Bram smiles shyly. “Most of them are already people in need. No one here is paying full-rent. I’m just not sure how long I can afford to keep this up without the city’s involvement. So that’s what I’m working on now. Had a meeting at city hall today.”

“Oh.” I think that’s one of the most surprisingly noble things I’ve ever heard. “And you’re hoping that the tax break you got for letting me live here will allow you to be able to do it for everyone in the building?”

“Tax break?” Then he grins. “Oh, no I lied about that.”

My eyes bug out. “What? Why?”

He shrugs. “Because there was no way you’d believe me if I told you I wanted to help you out of the goodness of my own heart. And if I told you the other truth, you would have run the other way.”

“What other truth?”

“That I wanted to win you over.”

I blink. “That’s why I’m living here? You wanted to win me over?”

“I’ve done outlandish things for a girl before, but nothing like this,” he says, almost to himself. “But yes. I wanted to help you and I wanted you to think of me just a little bit differently. I wanted you to get to know the real me.”

“But the real you is still an arrogant manwhore,” I point out, feeling far too many emotions about this whole thing. Strangely enough, none of them are bad.

“Perhaps, an arrogant manwhore with some endearing qualities.” He waves the drill at me. “Like, being handy.”

“You certainly are handy,” I comment, still feeling out of sorts. Dizzy swirled around. It must still be the hangover. It can’t be learning that Bram did this all for me because of, well, me. “I still don’t know what this has to do with Branson though.”

“He’s a huge humanitarian. He’s been able to do so much with his fortune. I want that. I want both – the money and the means to help.”

“Why is this such a secret? I would think your parents would be proud of you for this. I mean, your father is a diplomat, he must have many ties to charitable organizations.”

His mouth quirks into a quick smile. “Even Linden doesn’t know. No one does, except the city and you.”

“Why not?”

“Because people like to hold onto their ideas of what you are and who you are. They put you in a box and no matter how hard you try to show them what you’re really like, they can’t wrap their heads around it. They won’t. They only want you to be a certain way, the way they see you. To change that messes with their heads. I’ll always be Bram the fuck-up to them, the party-animal, the playboy. It doesn’t matter if I tell them my plans or not, they’ll never take me seriously. I could do this for fifty years, I could become the next Branson, and they would still see me in the box they put me in.”

I can’t help but relate to his every word. I know that the moment I tell people I’m a single mom, I’m slung into a box that I have no hope in escaping. I don’t think many people have met me and then seen that I’m more than just my title, my circumstances.

Not like Bram has seen me. The thought hits me like a bullet.

He’s studying me and when I meet his eye, my face perhaps held in surprise, he clears his throat. “The only problem with the whole thing is that Branson has had a fifteen year head-start. I pissed away my twenties and early thirties on booze, drugs and women. While I obviously enjoyed it at the time – as you know, women are still my weakness – I could have done so much if I had just gotten my head on straight at an earlier stage.”

“You know they say it’s never too late,” I tell him.

“In some ways it feels like it,” he says. “You know I had a great idea a few years ago for a social media site comprised of just pictures. Pictures of me. You know, after a swim, running on the beach, taking off my shirt. I called it Insta-Bram.”

I watch his face carefully, knowing he has to be joking. “Insta-Bram?”

But his expression is stone cold serious. “Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?” Then he breaks into a wide, shit-eating grin that lights him up. “Hey, I gotta let my ego come out to play sometimes.”

I shake my head. “You’re the worst.”

“I’m the best.” He taps the side of the couch frame. “Come on, this couch won’t build itself.”

So we get back to work on the shitty little couch and when we’re nearly done, it really does look like the cheapest crap I could have bought. I’m starting to think about throwing them out and just keeping my torn-up but reliable one.

“I’ll need your help with this,” Bram says, muffled. He’s inside the large swath of fabric that is supposed to slip on over the frame, covering him like a yellow ghost from head to waist. “I need to zip onto those white pads that are somewhere out there.”

I spot the pad behind me and dip down until I’m under the couch material with Bram. It’s like being inside a very tiny tent and there’s barely enough room for both of us to stand under here. Our faces are bathed in a yellow glow.

“Here,” I say, holding up the edge of the pad that has a zipper pull. I’m wildly conscious of how close I am to him and I try to keep my breath contained, my voice down. It’s getting hot under the canopy and all I can smell is his beautiful skin.

Shit, shit, shit, I think to myself. Get out of this situation.

But I don’t. He pulls down the zipper track inside of the fabric and I hold up the mattress pad and we struggle for the zipper pull and the track to connect. His brow is furrowed in concentration, I’m trying to hold everything just right and I feel like neither of us are breathing.

Then the zipper catches and slides along and the pad is attached. I think we both breathe out a sigh of relief and then he ducks under the pad, lifting it behind him so we’re still under the tent of fabric, but both pressed up against each other.

He’s smiling. I’m smiling.

And a flash of danger comes across his eyes.

Maybe it’s lust.

But it’s all danger to me.

Beautiful, delicious danger.

For once, for once, I’m ready for it.

But before that thought even has a thought to process, the look in his eyes smolders, drunk with desire and he grabs my face with one hand, the other hand going behind my hair and he’s kissing me.

Kissing me.

Kissing me.

I thought I was ready for this but I wasn’t.

His kiss.

It’s more than I remembered. It does more than knock me off my feet. His tongue is insatiable, explicit as it thrusts into my mouth hungrily, his lips crazed and needy. It’s wet and violent and makes the want inside me throb, over and over. His hand at my head is gripping my hair as if he’s holding on for dear life and each tug shoots fire down my nerves. Every part of my being feels alive, soaking it all in, desperate for more of his touch, more of him, more of everything.

He pulls back half an inch, just for a second, just enough time to let out a moan while his other hand holds my face in place, captive. His heady-lidded gaze fixates on my eyes, then my lips, as if I’m some sort of apparition.

Then I grab his shirt collar and yank his lips back to mine. The need in me builds and builds and I’m dying to wrap my legs around him, to feel every inch, to feel his want for me. I think I whimper. I gasp. I kiss him with the same kind of abandon as he’s kissing me, his mouth all encompassing as if wanting to swallow me whole. I wouldn’t mind his mouth somewhere else.

As if he reads my thoughts, he grabs me around the waist and quickly lowers me backward to the ground, the padding inside propping my shoulders up. We’re lucky that the couch frame or coffee table wasn’t in the way but I’m not even sure if that would have mattered. To hell with all the furniture.

With rough, eager hands he shoves up the tunic so my breasts are exposed and then pulls down my bra until my nipples are hardening in the air.

“I knew you’d be so fucking perfect,” he says, breathing hard. The feeling makes my nipples even more sensitive and a low moan escapes from my mouth. “Oh, sweetheart, if you keep making noises like that, I’m afraid I’ll come all over you before I can come inside you.”