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“Don’t be an ass.” I roll my eyes. “Anyway, the only friend of mine who might possibly understand your current attire isn’t looking for love. Especially with a New Yorker. Greer made that clear at lunch today.”
“I’m not looking for love either—wait. Did you say Greer? Her last name wouldn’t happen to be Hudson, would it?”
How the fuck does he know her full name?
Immediately, I stiffen my defenses. “Yes. Why?”
His chuckle is big enough that he actually has to stop inhaling the free bread basket for a second and a half. “Oh, nothing.” He smirks.
“You have no idea, dude. No idea,” he says to Quince with a bro-curated expression of I’ll tell you later.
“Tell me,” I say and lock eyes with him from across the table.
His obstinance appears in the form of a raised eyebrow. “No.”
“Tell me right now.”
He looks to Quince again, but this time, the line of his jaw is all control your woman.
This is a nice restaurant and I’m wearing a five-thousand-dollar dress, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
Quick as a flash, I stand and lean, over the bread carcass and carafe of wine and all manner of stain possibilities, and clasp my fingers onto the peak of his nipple.
He jumps and howls, and Quincy rears back in his chair, apparently shocked by this new side of me.
“You tell me what you know about Greer Hudson, and you do it now.”
His smile is overwhelming. It beams. And, if I’m not mistaken, it’s even a little bit salacious.
An image of Quince’s friend engaging in rough sex appears uninvited in my mind, and my hand jerks back as though his nipple burns. I sit back in my seat again.
“Fine. Whatever. What’s the point of attorney/client privilege, anyway?”
I scowl and tap my toe on the floor.
“Turn came in today to talk about her around lunchtime. That’s all.”
“Turn?” I ask.
“Trent Turner,” Quincy explains and reaches out to rest his arm affectionately around my shoulders. “It’s the nickname we gave him when we were kids.”
Jesus. While Greer was dining on pastrami with me, Trent Turner, Greer’s new boss, was seeing his lawyer about her. Mere hours after she was hired for the job.
What the hell did she do to this guy?
“And?” I prompt. “What happened?”
Caplin rolls his eyes and takes another piece of bread from the bread basket. I have to wait an entire thirty seconds as he slathers the thing with an ungodly amount of butter before he answers. “Well, he wanted to fire her—”
“What?” I nearly shout. Several patrons turn to look at us, and I feel the subtle heat of embarrassment as it pools in my cheeks. Quincy and Caplin don’t even notice. Evidently, they’re completely unfazed by uninvited attention.
“Relax,” he says through a chuckle. “He can’t. He knows he can’t. Hell, he knew it wasn’t possible before he even stepped foot in my office this afternoon. Still didn’t stop him from unloading his baggage full o’crazy on me, though.”
A relieved breath leaves my lungs. “Okay, well, that’s good.”
“Although,” Cap continues. “I did tell him I could hire a PI to find out more about her.”
What the fuck.
A private investigator? Jesus. Greer is the last person who needs some snoop digging around in the bowels of her life. They are shit-filled and clogged.
My only option is to protect her.
“Do that, and I will personally see to relieving you of a testicle.”
Cap smiles. “Like, in a kinky way?”
“No,” I say just as Quince jumps in with a “Hey!” of his own.
“All right, all right, all right,” Caplin agrees, a regular Matthew McConaughey. “Let’s all just calm down because I was never going to hire a PI. I only offered it to appease his temporary insanity.”
“So, no PI?”
Cap shakes his head.
“Well, what else did he say, then?” I continue my interrogation, because son of bitch, I’m mentally freaking out for my best friend. “Is he planning on making her life there miserable?”
“Couldn’t tell you.” He shrugs off my questions. “After I destroyed his irrational dreams of wrongful termination, he started talking about some chick he kissed at the party the other night.”
“He kissed someone?” Quince chimes in with a question of his own. “At a work function?”
“You know, I’m going to tell him you said that, Quince.” Cap winks. “More evidentiary support that he is the epitome of a man prude.”
“Who did he kiss?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Some fuck decided masks were a good idea,” Cap says, flashing a mocking wink at Quince, who gives him the finger back. “All he said was that she came as Beyoncé.”
Quince and I both freeze, statues in human form. “Beyoncé?” I ask to confirm.
“Yep.”
“As in Beyoncé Beyoncé? The singer?”
Cap smirks. “Is there more than one Beyoncé?”
“Wait…” I pause and blink through the utter shock of it all. “Are you sure it was Beyoncé?”
