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13
Dayum.I hadn’t slept that long since I’d been in my mama’s womb. What the hell? I was mad at myself for missing a morning in Seattle with my baby. Worst of all, though, I didn’t actually feel that much better for the sleep.
Sleep hangovers. Guessed they were real.
“Did you have fun last night?” I asked, in part because I needed to remind myself I wasn’t the world’s shittiest host.
“Loved it. Best of all getting to see you in your element. And your mom is amazing…” Maeve tugged down the duvet playfully, in a big swoop, exposing my skin to the air. “Which is why you need to get up! That paint ain’t paintin’ itself!”
She jumped off the bed, walked over to a tray of room service breakfast. “The coffee is probably lukewarm at best, but the orange juice would be fine?”
Guilt raced through me. She’d just been wasting away time watching her dude sleep. “Orange juice will do. Thanks, Fairy.”
I shuffled myself up, pulled the duvet up a little bit with me, and took the juice from my pretty girl’s hand.
“So I slept like, eleven hours?”
She nodded. “Hopefully you feel a bit better? I’m a little worried about you, babe. I’m warning you now. I’m the kind of woman who can handle the toilet seat up once in a while but I will nag you into the ground about your health.”
Much as I wasn’t a doctor kind of person, I had to be sensitive to the fact that Maeve was. She’d been through a lot of clinical shit with her dad and mom, plus was from California where between modern and ancient medicines, people were brainwashed into thinking they were immortal. They erased every sign of aging in that town.
Not that Maeve was like that per se, just, she came from a different culture than I did. We were tough types, us heathens who lived in the cold and rain. “It’s okay if my balls swing low sometimes. It’s life. Sometimes you ride it out and let your immune system do the work.” I lifted my glass. “Hence the vitamin C. Cure-all.”
She laughed. “We’ll see. Just warning you that I have it in me to bend you to my will in a very annoying fashion. I’ll make you wish you said yes the first time.”
“Is this you asking me to go to the doctor, like, now? Just need to start the clock so I can measure how much sound torture I can take.”
“Drake v Guantanamo? Is that what you’re suggesting? Because I need to measure just how much you hate going to the doctor.”
She was a coy little thing sometimes. And damn smart, great with her words, and always wanted to win. I never realized lyricists and lawyers had so much in common.
“Come here and kiss me,” I ordered.
She brought her lips to mine, and I knew she’d been up a long time because they were ready for her day, lipstick and all.
“Soooo,” she said. Her eyes searched her own mind, then scanned the ceiling. “I wondered if you’d like a hand finding some of those documents you need for Hunter? We could do that tomorrow before I leave? Or tonight?”
Now I knew why she’d searched her mind. She’d looked for a segue. She hadn’t found one as this felt left field for sure. And suspicious.
“How did you know I needed documents for Hunter?” I narrowed my eyes.
“You said so.”
“No. I said that everything would be fine and we might be able to flip this on its head. So why do you think I need documents? And ones that might be here in Seattle?”
Her mouth opened, probably to tell a lie, but only a crinkled puff of air came out instead.
“You gave Hunter the idea, didn’t you? You gave him the idea to make Jason my employee. A contractor. I said I liked surprises. Not secrets. Remember?”
“Babe, at the time we weren’t really together… I did it because… Well…” her gaze lowered to the bedsheets where she smoothed her hand over them sheepishly. “It really wasn’t a secret, was it? I told you I’d watch him burn. The method is just a detail around something you already knew about.”
She glanced upward, widening her eyes innocently, attempting to sway me with a sweet smolder. “Secret is not the way I’d describe this. But I’m disappointed in myself to have lost track of those details. Which ones you knew and when.” She shrugged, bit her bottom lip, and was totally playing me.
It worked. Mostly because I wasn’t really mad at her. We weren’t together when she’d set it all up with Hunter, and even if we had been, she was doing her job, and I could hardly say she’d been disloyal. She’d looked out for me when she hadn’t even known if we’d ever be back together again. But I did so love watching her squirm. So I played the game a little longer. “You’re a devil in disguise. Why didn’t you say something? You deserve the credit anyway and you knew Hunter wouldn’t give it to you.”
Maeve chipped some black polish off a fingernail. “Yeah. I guess. I didn’t even know if you really liked me anymore when I made the call to Hunter with the idea. Anyway,” she glanced up, “I swear I was going to mention it when we looked for the documents. Or even right now. Give me some credit. I was the one who brought it up. I swear I wasn’t hiding it. Just waiting for the right time.”
I reached my arm around her waist and tugged her into me. “Under duress of nipple clamps, is that what you were waiting for? My usual method for extracting the truth from your you? And so defines the line between BDSM and actual torture. You are the walking definition, you minx.”
