Bryson smiled as he took my phone and he looked right at me as he spoke. “Natalie, it’s Bryson Schroeder speaking. … Oh that’s fine, these things can’t be helped. … Yes, thank you.” His smile widened and his gaze bored into me. “Is that right? … Excellent. … Yes, we’ll be in touch.”
He handed me back my phone and I hit End Call whether Natalie was done talking to me or not. She could damn well text.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said.
“No need to apologise,” Bryson said with that stupid smug smile I wanted to kiss off his face. “She assured me that you’re the best corporate retail property agent in Sydney. And she said I’m in very good hands.”
I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Is there any other information you need on this location? Or should we head to Kent Street now?”
Bryson grinned but he looked around the empty store. “I like this one. Except the stairs to the basement storage are an issue for accessibility and liability. So that’s something I’ll have to negotiate. I’ll need all the specs to give to my fit-out people for quotes.”
“Yes, of course. I can have my office email them to you now, if you’d like? I’m sure Natalie has your email address.”
“Yes, she does,” he replied. She also probably has all his contact details, his address, and full business proposal . . .
And while I shot a quick text to my assistant, Bryson and Terrence were engaged in some silent eyeball conversation which ended abruptly when Terrence noticed me watching them.
“So,” he said, checking his watch. “I just remembered I have a thing. At work. I really should get back there, or my dad will be yelling.”
“No you don’t,” Bryson said.
Terrence ignored him and held his hand out for me to shake. “It was really nice to meet you. And now we have a name, so that’s nice.”
“Nice to meet you too,” I said, though it sounded more like a question.
“Terrence,” Bryson cautioned. “You don’t have to—”
“Yes, it’s a meeting, see?” He held up his phone. The screen was blank. He walked backwards to the door. “And you know what my dad is like. Bryce, I will call you. You owe me dinner. And lunch. And I want details. Okay, bye!”
And he was gone.
I ran my hand through my hair and sighed. “He absolutely didn’t have a meeting, did he?”
“No. But for the record, I didn’t know he was going to bail.”
“I could tell,” I replied. “By the panic in your eyes.”
He laughed. “That wasn’t panic. That was my ‘Terrence, I’m going to kill you’ look.”
“Oh, right.”
“Yeah, we perfected that in college. I have it down to a fine art now.”
I met his gaze, and all the tension melted away. I shook my head and laughed. “What are the odds that I’d get called in at the last minute to show some guy a property and it turns out to be you, huh?”
“Well, if we’re going with just the population of Sydney, I’m going to go with about one in four million. If we opt for ‘anyone in the world,’ it’d be closer to one in about eight billion.”
“Correct.”
“But now we know each other’s names,” he said. There was something unreadable in his eyes. Was it defence? Was it fear? Vulnerability? It wounded me that he would fear a negative reaction because now I knew who he really was.
“So, is it Bryson or Bryce? Or can I just keep calling you SAF?”
He grinned. “My friends call me Bryce.”
I bit the inside of my lip so I didn’t smile too big. He considered me one of his friends. And not the friend-zone kind either, but more than an acquaintance. But that did bring up the professional aspect of this exchange. “I, uh, god, I really should apologise,” I said.
“What for?”
“For how unprofessional I’ve been with you. Today, I mean. Your friend Terrence probably thinks I’m the least professional property agent he’s ever encountered, but seeing you walk in here knocked me off my game. Natalie would be horrified if she were here and saw me try and speak.”
“Well, I won’t tell Natalie if you don’t.” His smile was slow and genuine. “I’m just kidding. You were fine. And don’t mind Terrence. He’s a great guy. He absolutely bailed out of here so we could talk. You know, about skirting around the professional slash personal boundaries in private.”
I laughed quietly. “Gee, I don’t know . . . I thought the whole awkward inability to string a sentence together thing was working really well for me. I’m normally a little switched on. I wasn’t expecting it to be you.”
Bryce met my gaze. “Disappointed?”
“What? No, of course not. Why would I be disappointed? I think ‘shocked’ would be the operative word here.”
He smiled that sweet, almost shy-like smile before he looked around the storefront. “For what it’s worth, I wasn’t expecting the person we were meeting for these inspections to be you either.”
“Are you disappointed?”
He barked out a laugh that sounded way too casual. “Absolutely not.”
I had trouble looking away. I also had trouble gathering my thoughts and trying to lead this meeting. “Should we go to the second storefront?” I asked. “It’s on Kent. It’s not a far walk.”
“Yes, we should do that.”
“But you like this site? It could have potential?”
“Mm,” he said. “I do. I think I like the location. I could make it work.”
He didn’t sound convinced. Not that I knew what he needed the site for. “Okay then, I’ll lock this one up and we can get going.”
Bryce nodded and waited for me to make sure everything was locked, and soon enough, we were walking down the footpath toward Kent Street. “Did you really run here?” he asked.
“I did. Natalie gave me fifteen minutes to get here.”
“Lucky you’re fit then,” he said, giving me a smirk and a raised eyebrow. “I mean, your endurance is noteworthy.”
Oh my god.
I shot him a glare and pretended to snarl at him, but I was thankful I was still holding the manila folder so I didn’t do something stupid like shove him into traffic or try to hold his hand.
I changed the subject. “I must say, the suit is nice and all, but I think I prefer the Purple Rain shirt.”
He grinned. “You already know how I feel about you in your suit.”
I laughed. He wanted me to wear it when I opened the door on Friday night. “Right. The robe has lost its appeal. I forgot.”
“Oh no, the appeal of the robe still exists. But those pants and your—”
I stopped walking. “Okay. I think I need to stop you right there.”
Laughing, he took my arm and pulled me out of the way of the hurrying pedestrians. He didn’t apologise for talking about my arse and what he wanted to do to it while bending me over my couch, as he’d described this morning. “You’re right. This is business.”
“But you’re not sorry.”
“No, I’m not.” Those brown eyes glimmered with humour in the sunlight. “But I will behave. This new business is serious, and it’s important to me. It’s just when I’m around you, I forget . . .” He took his hand from my arm and ran his fingers through his hair, and whatever he was about to say was gone.