Type it.
Awful demanding. Didn’t hate it.
Coming, listening to your voice.
Good. Now it’s time to put your phone down and dream of doing that with me there for real. Then maybe we can renegotiate our arrangement tomorrow.
Lol, I knew you had an angle.
Just winning you over. If that’s an angle, guilty as charged.
Smiling, I sent him a smile and goodnight face, waited for the same, and put my phone on the nightstand. That was hot. Surprising. And most of all, whether smart or not, a tipping point.
Tomorrow would be… interesting.
31
BECK
It wasn’t even dinner rush, and it felt as if today had lasted forever.
Between the bank, the lawyer, back and forth calls with Mr. O’Malley, and our cook coming down with the flu (in May?) it had been a full day. I had to promise my back-up cook two weekends in a row off if I wanted to avoid the kitchen myself, which I did. Not that I minded all that much, though I preferred front of the house more, but with everything else happening I couldn’t be stuck back there.
“Round of shots, on me,” Mason called.
I’d told the staff already, and the guys. Since I hadn’t heard from Mae, I could only assume she hadn’t talked to her parents yet.
It had taken some creative timing, an emergency wire transfer, and a hell of a lot of signatures, but by four o’clock, O’Malley’s was officially mine.
“Four,” he corrected when I poured three shots for us before looking around the bar to be sure no one needed a drink first.
“You drinking two?” I asked, grabbing another shot glass.
“I’ll have his extra.”
As if on cue, a buttoned-up Cole walked up between Mason and Parker and reached his hand over the bar.
I shook it, surprised, even though I shouldn’t have been. So many people didn’t get our friendship with Cole. He was very different than the three of us, especially Parker and me. But Cole Ford was one hell of a friend. And fun too, when he loosened up.
“Congratulations, buddy.”
“How the hell did you assholes pull this together?”
Cole sat next to Parker. I thought he’d left a stool open for Delaney since the girls had to be back by now. They were stopping for lunch on the way home but Mae had confirmed she’d be here tonight.
I smiled, thinking of her brief text. Just a single line, classic Mae:
Behave till I get there.
“Only had one class this morning,” Cole said, taking the shot I gave him. “Mason said it looked like everything was going through so, here I am.”
He said that like it wasn’t more than a five-hour drive, if Manhattan traffic cooperated.
“I appreciate it,” I said, raising my shot glass, as did the others.
“To Beck,” Mason said. “Welcome to the big boys’ club.”
Fuckers.
