“I’d be happy to help. This won’t take very long to get together.” Garrett could write this policy in his sleep but what captured his attention was the little hesitation right before Wyatt had said “restaurant.” Had he been going to say something different or was it just his overactive imagination when it came to this…client. This client.
Maybe if he said it enough times, he’d remember what to call Wyatt.
They talked for a few minutes about how much coverage the client had requested. As he filled out the information on the policy, Garrett was making small talk about other business insurance Wyatt might find useful. Things were going well until Garrett turned to him to get the business name and address.
That’s when things went strangely pear shaped, as his mother liked to say.
“Um, oh…Um, I guess I forgot the address. Let me just…Yes, let me just email that to you later.” Wyatt grabbed a business card off the desk and waved it around. “I’ll call…or email…or something in just a little while about the address. Um, thank you. I’ll call…Um, yes…” Then he was gone.
Garrett sat there for a long time looking at the door. “What the hell?”
“Everything okay?” Calen asked, poking his head around the door, clearly not working. Hell, it was Friday afternoon. He was lucky anyone was still in the office. “He left in a hurry.”
“I don’t know.” Garrett wasn’t sure what happened.
“Did you finish the policy?” Calen came in and sat down, propping his feet up on the desk. “You scare him off?” It was a running joke around the office that one day Garrett was going to frighten the poor…customer…that Garrett would frighten Wyatt away.
“Almost and I don’t think so.”
Now Calen perked up. To Garrett, he looked like a shark smelling blood. “You don’t think you scared him off or you don’t think you got the policy done?”
Nosey gossip. “The policy is almost done. We got to the part about the business name and he went all rabbit and panicked. He dashed out making all kinds of excuses about calling back with the address later this afternoon. I didn’t even get the chance to tell him that I needed his business address or take a payment, damn it.”
“Man, I know you said he wasn’t—”
“He’s not shady. He’s just…skittish. I must have done something to make him nervous.” Garrett just couldn’t think what.
“This is the third time he’s been in this week. Come on, no one visits their insurance company this much unless they’re shady or they like the view.” Now Calen smirked, giving him a nod. “You know what Brent said.”
“Brent’s crazy. There’s no way…he’s just wrong. Besides, all we need is a sexual harassment lawsuit because I came on to someone.” There was a good chance Wyatt was gay. However, gay and a sub, or at least, open-minded enough to consider it, probably not. “Three times?”
“Yup. He paid the auto policy on Monday then came back on Wednesday to pay the life insurance. And don’t distract me, nobody blinks at you guys anymore. You’re paranoid.”
Cautious.
He preferred the term cautious. When he and his three brothers had all come out in college, things had been fine at home. However, when they’d taken over his dad’s insurance company after he passed, they’d ruffled a few feathers in the local business community. If word got out he was not only gay but a Dom as well, things might get interesting again.
“Your brothers—”
“All agreed that we would be discreet in town. That’s why when we want to play we go elsewhere. If I start making waves, then it would affect not only myself but the business as well.” That was the deal when they’d taken over. They wouldn’t go back in the closet, or anything absurd, but with all of them interested in kink in one way or another, they’d agreed that discretion was a must.
That meant being very careful when dating in town.
“Your dad would have told them all to go take a flying fuck and then told you to do whatever the hell you wanted.” Calen shook his head.
He was right about Dad. “It was a different time when my dad started building the business. People minded their own business back then.” His dad had been unique in more ways than one. Not only in his acceptance of his boys but in his own personal life. Martin Ryder would have understood the need for privacy but not hiding.
“I’m not willing to risk everything we’ve built up on amaybe he’s gayandmaybe me being a Dom won’t make him freak.” Garrett needed to get up to the club and find someone to play with. He’d been thinking about going up this weekend, but suddenly, the idea didn’t sound as good as it usually did. He probably just needed some time off.
Calen shook his head. “You’re making a mistake.”
“Bossy Dom.”
“Takes one to know one,” he said in a sing-song voice as he waltzed out of the office.
“Go get some work done!”
“It’s four o’clock on Friday, you should be grateful I’m here at all,” he hollered as he went down the hall. Garrett hoped Calen was heading back to his office to get work done, but it sounded more like he was heading for the kitchen to get a beer.
