Twenty-One Ch. 01

The limousine drew up outside the venue shortly after eight. Brooke's eyes opened like twin moons as she stepped onto the sidewalk. "The Carlton, I've wanted to come here forever!" The club's exterior glistened white like frosting, where it wasn't illumined in fluorescent green or mauve.

"Surprise!" Stacey's eyes were alive with delight at her friend's reaction.

"But will we get in? Isn't there—like—a list we need to be on?"

"Sweetie," Kimber said as she led their group of four down the wine-coloured carpet to the front entrance, "stick with me and you'll always be on the list."

Brooke exchanged a look with Stacey. "Is it me?" she'd asked her best friend not an hour earlier, "or is Kimber playing the society diva more and more these days?"

"It's so not you," Stacey reassured. "Her family has all sorts of connections, including in uptown Manhattan. Ignore her. You know what she's like."

As security nodded to Kimber and ushered them through The Carlton's porticoed entrance, it was easy to forgive the haughty blonde her posturing. Kimber glanced back as she clicked over the marble floor, a triumphant smile on her lips. "Beats the usual college dives, right?" She and Leandra high-fived smartly, the shorter girl basking in her friend's social confidence. "Hey Brooke, bet you wish you'd dressed for the occasion now."

The words stung. If Brooke had known where they were going to begin with ...

She'd dressed to do a certain kind of impressing, certainly, and was sure that she could carry off borderline-slutty in a place like this if she assumed enough self-assurance. But in truth Kimber's look showed her up. The taller girl looked every inch the killer blonde, white dress swathing her lissom frame to demure effect.

Strolling into the mirrored splendour of the main bar, Brooke shrugged off Kimber's cattiness. She let the buzz of conversation wash over her, picking up on snatches of wit as patrons relaxed over martinis and prim summer cocktails. Quite a departure from chest-thumping jocks and their beer bongs. Her eyes made a return flick to one particularly dark and well-made man ordering a drink and her gaze lingered on him a second. His solid frame was exquisitely coutured; he was the emblem of all she would expect in this class of bar.

She smiled at the thought and strolled further in. Acid jazz was filtering down from the upper-level dance floor. The bar-front recalled that Renoir print she had beside her bed. Now here was a place worthy of a landmark birthday.

"Loving it already?" Stacey squeezed Brooke's arm and grinned.

"God yes, I was born to this. Kim and I were swapped at birth." She burst into giggles with her friend. They ensconced themselves at a table and deconstructed the whole place—nouveau art-works, shimmering lights and svelte patrons—while their sorority comrades went for drinks. Kimber would make out she was used to such up-market swank and Brooke was sure she should relax into it too, like The Carlton was her natural habitat. But her gaze continued to wander covetously.

"So many delicious men here," Stacey remarked.

"Yeah, a lot of them hooked up."

"Not all. And the unhooked ones are all looking our way. Especially your way, but hey, I'll bathe in your reflected glory." Her slender fair-haired friend grinned.

Stacey's trademark reserve was thawing, Brooke observed, and it was understandable with all the careful grooming and tailored Italian silk on view. Her eyes instinctively searched for the dark stranger she had noted on entering and observed with an accompanying flash of irritation that Kimber was leaning into him to pass comment en route from the bar. Leandra was grinning in support at whatever her blonde friend had said.

"I'm not here for a hook-up. I'm here to celebrate with my friends," Brooke said vaguely, then realized that her gaze was belying the sentiment. Stacey appeared as amused as she was unconvinced. "No, Stacey, I'm sorry. I mean it! I'm not going to bail on you, whoever the guy is."

"So there's no suave stranger who could spirit you away from the rest of us?" the returning Kimber inquired, picking up on the conversation. She and Leandra passed drinks. "That's very sisterly of you."

"Hey, I'm a team player." Brooke sipped on her mint julep and eyed the slinky blonde as they all settled around the table's smoked-glass surface. "Unlike certain 'sisters' I could mention."

"Sweetie, I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"I mean whoever you were chatting with at the other end of the bar—if he'd offered to whisk you off in his Lamborghini you'd have turned him down because you were with the girls? I mean seriously, Kim ..."

"Well for all you know he did offer and perhaps I shot him right down." Kimber looked to Leandra who backed her up with a cute smile.

"You could take him or leave him, or maybe you could pass him on to me," her sidekick said.

