Escort (A Standalone Romance Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance) (73 page)

Wrapped up, but hardly
hiding anything, I walk out of the bedroom and find Wrigley putting bread in
her toaster.

“Hey there,” I say as I
walk up, wrapping my arms around her.

“Well good morning to
both of you,” she laughs. “Did you change your mind on coffee?”

“Nah,” I answer.

“So, there is something I
think we should probably talk about,” she says. “I don’t want to put it all on
the line or anything, but I just want to know where you stand.”

“Okay.”

“Your roommate,” she
says, “what is the deal with the two of you?”

The question catches me
off guard.

“What do you mean?” I
ask.

“Well, the first night we
got together, you shouted her name as you were coming. Don’t get me wrong, I’m
not judging or anything.”

“Yeah, didn’t you shout
your
name about that same time?”

“Yeah, but whatever,” she
says, leaning back into me. “I just need to know what kind of relationship the
two of you have. Like are you just roommates, are you roommates that fuck, are
you hung up on her, what?”

“We’re just roommates,” I
tell her. “We’ve had a near miss or two—actually, now that I think about it,
just the one, but it was kind of drawn out—but no, nothing’s ever happened.”

We’re in a relationship
and people in relationships are supposed to be honest with each other, right?

“Okay,” she says. “You’re
being totally honest, right? I’m not going to impale you with a meat
thermometer if you tell me the two of you have bumped
uglies
.”

“You know, that’s one of
my least favorite terms for it,” I laugh.

“I’m serious,” she says.
“This is the free pass for both of us. You can say pretty much whatever here
and, as long as it’s not way too fucking overboard, it’ll slide.”

“Really,” I tell her,
“nothing’s happened.”

“Yeah,” she says, “I
heard you the first time, but are there feelings there or what? Guys don’t
usually call out the name of their roommate when they’re slogging someone
else’s snatch.”

“Where the fuck did you
learn to talk like that?”

“Answer the question,”
she says, pulling away from me to butter the toast she pulls from the toaster.

“I don’t know,” I tell
her. “I thought there might have been something there, but she’s with some
other guy now. It doesn’t matter.”

“So if she weren’t
single…?”

“Nothing happened when
she was,” I answer, starting to get a little tired of this particular line of
questioning. I understand where Wrigley’s coming from, but I wasn’t prepared
for it this morning.

“But if she weren’t
single now, would you be here with me?”

“What does it even
matter?” I snap. “I’m not there, I’m here. Can we just drop it?”

“No,” she answers calmly.
“I think you should be honest with yourself before you really decide to jump
into something with me. Am I the woman that you really want to be with, or am I
just a decent second choice? You’re really not going to hurt my feelings unless
you lie to me.”

“How do you do that?” I
ask.

“Do what?”

“Just stand there and
calmly ask me if I’d rather be with someone else?”

“Well, it does seem like
something that might make things difficult for us in the long run, and if
that’s the case, I’d like to be prepared for it. I don’t see any reason to
begrudge you your feelings if that’s what they are. Is that what they are?”

“I don’t know, okay?”

That’s probably not the
most romantic thing I’ve said to a woman in the morning.

“Okay,” she says. “Are
you really ready to have a relationship with me, or are you just trying to run
away from the fact that Leila’s with someone else?”

“When did you turn into
Dr. Phil?”

She just laughs.

“I don’t know where my
mind is, and I don’t know what my feelings for Leila are, but I do know that
from the moment you woke up this morning, everything in the world felt so much
better.”

“Well, that’s something,
I guess,” she says. “Toast?”

Chapter Thirteen

Screening

Leila

Back in the office again,
and Annabeth is getting on my last nerve.

I made the stupid mistake
of telling her what happened last night with Dane and how he just took off with
barely a word. Now, she’s giving me her, “You know what you
gotta
do?” routine, and after the twelfth repetition of the question, I’m starting to
boil.

“It’s not that simple,” I
tell her. “Dane and I have never really broken the ice. I mean, we have, but
something’s always happened to cause it to freeze back over again.”

“You do love your
metaphors,” she says, the smoke coming out of her mouth in short puffs.

“I really don’t want to
talk about this anymore,” I tell her. “Any news on the job front?”

“Nope,” she says. “One of
these days, I’m going to get the phone call from somewhere. I’m just trying to
keep my sanity until it happens,
ya
know?”

Yeah, I know.

This morning, Kidman
asked me if I wanted a raise. Stupid me, I said yes.

