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“Then she can take coffee with me, instead of running off with him,” Courtney decided. “Go back to work. ” She waved her hand at him. “Don’t you have investigating stuff to do? I’m certain you do. Ian is always careful to keep you and Chase busy. Now, go be busy. ”
He released Jaci slowly. “Courtney, it will only take a few minutes,” he gritted out.
“Then it can wait until this evening,” Courtney decided, before turning back to Jaci. “The testosterone is getting so thick in here. I say we return to my suite. You said you had ideas you wanted to discuss, so the best way to do that is while you’re taking a break. Come now. We’ll go discuss them. ” She grabbed Jaci’s hand like a worried mother and tugged her through the room. “You can play with Cam later. ”
“Courtney . . . ” he growled.
“Do something with him, Ian,” she called over her shoulder, as Jaci kept her head carefully averted and moved to the doorway with Courtney, “he’s going to irritate me. ”
They moved out of the room, turned the corner, and disappeared from sight.
“Whoa! Damn, Cam, I guess you should have warned Jaci about telling on you when you slipped out on her at night. ” Ian chuckled. “Courtney might be more pissed than Jaci is. ”
Cam jerked around, his lips tightening at the surprised looks on the faces of the men in the room.
“Thanks, Ian,” he ground out, “for informing everyone else of my shortcomings. ”
Khalid snorted at that. “Ian, my friend, if Courtney knows your weaknesses, you can believe the rest of us will. She believes the only way to dissuade us from acting on our male shortcomings is to be aware that, should she find out, others will know as well. She’s worse than my mother. ”
“Even my mother wasn’t as bad as Courtney,” another member groaned. “She told that sweet little thing I was talking to at the Brockheim ball that she should consider another escort to the next party, considering my habit of being late to everything except dinner. ”
“Yeah, and she told my father about the speeding ticket I got last week. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since anyone dared to do that?” That member was the son of a high-ranking judge.
Cam winced in sympathy. The only secrets that were safe were those few she learned from the club itself. If she learned anything outside the club, then she considered it fair game.
“You’re part of the club, you’re part of the pain. ” Ian sighed. “Look at it this way: if she didn’t like you and didn’t know you so well, she wouldn’t give a damn. ”
“Yeah, remind me of that the next time His Honor decides to lecture me for a few hours,” the judge’s son growled, but laughter tinged his voice.
“I’ll be sure to remind her again that she shouldn’t get her friends into trouble. ” Ian grinned. “But I won’t promise it will help. ”
Everyone laughed but Cam. With a tight grimace, he stomped from the room instead, and headed back to his office. No doubt Chase had watched the entire debacle on the security monitors. Just what he needed: a damned conspiracy among his brother and friends. At this rate, he’d be babbling like a moron within a week.
“You do know he’s going to get back at us over this,” Jaci informed Courtney as they stepped into the sitting room, just as Matthew was arriving with the fresh coffee that he seemed to have known she would be ordering.
Jaci had noticed that things just seemed to happen around Courtney. There were things she didn’t have to ask for. They just materialized, as though the very fact that she wanted them was enough.
“Thank you, Matthew. ” Courtney eyed the tray he sat on the table suspiciously. “It isn’t decaffeinated, correct?”
Matthew looked down his imperious nose at her, his expression pinched. “I wouldn’t dare serve you anything but real coffee,” he informed her, before turning and stalking from the room.
Courtney snorted as she flipped her hair over her shoulder and glared at the tray. “As if. He’s always trying to sneak that fake stuff in on me. As though I wouldn’t know the difference. ”
Jaci eyed her friend curiously. “What has you so upset?”
“Cameron Falladay. ” Courtney bit the words out. “You are aware of why he intended to rush you off the job, are you not?” Her accent thickened with ire. “He had every intention of trying to seduce you, my friend. ”
Jaci’s lips quirked into a grin. “ ‘Trying’ being the operative word here, Courtney. I’m not in the mood to be seduced. ”
“Who has to be in the mood?” Courtney’s brown eyes rolled expressively. “The man is like a volcano ready to explode. Trust me, when Ian’s like that, it doesn’t matter how irritated I am with him, I am seduced. It’s impossible to resist. ” She waved her hand for emphasis. “So I saved you. ”
Courtney moved to the tray, poured two cups of coffee, and then took a tentative sip of her own cup.
Jaci accepted her cup before curling into the corner of the couch and watching as Courtney did the same on the other end. Perhaps she really shouldn’t have called Courtney last night.
“This is more than Cam,” Jaci stated. “What really has you upset? I’m the one that should be upset with Cam. ”
“As though you aren’t?” Courtney sighed. “How could you not be? I heard the pain in your voice on the phone, Jaci. Had Ian done anything so unforgivable to me, I would have had to break one of his bones. ”
