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“Around nine-thirty okay? First match starts at nine forty-five.”
Good grief, I was usually in my jammies by nine-thirty, but I nodded enthusiastically—and immediately regretted that too. “Sounds good. See you then.”
“Bye, Taylor.” He opened the door for me. “Have a good day at work.”
“Um, yeah, you too.” I flashed Seb a nervous smile as I passed him. He gave me a single nod back, his expression as stoic as ever.
I wasn’t quite sure how and why I’d gone from never wanting to see Holt again out of sheer embarrassment, to scoring an invite to his “exclusive” wrestling club in the basement, but… for the first time in literal years, I was actually excited about something.
I was really excited.
Chapter Nine
The Repercussions
“Mornin’, Taylor.” I heard Chase’s familiar voice as I was waiting for the elevator. A hand clapped down on my shoulder as he appeared beside me. “You get caught in that traffic too? Think there was a fender bender a couple blocks back.”
“Yep,” I said quickly, because I was already five minutes late for work.
The elevator dinged, doors sliding open. As we both stepped on, I said a silent prayer that the smell of rum wasn’t still wafting from my pores.
“Nice tie.” He nodded at my chest, so I looked down. I hadn’t even been aware of which one I’d grabbed this morning, but now I saw it was pale pink.
“You left the party pretty early last night,” Chase then said. A bolt of panic shot through me as I frantically tried to remember the excuse I’d given to Lance on the phone.
I couldn’t. My weak, sickly brain could only focus on the hours I’d spent with Holt.
“Oh. Yeah.” I pretended to have a coughing fit to buy some time, which made my head pound even harder. “I had to—”
The elevator came to a stop, saving me. When the doors slid open, Grace from HutSec’s front desk was standing in front of the white sign that listed all the companies on this floor. There was a spray bottle and a cloth in her hands.
“Mornin’, Grace.” Chase stepped off the elevator with a frown. “What you doing?”
She sighed and stepped aside to show us. My stomach dropped out of my ass when I saw that the word HutSec had been written on in thick black marker.
To say HotSex Corporation.
Suddenly, more rum-soaked images were filling my brain. Holt had gotten the night security guard to let us up here so I could get my keys and backpack. The moment he’d seen the sign, he’d grabbed a pen from the front desk and come back out here to change ‘HutSec’ to ‘HotSex’ while we both snorted with laughter.
Oh god.
“Someone vandalised the sign.” Grace sighed. “They used permanent marker. It’s not coming off.”
“What the heck?” Chase stared at it. “Why only ours?”
“Who knows what goes through dirty vandalisers’ heads?” I blurted, my face turning red. “Awful criminals, the lot of them. Lock them all up, I say.”
“Tamsin’s furious.” Grace said in a low voice, referring to the Director. She glanced at the door to the HutSec offices. “But Felicity managed to calm her down. Said it was probably just someone who had a bit too much to drink last night at Sharon from Accounts’ party.”
“It is pretty funny.” Chase chuckled, nudging me with his elbow. “HotSex Corporation. That’s clever. Never thought of that. Our jobs would all be a lot more exciting if that really was the company name, eh?”
I managed a weak smile, trying not to furtively glance around for any security cameras. We left Grace scrubbing at the sign and walked into the office, and I spent the entire journey to my desk trying to see if we’d done anything else while we were up here. Shit, I couldn’t remember.
Chase left me at my cubicle after saying good morning to Lance and continued on to his office.
“Morning, Taylor! Time to make the donuts.”
I didn’t answer Lance straight away, because a new horrifying memory was forming as I watched Chase open his office door while I set down my backpack and took off my suit jacket. Through the window that looked out onto the bullpen, I saw him pause. And wrinkle his nose.
