Undeniably Yours Read online

  “Undeniably Yours”

  An MM Gay Romance

  Six Degrees of Love

  Book 3

  Jerry Cole

  © 2020

  Jerry Cole

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is intended for Adults (ages 18+) only. The contents may be offensive to some readers. It may contain graphic language, explicit sexual content, and adult situations. May contain scenes of unprotected sex. Please do not read this book if you are offended by content as mentioned above or if you are under the age of 18.

  Please educate yourself on safe sex practices before making potentially life-changing decisions about sex in real life. If you’re not sure where to start, see here: http://www.jerrycoleauthor.com/safe-sex-resources/.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner & are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Products or brand names mentioned are trademarks of their respective holders or companies. The cover uses licensed images & are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are simply models.

  Edition v1.00 (2020.07.22)

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  Special thanks to the following volunteer readers who helped with proofreading: Earleen Gregg, A. Pittmoore, C. Mitchell, RB, Big Kid, Naomi W., and those who assisted but wished to be anonymous. Thank you so much for your support.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter One

  “I will be keeping my eye on this. You guys have my undivided attention.” I was lying again. I do it so often and so effortlessly these days that I hardly register when it’s happening.

  The truth was that my attention was anywhere but here. Behind the group of fresh-faced interns, I was lying to, was a sight that made me feel decidedly ambivalent. My ex and his new lover were wheeling his father out of the hospital. His father was part of a clinical trial we were conducting at the hospital and, even though I wasn’t allowed to access his medical records, he looked much better. The word was the trials were showing great results and I could only assume that Mr. Green was part of that group.

  What drew my attention wasn’t just the sight of tall and handsome Josh Green. Though, that was worth watching by itself. It was the way he was looking at the boy who was now the center of his world. I say the word boy, even though I know he is a grown man, but his new lover is boyish in his ways. It’s like he’s in some sort of perpetual puberty or something. It’s so unfair. Meanwhile, I am struggling to beat back premature wrinkles and sunspots. Damn this fair skin and red hair.

  But I digress; the way Josh looks at his new lover reminds me of the way he used to look at me. When we were in high school, sneaking around like any two gay boys in small-town America would do; he used to look at me that way and I felt like I would light up. And that is what that boy is doing now. He is positively glowing. Even Josh’s grumpy old man seemed to be bathed in the soft glow of their love. He looked like less of an asshole than I remember. The three of them boarded the elevator at the end of the hall and disappeared from view, leaving me to rejoin the group of interns and their lists of petty grievances.

  I don’t know why I couldn’t help but watch them. Maybe because Josh was the last person I could say I ever genuinely loved. Maybe because he was the last person I could say ever truly loved me. The first and the last. Either way. Even though I knew going back was impossible for so many reasons, I couldn’t help but feel something whenever I saw them together. I don’t want him back, exactly. He hates me, and with good reason. I totally poisoned the well on that one. But more like a strange longing, like a strangled cry somewhere deep in my chest. I want what they have, but I don’t want to take it from them. I want a Josh-like love of my own.

  Which is a new feeling for me.

  I managed to properly butter up the interns and slip out of the hospital and back into the sunshine. I made my way over to the Hummer I have parked in my special reserved spot and climbed into the cab. I say the word climb because, although I am hardly what anybody would call diminutive in size, the damned vehicle is a fucking behemoth. I only bought the damned thing to be an annoyance. I wanted to annoy my father by buying something completely unnecessary with his money. He’d siphoned money out of one of his charities into a slush fund and threw a sizable chunk at me as a belated birthday present. Unfortunately, it wasn’t his money, so he gave even less of a shit than he usually did. Once I realized where the money came from I quickly reimbursed them and ended up paying for the damned thing myself.

  Happy birthday to me!

  I made my way back to the old family home that was now doubling as the headquarters of Dunlevy Inc. We owned a building downtown that served as the official headquarters, but ever since I was sent back here to look after things I’d been avoiding the aging gray building. All of the day-to-day operations still happened from that building. All of the staff still reported to the glorified jail cell and carried on the work of their varied departments. I simply refused to follow suit. All of the executive decisions were made here, from the comfort of what was once my own home. The old house was so big that I could afford to convert four or five rooms into office space without disturbing my private life at all.

  Marcelo is waiting for me when I arrive. He has that look on his face that tells me he has something to say and I’m probably not going to want to hear it.

