Collide Into You: A Romantic Gender Swap Love Story (30 page)

I’m prepared to force the issue, but it isn’t necessary. Everyone readily leaves, including Mr. Brookshire and LouAnn. She pats me on the back on the way out, but otherwise says nothing. I quietly shut the door when it is just the three of us.

“Was that necessary?” Ken Fromm asks.

“No,” I answer simply, sitting at the head of the table and between the half-siblings. “I’ve been called many things.
Dramatic
being one of them. It gets the message across.” I know I’ve called Dillan
dramatic
a time or two before, so, strictly speaking, I’m still telling the truth. “Listen.” I turn to Amanda. “Mrs. Joy, I’ve read the files, your biography, and the history of your father’s company. You’ve done an amazing job running the company.”
 

Ken tries to say something, but I shush him.

“Mr. Fromm, you are as impressive as your sister. When you two look at each other, you see competition. You see your father’s favoritism played out in your mind. You envision a new path for the company. The difference is that each of you see yourself at the helm. This will never work. Ken, you will never work for Amanda. And Amanda, you’ll never work for Ken. Now, have I said anything incorrect? I want just a yes or no. No expositions.”

“No,” Ken answers, begrudgingly.

“No,” Amanda concurs.

I nod. “All right. Then there’s no need for representation. No matter what Brookshire Mierkle does for you, you’ll fight and bicker with each decision and your father’s company will never be successful again. Is that what you want?”

Both say
no
.
 

“I want to meet again tomorrow. I have a few ideas, but I want to think them over before I present them to you in the morning. Give me twenty-four hours. Dismissed, soldiers.” I walk out of the room before either can respond. However, I didn’t miss the shocked expressions on their faces.

Dillan

I
T
’
S
EXHAUSTING
BEING
A
SOLDIER
. There is no way I can do this for another day. I shuffle into the apartment and take out two beers. I’ll be done with the first one within two minutes and I don’t want to get up again once I sit on the couch.

After learning about the existence of the stories in the two newspapers, I went back to reading the letters until it was time to leave. A romance has grown between the two letter writers, though their words are passive and muted. Now that I’ve cracked into the 1957 letters, they have begun to sign their letters, at the closing, with
Yours Affectionately, Greta
, and,
Ardently Yours, William
. However, they still discuss the weather.
 

Back in the 1950s,
Yours Affectionately
could equate to
I Want to Jump your Bones the Next Time I See You
in today’s slang.
 

The door opens and closes behind me and I hear Keira come in. She drops something on the counter with a loud slap, opens the fridge, and, after a few seconds, sits next to me on the couch. With two beers.
Great minds think alike.
Wordlessly, she pops the top and drains most of the beer in one shot.

We sit this way for a few minutes.

“How was your day?” I ask finally.

“I didn’t get you fired,” she says. “Tell me: Why does that receptionist hate you so much?”

Of all the things she could have asked, I wasn’t expecting her to ask that.
 

This tells me two things. One, the meeting with the Joy Fromm half-siblings wasn’t the worst part of her day, and two, LouAnn didn’t eat her alive.

I take another sip of beer.
 

“I have no idea. She’s been mean to me ever since they hired her. I’ve never hit on her. Never asked her out. Never dated anyone in her family that I know of.”

“She’s cute,” Keira says. “In a bookish kind of way.”

“Hm. I guess so. I can’t even tell you what she looks like. For all I know, it’s a different woman each day. How’d the meeting go?”
 

I study her and notice for the first time what she’s wearing from my closet. For a woman who has zero fashion sense, she happened to choose the most expensive blazer in my closet—a four-thousand-dollar Ralph Lauren jacket, and paired it with a pink tie, my light cotton twill shirt, and brown loafers.
 

It doesn’t look all that bad. Dillan Pope: male fashion model. If I get fired, it seems like I have another job lined up for me in the fashion industry. It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her she’s wearing six thousand dollars worth of clothing. However, I don’t think she’d be impressed. She might be horrified, actually.

