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A shadow crosses in front of the connecting door, still right there instead of just a hesitant break in the light. Oh my God. Is he pressing his ear to the fucking door trying to figure out what I’m doing in here? What a creep.
I turn over in the bed, doing my best to ignore all thoughts of him. Eventually, I manage to fall asleep.
***
Like it always goes, I wake before my alarm goes off, still exhausted from two nights of horrible rest. My body aches, more from tossing and turning all night than anything else. My eyes feel like sandpaper, dry as if I stood in the sun for hours without proper hydration. Even my throat is a little scratchy as I sing in the shower to music playing on my phone, an awful attempt to lighten my mood.
I’m fully dressed, applying eye makeup when the knock hits the door connecting our rooms. I ignore it. It’s not appropriate for that man to be bothering me before eight, and he sure as hell has no right to interlope on my semiprivate current residence.
He knocks again.
“What?” I snap from in front of the bathroom mirror.
“Can I come in?”
“Absolutely not,” I hiss, my words a little skewed from the position of my mouth as I line my eyelid.
“Leighton.”
“What do you need?”
“Can I come in?”
I slap the eyeliner on the counter and go to the door, opening it just enough to see his face. Of course, he’s already ready. Men have it so damn easy. Shower, get dressed, brush hair, done.
“What do you need?”
He doesn’t answer as his eyes go over my shoulder, scanning the room.
“Can I help you?” I’d stand on my toes to keep him from seeing behind me, but I’m not big enough that it would help much.
“I heard you open your door early this morning.”
“Okay. What business is that of yours?”
The sun wasn’t even up when I grabbed the newspaper from the hallway, but I won’t tell him that. He has a wife at home. He doesn’t need to worry about what I’m doing in my hotel room.
“I don’t want your extra-curricular activities interfering with your job like they did yesterday morning.”
Is that what he honestly thinks? That I was too busy getting fucked to make it to work on time? I wish… I fucking wish an orgasm was the reason I was late.
“I’ll try to do better,” I say instead of telling him the truth before closing the door in his face.
The day doesn’t go any better than I expected it to. Blackbridge is too organized and regulated for Victoria Nadir. She’d never consider working for The Man—her words not mine—and we didn’t even make it off her mother’s front porch before she told us to kiss her ass and leave.
We return to the hotel with our tails between our legs. I’m feeling like a failure, wondering if taking this job was a big mistake for more than the reason sitting beside me at the bar.
Chapter 17
Gaige
“She’s probably going to hire a team to sweep her front porch for bugs,” I tell her, as I lift my shot glass.
Her brow creases in confusion, but she lifts her shot glass as well.
We tap the bar top and toss them back. I don’t recall when we went from her sipping wine and me drinking whiskey, but here we are, laughing and joking about the unfruitful day and slamming tequila. It’s the most fun I’ve had in as long as I can remember.
“The porch looked pretty clean.” She shudders, her gorgeous body giving a sexy little wiggle from the disgusting taste of the alcohol.
“Like digital bugs, not the creepy crawly ones. Hackers are notorious for being paranoid.”
She tilts her head in that knowing way of understanding.
“She really got in to trouble for helping out a library?”
“Yeah,” I answer. “And she was completely unremorseful.”
Her face grows somber. “Redmond helped a lot of people.”
Her eyes drop to the empty glass in front of her before she lifts her fingers to wave over the bartender for another round.
“The company donated a lot to non-profits. Those people won’t get that help any longer. I bet my mom didn’t even take that into consideration when she—” She clears her throat, making me want to reach out and press my palm to her back.
I want to tell her that things will be fine, but lying to her wouldn’t solve anything. Shutting down the company is only the beginning of the shitstorm coming for Redmond Enterprises. When the investigations start, her dad is going to be in serious trouble—prison time sort of trouble. I feel like a fraud for not bringing it up.
The bartender pours two more shots, and Leighton immediately holds her shot glass up between us.
“Blackbridge donates to a lot of non-profits as well,” I tell her with a smile, hoping that it will help to know that she’s once again involved with an agency that helps in a good way.