  “You’re lucky you’re so good looking, or I wouldn’t be able to stand seeing your sour puss every time something goes wrong,” I say. Instead of frowning his face seems to brighten, as if I’d just played right into a trap that was moments away from springing.

  “Well, then this is your lucky day.”

  The next few moments feel like they happened in slow motion, though I know that’s impossible. He moves from his spot, shoulders squared, and relaxed in that damned blue suit that makes him look like a Latino Clark Kent. His gaze is steady behind those square black-rimmed glasses. He’s made up his mind about whatever he is going to do next. Nothing about him leaves a
ny room for negotiation. I can tell. I’ve been in enough trouble and negotiated my way out of enough tight spots to know when I am up against an immovable force.

  As he takes the last step toward me, he reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and produces a piece of paper. He holds it out for me and I take it instinctively, without looking at it. He doesn’t say anything, he just waits for me to look at it with a tiny flicker of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. I can tell by the quality of the paper that this is an important moment for us both. It’s heavy and soft, like the silk and cotton blended paper they use to print wedding invites and birth notices.

  I look down and unfold the paper.

  “Letter of resignation,” he says, sparing me the effort of reading the whole thing. I skim it quickly. It’s dated for today and informs me “regretfully” that he will be leaving me in two weeks. At the bottom is his signature in blue, iridescent ink. A nice touch. Almost as impressive as the embossed letterhead that he used when he wrote this abomination.

  “Absolutely not!” I crumple the letter up and throw it in the wastebasket. “Where in the hell do you think you’re going, anyway?”

  “I’ve already submitted my paperwork to HR, sir.”

  “Sir?” I feel like he’s just thrown a bucket of ice-water in my face. Marcelo is one of the few men in the world who can make a term of respect feel like a slur. Just watching him pucker his lips to call me sir makes my skin crawl.

  “I am sorry, but I have made my final decision.”

  “I hope you don’t expect to get a reference from me,” I say.

  “I don’t.”

  “Have you secured another position? Is that it? Has Waterson poached you for that conglomerate of monkeys he’s got over there?”

  Marcelo actually smiles and shakes his head.

  “No, sir,” he crosses his arms in front of himself like the mother of a toddler, patiently waiting for her kid to stop throwing a fit before she continues with her shopping.

  “Then WHY?” I sound desperate because I AM. Before hiring him seven years ago, I went through a mountain of personal assistants. Each one was a little more fucked up than the last. When I decided to take a chance on an earnest, dedicated guy with more charm than qualifications, it was as if the Fates finally smiled down on me. He didn’t have a lot of fancy degrees or impeccable references but he was organized, efficient, creative, professional, sexy, charming, and had a knack for curbing my darker impulses.

  “I’ll double your pay.”

  He shook his head.

  “You don’t have enough money to make me stay,” he said softly as if it was simply a fact instead of an insult.

  “How do you know?”

  “I open your mail and do most of your banking for you.”

  He was right. All the more reason why I couldn’t let him go without a fight.

  “Come on Marcelo, let’s talk about this like two men,” I sat on the sofa that he’d told me was overpriced but I simply had to have. “What’s this all about?”

  “I want to take some time to pursue a few personal projects and find a new direction for my life. I am resigning for a better life.”

  “I get that,” I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Do you?”

  “Of course I do!” I had no clue.

  Marcelo simply sighed; that soft, short exasperated sound he made when he knew I was lying.

  “In any case, I’ve already found a replacement,” he said.

  “Is this because we stopped sleeping together?”

  Marcelo pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and shook his head as if he were being forced to talk to the dumbest man on the planet.

  “That ended a long time ago,” he said.

  “I know, but maybe you’re still upset about it. I remember you took some time off not long after that.”

  “It was nearly a year after that, and I took time off because my sister died.” Marcelo showed the first signs of being upset.

  “Oh yeah...then you should have more free time. You don’t need to resign to pursue your dreams!”

  I realized instantly that I’d said the wrong thing. His face reminded me of the look my mother gave me when she caught me masturbating to a pin-up poster of my favorite boyband member. It was shock and horror, which I was used to by now. But there was something else; something more visceral and painful to see. Disgust. Revulsion.

  “My God,” he whispered, turning on his heel and walking back into the room that he used as an office.

  It was a closet really.

  I mean I literally converted a utility closet into an office space for him. Thinking about it now, I probably should have given him a regular office but I hadn’t thought of it at the time. I just wanted his office to be adjoined to mine and the closet was the most obvious choice. It dawned on me that little slights like that may have built up over the years and finally led to the inevitable. He was leaving and moving on to greener pastures. Just like everybody else.