“I think that if there was a sharp object nearby, like a pair of scissors, that one or both of those half-siblings would have stabbed the other. In fact, I suspect that a sharpened pencil might have been okay in a pinch. Jesus, they hate each other.”

“What did you do?” I’m waiting to hear about Johnson Brookshire yelling at her, or LouAnn giving her backhanded compliments for not tripping on her own feet. Stuff like that.

“I kicked everyone out of the meeting except for me and the Joy Fromm siblings.”

I sit up straight. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Dead serious.” She finishes off the second beer and gets up. “Want another?”

“Hell yes.”

She hands me my third beer and sits down even closer than before. “I have an idea about them, if you’re willing to hear it.”

“Okay,” I say. I have my own ideas, but a second brain on the case isn’t a bad thing.

“I think they should split up and form their own companies. Amanda is more interested in logistics and transportation, whereas Ken has a knack for finance and contracting. They are only connected because of their father. It wasn’t like the elder Mr. Fromm hired them to run his company. They were his children, so his judgment was clouded when he allowed them to co-operate the company.”

“That idea certainly has merit,” I say. “I suspect that they aren’t willing to part with three million dollars for that assessment. They are expecting Brookshire Mierkle—me—to fix them as a whole and get them running again, but with Brookshire’s support as the ace in the hole. Our name opens a lot of doors. That’s what they are counting on.”

“You’ve had your hand in this game a lot longer than I have. Tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. I told them to come back tomorrow and that I’d have the solution packaged for them.”

“And they said okay? Did Brookshire threaten to kill you afterward?”

“I avoided him entirely by telling the receptionist that I was having lunch with one of the President’s interns. They left me alone after that.”

“You mean the President of the United States?”

“Sure, why not,” she laughs. “I was vague enough to give them that impression.”

“I’ve rubbed off nicely on you, I think,” I say proudly. “What did you do the rest of the day?”

“Surfed online for porn, had a few quickies in the bathroom stall, and antagonized the receptionist. You know, an honest day’s work. Now tell me about your day. I’ve had three beers. I can take it.”

I grin. “That place is huge,” I say, and tell her about my impressions of the Pentagon, ending with, “It is my dying wish to get one of those adult-sized tricycles.” I don’t have the heart to tell her about the newspapers or my lunch with Justin and the gang.

“Yeah, that place is crazy big. You never have to leave it except to go home. What were your impressions of the letters?” She smiles. The beers have relaxed her.

“Oh, I thought that that was obvious without having to say anything. They are a snooze-fest.” I make a loud snoring noise. “Though things picked up once William started discussing Area 51.”

“Shut the hell up!” She playfully hits me on the shoulder. “William and Greta. I wonder what happened to them?”

“I think they love each other,” I say seriously. “Maybe they are together now, old and married, with a dozen great-grandchildren.”

“Doubtful,” she says. “They’d have to be close to a hundred. The chances of both of them still being alive are slim to none.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m starving,” I say, rubbing my stomach like it’s a dog’s belly. “What about you?”

“You forgot, didn’t you?” she asks, her eyes narrowing. Just then, someone knocks on the door. My blank face must answer for me because she says, “You and Alec are going on a date to the exotic location of your kitchen.”

Shit. I did forget. I was enjoying Keira’s company too much. I was enjoying the fact that even though we are in each other’s bodies, we were having a somewhat normal conversation. That’s a rarity for us.

Alec Huffman is the last person I want to see right now. I’d bet anything, including the Ralph Lauren blazer hanging from Keira’s shoulders, that Alec knows about the articles. But more than anything, he has the power to pull Keira away from me, thus ruining our chances of switching back.

Keira

I
OPEN
THE
DOOR
AND
am struck by how handsome Alec Huffman is. Freckles stand out against tan skin. His blue eyes seem even lighter and his reddish-blond hair is just different enough to make me differentiate him from Dillan’s brown hair and green eyes.

Both are handsome. Both are successful. But only one of them makes my heart beat faster, and it isn’t the man standing in the doorway right now.

I let Alec in after giving him a bro hug. He seems tense, like he can’t wait to see Keira and tell her something. I pray to God it isn’t some sort of love proclamation because I can’t deal with that right now.

