“Susie,” I greeted as I approached her desk with a smile.
Her porcelain cheeks flushed pink. “Hi, Mr. Kelly.”
“I’ve got a meeting with Wes.”
She nodded as though she already knew, but she signaled me to wait one minute with her forefinger. Punching a couple of numbers into the phone that I assumed connected her to Wes’s assistant, she checked to see if I could go back.
We exchanged a few words while I waited, and I moved my eyes around the office rather than keeping them on her. The old candid player photos were more interesting than Susie anyway. Don’t get me wrong; she was pretty in the conventional way, soft features and golden-blond hair, but she didn’t even register on my dick’s radar.
Apparently, he only gave feedback to supercell women now, the kind that fucking lit up your world with lightning-like surprises and thunderous opinions—the ones whose looks were ominous and their bite was just as bad as their bark. The kind of women who weren’t a kind of women at all, but instead, a woman all their own. The kind of woman who wasn’t just a woman because she was fucking Cassie.
She was a dozen things at once, and I couldn’t fucking get a single one out of my head.
“Mr. Kelly,” Susie called, and I turned at the sound of her voice. Her eyes moved upward dramatically, and I had the feeling they’d been studying my ass. “He’s just finishing up on a phone call, but you can go on back.”
“Thanks,” I said with a wink and smile. She flushed again, and only when she tried to surreptitiously hike her breasts higher in her bra did I realize that maybe I shouldn’t have done it.
It was just second nature. Like a facial tic. I wasn’t even sure I was in control of it.
Pulling my face to neutral, I moved past her space and down the hall, looking at the nameplates on the doors as I did. Wes didn’t have a huge staff here at the offices since the stadium was actually in New Jersey, but he kept the people he needed to interact with on a regular basis close. And for him, and his multifaceted entrepreneurship, that meant being in Manhattan.
Since he was still busy on a phone call, I had time for a little visit with one of my favorite women.
I knocked on her closed door before turning the knob and peeking my head in. Her lips curved into a smile when she saw me—a completely different reaction from the first time she’d laid eyes on me in the Raines Law Room.
“Hey, Georgia girl,” I whispered when I saw she had her phone up and in front of her like she was FaceTiming with someone.
“Hey, Thatch,” she said dramatically, and my eyebrows pulled together.
“Thatcher?” I heard from her phone and immediately understood. “What’s that motherfucker doing there?”
I moved around the desk and into Georgia’s space until my big head came into the shot beside hers. “Hi, honey. Nice to see you too.”
She rolled her eyes and smiled at the same time. “I just didn’t know you were gonna be there.”
“Yeah, baby, I have a meeting with Wes,” I replied, and then noticed Georgia’s eyes go comically wide out of the corner of my own at the unexpected genuineness of my endearment.
“Oh, okay.”
“Hey, I meant to ask if you’re going to be home early tonight?”
Georgia’s head moved back and forth between us, but I tried not to notice. Instead, I watched Cassie look over her left shoulder and talk to someone out of frame and back again, her dark hair pulling across the top of her low-cut shirt as she did.
“Yeah, I should be done with this shoot in the next couple of hours. What about you?”
“Yep. I’ve got to run back to the office after this and work on a couple of third-quarter plans that I’m almost done with, stop by and open up for Frankie, and then I’ll be home.”
“Okay, I’ll see you there. Need me to pick up your dry cleaning on my way?”
“That’d be great, honey. I’ll get dinner.”
“Perfect.” Someone called for her attention in the background again, and she whipped her head back and forth once more. “I have to go,” she said directly to me, and she almost looked disappointed. “I’ll talk to you soon, Wheorgie. Let me know if you need me to do any last-minute stuff for Big Dick’s party.”
“I need you to cook,” Georgie teased, and Cass just flipped her off.
“Let me know if you need me to do something I’m actually capable of.”
“Like give blow jobs?”
Cassie smiled as she made a slicing motion across her throat.
I took the opportunity to interject. “I could actually use your help with one of those.”
