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“What’s that?” the woman in the blue uniform asked.
“Nothin’, hon. Just talkin’ to myself.”
She eyed me a little suspiciously for a few seconds, looking back and forth between me and my driver’s license photo.
“I know, I’m ten times more handsome in person,” I told her. “Don’t be intimidated. You’re not the first.”
Her frown turned into a smirk with the tiniest hint of a smile before she handed back my stuff. I winked at her as I took it, then got in line for the X-ray machine.
At least I’d see my family, and maybe hoist a few with some old friends. I’d spend a nice day in Dublin before I shuffled off to England, and the shitshow would begin from there.
I tried focusing on that. On the positive parts of my little impromptu trip.
But no matter what I did, Jordyn’s face kept floating back into my mind.
“Don’t stay away too long,” she’d told me, when I informed her of the trip. Then, adding a sexy smile: “You might miss something.”
Damn.I didn’t want to miss any of it! I wanted to stay here, back at home, where I belonged.
Most of all, I wanted to stay withher.
“Sir? Your shoes?”
The line had shuffled along, and the agent at the X-ray machine was pointing downward. I had to slip out of my shoes, and I wasn’t even wearing bloody socks.
“Sorry,” the guy said, sensing my surprise at my own dilemma. “You still have to take them off, though.”
Removing them quickly, I shoved them into the little plastic bin and pushed it through along with my bag. Then I stepped forward along the cold, bare floor.
I wasn’t prepared for anything right now, much less this.
Forty-Five
ELLIOT
The numbers stared back at me from three different screens, glowing in the nighttime silence. I knew if I stared at them long enough they’d start to dance, the columns merging into one other until the whole thing was a jumble of meaningless gibberish.
Connor… you should be doing this.
I sighed, shaking my head. That was unfair. The truth was hehaddone it, but because I needed to see it for myself I was double-checking my friend’s math.
And Connor’s math was always right. He was a goddamn sorcerer when it came to shit like this.
On one screen I had bills and expenses, including outgoing payments and anything not reconciled as of last month. On another, money owed from finished projects as well as transfers from recent closing dates. The screen in the center was of the most interest to me, however. It showed projections for the three of us, based on letting things go. Simplified bi-weekly totals that would come to fruition once we’d delegated the bigger chunk of our responsibilities to others within the company.
To others…
Those two words scared the shit out of me, even though they shouldn’t. We hired only the best, and always had. Our team was small but streamlined — driven and focused and very-well paid. It’s the only way we knew how to run things: by doing the lion’s share of the work ourselves. It had always worked for us, too.
Until now.
I sighed, thinking about what I’d agreed to when we began seriously discussing starting a family together. Aiden and Connor had been pushing the idea for years, and eventually I’d caught on. It was radical, yes, and definitely unorthodox. But it was smart. Practical. And best of all, having a child together with no other person legally involved gave us the most of the one thing I simply refused to live without:
Control.
Pushing back from the desk, I set my glasses down and rubbed at my tired eyes. The math all checked out, of course. It was pathetic that I’d spent so much time trying todisprovesomething that could only be good news for us. And yet here I was, something of an asshole for even going down that road.
Something of?
