His Forbidden Kiss. Jessica Lemmon

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       Four

      Royce stepped into the financial review meeting, unbuttoned his suit jacket and took a seat at the sleek mahogany conference room table. As CFO, he’d be called upon for input but he wasn’t running the meeting. That was up to the finance manager, Stella, who had already lined up the projector and was sifting through her notes.

      He’d had trouble keeping his mind on work for obvious reasons. Work and play didn’t mix. Not that he had time to play. Being in charge of the company’s numbers was an undertaking he took very seriously.

      Gia arrived last as per her usual. She sat next to Taylor, who was at Royce’s left elbow. Brannon was across the table, leaning back in his leather chair, tapping a pencil eraser-side down while he glared in Royce’s general direction.

      Royce ignored him.

      “Everyone ready to get started?” Stella asked rhetorically before doing just that. Meetings were a nuisance but necessary to keep everyone on the same page. Especially now that his father was flirting more and more with the idea of early retirement.

      Jack Knox wouldn’t hit the links right away nor was he interested in building birdhouses in his spare time. No, no. Jack planned on traveling, experiencing life and the world. Royce’s old man, now sixty-one, had never truly run out of wild oats to sow.

      Bran focused his attention on a paper report while Taylor and Royce consulted their tablets. Gia had a fussy leather notebook in front of her, bejeweled with gems and dotted with stickers. His baby sister wasn’t much for formality. Brannon wasn’t either, though he did follow along. He rarely used the very electronics their company sold, which made Royce laugh.

      Or would have if Bran hadn’t been shutting him out for two solid days.

      The last conversation they’d had was at the threshold of that closet when Bran had caught Royce and Taylor post-lip-lock. When Royce had come upon Bran and Gia talking later that same night, Bran promptly turned and walked away. Royce understood his younger brother’s anger. Seven unanswered text messages later, he’d given up, until this morning.

      He’d stepped right into Brannon’s corner office and addressed him with a “Good morning, brother.”

      Brannon had looked up from his laptop to narrow his eyes. Eyes that were lighter brown than Royce’s own, and greenish like their mother’s. He’d picked up his phone, made a call and started talking, ignoring Royce altogether.

      That’d been two hours ago and here they sat, ignoring each other again.

      With a sigh, Royce glanced at Gia, who was jotting notes and lounging in her chair at the same time. No doubt her big brain soaked up every word Stella was saying like a fresh, dry sponge. Gia had always been able to pay attention to everything around her. Bran was more easily distracted during boring moments like this meeting, while Royce enjoyed the methodology of a presentation. There was a certain order to it that made sense to him.

      Jayson Cooper, Gia’s ex-husband who still worked at ThomKnox, was notably absent from this meeting. Cooper was in charge of tech, but he’d sent his assistant, Whitney, to ferry back any pertinent information.

      Taylor asked a question, drawing everyone’s attention. Royce watched her openly, not a hardship since she was beautiful. He appreciated the way she’d come in today sans drama about Saturday night. She’d always been professional at the office, even though he remembered her differently when they were kids. She and Gia were about the same age, but Royce was six years older than the girls, and only a few years older than Bran. While Royce didn’t exactly hang out with any of them when he was younger, social situations mashed them together.

      Charity functions, raffles, art shows and galas like the Valentine’s Day celebration on Saturday put them in fancy clothes at fancy affairs on the regular. Even when he was a gangly sixteen-year-old and she and Gia had been fifth graders. He hadn’t thought of Taylor as more than his sister’s friend, including when the girls were teens and attending those same functions in ball gowns.

      As he’d aged up, so had Taylor. He could begrudgingly admit that her changes hadn’t gone unnoticed. Charles Thompson’s candid discussion about how Taylor wasn’t a good romantic option for Royce had prompted no argument. Charles was like a second father and Royce respected the man immensely.

      But since that very conversation, Royce had noticed attributes about Taylor that he hadn’t previously. Physical ones, sure, but also the way she handled her life. She wanted everything and wanted it all at once. Like a kid at a buffet who agonized over how she’d fit a spoonful of everything onto the same plate.

      Royce was simpler than that. He did better when his focus was narrow. Unfortunately for everyone, it’d been Taylor who’d narrowed his focus to a fine point on Saturday night.

      No matter the reaction to a rogue kiss, the wisest course of action was to set them back on the path from which they’d strayed. They both cared greatly for ThomKnox, Taylor having been thrust into the position of COO after her father passed last fall.

      It was a loss she took hard and he noted now, and not for the first time, that those feathered lines around her eyes were a new addition. Grief had taken a toll on Taylor and her mother, Deena, most of all. Jack Knox and Charles Thompson were best friends who didn’t always see eye to eye but made the best decisions for the company. Since Charles’s death, Jack had been less about the company and more about skydiving lessons, traveling to Africa for safari and scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef.

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