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“Just letting you know that Daria—your, uh, consultant—has a 10 a.m. meeting with you.”
I looked back down at my spreadsheet. “Thanks, Tom.” I’d give him a good bonus this year. He’d weathered this bullshit like a champion, and I believed in rewarding loyalty and commitment.
It had been a week since our very public outing as a quad, and as expected, it had kicked off most of the gossip and bullshit again. We weren’t blindsided by it this time, though. We rode it out. I threatened to pull the company's sponsorship from the IceCaps, which wasn’t a whole lot of money to someone like Monderra, but his board of directors saw it differently. The guys stood their ground against the coaches and the exec team, and their teammates backed them up, under the urging of Ludo and Muss.
We didn’t open our phones, or social media, or even turn on the television for a week. We just enjoyed each other's company, and that of Rigby’s parents, for the full week. Every night, one of us would return with Nova to her apartment, and make love to her all night.
I was so fucking happy; tonight was my turn, and I had so many things planned. I was going to woo the hell out of Nova Stone.
I got the brief report from my public relations team, whose job it was to keep me apprised of the general vibe of the drama and let me know if I needed to step in. The lawyers had been working overtime sending cease and desist letters. In my opinion, the amount of extra money I was spending in overtime and billing hours was money well spent. It was an investment in happiness, and they were the best kinds of investments.
My time got lost in numbers and bottom lines, and all too soon, my 10 a.m. appointment was here. Daria strolled in, waggling her eyebrows at Tom as if she’d personally love to devour him like a black widow spider.
“Stop eye-fucking my personal assistant, Daria, and come in. Tom, can you grab Daria a drink? Water? Soda? Coffee?”
“Double-shot espresso. Black. Like my heart,” she cooed at him, and he visibly gulped before nodding and scurrying away. Yeah, Tom had some self-preservation skills.
“Don’t scare the poor kid,” I chastised, though it amused the hell out of me. Daria was an interesting character. She was Middle Eastern, I think, her skin golden like warm sand but her hair a wild halo of curls that she didn’t even try to tame. Nope, like her, she didn’t try and make it anything else. You either accepted her how she was, or you got the fuck out of the way. I could respect that.
And arguably, she was beautiful. In another time, she might have been a fertility idol, all wild hourglass curves, pouty lips, and soft freckles across her nose. She wasn’t the socially accepted standard of beauty, but I’d once seen a man trip over a barstool when she bent down to tie up the laces on her Doc Martins, allowing the thigh-high split of her long, tight black skirt to show a little more thigh than intended.
She was the kind of beauty that both men and women were drawn to, and she blessed both with her attention. When she’d said she could steal my girlfriend, I had no doubt she could. It took a special kind of man to handle everything Daria had to offer, but she attracted those bisexual women like moths to a bunsen burner.
Daria was still watching Tom walk away. “A little shake-up every now and then is good for the soul, Devan Mayson—which you should know.”
Despite Daria’s obvious attractiveness, and the amount of time we’d known each other, we’d never been more than friendly. We saw through each other's bullshit, and it made us respected acquaintances, if not friends. I’d used her PI services a few times over the years whenever I thought I was being screwed over, or to investigate the guys’ fuck buddies, but that’s all it had ever been. Although I had no doubt that a night with Daria would change a man, I was happy how I was.
Tom reappeared with her double espresso, looking a little dazed. Today she was in a long, blood-red skirt and a band t-shirt that was more rips than actual shirt, as well as a leather jacket covered in zips.
She smiled up at him, all teeth. “Thank you, Tad.”
“It’s Tom,” he said in a voice an octave too high, and I swear to god, Daria’s eyes got predatory.
“How about you come home with me and I’ll call you whatever you like, babycakes?” Tom’s eyes went wide, and I took pity on the poor bastard.
“Daria!”
She huffed and turned back toward me, and I gave her a stern frown. Tom took the opportunity to escape. “What would Xander say?” Her boyfriend was huge. Like, fucking massive. I wasn’t sure what he did for a living, but I figured it might involve eating billy goats under a bridge.
Daria grinned shamelessly. “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to share.”
Shaking my head, I waved a hand at her notebook. “Tell me what you found instead of harassing my employees.”
Suddenly, Daria was all business. “I talked to the photographer Esperanza always has with her, and there's no loyalty or love lost there. He thinks she's a piranha who wants to chew his balls off. So I don’t think he was your early, camera-happy stalker. But I wouldn’t put it past Esperanza herself to have done the dirty work and just handed off the info to some poor, unfortunate intern. I’m working on connecting with the intern herself, and maybe I can get some concrete evidence. At least, enough to get Esperanza fired from her position.”
I scowled, because it wasn’t enough. I hated that this crazy bitch was still running around as a possible threat to my new-found happiness. “I’ll pay you double if you can get it done in the next week.”
Daria grinned. “Consider it done, Mr. Mayson.” I rolled my eyes at her, and she slouched back in her chair. “So, I see that you’re back with your girl. About fucking time. I thought you guys were going to be little bitches about it forever. Honestly, I was waiting for you to pay me, and then I was going to swoop in like a fairy godmother and take her for myself. Xander was even on board. You know he’s a sucker for a damsel in distress, and he certainly doesn’t get the opportunity with me.”
“Mine,” I growled at her, and she had the audacity to laugh in my face.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Anyone with eyes can see she’s happy now. Just keep it that way—she’s a nice girl.”
“How would you know? It was meant to be a no-contact assignment.”
Daria grinned. “Well, it just so happens that the apartment next door came up for rent, and Xander and I needed a place. So we moved in next door, because all the better to surveil her with, right? She’s never once complained to the super about the noise, and Xander and me? We get noisy.”
I screwed up my nose at the thought. Daria was beautiful, but Xander was a monster. I honestly wondered how he didn’t split Daria in half like a fucking watermelon. Maybe there was justice in the world, and he wasn’t in proportion. But judging by the shit-eating grin that seemed to permanently be etched on Daria’s face, I wouldn’t bet on it.
