Her red lips scrunched up as she trailed a long fingernail down the side of her computer screen. After a moment, she found what she was searching for and looked back up at Daniel. “She’s still on her lunch break, but if you want to have a seat?—”
She was cut off by a door to the left opening up as two women entered the room, chatting. Daniel turned his head to look at them, and his heart plummeted to the soles of his dress shoes.
He knew both of them.
In a fitted green suit, Janelle Butler stepped to the side of the door, her short heels clacking on the tile of the lobby. She looked just as put together and professional as she had at the event where Daniel first met her, but her smile was more genuine and her posture more relaxed as she focused on the woman with her.
Kassandra let the door close behind her and shifted the brown paper bag with a restaurant’s logo printed on the side to her other arm.
“Mrs. Butler, your one o’clock interview is here.”
Daniel wished the floor would swallow him whole as Janelle and Kassandra turned to stare at him. If his legs were working, he would run out of the building. He might run across the country and find a different town to live in. Or he might just keep running, as it seemed his past was never going to leave him alone. It was stupid of him to think that sooner or later the years of sex work wouldn’t catch up to him. He just hadn’t thought it would happen before he got to interview for a new job. Before he got the chance to prove himself.
“Daniel?” Kassandra said.
Janelle looked between the two of them. “You know each other?”
His tongue was too dry to answer. It stuck to the roof of his mouth and seemed to want to remain there. And what could he say? Was he really going to admit to their relationship? Yeah, he should just leave now before things got more humiliating.
“This is the Daniel I told you about,” Kassandra answered. “The one I met at a bar and who helped me get through the divorce.”
What?That was what Kassandra had to say about their unconventional connection? It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it definitely wasn’t the whole truth.
Janelle’s eyes lit with recognition. “The mysterious Daniel you never let me meet. And now I’m interviewing him for a job here. It’s such a small world.”
Daniel was effectively useless as Kassandra’s gaze went from his shoes to his wide eyes. At any second, his sordid past could be exposed, and he’d no doubt be thrown out of the office and onto his ass. Kassandra had his balls in her hand, and he wouldn’t blame her if she warned her friend about him.
“If you don’t hire him, we can no longer be friends,” Kassandra said, shocking Daniel so much he had to steady himself on the desk.
Janelle laughed and playfully slapped her arm. “I can’t make hiring decisions based on personal relationships.”
A conspiratorial smile crept onto Kassandra’s face. “Should we tell your dad he shouldn’t have hired his kids?”
“Only if you want your invitation to dinner on Sunday rescinded. Now go, I have positions to fill, and we wouldn’t want to waste Daniel’s time.”
Kassandra walked to the front doors, sending Daniel a smile on her way there. As she was leaving, she turned back to wave at Janelle, then Daniel. He could hardly lift his arm to return the gesture.
“So,” Janelle said, forcing Daniel to look at her. “Decided you finally wanted bigger and better things for yourself?”
Daniel could have laughed at how accurate her question was.
Yes. Yes, he had.
He wanted so much more than he’d forced himself to live with. He wanted a job he enjoyed, money he was proud of making, real friends that helped one another out, and a boyfriend who wouldn’t order seafood at a restaurant but would uproot his entire life at a moment’s notice just to be with him.
Yeah, Daniel was finally ready to move onto bigger and better things.
24
“Areyou sure you want to do that, Mom?” Jensen asked.
“It’s already been done. There’s no turning back now.”
Jensen let out a loud breath that contained half a chuckle and shifted on his feet. He refused to sit on Daniel’s bed in the clothes he’d been wearing—even the thought of it made his skin crawl with a desperate urge to wash the sheets—so he was standing in the middle of Daniel’s bedroom. Honestly, Jensen was just grateful to be in clothes that fit him and not Brody’s hand-me-downs. Daniel’s roommate had been incredibly generous over the past couple of days, allowing Jensen to wear his surprisingly soft clothes without a single complaint. But Jensen had quickly gotten tired of all the skin he was showing and didn’t love the comparison of how he looked in the borrowed clothes versus how Brody looked in them. He wasn’t exactly self-conscious about his lack of muscles; rather, he considered himself a realist and knew he couldn’t compare to the apparent ancient Roman Olympian Daniel lived with. But he still didn’t like being faced with those facts.
“Your father and I are excited to see Daniel again, and we’ll need to start getting familiar with the city for when we move there,” his mother continued.
“I feel like you’re jumping the gun,” Jensen said, then snapped his mouth shut. God, he was a hypocrite, wasn’t he? Here he was, telling his mom not to come out to visit for the weekend when he’d rushed out of San Francisco without socks, underwear, or a job.
