightened my hold on him. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. If he wants to reprimand me for dating you, then let him. I don’t care.” I rolled over so I faced him, so our noses were almost touching. “Because given the chance to go back and do it again, I wouldn’t change a thing. I should be sorry for breaking company policy, but I’m not. I’m not sorry at all, and if he has a problem with that, he can get fucked.”

  Cooper laughed and put his hand to my face. “I think I’m starting to rub off on you.”

  I kissed him with smiling lips. “I know you are,” I agreed. “But if I’m going to get reprimanded over anything, it will be because I told him the reason I didn’t want you to work with me was because people like him would suffocate someone like you with their institutionalized way of thinking.”

  Cooper’s eyes drilled into mine. “But you don’t think like that.”

  “Not anymore,” I whispered.

  He smiled, slow and shy. “I think that’s the best compliment you’ve ever given me.” I opened my mouth to speak, but he put his thumb over my lips. “Ssh, don’t ruin it.”

  I took his thumb between my lips, sucking it into my mouth. His eyes darkened and he groaned low in his throat.

  I pulled off his thumb. “Want to put something else in my mouth?”

  He nodded. “God, yes.”

  “Get up on your knees,” I urged him. So while I lay on the bed, he knelt near my face, offering me his dick.

  I slid one arm around his thigh and ran my fingers over his ass to cup his balls from behind while I took his cock into my mouth. He gripped the headboard and moaned, threading his fingers through my hair.

  “Oh fuck, Tom,” he gasped, then moaned long and slow.

  I worked him over, while his thighs trembled and his cock grew impossibly harder. He was trying not to thrust into my mouth, trying to restrain himself, so I sucked him harder, deeper. He stuttered out a warning, “Tom, gonna—gonna—fuck, Tom, I’m gonna come.” So with a final thrust, I took him into my throat and his whole body shook as he cried out some strangled cry and he came.

  When he could form coherent words, he said, “Your turn.”

  I stopped him. “No, just for you tonight.”

  He was too spent to argue. He burrowed himself into my side and fell asleep with a smile.

  * * * *

  “Good morning, Lionel,” Cooper said cheerfully as we walked through the lobby.

  “Good morning, Mr Jones, Mr Elkin,” Lionel said, addressing us both with a smile.

  “How’s the weather out there today?” Cooper asked, looking out at the rather grey-looking New York day.

  “Getting colder,” Lionel said with a nod. “It’ll be snowing before you know it.”

  “I trust Mrs Lionel is well?” Cooper asked with a smile.

  “She’s still wonderful,” the old man said proudly. “Don’t know what I ever did to get so lucky.”

  “Aw,” Cooper said. “Tom says the same thing about me!”

  I rolled my eyes and Lionel tried not to smile. Instead, he said, “You gentlemen have a great day.”

  “Thank you, Lionel,” I said. “Same to you.”

  Cooper and I stepped out onto the sidewalk, ready to go our separate ways. “Don’t let that Robert dickhead say anything to you today,” Cooper said. “I’d hate to have to come over and kick some old guy’s ass.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Do you have some tough-guy persona I haven’t seen yet?”

  “Absolutely,” he said brightly. “I have a black belt in sarcasm, and my wit is like lightning.”

  I laughed. “Goodbye, Cooper.”

  I walked to work with a smile, and Robert never spoke to me, came near me or even looked at me. That was fine by me.

  Jennifer was her cool, professional self, but she looked troubled by my conversation with Robert, or at least by the residual tension that seemed to settle over the office because of it.

  Never one to look like anything affected her, she seemed a little on edge all week. When she brought in some files on Friday, I asked her if she was okay. “Yes, I’m fine,” she said plainly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Just with my meeting with Robert earlier this week, I don’t want you to worry about it, that’s all,” I told her.

  “Nonsense,” she said, dismissing the notion completely.

  Of course she said she was fine. On the outside, nothing seemed to faze her. I remembered when I’d told her I’d separated from Sofia because I was gay, she hadn’t even blinked. She’d just asked if I was okay, then proceeded to hand me my coffee and tell me of my day’s appointments.

  But this seemed to have put a chink in her well-polished armour. Knowing Jennifer, if she didn’t want to discuss it, it wasn’t up for conversation. She obviously didn’t want to discuss it, so I let it go.

  I went about my work, having a rather productive afternoon, when my phone buzzed. Cooper’s name flashed across the screen, and I smiled as I answered. Without so much as a hello, and not giving me time to speak, he said, “Oh my God, Tom. I got it.” His voice was fast and excited.

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Got what?”

  “The job!” he cried. “I got the Xavier Baurhenn contract.”

  “Oh, Cooper, that’s excellent,” I said. I was grinning, knowing what this meant to him.

  “He saw my proposal, and loved it.”

  “Of course he did,” I said. “Because it was amazing.”

  I could tell he was grinning when he spoke. “He said it was a standout.”

  “I thought you weren’t showing him until Monday?”

  “We weren’t supposed to,” he explained. “But Xavier called and asked Louisa how we were coming along with the prelims, and she told him I’d done more than just the prelims. She told him I was almost done, so he came over to look at it.”

  “And?”

  “And he freakin’ loved it,” he cried, and I laughed. “We’re going out for celebratory drinks,” Cooper said. “You have to come, Tom. It’s my first contract and you need to be there.”

  “Of course I’ll be there.”

  An hour later, still dressed in my work suit, I walked into the young and trendy bar, through the young and trendy crowd, to find some young, trendy, good-looking guy with his arm around Cooper.

  Chapter Three

 
Cooper’s face lit up when he saw me, as though he couldn’t get away from the other guy quick enough. He left him standing there, and the others he was talking to, and quickly walked over to me and kissed me, right on the mouth.

  “Thank God you’re here,” he said.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “Yep,” he said brightly. Then he took my hand and led me back towards the group of people he was with. “I want you to meet everyone.”

  I was introduced to a Skye, Tyson, Ben—all of whom gave me wide-eyed nods—then Cooper turned and proudly, nervously, introduced me to Xavier, the guy who had had his arm around him.

  “Hello,” I said, shaking his hand. He was about twenty years younger than I’d expected him to be. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Xavier shook my hand firmly, then looked at Cooper. “You said his name was Tom!”

  Cooper smiled. “It is.”

  Xavier shook his head. “Not Thomas fucking Elkin.”

  Cooper burst out laughing. “He’s just Tom to me.”

  I smiled at Xavier. “It’s true. I am just Tom to him.”

  Cooper slid his arm around my waist and leaned into me. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked me.

  “Shouldn’t I be buying?” I asked. “I believe congratulations are in order.”

  Cooper rolled his eyes and ignored me. “Scotch and soda?”

  I gave him a nod, and was left with Cooper’s colleagues and Xavier staring at me.

  One of the young guys, Ben, stuck his hand out. “Mr Elkin, it’s a real pleasure. I’ve admired your work for years.”

  Skye was next. She shook my hand nervously. “I had no idea when Cooper talked of Tom that he meant you,” she said.

  Before I could be any more embarrassed, Louisa Arlington, Cooper’s boss, saw me and made her way over. She kissed my cheek. “Tom, it’s so good to see you!”

  “Louisa, you look great,” I told her honestly. She did. She’d lost weight, or got taller or done something to her hair.

  She smiled genuinely. “Cooper’s been doing some excellent work,” she went on to say. “He has an eye for fine detail.”