Page 37 of Mr. Perfect

“Mac?” Ming says with a sneer. “You’re really calling him Mac now?”

“What? I told you, that’s his name!”

“He likes you,” Adeline says. “That’s my bet. What kind of man does these things if the girl is just a casual one-nighter?”

“And you’re already past that, anyway,” Ming says. “How many times was that? Three? Four?”

“We only had sex once, Ming.”

“Once is enough. What happened to, ‘I need ten dates before I sleep with a man?’”

“Five,” I say. But I have said ten before. My standards just got a little lower over the years.

“I guess my main question is,” Adeline says, “will you stay here in this job because of him? Or will you still leave when your two weeks are up?”

“Oh, I’m leaving,” I say, putting a hand up to stop that line of questioning. “I’m definitely leaving in thirteen days. Practically twelve now.”

Ming sighs, but then smiles a little. “Well, as long as you’re still leaving, I guess there’s no harm in a casual office romance before you go. Just don’t let him talk you into staying. This job is a dead end for you, Ellie. You’re going to spend the rest of your life walking celebrities around this campus if you don’t get out now.” She looks over to Adeline and says, “No offense, Addie.”

“None taken. I completely agree. Our Ellie has potential. Potential that will never manifest while working for this company.”

“OK.” I sigh. “Can we be done talking about me now? And just go get drunk?”

Chapter Fifteen - Mac

I wait the appropriate amount of time before calling. It’s Thursday night. They went out for a happy hour drink. And now it’s eleven PM. She should be home.

But she’s not.

At least, she’s not answering her phone.

I should’ve asked her where they were going. It’s got to be some place semi-discreet. You can’t just show up at Chili’s for Happy Hour Sliders with Adeline. There’d be a mob. It would make the nightly news.

I open my phone browser and do a search for Adeline. Nope. No reports of her getting drunk with the locals in the Denver Tech Center.

I open the message stream Ellie has been sending Heath instead. Goddamn. Why did I have to stumble onto this? She’s so fucking cute. The sheepdogs. I can’t even deal with how fucking cute that is.

And then there’s the dream house pictures. She’s got pictures of furniture she wants. She’s even got pictures of what their future kids would look like.

Heath and I don’t look very much alike, so I can’t even imagine that’s what our kids would look like too.

What the hell? Where did that thought come from?

I call Ellie again. Straight to voicemail.

I text her. I bet if it was Heath calling you’d pick up.

Heath’s phone rings. I tab the answer button. “How can I help you, Miss Hatcher?”

“How can you help me?” She sounds groggy. “What do you want?”

“You called me,” I say.

She ends the call.

I stare at the phone. Then call her back.

“What?” she says, severely annoyed. “I’m trying to sleep.”