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Twenty-Nine
REESE
“Hey, cheer up, my man! We’re all still in it!”
The goofball meathead from Never Been Last was harmless, but he was definitely bigger than he realized. It also didn’t help that he was drunk. He clapped Devin on the back so hard he ended up jolting him forward, spilling his bowl of gumbo all over the cracked wooden table.
“Whoops!” the man laughed, and his friends laughed with him. “Sorry, boss. Let me get you anot—”
“It’s fine,” Devin assured him quickly. “No need, really. I was done anyway.”
The man smiled apologetically and clapped Devin again, this time softly. He struck me as the type of guy who’d been paling around with bigger friends his whole life, and was used to playing rough with them. As a result, he’d probably spilled a lot of soup.
“You sure you don’t want mine?” Brooke offered, pushing her gumbo forth. “I’m done with it.”
“Nah, I’m good,” said Devin. “Actually, I might turn in early.”
He pushed his chair back to leave, and I could see Brooke’s eyes following him. Apparently she shared the same concern Hayden and I had earlier, when he’d returned to the room before dinner.
“He’s still upset about…”
“Yeah,” I cut Hayden off. “He definitely is.”
Devin hugged Brooke tightly, then moped his way toward the hotel restaurant’s exit. As always, one of the cameras around the room peeled off to follow him.
“If I know him, he’ll be back in the lobby,” said Hayden. “Either on the hotel’s computer, or making another couple of phone calls.”
I sighed my reluctant agreement. “Well if he does he’d better watch it,” I said. “Required communication only. That’s the rule.”
“He definitely sees this as required communication.”
“I know he does,” I answered. And in a lot of ways, it is. It’s just…”
Brooke returned to her seat, looking especially cute in her sexy blue dress. Her tan thighs poked tantalizingly out from just beneath the hem, visible for a brief instant before she sat down again.
“It’s just that he can’t micromanage the company from halfway across the world,” Hayden finished for me. “No matter how hard he tries.”
He’d lowered his voice a bit, but the last part was still loud enough to be heard. Not that Brooke wouldn’t have heard anyway. We’d learned very quickly she had bionic hearing.
“Alright,” she said. “Out with it.”
Nonchalantly, I reached for the community pitcher of beer and refilled my glass. “Out with what?”
“Out with whatever’s bothering him,” she said, jerking a thumb in the direction of Devin’s impromptu exit. “Ever since we got back today, he’s been acting like he’s someone died.”
“Did you ask him?” mused Hayden.
“Yep. And he told me it was ‘nothing.’ That I was imagining things.”
My friend and I exchanged questioning glances. The move was perfunctory, though. Brooke was our teammate, our friend, and of course so much more. We already knew we weren’t going to hide this from her.
“Devin placed some calls back to Minnesota today,” I told her. “Turns out the guys we put in charge of things while we were gone haven’t exactly lived up to expectations.”
“And that’s putting it nicely,” Hayden chimed in. “Quite bluntly, they suck.”
Her expression — which had been stern and ready to fight for answers — instantly softened.
“Oh, wow. I’m sorry.”
