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“Why would Reagan St. James bother me?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Maybe because I’ve seen her countless times entering your office after her shift. Or that you’ve been lingering outside the banquet hall a little too long when she’s playing the piano. She’s good, by the way. You have a nice ear for that sort of thing.”
“Reagan St. James would be the last person I’d allow to disrupt me.”
“Really?” Clair narrowed her eyes at me, challenging me. I had forgotten she had known me since we were teenagers.
“Really.”
“So you picking her up last week was nothing?”
“How did you—”
“The bellman is my friend, too, Matthew. And he talks. Only a fool wouldn’t know the type of Tesla you drive. It’s not difficult to put two and two together.”
Sometimes, I wondered why Clair Sullivan didn’t go into law with her evidence-gathering and interrogation talents. I saw that there was no point in lying to her, not when I was practically digging my own grave.
She beamed when I sighed in defeat.
“We were sleeping together.”
“Ha!” she yelled as she pointed a finger at me, hiding her vape in her pocket, happy that she had gotten that out of me.
“‘Were’ as in past tense.”
“Was it serious?”
“You think I’d be in a serious relationship with Ryan St. James’ sister, Sullivan?”
“Well, no,” she said.
“Exactly. I ended things with her. It wasn’t the best idea.”
“You didn’t think of that before you slept with her the first time?” she joked, but she didn’t judge. I was lucky to have a female friend like her who I could talk to. And Clair was proud of her bluntness, even though sometimes it could sting. “So why are you sulking when you’re the one who ended things with her?”
“I’m not sulking.”
“You are. Like a fucking child.” She was silent for a while as the cogs of her brain started working, her thoughts racing to a conclusion. “You like her, don’t you, Matthew?” the smirk on her face was devil-like and it caused me to frown at her. She was such a gossip.
“I can’t,” I sighed, leaning back against my chair before tossing my pen on my desk in aggravation.
“That’s not a no.”
“It’s not,” I admitted. And even my own words surprised the living shit out of me. Maybe that was why I was feeling so upset lately. I was mourning what happened between me and Reagan.
I found myself telling Clair everything from how we started sleeping together until the things that unfolded last week. And she listened to me without critique—with zero intention to judge me.
“Why can’t you like her?”
“Because of her brother.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Hey, it’s valid.”
“I can’t believe I’m defending our most disruptive employee, but Reagan is her own person. She’s not like her brother. And you can’t punish her or yourself because of Ryan. You’re doing well in your life, Matthew. You have this big-ass hotel. You’ve put him in jail, for crying out loud.”
“It’s more than that, Clair.”
