Page 64 of Finding Lord Landry

My hand tightened involuntarily around his.

“I thought your father managed rental properties,” I said, trying not to act as upset as I felt at not having known this. “How could you have been homeless? That was only ten years ago.”

Kenji waved his free hand dismissively. “I didn’t tell them. I was too embarrassed. And it wasn’t like I was sleeping under a bridge. I’d met a guy at a bar one night who gave me the code to his building. I snuck in and slept at the bottom of the stairwell in the basement by the storage room door.”

I ran through my memories of that time, looking for clues. “You… you had a resume. You’d worked for a consulting company. In market research.”

Kenji sat back, as if my recall surprised him. Unfortunately, he took his hand with him. I moved both of my hands around my coffee to keep from reaching for him again.

“Yes,” he said. “And I was looking for something similar in New York.” He continued to tell me the story of how he’d wanted to live a bigger life, wanted to have hisSex in the Cityera, but had been taken advantage of after answering the wrong rooming ad.

Kenji shrugged, the movement drawing my attention to his elegant frame in the cream turtleneck sweater I’d picked out for him. He was so fucking beautiful it made my eyes smart.

“Then suddenly, I needed a paycheck, and I needed it quickly. I knew if I looked for a serving or bartending job, I ran the risk of never getting back into an office environment. So I signed up for a temp agency. Got sent to Sterling Chase that very first day.”

I remembered Bash mentioning his “miracle” of a temp and how he’d burned a bridge with the temp agency by hiring the guy right out from under them.

“You impressed us,” I said, remembering the younger, skinnier Kenji. The one in a hundred-dollar suit and a delicate nose ring that had made my dick perk up immediately. “Whatever happened to the nose ring?”

Kenji ran his fingertip down the side of his nose. “My father didn’t approve. He suggested the reason I hadn’t found a ‘real’ job yet was because I didn’t project a professional appearance. Maybe he was right. When I removed it, I got an offer from Deloitte.”

My coffee landed on the table with a thunk. “That was after you were working for us!”

He nodded calmly. “Yes.”

Before I had a chance to ask him why he hadn’t taken it, the server appeared with our food. We slipped back into the lie, pretending to eat our food while chatting happily about absolutely nothing.

I remembered to take a bite of his french toast. And he ended up with a dollop of hot chocolate on his nose. I leaned over and dropped an open-mouthed kiss there, tasting the creamy sweetness before moving down in search of more of it on his tongue.

We kissed longer than necessary. I was a victim of the heartbroken boy inside of my chest who insisted that kissing Kenji on the mouth was something we were meant to do. It was a god-given right we’d been denied for entirely too long.

When I sat back in my chair, I quickly grabbed his tall hot chocolate mug and made a comment about needing more of that sweetness, but in reality, I needed something to hide behind, if only for a moment.

He stole it back from me too soon, losing his smile for a second as he met my eyes.

The tension between us was excruciating, and I began to wonder how many hours we were expected to stay here.

Somehow, we survived long enough to make it to the door before running into the Winthrops. My stomach dropped with the reminder that we were only partway through this nightmarish ordeal.

Another half hour of chatting, of manly back-clapping and hearty handshakes, remained. My restlessness must have shown because Kenji grabbed my hand and held it tightly in his, running his other hand up the inside of my forearm under my sweater.

His nails dragged lightly up and down my skin. Up and down. Up… and down until my body hair stood on end and my dick swelled. I shifted in my seat, but Kenji only pulled me closer and continued the tender torture. He carried the entire weight of the conversation, asking Jim and Jamie about their business and discussing mutual colleagues known to Kenji through Bash and Silas’s work with Sterling Chase.

“…looking forward to seeing Cora,” Jamie said.

The mention of my cousin quickly doused the magic and returned my dick back to unimpressive proportions. “I’m sorry, what? You’re seeing my cousin?”

Jim nodded enthusiastically. “I spoke with her yesterday. She’s agreed to partner with Jamie for the sports day so you and Kenji can be together.”

“Sports day,” I repeated stupidly as the details mentioned in one of the PR meetings finally bobbed to the surface.

Kenji gave my arm one last squeeze before letting go and reaching for his glass of water. “The youth program receiving the foundation’s endowment in a couple of days. Remember? You’re giving a speech to the kids on healthy nutrition and exercise. It’s part of the?—”

“Darling, I can’t possibly give a speech,” I said with the same fake smile I’d been abusing all day. “How about money? I’m good at giving that.”

Kenji gave an equally fake chuckle. “Don’t listen to him,” he told Jim. “Landry’s good at doing both. We’re looking forward to it. Cora is excited about the dedication, and I’ll make sure Landry doesn’t take the games too seriously.”

Jamie leaned forward to tell Kenji a supposedly funny story about the time we played cricket during a heavy rainstorm at Eton. “We were all too competitive to call the match. I remember wondering if it was all of those years of family expectations and brinksmanship that made these baby lords insist on catching colds and making themselves miserable.”

---