"There are other nights for picking up rich men. Tonight, Brooke darling, it's all about you." Kimber chinked her French Cosmopolitan against Brooke's julep.

They all drank and gave themselves up to frivolity and further cocktails. Brooke laid aside the concerns of imminent post-college life and love and relaxed into the glittering moment. It had been quite a ride for them all, these past three years. Tonight was for enjoying her college companions and to hell with all else.

"So what's with those stars?" Leandra asked, looking up from her endless texting. They'd all traipsed a good way down the road to alcoholic merriment by that stage.

"Yeah and why stars?" Kimber added with a familiar taunting edge to her voice.

Brooke rubbed her bared shoulder instinctively; her flesh was still tender from the tattooist's gun. "White Rabbit parlour in the East Village," she said, forcing nonchalance.

"And it's stars because she's still her Daddy's little star," Leandra said with a giggle.

"The stars," Brooke explained, mustering dignity, "are the Libran constellation, my sign. It doesn't mean anything, I just liked it."

"It looks really cool and pretty," Stacey said, beaming reassurance.

"And a little bit slutty," Kimber put in. "I don't mean that in a bad way," she added, when Brooke's eyes widened in response. "I figured it was what you were going for, the fish-nets, and all that mascara to set off those big baby-blues. Like right now, the way you're staring at me all offended." She smirked. "Hey, go for it girl, if it makes you feel grown up."

"Thanks, I feel plenty 'grown up'." Brooke hadn't expected anything less than a bit of light sparring with Kimber on her birthday. Leandra was smirking at the exchange, Stacey's eyes flicking back and forth warily. "I wanted to do something for me, that's all," she said. "Something unexpected. You should try it."

"Well good for you." Kimber smiled. "The jocks will love it. You might be able to pick up the final few members of the athletics squad, the ones who haven't noticed you waggling your well-formed tush around on the track-side."

"I've dated one or two boyfriends from the athletics squad, true."

"And flirted with the rest."

"I'm sorry Kim, was there someone you had your eye on? You should have said. I never meant to step on your toes."

"Not at all, sweetie, I was occupied elsewhere. You play with all the college boys you like."

"Hey, Brooke's very selective who she dates," Stacey said, loyal to a fault.

"I agree," Kimber responded, clearly on a roll, "and I admire selective sluttiness, especially for a sheltered suburbanite like Brooke here. It's been good for her to experiment with her sexual allure. What's the good in being passably pretty if you don't flaunt it a little? Wear the sporty types on your arm, tease study tips out of the geeks ..."

"That was once." Brooke had cut in before that story could go any further. She kept her cool, but Kimber's remarks tonight were calibrated to create maximum irritation. The blonde eyed her slyly, gratified to have drawn a flash of fire. "The economics course was a bitch," Brooke said, with as throwaway a tone as she could manage, "and he volunteered to help me. He's a sweet guy. What happened ... happened."

"Of course it did, sweetie. I'm sure you had no game-plan in mind."

Brooke squirmed under Kimber's smiling scrutiny. James McFerrin had received several late-night treats after suggesting he couldn't afford any more time with his study partner and Brooke had known exactly what game she was playing. How damnable that Kimber walked in on one of those treats—James palming her breasts in wonder as she rode him on her bed. It had brought her a sense of power and pleasure to rock that lanky boy's world.

She recalled the gratitude in his face as she punched out the boundaries of his experience ... and the crestfallen look when she discontinued their sessions having aced the paper. She had tried to let him down easily, but it wasn't her finest moment and the memory rattled her conscience still. She didn't need to have such college laundry strung out by someone whose moral high-ground was based purely on a greater degree of discretion regarding her own promiscuity. Dating her more eligible professors and screwing the coach at her exclusive tennis club, while stringing along an aspiring young local politician who she'd met at some society function—such were the ways of Kimber Jensen.

"If I did have one I'm sure you'd recognise it," Brooke answered coolly. "Game-plans are your speciality after all, Kim."

"Oh I'm not criticising you for indulging in a little give and take with James," Kimber proceeded blithely. "Or having fun with the jocks. You've had your college escapades and I respect that. But if you don't mind me saying so, I think it's time you stopped playing little-girl games with little boys."

"And who's to say I don't play with the ... the 'big-boys'?"

"Oh now Brooke, how long have we been friends? Name me one actual man you've dated."

"I dated Kenny Radford last fall a few times. He's ..."

