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“Yep.” I sat down at the head of the table, studying Lucas. “Speaking of Brooke, what do you think of her?”
“She’s great,” he said, almost too quickly. “She’s doing an amazing job, and she has a positive attitude no matter what we throw at her.”
“Right. She does.” I kept my eyes on Lucas for just a beat too long. He wasn’t easily fazed in business, but I was a different story. We’d known each other since we were in college, so he knew when I saw straight through his shit.
“Fine, maybe a little more than that.”
“A little more than that meaning…?” Chase asked.
“We might have hooked up before her first night out on the casino floor.” Lucas raked his hand over his face.
“Seriously, Lucas?” I asked, but not out of jealousy, to my surprise. I wanted her, too, but I was more concerned about the ramifications of what he’d done. The line between boss and assistant wasn’t one that any of us should have crossed, especially this soon. She’d been our assistant for one week.
“I know. It was a moment of weakness,” he said.
“That’s an understatement,” Chase said, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “She’s our assistant.”
“Iknow.” Lucas was unflappable, but he was quickly approaching exasperation. “I can’t explain it. It’s not like I’ve had trouble resisting women in the past. But seeing her again after all these years, and her looking the way she does… both of us went for it at the same time. I didn’t make a pass at her.”
“Regardless, it’s not something any of us should do again,” Chase said. He paused, then added, “Not somethingyoushould do again, I mean.”
I smirked. Chase was a genius, but he wasn’t all that hard to read. All three of us agreed—our feelings for Brooke weren’t exactly work appropriate. But figuring out how to put those feelings aside now that Lucas had broken that seal was going to be difficult.
CHAPTER9
Chase
Knowing that Lucas had fooled around with Brooke made me look at her differently. Not in a bad way, of course, but in a way that made the idea of me doing the same uncomfortably real.
I took a deep breath and walked past her desk throughout the day, day after day, for the next week. I kept it professional. I tried to focus on the bigger task hanging over us—the mobsters frequenting the casino.
We were waiting to send her back down to the casino floor while we gathered more information on what she’d seen. Knowing she was able to go home safely each night was a relief, even if I agreed that her spying for us was a good course of action. Plus, I didn’t have to watch her through our security cameras in her slinky black dress. I didn’t condone Lucas hooking up with Brooke, but I really understood how he’d cracked.
“I’m grabbing some coffee from the shop downstairs,” I said to Brooke mid-morning. “Would you like some? Or a pastry?”
She smiled, a dimple appearing in one of her cheeks. “Aren’t I supposed to be the one getting you coffee?”
“No, you’re doing more important things for me up here. I need to take a break, anyway,” I said. “What would you like?”
“I’m fine with the coffee from the break room, but thanks,” she said.
She turned back to her work, and I started to leave. Her stomach growled just loudly enough for me to hear as I walked away. I had to get her something. She never, ever wanted to give us trouble—or what she considered as trouble, which was usually a minor favor for most. I should have known that asking her for what she wanted directly was never going to work.
I got on the elevator and headed downstairs. The casino was wedged between some fast-casual restaurants and coffee shops that were usually hell on earth around peak hours. But this coffee shop wasn’t that bad mid-morning, so the line wasn’t long.
I passed the time looking at my phone, until a call from my ex-fiancée, Stephanie, broke through my focus. I sighed. Why was she calling me? We definitely weren’t friends, but our lives had been so intertwined that we sometimes had to touch base to talk about an old mutual friend’s contact information or the location of some important file in our old-shared cloud account.
I stared at her name on my phone screen. She always popped up just enough for me to feel like we would be wrapped up in each other’s lives forever, no matter how much I wanted to forget about everything that had happened.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Chase,” Stephanie said. She didn’t sound stressed or upset, so I let my shoulders relax. “How are you?”
“Fine. How are you?”
“Good.”
She didn’t speak, but I heard her puttering around on her side of the line.