“Nice jacket,” he says to me. “You going out or something?” Alec asks in a manner that suggests he hopes it is true.

“No,” I say, getting him a beer. He accepts it without saying anything. “I’ll stay out of the way, of course, though I might creep in to grab a bite to eat. Keira never likes to admit these things, but she’s a pretty good cook. So I don’t plan on missing out. Stacey said she might come over. But, don’t worry about us. We plan to keep a low profile, if you know what I mean.”

Alec looks at me as if I’ve sprouted a third eye. “Uh, okay, Dillan. Thanks for the play-by-play.”

I laugh. I might be overdoing the bro-thing by telling him everything.

“Keira just got home. She’s getting changed.”

He sips the beer, does a double take at the Nine Year Crush label, and takes another long sip. “This is really good, Dillan. I’m getting a hint of blackberry in the aftertaste. Well done, sir!”

He claps me on the back. I have no idea of what he’s talking about, but I just nod like a simpleton and hope it looks convincing. Dillan—in my body—walks out of my room wearing another outfit that he would classify as “grandma-couture” and warmly embraces Alec.

What. The. Hell.

How many beers has he had? With my smaller frame, he shouldn’t have drank more than two. Now I’m worried things will get worse from here. Also, how many calories are in each bottle? I calculate how many miles I will need Dillan to run in the morning to burn them all off.

Eight. Eight miles.

Strangely, Alec looks uncomfortable after he extricates himself from my body. Again, what the hell?

“I thought I would bake chicken with portobello mushroom caps and, on the side, asparagus tips wrapped in bacon. I’m not a big bread eater, but I can whip up homemade biscuits if you want. As a starter, however, how does a light house salad with oil and vinegar sound?” Dillan says to Alec as he puts on an apron.

My mouth waters. Bacon. Biscuits. Mushroom caps.

“Sounds great, Keira,” Alec says, rubbing Dillan’s arms at the same time. My own arm tingles. It feels like I can feel it, too. Or maybe I’m imagining things.

“I’ll just do a bit of reading,” I say stiffly. “In my room.” No one is listening to me. I walk toward my true room first, realize I’m heading for the wrong room, squat down to
fake
pick something up. “Food,” I say by way of explanation, throw out said fake piece of food, and then head into Dillan’s room.

I can tell something’s troubling Alec so I plan to listen in on their conversation. I leave Dillan’s door partially open.

Dillan

I
SHAKE
MY
HEAD
. T
HREE
beers is all it took to make Keira’s body woozy. Good lord. I gulp down a large glass of water.

As I make food preparations, Alec asks me about my day, and this time I can honestly tell him about working in the Pentagon.
 

“It’s like a maze, I swear,” I tell him and he laughs. The smile doesn’t reach his eyes, so I feel it’s best to just air out the dirty laundry and get it over with. That way, if he leaves, I don’t have to cook all this food.
 

“Listen,” I say. “Someone showed me the newspapers today. I can understand if you’re upset, but I’d like you to know that I had nothing to do with them and only found out about them today.”

“I believe you,” he answers thoughtfully, leaning against the counter, watching me as I make preparations for dinner. “I was worried that you’d be livid at me. I’m used to it, but it’s never my intention to hurt those I care about. I thought that once you experienced what it’s like, that you’d back out fairly quickly. I should have known you’d take it in stride. You’ve experienced life-changing events and you’ve been deployed to war zones. Three newspapers calling you the
Nats’ Tramp
won’t hurt your feelings.”

“Excuse me, but did you say
three
newspapers?” There’s nothing in my mouth, but it feels like I’m choking on something anyway.

He raises an eyebrow. “How many did you know about?”

“Two,” I say. Crap. Crap. Crap. Justin, Aaron, and Nebraska missed the third newspaper. Oh, who am I kidding? They would have been well out of money by then anyway. I can’t have people stealing things for
me
.

For Keira
, I mean. I’d climb to the moon and back to protect her.
 

“Seriously?
Nats’ Tramp?
That’s…harsh.” And sexist. I plan to hurt whoever did this to Keira.