"He's a post-graduate research assistant earning peanuts, sweetie. I mean a proper man living in the real world and making something of himself."

"I've been doing something called 'studying'," Brooke said, her calm properly ruffled now. "I've hardly been surrounded by that kind of guy."

"But you could interest 'that kind of guy' if you had the chance, that what you're saying?"

"Sure I could. I think I've got enough smarts to ..."

"Well you've got a chance tonight." Kimber sipped from her cocktail and smiled like she'd smacked a particularly satisfying shot past her opponent on the tennis court.

"Kim, I ..."

"Sitting all around you—eligible men. Grown-up successful men, any one of which would be a major coup to be seen with."

"Leave her be," Stacey broke in, trying to keep things light-hearted. "It's her birthday."

"That's the point. It's her coming-of-age." Kimber didn't take her eyes off Brooke. It made the brunette shift uncomfortably once more. "Unless," her acidic blonde friend said, "she doesn't think she could pick up a guy somewhere like here."

Brooke attempted casualness. "I'm sure I could pick up someone if ..."

"Then do it. No more college boys. Someone here, now. Hottest guy in the room."

"You mean ..."

"I mean the James Bond type near the other end of the bar. You've been checking him out since you stepped in here. Do something about it." She eyed Brooke over the rim of her cocktail glass. "I dare you."

The mood had acquired an electric quality. Leandra was looking to Kimber and then grinning across the table at Brooke along with the friend she idolised. The birthday girl bristled as hers and Kimber's incipient rivalry asserted itself. Stacey's hand on her arm failed to restrain her.

"Okay," she said. "Dare accepted. I'll finish my drink and ..."

"Need the courage, do we?"

Damn the girl. If Brooke didn't do this thing, she'd harp on it all evening. She set her glass down with a resolute thump on the table. "No, I don't. Excuse me ladies, it seems I've got some business to attend to, before we can all relax and enjoy the rest of the night."

Kimber's smile was insolent as Brooke rose from her chair. Awkwardness consumed the brunette and she tugged the hem of her dress down her fishnets. Stacey was still telling her to ignore the challenge, but a line had been crossed. Her heartbeat was palpable in her chest, stomach roiling with adrenalised panic. She tried to walk smoothly across the room, but with her friends' stares lasering into her back, her heels had become perilous beneath her. And then there was him, looming through the crowd before her as in a slow-zoom movie shot.

Christ, he scared her.

He was still solo at his table, preoccupied with something on his iPad. The sharp cut of his jacket offset his massiveness; she sensed a mighty chest beneath that black-silk shirt. Her pace slowed as she neared him, but she urged herself on in knowledge of the other girls' scrutiny. Beyond "Hi" she could think of nothing to say and she prayed the words would come. He looked so stern and austere; maybe that would change when he raised his eyes and smiled at her.

Perhaps beneath that hard exterior beat a tender heart.

She was almost at his table, opening her mouth to speak, when he pocketed the pad and rose from his seat. Instinctively she wheeled off to the bar, heart racing in renewed panic. Her face and neck burned with embarrassment. Kimber and Leandra would doubtless be laughing at her comic last-second re-routing. Then he was there at the bar beside her, ordering.

"Same again." His voice had a deep granite quality that made her shiver. Her heels brought her up to five-eight, but he still towered above her. She cast a glance to him, then turned her head his way, taking in that close-shaven jawline and immaculately trimmed hair—dark, flecked with silver. His gaze was straight ahead and impassive. This was simply too much man to talk to. Brooke gulped down her fear and tried anyway.

"So, what does a girl have to do to get a drink on her birthday?" Pure cheese. From where had she sliced that?

His stony face did not betray a flicker. Those eyes stayed fast on the pouring of his drink. "I'd have thought," he said after a pause that spanned an aeon, "that her friends would stand her one." His accent was polished, English—very double-0 seven, just like Kimber had suggested.

"Well yeah, but that's obligation," she ventured, astounding herself that she was pursuing this. "Much better if it comes courtesy of a mysterious British guy." She struggled to redeem the situation from her own dire lines. "Hey, I saw you all alone and figured you might like some company."

"Very thoughtful," he said, handing over payment for his tumbler of Scotch, "but I'm fine. Run back to your friends and have a happy birthday."

