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“The company has a small gym on site which she uses religiously four days a week according to her office badge scans, mostly the elliptical. I imagine she’ll begin to use the one at her apartment complex now.”
He grows silent as his fingers work over the keyboard.
Puff seems agitated, and it’s possible the bird may ask the questions I need, so I look in his direction. The stupid thing chuckles. I guess he’s not on my side either this morning.
“She doesn’t go out very often. If she does, she’s not the one paying the tab. White wine is her drink of choice.”
I already knew that from the night we met.
“Red is her favorite color.”
She looks fucking amazing in it.
“But I guess you already knew that.”
I lift my eyes, wanting to smack him in the back of the head at the video playing on the computer screen but I can’t pull my eyes away. It’s from the bar that night.
There’s no soundtrack, but I don’t need it for the memories to recreate it in my head.
Her eyes on me as I approach.
Her body language, open and welcoming.
My fingers tingle when I reach out for her on the screen.
My cock threatens to thicken.
“Wow,” Wren mutters. “Now that is some serious heat.”
“Yeah,” I mutter before I can stop myself.
“Forty-five seconds,” Wren says in awe.
“What?” I ask as I watch the two of us walk toward the elevator.
“That’s all it took for you to cross the bar and walk away with her. Who has that kind of skill?”
I don’t brag. There’s no point. It’s not normally like that. It was different that night. So many things had to line up for it to happen the way it did. Chemistry. All the stars in the universe. Karma. So many things had to be perfect.
And it was an epic night.
Until it wasn’t.
“She doesn’t do relationships.”
His statement stops me before my memories take me from the elevator to me kissing her neck in the hotel room.
“She works too much. Her dedication is to her job—was to her job, I guess. She’s never dated from what I can tell, and with all the shit going on in her life, I don’t see that changing now.”
It sounds like a warning, and I don’t know if he’s telling me all this to try and protect me or because he’s trying to protect her.
What he doesn’t understand is that I have no intention of doing anything with Leighton Redmond. She was a great fuck, and my cock knows that, but I’m a man fully in control of my body. She signed a contract earlier with BBS. That makes her one hundred percent off-limits.
Chapter 12
Leighton
If anyone ever needed an example of Murphy’s Law, they could easily use today’s date and fully understand the definition, meaning if it could go wrong, it has.
I planned for today. I knew it was going to be stressful. It’s my first day on my own. At thirty years old, I’m experiencing the real world, one not proctored by my father, for the very first time. It’s terrifying. More so than I imagine it would be at sixteen. At that age, you have rose-colored glasses, and a filtered look at the world. You’re ignorantly unaware of the shitshow the world actually is. As an adult, you know firsthand just how awful things can be.
So I prepared, not just emotionally with two tiny bottles of wine I got at the grocery store while buying a prepared salad for dinner, but also with a handful of tasks to make my morning easier. I plugged my phone in and set my alarm thirty minutes earlier so I’d have time for a little stretching and stress-relieving yoga.
Since Murphy is a total dick, I didn’t realize my phone charger wasn’t plugged into the actual wall. Not only did my alarm not go off, but my phone died in the middle of the night. I didn’t wake up thirty minutes early but an hour and fifteen minutes late.
I couldn’t not take a shower. I slept horribly last night, tossing and turning of course until the last three hours where I fell into a coma-like state, leaving my hair in a knotted mess. The less-than-stellar hotel I’m staying at decided today was the day the hot water was optional, but awesome for me, the cold shower perked me right up.
The hasty packing I did in the hotel room to get away from Gaige “John” Ward left my clothes wrinkled and the iron in the room doesn’t work. The call to the front desk went unanswered.
The car that was supposed to be waiting for me out front had already left because I was so late and unreachable by phone. Thankfully, I managed enough charge to order an Uber to get to the airport. I didn’t email Deacon to apologize, figuring if I made my flight, it wouldn’t matter.