“Elderly men shouldn’t be
allowed to grab their junk in public,” I say without sharing the context.

Annabeth laughs. “What?”

“Kidman,” I answer. It’s
the only answer I need.

“I’ve got that all
figured out,” she says and tosses me a pen.

“What am I supposed to do
with this?” I ask.

“Just don’t say anything
to get yourself in trouble,” she says vaguely. “So, what are you
gonna
do about your roommate problem?”

“We’re back on that? Seriously,
I don’t even know what happened. For all I know, the phone call could have been
his mother saying she’d broken a hip or something.”

“Nah,” Annabeth says. “It
sounds to me like he was off his game as soon as he saw you and that friend of
yours
macking
on the couch. You know what you
gotta
do?”

“Annabeth, I swear if you
utter that phrase one more time, I’m going to punch you in the throat.”

“Easy there, girl,”
Annabeth says, spitting her cigarette out of her mouth in the process. “I was
just
gonna
say that you should just talk to the man
and see what he has to say. If you and him aren’t
gonna
talk, you’re just
gonna
end up going past each other,
wasting all the hours of your lives wondering what the other one is thinking.”

She has a point, but I’m
not quite ready to admit it.

“I really thought you
would have heard something back on one of your applications by now,” I tell
her. “You’ve got the grades and the pedigree. I wonder what’s holding it up.”

The glare on her face
seems pretty out of context, but maybe I’ve overstepped again. I have a
tendency to do that when I’m trying to lead a conversation away from something
I want to avoid.

“We should probably get
back in,” Annabeth says, leaving her half-smoked cigarette smoldering on the
ground.

We make our way back
inside and don’t say a word to each other on the way. When we’re back to our
floor, we just part ways, and I’m starting to think I can’t do anything right.

“Tyler!”

I swear to all that is
holy that if this geezer makes one stupid comment, I’m going to lose it.

“Yeah?”

Well, he’s not grabbing
himself, so we’re off to a good start.

“Did you put this on my
desk?” he asks.

“Did I put what on your
desk?”

“This!” he shouts and
holds up a file.

“I don’t know,” I tell
him. “What’s in it?”

“In my office!” he
shouts.

Anymore, it’s not all
that common for anyone working on this floor to even bother looking up when
Kidman starts screaming at me. This time, though, I’m not the only one that can
tell this rant is going to be different.

I’m not even in his office
before he’s telling me to close the door.

I follow instructions and
try to prepare myself for what’s about to happen.

“Do you know what’s in
this?” he asks.

“It’s a folder,” I
answer. “I don’t know—”

“Did you put this on my
desk?”

“Sir, I honestly don’t
know which folder that is. I’ve put a few folders on your desk today, but
without knowing what’s in that one, I really couldn’t tell—”

“Do you think you’re
funny?” he asks. “I get that I’m not the easiest person to work for, but this
is so far over the line you’re in another country.”

“Sir?”

He slams the folder on
his desk.

“You know, I’d expect
this from that friend of yours, but coming from you—this is really too much.”

“I don’t know what you’re
talking about,” I tell him.

“You mean to tell me that
you’re not the one who printed off a copy of my bank statement, put it in a
file and set it on my desk?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

He takes a breath.

“You really didn’t know
what was in this, did you?” he asks, starting to cool down a little.

“No sir, I didn’t. Why would
someone—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he
says. “You can go.”

“Sir?”

“I said go!” he shouts.
“I’m not going to tell you again!”

So I go.

With the door closed
behind me, I try not to look at all the faces looking at me. Although I’m
technically off the hook, this office is great at one thing and it has nothing
to do with finance.

As I make my way toward
Atkinson’s office, as I have absolutely nothing else to do right now, and I’d
really like to take my mind off of everything, I can hear the not-so-hushed
voices.

“Yeah,
he just came in screaming. I think she’s going to get fired.”

“Look
at her—no, not now, she’s looking over here. She looks like she just got
fired.”

Somewhere around the
eighth utterance of the word “fired,” I’ve had enough.

“Oh, will you all just
shut up?!” I shout. “Every time someone leaves the room, you’re all pick, pick,
pick, pick, pick, pick, pick as if your lives are such a pretty picture!”

“Leila?”

“What?!” I yell, spinning
on my heel.

I turn around and,
standing there like a scolded child is Mrs. Weinstock, one of my five bosses.

“Mrs. Weinstock,” I say,
“I am so sorry.”

“Would you come and talk
to me in my office?”

“Sure,” I answer, my
voice suddenly small again.