Not a glance at her. Brooke's face stung with the dismissal as he accepted his change. A long humiliating walk to her friends' table loomed. Desperation possessed her and she laid a hand on his wrist before he could retreat from the bar. "Look, please don't walk away. I can't go back there, not straightaway." He looked at her for the first time, like he was observing a mild irritant that could easily be flicked away.

"I'm not demented, I promise," she told him, widening her carefully-primped eyes in appeal. "It's just that my friends kind of dared me to come over and—well okay, hit on you. One friend in particular, she's being a bit of a bitch to be honest and if you shoot me down I'm going to basically want to hide, so ... What I said about obligation? I'd be really obliged if you could talk to me for five minutes and, you know, buy me that drink? It's my twenty-first. Birthday, I mean, not drink." She'd given him her animated, smiling, blue-eyed best, but eventually her words tailed away. Perhaps such tactics only worked with naïve college types. She released his wrist, abashed at her own recklessness.

But there was a certain thawing of his flinty visage. His eyes took her in properly for the first time. In fact they went on a brief tour and checked her all out before settling on her face. "Twenty-first, eh? So this is a rite of passage."

"A ..."

"A coming of age."

"Yeah, I know. I know what a rite of passage is." Her eyes dropped with a shyness she hadn't felt in years. "I guess that's what my friend had in mind." God, they'd been Kimber's exact words.

"So you're swallowing all your trepidation and approaching what your friend no doubt described as 'a real man', or something similar." His voice has softened and she raised her eyes to his, trying to transcend her girlishness. His features had fully relaxed as well, to something amiable. Playful. "Yet here I am," he said, "treating you like a schoolgirl. Most unchivalrous. What can I get you to drink?"

Brooke's relief was like a rush of cooling water. "I'll have a mint julep. Thank you."

He raised a hand and drew immediate attention from the girl serving closest. "Mint julep for the young lady." He smiled at Brooke and she tried, quite heroically she thought, not to simper. "A twenty-first birthday should be celebrated in style. My nephew turned twenty-one a couple of months back. I took quite a deal of trouble to make it memorable."

"That's very family-spirited of you." God, he had a grown nephew, this guy. It served to emphasize the age-gap. Here was a man of maturity, of responsibility. "Still," she said, "I don't mean to take up your time. You looked kind of preoccupied sitting there."

"Last-minute prep for a business meeting tomorrow morning. It's the reason I'm in the States."

"Oh wow, I'm sorry. If I'd known ..."

"You'd have done exactly what you did," he said, and she blushed to be called on her disingenuous comment. "And you'd have been right to. If I wasn't open to distraction I'd have stayed in my hotel room to work."

"So I'm a distraction?" she asked, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear and daring to look straight into his dark eyes.

"A very pleasant distraction," he told her, intensifying her blush. "Going by the name of ..."

"Brooke. I'm Brooke."

"I tell you what, Brooke—you help me clear my head of everything business-related and I'll help you celebrate your birthday. How does that sound?"

She almost let the mint julep spill as he handed it to her. "It's a deal ..."

"Gavin," he said, taking her slim hand gently in his massive grip.

"I love that name. Pleased to meet you, Gavin."

"The pleasure's all mine." His hand stayed on hers a moment and she could hardly breathe. "Care to sit with me? Give your friends something more to talk about?"

"What? Oh god yeah." She stifled a giggle, trying to regain composure. "Yes. Yes, I'd like that."

As they moved to the table she glimpsed their reflection in the bar's mirrored rear—her slender frame so slight and girlish relative to his, her efforts at fashionably slutty shown up by his style and how he carried it. Mr Armani Catalogue. God, he could crush me. The latter thought made her liquefy at her core. She sat down facing away from her friends when he pulled the chair out, so that she could simply imagine the looks on their faces, Kimber's especially. Look all you like, girl. He's paying all his attention to me. All I have to do now is sustain a conversation.

"So Brooke," he said, throwing all that athletic weight casually back in his seat and sipping on his Scotch, "where have twenty-one years of life taken you?"

Crap ... She scrabbled for coherent sentences as he drew her out, letting her do most of the talking. She told him about her college courses in business, finance and modern languages, making the most of her limited travels in Europe. "Paris was amazing, and Barcelona too. I haven't even been to London yet, but I so want to go. It's amazing." Oh god, 'amazing' again. Find another adjective ... "It's ... It's got such a rich history, such a cultural centre." Shit, what am I talking about? "It always strikes me as ... this kind of centre of sophistication."