Brees smiled. “Oh good. That means I’ll probably see you again.” He glanced at a very expensive watch. “I’d better get to my meeting. We’ll talk later, Ichiko.” She gave a small bow, and he turned and headed out the gate.
Jericho couldn’t stop staring at lovely tight buns in a pair of trim jeans as they disappeared around the side of the house. If he’d needed another reason to show Batshit at Papillon dog shows, man, he’d just found it. Of course, the chances the guy was gay were slim. Jericho never had that much luck. And even if he is, where do I think I’d get the nerve to say or do anything about it? Hell, a guy like that can have anyone he wants, man or woman. He doesn’t need a guy like me.
“Uh, Mr. Jones?”
Jericho turned his head to find Ichiko staring at him and Batshit sitting on the grass beside her also watching him. Yes, he had been frozen in place, transfixed by a beautiful ass.
“Uh, sorry.” He grinned sheepishly.
“I thought you might like to work on hand-stacking Marisol for a few minutes while the others gather their things. Then you’ll have another behavior to practice at home. Use the stacking blocks over there.” She pointed to her porch. “I’ll also go over a list of materials I recommend you acquire for grooming and to use at her shows.”
“Okay, yes. Thank you.”
She walked to the other dog owners and he knelt beside Batshit.
“Woof.”
“Yeah. You know way more than I do. Stay here.” He trotted to the porch and picked up four wooden blocks. He stared at them. No clue what to do with them. He strode back to Batshit. “Okay sorry. I don’t know what to do with those things, so show me what you got.”
She sat in front of him and cocked her head.
Hmm. Jericho picked her up and set her down standing, then touched her legs with his finger. Instantly, she moved into a stance, with her front feet planted and back feet far away from the front ones. Her chin went up. He grinned. That’s what Ichiko called self-stacking. “Good girl.”
She didn’t move.
He handed her a treat and she took it. He swore she grinned. “So what do you think, girl? Should we go to the dog show and maybe, just maybe see that gorgeous guy again?”
“Woof.”
He whispered. “Do you think he’s gay?”
“Woof, woof.”
“You do?” He sighed. “I wish I had your confidence.” He picked her up and she didn’t protest. “But you know me. I’m such a wimp.”
That crazy little dog pulled her lips back and showed her teeth.
Brees Apollonia smiled as he pressed the accelerator and sped up the long incline toward Pelican Point. That guy—was his name really Jericho?—sure was cute and funny as hell. It’d been very hard not to laugh at that enormous dude lying in a heap on the ground with tiny dogs licking his face. He’d been tempted to join them.
He turned right, waved at the guard, passed through the discreet gates, and navigated the long drive to the low-key building set in a grove of palm trees. Members only. If you didn’t belong, they’d politely turned you away at the very-locked entrance. He drove around the circular drive and stopped. Yes, the place thought it was Twelve Oaks. Twelve Palms?
“Afternoon, Mr. Apollonia.” Charlie, one of the valets, greeted him as he slid out and handed over his keys. “Your dad’s already here.”
“I figured. I’m late.”
“I’ll take good care of it.” His eyes always glistened when Brees gave him the electric NSX. Unlike many of the members, he didn’t self-park just because he had a sports car. Charlie appreciated that.
Striding past the doorman with a short wave, Brees entered the reception area, smiled at Alejandro, the maître d’, and entered the large dining room with three solid walls of glass overlooking the golf course and the vista of the ocean beyond and far below.
Inside the double door, he stopped and glanced around, then frowned when he spied his father. Uhh, what’s up? His father, who was also his boss, had called him that morning and asked Brees to join him for lunch at the club to deal with an important business issue. On the other side of the dining room, however, his father sat with another older man and a young woman. Brees’s stomach tightened. It was possible that the woman was the man’s vice president of marketing or operations. The two men were talking animatedly and the woman was staring at her hands.
Brees sighed. Every instinct said run, hide out at his home, call his father, and tell him he couldn’t make it.
A waiter named Gregory hurried up to Brees. “Good afternoon, sir. Let me take you to your table. Your father’s been looking for you.” At that moment, his father raised his leonine head that always reminded people of Don Vito Corleone and met Brees’s eyes, but his expression didn’t change. A non-changing expression meant extreme disapproval. Two fucks.
Brees moderated his own expression to pleasant neutral, his own version of extreme disapproval, and followed Gregory across the room to the table where his father gave a phony smile. “Brees, welcome. I told our guests that you must have been detained by something very important or critical. I hope all’s well.”
Brees gave a respectful nod. “My sincere apologies for my tardiness, sir. I encountered a person in considerable distress and I had to see that he wasn’t seriously injured and in need of a doctor.” That was in some vicinity of truth.
His father’s eyes widened slightly, like good story, and Brees almost laughed as the picture of Jericho Jones tied up in the leash flashed in his mind.
His father gestured to the older gentleman. “Carlo, may I present my son and the vice president in charge of client affairs, Brees Apollonia. Brees, this is Carlo Ricci, CEO of Artful Intelligence Worldwide, and his lovely daughter, Elizabeth.”
Even as Brees’s heart sank at the dreaded information that the woman was not a member of her father’s company, he shook hands with Carlo Ricci. Nobody had to tell Brees who he was addressing. Ricci was not only the head of a wildly successful tech company, he also held the keys to an acquisition that Brees’s father desperately wanted. Artful Intelligence held patents in some of the world’s hottest emerging markets and Matteo Apollonia had his sights set on bringing them into Apollonia International.
Ricci nodded his head with no hint of emotion.
Brees sighed softly. He got sick of these old men and their mind fucks, particularly when somebody played the “old country” card, as was obviously the case here. Jesus, he expected them to start divvying up the cannoli at any minute. Brees’s dad was American, but he’d been born in Italy. From what Brees had read, Ricci still held dual citizenship and had deep roots in northern Italy. Any deal they made had an uncomfortable blood-brother quality.
With no reaction of his own, Brees turned, smiled, and extended his hand to the daughter. “I’m so pleased to meet you.”
She looked up and met his eyes, returned the smile, and took his hand. The whole greeting was pretty direct. She didn’t look like a shrinking violet that would bend to her father’s will, whatever that was.
Rituals complete, Brees pulled out the one empty chair and sat. The waiter rushed over offering iced tea, which he accepted. As he tried to tune in his ear to the conversation between his father and Mr. Ricci, Elizabeth leaned over and said softly, “Is the person you stopped to help okay?”