My gaze darted around as if Trey was within hearing distance. “I am not.”
“Um-hm, I saw the drool in the corner of your mouth when he showed up in my basement.”
Heat infused my cheeks. He wasn’t wrong. “You think he’s hot too.”
“Hails, I would have to be blind not to. Tell me what’s going on. Did you sleep with him?”
“You’re insane. And the answer is no.” Not that I hadn’t thought about it.
“I’m disappointed. Tell me everything—and it better not be that you’re in the friend zone, which is likely since you haven’t slept with him.”
I was not addressing that. “Things are honestly going well. I told him why we did it, and he said he would help get the money from Allen and have it allocated to the children’s donations.”
“When you say help, what do you mean?” Justin’s voice sounded strange, tense. “Is he going to hurt Allen?”
“No. Nothing like that.” I dropped a leg and swiveled the chair from side to side while we talked. “Allen doesn’t even know he has me. We’re just playing out the ransom demands like normal. And on that note, I’ll need you to call him with that voice-altering thing in two days and tell him where the drop is. Trey will pick it up then give it to me.”
“Do you trust him?” Someone asked a question in the background, and Justin muffled the phone, but his voice still came through. “Amelia, I’m busy. Go ask Chris for a lead.” There was a pause, and I had to stifle my laughter. He and Amelia were work frenemies. “Shoo.”
There was a rustling noise then the sound of a door closing before he huffed. “I cannot believe she asked me about the research I did the other day.”
Unable to hold it in any longer, I laughed loudly. Justin worked at a financial magazine. It wasn’t his dream job, as he was an assistant to one of the lead reporters, but as he said, it paid the bills. Amelia reported to one of the other people in charge, and they sort of jockeyed for whatever their bosses needed, which was sometimes closely related.
“Drama aside”—I was referring to Justin, and we knew it—“I do trust Trey. He doesn’t like Allen, and we both know he doesn’t have a shortage of funds. Besides, he’s a doctor. Why wouldn’t he be on board to help?”
There was a long pause, and I pulled at a loose thread at the bottom of my shirt.
“I’m worried about you, Hails.”
“I promise, I’m fine.”
“That’s debatable.” His voice was infused with the teasing quality innate to his nature. “You must smell rank with only the one outfit. Did he run away screaming yet?”
“Pfff. Shows what you know. We were going to go shopping for clothes, but he got called into the hospital for emergency surgery.”
“It was the clothes, wasn’t it? He made that up. Come on, you can tell me.”
“You’re lucky I’m not anywhere near you.” I would have cracked him upside the head for that one. Not too hard, of course.
“I can feel the back of my head stinging as if you were.” The sound of a keyboard filtered through, and I could imagine him sitting at his desk and typing an email. “If he’s not around, let’s meet for lunch.”
“I wish I could, but I’m sort of under house arrest. And don’t say anything! Your mind is always in the gutter.”
Justin’s throaty chuckle filled my ears. “You love that about me.”
“Sadly, I do.”
“I’ve got to run. Duty calls at this hellhole and I need to pay my mortgage.”
“Still haven’t met your dream sugar daddy?”
“Don’t I wish. If you find anyone, put in a good word for me?”
“Miss you.” I didn’t want to keep him on the phone at work.
He made a kissing sound then disconnected the call.Now, what am I going to do?It was as good a time as any to binge Netflix. I got up, rinsed my coffee mug, then put it in the dishwasher. I grabbed the remote, hit the power button, and got comfortable in front of the TV. As I clicked through the movies and series I could watch, I had a strange feeling of what it would be like if I lived with Trey and how easily I could see myself doing that.
The only problem was that anytime I thought things were going well, they blew up in my face. I couldn’t help but worry about what disaster was headed my way.