“Found ya! Hope we didn’t interrupt anything.”
You did, but thank God for that, I thought.
And when I turned around, it was his whole damned team.
12
DREW
Thanks to Emmett’s tip that I was here with Evie, Ty had not only come but had brought half the team. It was chaos, the staff was quickly overwhelmed and it wasn’t long before Emmett suggested we take the party to some lounge at one of his new hotels.
I had zero plans of going but Evie was apparently eager to get the hell away from me. Much to my irritation, she did two shots with Ty before following the group without hesitation, and because I wasn’t leaving her alone with any one of those animals, I wound up with them on the nineteenth floor of some new, overly swanky and pretentious hotel in the Meatpacking District. The massive lounge or bar – or whatever it was we were at – had six rooms, all of which I lost Evie in at least once.
Then again, I was pretty sure she was actively ducking me.
“You’re playing the role of dedicated partner much better than I thought you would,” Emmett said when he found me scanning the crowd for her in one of the bigger rooms.
“When I picture Watt or Brewer so mu
ch as touching her shoulder, it makes me want to slam someone’s head in a wall,” I explained before my brain did a playback of his words. Playing the role of dedicated partner. I shot Emmett a weird look. “By the way, I don’t recall telling you that this whole deal was fake. And Iain said he had no plans to, either.”
“Aly told me, fucknut. She doesn’t keep secrets from me.”
“Adorable. I’m sure I’ll be hearing wedding bells soon.”
“In a year, probably. I’m proposing to her next month.”
I snapped my head over to him. He already had his phone out to show me a picture of the giant fucking ring.
“Christ. That’s nice.” I had to give it to him. “You’re serious then.”
“Yeah. Which means you’re in for a lifetime of stink-eye from my wife.”
“What? Why? Aly loves me.”
“She won’t after this shit between you and her best friend blows up in all our faces.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I had no clue but I was preemptively pissed.
“Both of you are already deeper in this than you’re supposed to be. That much was made clear by the cute little whisper fight you had after my clients checked her out.”
“Yeah, nice clients by the way. Literally saw one guy tilt his head to get a better look down her dress.”
“I’m sorry. Trust me, I’m not a huge fan of those guys either, but you don’t make money by doing business with just the people you like.”
“Sounds like something your brother would say.”
“It is. Speaking of Julian – “
“Let’s not.”
“ – I know you’re pissed because you think I heard about the trade thing from him and decided to just gossip about that shit with Iain instead of telling you. But the reality is that I spent the past year sweating my ass off for you and doing everything in my power to either buy time or change Julian’s mind.”
“I’m honored. And thanks for the visual of your swamp ass.”
“You’re welcome. Also, I didn’t tell you because I thought I could fix things before you found out and fucking killed someone over it.”
“Got it. Thanks for the vote of confidence, by the way.”