Brandon’s POV
I stomped off the terminal and glanced over at the chair next to me. Natalie had clammed up. She would be there, fists tight with hands, all balled up in fists, with me. At least on her face, observably there was some bravado; it was there in those features that one could read restlessness. Reaching over, I grabbed one of the tightly bunched fists and squeezed it.
“Just a few days,” I murmured and continued as if to reassure her-but most definitely myself, “I will be back before you even know it.”
She just nodded at that and didn’t turn her eyes away from the jet outside. “I know,” she whispered in return, and I felt worry almost oozing out of her voice. “I just wish things were different.”
I huffed and let myself fall back into the seat, my gaze out the window to where the super-sleek jet was about to whisk me away from her. “Yeah, I do too,” I said truthfully. “But we’ll make it through, Natalie. We’ve gone through worse, right.”
She turned then, and her eyes met mine, full of some mixed-up emotion I couldn’t turn into words. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”.
Nodded to that, single swallow, I washed down my emotions, but in the process went even closer to her. I let my lips make the barest connection to her forehead. “Promise,” I whispered against her skin. “And you do the same, alright? Stay close to the guards, alright? I need to know that you’re safe, while I’m gone”.
“I will,” she whispered, closing her eyes so that she could feel his touch. She took a step back, a wistful smile still playing around her lips. “You’d best be off before I change my mind and drag you home with me.”
“As much as I would dearly love that, I fear Anthony hunting me down if I didn’t show up in London.”
She chuckled at that, and it brought just the lightest thread of humor into that thick, heavy atmosphere. “Well, we can’t have that, can we?”
I leaned down slowly, back over in a real full contact this time, slow and lingering, taking her lips captive under my own. I had to file that in the mental bank under “Her, how delectable, how sweet still on my own lips,” and, finally, by force of will, we broke apart, only enough for me to press my forehead to hers, our breath mingling in the slight space between us.
“I will call you when I land.” It became my turn to make a promise, and my voice was shaking.
“Then I shall expect you,” she said, with a philosophic quietness.
Very slowly, and I thought a little bit somehow reluctantly, she drew off from the car. And now it was beginning to come home to me, literally hit me just like the cold wind lashing up into my face. In earnest, I was going from her to whom all my life had become so important. But I had to go.
I had to yank my eyes back to the jet in front of me, from where they had strayed. I squared my shoulders up and brought my foot down heavily as I began toward Natalie; she followed me like that, so I gave her a wave, and she gave me this pitiful little smile. It had taken everything in me to look at her one more time past the jet, knowing that every step closer that I got was one further from her.
I took the chair reserved for me on the plane, gluing myself into the seat and trying with all my might to feel comfortable by pressing down the lever of almost unbearable anxiety eating away in my chest; my thoughts had to focus fully on the job at hand. It was the most inopportune time, and yet, with the plane shooting up and the vista of London suddenly coming into view, all I could think about was Natalie and what her hand had felt like in mine. I had just about managed to keep myself buried in some work, going through all those reports and figures Anthony posted to me by email, but she was there at the back of my mind all the time. I was edgy and knotted in my feelings as we finally began our descent.
From the time that airplane touched down in London, I knew finding Anthon would be the very next thing, probably just to bury myself in work and take my mind off all the rest. Then there, walking down, out of that airplane by the tarmac, was Anthony-with a face so familiar to me-almost comforting in a mixture of relief and worry.
“Yo, Brandon,” he said, grabbing my hand in his first before he took me into a quick, brotherly hug. “Good to see you, man. How was your flight?”
“Long,” I told him as that tight smile remained plastered on my face. “But I’m here. What’s the sitch?”
It has just been a pure hell. We have tried to keep it in the dark, but now everything is slipping right out from under our very hands. I have the Board of Governors breathing down my neck; if we can’t sort this out pretty soon, then reflect on the big losses that can hit the company.
His words were seeping through my head as I only nodded and got into the front seat beside him. I said to him, ‘Tell me everything’ because I needed at that particular point to forcefully come into the program.”.
He went on telling every little detail of what had happened with the branch in London in the past hour. Things had turned out to be even worse than we had been made ready for. Q. A massively big deal flushed down the drain on the curve, and now the two of them, our competitors, are vulturing and tearing the thing apart ferociously, desperately, that is what was left of it.
The staff has been demoralized by the fact that it is evidently on the downslide to seriously low productivity and faith is waning here and there on the board. It was only now that Anthony had ceased that the full meaning of things came home to me. Heavens knew it wouldn’t be such an easy one to fix, but fix it come hell and high water I must.