“Just how many of those are on your to-do list?” she asked, pretending to be annoyed. “Every time I check one off, another one gets added to the bottom.”
“Yeah, it’s more of a perpetual to-do.”
I heard someone speed-talk about something from off to the side of her, and her eyes snapped back to us. “I really have to go now. Later.”
And then she was gone. I missed her immediately.
“Picking up your dry cleaning?” Georgie questioned, and I waved her off.
“Georgie.”
“No, Thatch, that was as domestic as I’ve ever seen my friend in the history of, well, ever, and she didn’t even seem pissed about it.”
“She’s just determined not to let me win in a war of wills,” I downplayed in an effort not to talk about it. I was pretty sure Cassie was on my wavelength, feeling all the things I was feeling, and I hoped my instincts were right.
“True enough, but this is not that.”
I took a deep breath and changed the subject. “Where are we with Kline’s party? All set?”
“Nice subtle avoidance,” she mocked. I shook my head and stared directly into her gentle blue eyes.
“I wasn’t trying to be subtle.”
“O-kay,” she agreed, the motion of her mouth exaggerated.
She turned to her computer and opened a document that had a checklist of party details two pages long.
“Jesus,” I remarked. It was supposed to be to myself, but judging by the aggressive eyes she turned my way, I hadn’t been successful.
“It’s mostly just the details of what I’ve been telling Kline. You know he’s too smart for anybody’s good, and I’ve been trying to avoid getting caught in a lie.”
“Especially because you’re a shit liar.”
“How do you know I’m a shit liar?” She pouted.
“Honey.” I tilted my head. “Everybody knows.”
“Goddammit. I’m gonna be good at it one day.”
I shook my head with a smile and tucked a stray hair behind the ear of Kline’s perfect match. “No. You won’t. And that’s a good thing. We are who we are for a reason. You’re the perfect fit for my friend because you are the way you are. I’m pretty sure he’d be pissed if you changed.”
She smiled, and the sincerity of it lit up the room. Yeah, Kline had picked well.
“Why are you the way you are?”
“How exactly am I?”
“Knock, knock,” Wes said from the door, looking from Georgia to me curiously. “I’ve been waiting for you for at least five minutes, dude. I had a suspicion I might find you here, though.”
“Just saying hello,” I dismissed, leaning down to place a friendly kiss on Georgie’s cheek.
“Does Kline know you like to kiss his wife?” Wes teased.
“As a matter of fact, he does, Whitney.” He didn’t fucking like it, but he knew. And it wasn’t like I was giving her open-mouth tongue with a side of tit grab.
Georgia just shook her head and threw up a jaunty wave. “Bye, boys.” Her eyes moved to me, a piercing promise of this-conversation-isn’t-anywhere-near-over rolling tumultuously in their depths.
Wes and I both waved before moving down the hall toward his office.
“What did I interrupt?” Wes asked as we stepped inside and he closed the door behind me.
“Nothing.” I pulled off my suit coat and took a seat in the chair in front of his desk. “We were just talking about Kline’s birthday.”
“It didn’t sound like that.”
“Jesus.” I rubbed at my head. “What are you, the conversation police? It was nothing.”
“So it doesn’t have anything to do with your roommate?” he pushed with a smirk.
Narrowing my eyes, I told him the truth. Well, at least half the truth. “No. It doesn’t.”
He pulled out the chair from behind his desk and moved to sit down.
“And how do you know she’s my roommate? I’m pretty sure you were still out of town when that happened.”
“I was. Kline wasn’t.”
I twisted and lifted my leg so that my right ankle rested comfortably on my left knee and tried to tamp down the nervous swell in my stomach. Talking about everything with Cassie with other people made it real. And being real made me feel like I had everything to lose. My mind had rerouted the end goal, and winning a prank war wasn’t my focus. I wanted to win her.
“He sure has made a flawless transition from Perfect Paul to Gossip Gabe.”
Wes smirked. “He’s just happy he isn’t the center of attention anymore. It was never his thing. But you should feel at home here.”