“You’ll be in here tonight, at seven, with my friends helping me switch the living room and bedroom.”
“Are you sure—”
He pushed the door open. “I’m not as big of a dick that I’m going to make you get rid of your dog. The rooms are the same size. Just show up and pay for pizza and beer.”
“Done, man,” I said, sticking my hand out. “Thank you for not suggesting—”
He gripped my hand. “Stop right there. He’s a dog. I’m a human. I can adapt better than he can. Plus, he helped with Missy yesterday so there’s no apologies necessary.”
“Thanks,” I answered, not letting go of his hand right away. His hand was warm and soft, and oddly comfortable in my own. Had we not shook hands last night? Why did I not remember the way it felt.
He was straight. That was why. I pulled my hand back and I could see confusion on his face as he stared at his hand.
Shit, was hequestioning?
Chase lifted his eyebrows and sighed. “Okay. Seven. Don’t be late. I need my beauty sleep, otherwise,” his hand swept the tableau of himself, “you can see what I look like.”
Hot? Sexy? Alluring in that robe with those long, muscular legs sticking out? Even his feet were sexy? “I get it,” I finally said. “I’m also going to set up a recorder and see if we can catch some kind of noise at night making him crazy. He didn’t do this for the first week I was here, so I’m wondering if it’s something else.”
“Good idea,” Chase yawned. “I’m going to get ready for work. I’ll drag my friends back. See you tonight.”
He pushed the door in and disappeared.
I looked down at my dog. “You. I don’t know what to do with you. It’s a wall, you furry asshole. Stop barking at it like it’s in your way. The only time you’ve ever paid attention to any walls was when you walked smacked into them.”
I only did once around the block with Pollux before I had to run off to get to the studio. I had four more projects in the mailbox, and I trotted into the room studying them. Two were marked rush but had no deadline. The other two had deadlines in three weeks. Plus the ones I already had that were urgent…
I grabbed the phone and dial my manager’s number.
“Liggit.” His tone was clipped.
“Hey, Jerry, it’s Marcus. I have two assignments here marked urgent and have no date on them. How would I find out about those.”
“Two?” I heard him shuffling paperwork. “That’s weird. There was supposed to be numbers on those. Vi! Where’s the urgent sheet?”
He screamed right in my ear and I wanted to laugh. Screaming into a sound engineer’s ear was kind of a stupid move since we relied on our hearing for work.
There was a rustling of papers, and I shook my head. Everything else was done by computer and spreadsheet, except the urgents? That was down right ridiculous. Someone slapped a paper on a surface.
“Here we go,” Jerry said, “Thanks, Vi.”
“Get organized, jackhole,” Vi snapped into the phone.
“So what are the numbers?”
I rattled off the two I had gotten today and the two yesterday. “I need those dates to—”
“Oh, fuck,” he hissed.
“Oh fuck what?”
I could hear him hiss between his teeth. “All four of those are Roberts’ pieces. They need to be done today.”
Ed Roberts strikes again. “Jerry, there’s ten hours of audio between the four assignments. I can’t do that all today. I have—”
“Roberts requested you, the one who assisted Sorcha on the last set. He really likes your style, and he wanted to rerecord some stuff he didn’t like with the last tech.
Shit.
