There was a small chance that her last pay from Wicked would be enough to cover her rent if she combined it with the money the man tucked into her top. Any other expenses would be impossible. Another month with a roof over her head could give her the time she needed to find a new job. The choices would be even slimmer than they had been before.
“Maybe it’s time to revisit that ‘I’ll never do that’ list, my girl,” Quinn whispered to the lightening sky. A glance at the clock showed it was 6:30. Someone should be in the office by now.
Rolling to her back in the false safety of her nest, Quinn palmed her cell phone from the floor beside her and punched in Wicked’s number.
“Who the fuck is this,” Beaumont snarled by way of greeting.
“It’s, uh, Quinn.”
“Who?”
“Quinn Ivers,” she said, making a face in the gloom at the question in her voice. As if she didn’t know her own name. “Uh, Mr. Rey told me to call this morning.”
“Wait a sec.” A staticky crackle filled her ear followed by muffled male voices. Beaumont’s grew louder until he came back on with a vicious laugh. “The Omega slut who thinks she’s too good for the rules. Now I know who you are, bitch. What the fuck do you want?”
“Mr. Rey told me to call…”
“Well he isn’t here right now, so you get to deal with me. What do you want?”
“I guess I need to know when I can pick up my last paycheck.”
“Wait a minute.” There was a series of clicks and beeps then the hollow clatter of a receiver being tossed into the cradle. “Say that again.”
“I need to know when to pick up my last paycheck.”
The hollow echo of her voice made Quinn wince. She was on speaker phone, the humiliation of it driven home as several males chuckled and laughed.
“You want,” he began, giving a mean-spirited snicker, “to know when you can come pick up your paycheck?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You’ve got some nerve, you little cunt! After the shit you pulled—” Beaumont’s enraged rant was swallowed under the roar of another male. The insidious din of heavy objects falling and smaller items sent flying clawed into Quinn’s ear through her phone. Holding the rectangle of plastic at arm’s length, she stared in horror at the bright screen.
“I’m sorry,” Quinn whispered, trying to find the button to end the call through a haze of watery misery and shaking hands.
“Quinn! Quinn, don’t hang up, honey. She had damn well better still be on that line, Beau, or so help me,” Mr. Rey’s deep voice bellowed from her cell phone, making her drop it in an instinctive flinch from all that anger.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Rey,” she said, hoping he hadn’t heard her weak response. Far easier to pretend she had never called and made such a mess of everything. How had she been sostupid? She’d make do, find a couch somewhere. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d scraped by on next to nothing.
“Quinn, I can’t hear you. Come on, hon, it’s all right now.”
Swiping the tears from her eyes with rough hands, she snatched the phone from the rumpled sheets. Edgy and approaching angry at the purring tone, she slapped the phone to her ear.
“I made a mistake, but Mr. Beaumont has made that clear. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
“Don’t listen to his bitching, girl. Now come on, what happened? You forget your pills or something?”
“I never forget them!”
“All right, calm down. Just the girls said you never react to a male, so maybe that or you got a bad batch.”
“No, I… I don’t think so.” The seed planted, the thought snarled on her firm belief that her meds were pure and pulled it into murky doubt. Could that have been what happened? It would be so easy an explanation.
“Okay, so get yourself to your doctor and see what’s going on. Do you have money for a cab?”
“Uh, no, but I can walk. Mr. Rey what—”
Mr. Rey’s voice was muffled as he said, “Hey, Mike, go get Lana and tell her I need her to make a run for me.”