Kidman is the filthy old
man. Atkinson is the drill sergeant that wants you to scrub the floors with a
toothbrush—although, to be fair, he’s only had me do that once. Iverson keeps
calling me Kayla and hasn’t once given me clear directions on anything, so when
I invariably screw up, he’s always got something to say about it. I still
haven’t met Mrs. Beck.

Mrs. Weinstock, on the
other hand, she is the master of the guilt trip.

With that soft-spoken
tone and those big eyes, made even bigger by the thick glasses she wears—I
swear, for the sole purpose of adding to the puppy effect—she can make you feel
worthless just by looking at you.

Once I’m in her office,
she asks me to close the door behind me.

“Have a seat,” she says.

She’s the oldest
forty-something woman I’ve ever come across in my life and somehow, that only
makes her entreaties all the more gut-wrenching.

I sit and wonder whether
she’s got me in here to make me feel terrible about yelling at everyone in the
office, or because Kidman told her that I put that file on her desk or what.

“How are you doing? You
seem a little stressed,” she says.

“It’s been a rough day,”
I tell her. “Then last night, there was this whole thing with my roommate…”

Even though I know
better, those big brown eyes just make me open up. I can’t help it.

“I’m sorry to hear that,
dear,” she says. “I just got a call. Someone from Claypool and Lee—did you know
they’d be calling me for a reference?”

“Yes,” I answer. “I
thought we talked about that.”

“Well, we did,” she says,
“but I didn’t think you’d actually go through with applying somewhere else. I
thought we’d made a nice home for you here.”

“Ma’am,” I start, “it is
absolutely nothing against you. I’ve just been looking for something more
permanent.”

“I thought you’d want to
stay here,” she says. “But you’ve never once asked me if we had anything open
for you. Why is that?”

“To be honest, ma’am,” I
start, “I haven’t had the greatest experience here. I really don’t get the
feeling that anyone really wants me around.”

And now she looks like
she’s going to cry.

“I’ve always been so nice
to you, Leila—”

“What did you tell them?”
I interrupt, as I’m starting to get the feeling that she just torpedoed me.

“I told them that we sure
didn’t want to see you go,” Mrs. Weinstock says.

“Did you give them any
reason not to hire me?” I ask.

“Now, why would I do
that?”

Yep, she’s actually
crying now. I really hope I got that other job; otherwise, I might just end up
getting fired by Rose
Nylund
.

“I didn’t say that you
did, Mrs. Weinstock,” I answer, but she’s too busy wiping the tears from her
eyes with a tissue to pay me much attention.

This is torture.

Right now, I kind of wish
I was back in Kidman’s office.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I
just hate to see talented people like you go.”

“Well, they’re just
calling references,” I tell her, hoping that might comfort her enough to get
her to stop the sobbing. “I probably won’t get it. Annabeth’s up for the same
job and she’s the likely choice.”

“Annabeth?” Mrs.
Weinstock howls.

Oh, great. Annabeth’s
going to kill me for that one.

“I can come back,” I tell
her.

“You’re all going to leave
me!” Mrs. Weinstock cries and with that, she’s overplayed her part.

“Oh, will you stop it?
You’re a grown woman. People get hired, people leave. That’s just the way it
goes. You can’t guilt everyone into doing whatever you want them to do.”

Her expression changes in
an instant. “You don’t talk to me that way,” she barks. “I am your superior,
and you will address me with proper decorum.”

“You know what? I am so
sick of all the crap you people pile on me every time I come into work. I’m
just trying to do my job and do it well, but every single time one of you asks
me to see you in your office, I want to throw up, and you, Mrs. Weinstock,
you’re the worst one of all with your whole grandmother act. You know what you
are?”

“What am I?” she asks,
and I think we’ve gotten a little off topic.

I let my temper simmer
for a beat.

“You are someone who
asked me into her office to tell me something, and I’ve got a feeling you
haven’t told me half of it yet. If you bombed my chances with Claypool and Lee,
fine, I’ll find something else, but I’d just like to know so I can stop putting
your name on my
resumé
.”

“For your information, I
gave you a glowing review, and I called you in here to tell me that I was their
last call. The job is yours if you want it, although I sure don’t envy them
putting up with your behavior.”

“Maybe if you—wait, what?
I’m hired?”

“The man told me to have
you give him a call when you had a free moment and they’re going to work out a
time to get you in for training.”

“I’m hired?”

She goes to respond, but
the suddenness and volume of the “Woo!” that comes out of me overpowers
anything she might be trying to say.