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Ugh. Less thinky, more drinky.That’s a motto Sally could get behind.
“Maeve!” Anna cried, standing up and throwing her arms around the startled woman, who made an A+ effort to hug Anna back without seeming uncomfortable about the whole thing.
Sally grinned, entertained.
Pulling back, Anna did the introductions, inviting Maeve to sit in the booth beside her.
After settling in, Maeve asked, “So you’re Sallina? I hear all about you at Harris.”
Arching an eyebrow, Sally pursed her lips. “And what exactly is my brother saying about me? Is he still telling people I spent that summer in the third grade fulfilling my dreams of creating a nudist colony?”
Anna didn’t even bother smothering her laugh. “What?”
Maeve’s blue eyes wide in shock, she sputtered, “No! No, no. He told me that you work too much….and—and that you make the best mojitos he’s ever tasted.”
Suddenly smug and not scheming ways to murder her brother, Sally smiled widely.
“Well, he ain’t wrong.”
“On either topic,” Anna interjected, making Sally scowl at her. “What? It’s true. Sixteen-hour days over a week is fine, but when George and company force you to do all their work and them some for months at a time, you’re looking at burnout at the ripe old age of thirty—and that’s freaking tragic, my dear. If they’re going to make you run the company, they could at least pay you better.”
Anna wasn’t wrong. For all the hours Sally worked, she should be making another fifty grand per year. Unfortunately, she was still making lower-class money despite her annoying upper-class dreams.
At Anna’s words, Maeve nodded, apparently comfortable enough now to add her two cents.
“I used to work that many hours at my last job—before I started working for Mr. White part-time. For the last seven months, I’ve been working 7AM to 3PM because his executive assistant in Miami picks up all the slack from his other, bigger office. I just focus on the stuff that needs to be done here at the satellite office.”
“Uh-huh,” Anna jumped in, oblivious to the fact that Sally’s brain was still misfiring from the mention of Sylvester…and the realization that Maeve worked directly for him.
“Now, though, she’s adding to her daily work hours because she agreed to come work for Blaze and AJ from 4PM until 6PM to help with their filing, phone answering. Generally keeping the two male equivalents of messy toddlers from turning their professional office space into a disorganized heap.”
As if emerging from one solid mass of bar-goers, their waitress, Stella, greeted them and took their orders. Anna wanted a draft beer, Maeve ordered a vodka tonic, and Sally asked for a pitcher of margaritas. For herself. Party for one.
Once their drinks were in hand, Sally brought her thoughts around to what Maeve had mentioned earlier.
Holding up a hand, Sally blurted, “Hold up. You work for Sylvester White and Harris Construction?”
Maeve nodded, sipping her drink, her too-cute round cheeks turning pink.
“Isn’t that some sort of non-compete issue?” Sally asked, genuinely curious—and not at all champing at the bit to ask questions about Sylvester.
She took a long slug from her nearly empty margarita glass.
Time for a refill already?She listened as intently as she could while she tipped the pitcher, refilling her glass. She had nowhere to be tomorrow, she was desperate to let loose, and she couldn’t get sexy asshole Sylvester White out of her damn mind. Sober was bad. At least for tonight.
Shaking her head, Maeve answered, “No, because they are in a partnership together. They are actually sharing employees across the board. I’m helping in the office, especially with matters pertaining to their luxury rental development. White’s marketing department is coming in to help Blaze and AJ set up a workable marketing and publicity campaign to draw in more business. Mr. White really is a generous man.”
A generous lover, too….Despite never wanting to think of the man again, especially of that night, her thoughts betrayed her efforts. That night…he’d played her body like a fiddle, drawing her out to the very edge of her need, and then giving her the best orgasm of her life—three of them, actually, before he’d ever even put the condom on. His hands, tongue, mouth, and filthy words, spoken in the deep, velvet voice, had done things to her no other man had ever done before. And he’d ruined her.
Utterly.
Finishing her second margarita, Sally simply dropped her straw into the pitcher, determined to pave the way to bliss with fewer unnecessary steps.
The clock was nearing midnight, and the bar was still overflowing with loud patrons on their way to happy drunk. Maeve had called it a night after her one vodka tonic, and Anna had jumped on the margarita train, joining Sally in the sweet delight found in fruity booze.
They’d gone through four pitchers and were barely sitting upright, but hell, that’s exactly what Sally needed.
“Sylvester, Sylvester? The beautiful billionaire, real estate mogul with teeth like a shark, is the guy you’ve been hung up on for months? That one from the bar that you were eye-humping like you’d never seen a man in a suit before?” Anna’s shriek of drunken disbelief made Sally wince, her own sloppy brain having trouble making sense of why she even admitted anything to Anna.
