Underneath It All

“From?”

“My family. That’s what I was looking for by coming here. I needed some space and time.” She set the fork back down on her plate. “My mother’s cancer took a lot out of me, made me see things differently. And when she went into remission, she didn’t need me so much anymore.”

“That’s all very understandable.”

“But it’s not only that.” She stared into space as if she were trying to put together the right words. “It was sort of time for me to get away from it all and find out who I was and what I wanted from life, without the distraction of all the opinions around me.”

Devon couldn’t help but laugh. “I understand completely.” And he did. He wondered if her leaving San Francisco came with the same uproar he would probably get when he announced to his father he wasn’t interested in the family business. Regardless, Nicole was here in Atlanta looking to find her own way which was the example he needed to follow.

“Sometimes family ties can feel more like shackles,” he said. “I admire your courage to make a break from it all. It’s something I plan to do myself when the time is right.”

“You don’t like running an investment company?”

“How do things like bond trading and corporate acquisitions and capital funding sound to you?”

She smirked and confessed, “A little dull.”

“A lot dull. I only suffered through economics in college because I thought life would get more interesting once I was running the show.”

“But it hasn’t.”

“Not by a mile.”

Taking a sip of her wine, she pushed her plate away signaling the end of her meal, and Devon breathed a sigh of relief. The woman was sexy to distraction, so seductive the simple act of chewing made him hot under the collar. Not that it was a bad thing. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman lit so many nerve endings. Not since those lustful days of puberty, when anything with breasts turned him on, had he been so wired over a woman.

The problem was, he was enjoying getting to know her and discovering the things they had in common. He’d like to keep his focus on the conversation rather than the many ways she could unwittingly arouse him.

“So, what do you want to do?” she asked.

“I want to build things. At the end of the day, I’d like to have created something that didn’t exist that morning. That’s what I don’t like about what we do. Bradshaw Investment Group doesn’t produce anything tangible. Basically, we help rich people get richer.”

“But this country is founded on commerce. You may not be building things yourself, but you’re providing avenues for those that do.”

“For a fee we find people the backing they need. But we’re just the money end of it, and even then, we aren’t paying for anything. We’re brokering in the middle, neither offering the cash nor creating a product.” He set his knife and fork on his plate and pushed it aside. “I guess I’d like to do something that really matters.”

“And how do you think your family will react when you break the news?”

He took a sip of his wine and considered the question. Before now, he hadn’t really put thought to how his father would react to the idea of him stepping down from the company. Though he’d joked to himself about a backlash, when pressed to really consider, he gathered the man would be more hurt than upset. The business was his pride, his life’s work. He’d wanted all his sons to keep going what he’d nourished, and though he’d been realistic enough to know not all the kids would want it, Devon doubted his father would expect him to be the one to opt out.

Devon had always been the easy one, the kid that went along and never made waves. And he supposed in order to please his parents he felt he owed them a shot at taking over the business. But now that he had, he’d confirmed this wasn’t the life for him, and though pleasing the folks was one thing, living for them was an entirely different matter.

“I don’t know,” he said. “How did your parents feel about your move to Atlanta?”

She shrugged. “I think they were as upset with the career change as the move. The show I produced back in San Francisco had a lot more exposure than Just Between Us. That and they’ve only got me and my brother, Nate. I think my parents had wanted a bigger family, but it didn’t turn out that way. With just the two of us kids, it’s been even harder for them that I moved away.”

He sensed an undercurrent of discomfort every time she spoke of her family, as if there was more going on where that was concerned. So he backed off the subject, preferring to leave his first dates on a high note—this one in particular, since he was hoping this would be the first of many.

Backing from the table, he motioned for the check then asked Nicole, “How would you like to go for a drive?”

The fire returned to her eyes. “Do you really own a 1959 Cadillac convertible?”

“Yes, and I happen to have it with me tonight.”

“This is Gabe,” Devon said after they left the restaurant and made their way to where he’d parked his old Caddy. He motioned to the car, a monstrous red Cadillac with white interior and a white canvas roof. “Gabe, meet Nicole.”

“You call your car Gabe?”

“Every old car needs a name. Gabe just seemed to fit.”

She chuckled. “Please don’t tell me you’re one of those people who names their home, too. That’s so pompous.”

“No, just the car…and a stuffed alligator named Crikey, but I don’t usually talk about that on first dates.”

He opened the passenger side door and she slid in, one long, silky leg after the other, and he had to remind himself he’d vowed to remain a gentleman tonight. Every moment he spent with Nicole furthered his feeling that she was the one, the woman he’d been waiting for to come along and turn his head. When it came to the right woman, Devon never had a specific list of attributes he was looking for, but always felt he’d know her when he found her.

And tonight confirmed that notion.

He wanted to see a lot more of this woman, which meant she wouldn’t be his one-night-stand. He’d made enough mistakes in his past to learn how to approach that one lover he wanted to keep, and now that he’d found her, he intended to learn from them.

His every move tonight would be honorable, right down to leaving the evening with nothing more than a goodnight kiss.

Even though it would probably kill him.

Slamming the door, he rounded Gabe and slipped into the driver’s seat, then turned the ignition and started them on their way.

Nicole looked behind them. “This thing’s a boat. How do you avoid hitting things?”

“I don’t,” he teased. “The beautiful thing about cars like these is you can run them into a train and step away without a scratch.”

She smiled. “I’ll take your word for that one.”

“Seriously, I don’t drive it often. It sucks up gas and you can’t park it anywhere. I only pull it out of the garage once a week to keep the juices flowing. It’s a real kick on a day when the temperature’s just right. I put the top down and take it for a spin.”

He pulled onto the street and drove her out of town, making his way toward one of his favorite vista points overlooking the city. He loved how readily they could talk, the easy comfort of her company and that west coast manner she had of speaking her mind without thought to propriety. It was refreshing, stepping away from the typical guessing games and double-speak he’d had to deal with on other dates.

She pointed to the red tomahawk hanging from his rear view mirror. “You can’t be a Braves fan.”

“Till the day I die.”

She sighed and shook her head. “And here I thought you had such promise.”

“Oh, come on. What’s wrong with the Braves?”

She quirked her brow and crinkled her nose in a way that made him want to kiss it. “How much time do you have?”

“So I suppose you wouldn’t be interested in going to a game with me one of these days.”

“And suffer through that stupid tomahawk chop and that incessant chanting? There’s not enough aspirin on the planet to get me through that.”