  I threw myself down in my chair behind my desk and closed my eyes against the headache that was threatening to pound its way through my skull. I’d be damned if I let Marcelo just walk away like that. Not him. He wasn’t like everybody else. He was the only person who knew how to make my coffee not taste like boiling turpentine. The problem was, I may have left it too late.

  I was repulsive to him already.

  Chapter Two

  She was a nightmare; my actual nightmare came to life. She was tall. Too tall to be considered elegant, and too skinny to be considered thin, and OLD. Too old to be considered at all, frankly. She had the kind of complexion that made all of her makeup look dusty and grey. It didn’t help that she was one of those women who favored darker colored lipsticks over the traditional pinks and reds. Hers was a deep rum raisin color, a dusty rum raisin.

  “This is Helen Moraz,” Marcelo introduced the shrew to me with a big smile on his face. “Mrs. Moraz comes highly recommended, speaks five languages, and is a bit of a coffee connoisseur.”

  The screw faced shrew gave a demure smile at the compliment, making her wrinkled old bat face light up like a lava lamp.

  “Hello, Mrs. Moraz,” I said obediently, offering her my hand.

  She grasped it firmly and I shuddered at the cold, soft flesh clothing her bones. I looked up at Marcelo and gave him the look that meant “please don’t leave me with this person”. I knew he knew what it meant because we’d used it many times before. Usually during business-related dinner parties or obnoxious fundraisers.

  As if on cue, his fucking cell phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket.

  “I’ll leave you two to get acquainted. I need to take this,” he said, stepping out of the room and out of earshot.

  “So, Mrs. Moraz, where were you before this?”

  “Tempe,” she said as if that explained everything.

  “And what did you do there?”

  “I was the personal secretary of the Chief Financial Officer,” she said.

  “Really? Then why on earth would you want to come here?”

  “The CFO died, and I figured it was time for a nice change of pace,” she said as if being my personal assistant was a lovely vacation from her years of REAL work in Tempe.

  “Well, the winters here are going to be a major change compared to Arizona weather.”

  “I wasn’t in Arizona.”

  “But I thought you said you were in Tempe.”

  “Yes, Tempe Industries.”

  I nearly swallowed my tongue. Tempe Industries was a global player in electronic components manufacturing. If you owned any kind of gadget, there is a good chance that at least some of the components were made in a Tempe factory. They even thought about building a factory here a while back but decided that Indonesia was the place to be.

  “Shit.”

  Mrs. Moraz smiled sweetly and opened her handbag and pulled out a notepad.

  “Mr. Ramirez has given me a brief rundown o
f how things run here,” she flipped through a dozen pages of tiny handwriting before she came to a blank page. “Is there anything that you’d like me to know about you before we begin working together?”

  “Working together?”

  I don’t know why those words still seemed like the result of a Madlib instead of an actual thing that can happen.

  “Yes, it must feel like a bit of a shock to you,” she said sympathetically. “You two have been together for a long while.”

  “Together?”

  “Yes,” she smiled again, but this time her eyes became soft like a woman recalling lost love. “Working so closely together is a bit like a marriage of sorts. You get to know each other in ways you never intended and begin to rely on each other in ways you don’t realize...until it ends.”

  I tried to swallow the lump that was currently inflating in my throat.

  “How long were you with the CFO?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  “Fifteen years?”

  She nodded and the corners of her mouth pulled back a little more as her soft eyes became wet with unshed tears.

  “You should’ve been the CFO after fifteen years!”

  “Oh, I was right where I wanted to be. Besides, I was well compensated for my time. Some people want to be king of the hill, but I would much rather support a good king than become king myself.”

  I thought about Marcelo. In seven years, he’d never once sought another position in my company or any other to my knowledge. Of course, he’d received raises and bonuses and an impressive benefits package. He had access to almost every perk that I had. Hotel suites, luxury cars, and drivers, private jets, a company card, the works. So why was he unhappy?

  Why was he leaving me?

  I looked at Mrs. Moraz again. Perhaps she wasn’t as old as I thought she was. She was still nimble and pleasant. A far cry from the barking shrew that I feared she would be. But she wasn’t Marcelo. She didn’t soothe my nerves just by looking at her. She was most likely quite capable and efficient at her job. Marcelo would accept nothing less. But she was the type of assistant that was meant to be conspicuously invisible. She was there but not there as well. She wouldn’t be the Ying to my Yang. Not like Marcelo. Not like Marcelo at all.