by Tracey Ward
“Is it true?”
She rolls her eyes, avoiding mine. “The Seattle Seahawks have banned me for life, yes. It’s true.”
“Damn, girl,” I drawl, leaning my hand against the shelf by her head. “Who were they playing?”
“I have no idea. I was blitzed out of my mind. I used to do that a lot.”
“Get faded?”
“Yeah. On everything. Drinking, drugs.” She pokes my stomach playfully. “Men.”
“Boys,” I correct.
“Yes. Boys. I went through a lot of boys and a lot of booze before I quit.”
“Why’d you quit?”
“It was time to grow up.”
I shake my head, unconvinced. “That’s not why. What’s the real reason?”
“It got too real, that’s all,” she admits grudgingly. “You can’t live like that forever. Eventually you’ll fuck up big and you’ll die or ruin your life for good. What if I want to have kids someday and they find that video of their mom streaking the field? Am I supposed to feel proud of that?”
What she’s saying makes sense but it sounds less like her and more like something she’s heard before. Probably more than once and probably from her parents.
“I couldn’t find the video,” I tell her sadly.
She smacks me hard against the chest with the back of her hand. “You looked? I thought I asked you not to Google my shit.”
I laugh, capturing her hand in mine before she assaults me again. “You asked me not to Google last year’s Halloween and I didn’t. But everything else is fair game.”
“I should have been more specific.”
“For real, though. What happened to the video? I looked it up and all I found were a bunch of dead links.”
“Daddy happened,” she answers drolly. She looks down at our hands hanging together. Her thumb runs slow and soft over the back of mine. “He bought the video from everyone he could and sued everyone he couldn’t. He had it taken down everywhere.”
“Has he had to do stuff like that before?” I ask gently.
Mila nods, her eyes and attitude still downcast. “Yeah. He’s done it a lot. He’s good at making things disappear.” She squeezes my hand tightly for a second. “Including men.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“There’s a man in prison because of me.”
“The senator?”
Her eyes rise slowly to mine. “You read about him?”
“Court records aren’t something your dad can make disappear. I was surprised he hit him with a felony charge, though. Four years in prison is no joke.”
“It wasn’t Tom’s fault.”
“It sure as hell wasn’t yours.”
“I was seventeen. I was practically an adult.”
“Practically isn’t an adult.”
“I lost my virginity when I was fourteen, Tyus. I wasn’t some kid. I never have been. I seduced him.”
I shake my head hard. “I’m not gonna argue with you about it.”
Mostly because I don’t want to hear about it. I can’t picture her with other men. Not when I’ve already seen literal pictures. Nothing lude because her pops would never let anything like that get out, but I’ve seen enough. She’s dated her share of men, and probably a few other girls too, and it strikes an ugly chord in me. It rings in my ears and makes my head scream in my skull, demanding it shut the fuck up.
“Why?” she asks sharply. “Because you feel like you’re seducing me too? Same way he did, right? The same way men always do. And you don’t want to lump yourself in with an old pervert, do you, Tyus?”
I glance around to make sure no one can hear us. We’re alone, for now, but the place is busy. Anyone on the other side of the aisle could hear her if they were listening and I feel my temper start to rise. I work to keep it in check. She’s pushing, trying to piss me off, and I don’t know why she’s doing it, but that shit’s not gonna work on me.
I drop my voice down deep, moving my body in closer to hers. “You in charge of this, Mila?” She inhales sharply when my chest presses against her breasts. When I push my weight into her and she’s trapped between me and the shelves of whey powder with nowhere to go. With nothing to feel but me. Us. “Are you runnin’ a game on me right now?”
“What if I am?” she asks defiantly.
I shake my head, grinning crookedly. “Nah, that’s not how this feels. Do you know what this feels like?”
“It feels like your dick on my hip.”
“It feels like you can’t help it. Like you want this just as bad as I do and you know this is wrong but you can’t stop, can you?”
Her body softens under mine. Her eyes go half-closed as she surrenders to the pressure of me weighing down on her. “No,” she whispers.
“That’s not a seduction. It’s attraction, plain and simple, and it’s real, isn’t it? You feel it.”
“Yes.”
“You want it.”
“I thought about you last night,” she whispers. She licks her lips nervously, but she isn’t nervous. It’s an act or a reflex, but it’s not her. Her eyes give her away, telling her truth bold and beautiful as she stares up at me unashamed. “I touched myself and I pretended it was you.”
I groan appreciatively. “How’d I do?”
“You did good, Tyus.” She thrusts her hips forward against mine. “You did so fuckin’ good.”
“Goddamn it, girl,” I moan, my eyes closing. I’m losing control of this. Of me. What the fuck is it about her that I can’t step away from? I’m practically mounting her in the middle of the store. If anyone sees us like this, I could be recognized and then I’m dead. Maybe even literally. I definitely won’t see the field on Sunday. But even knowing that, even risking everything I’ve tried so hard to get back to, I can’t walk away from her.
But I am gonna have to step away. For now.
I back off, putting feet between us that feels like miles. “Give me your number,” I tell her stiffly. Stiff as my dick sitting full attention in my jeans. “I’m taking you out tomorrow.”
“Seriously?” she laughs.
“You love to eat, right?”
She smiles slyly, like she knows a secret I’m not telling. “I do.”
“And I owe you for what you did for me. You went behind your dad’s back. That couldn’t have been easy.”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“And paying you back is the right thing for me to do.”
“You already did. You got me a job.” She shakes her head faintly, her eyes glowing with gratitude. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Nah, it’s nothing.”
“Why’d you do it?”
I chuckle, surprised. She’s blunt. It takes some getting used to. “I, uh… I don’t know. It seemed like a good fit.”
“No,” she smiles slyly, “it doesn’t. But I’m grateful anyway.”
“It’s working out, then?”
“Yeah. I like Sloane. Hollis too. They’re nice. Very patient.”
“Do you need a lot of patience?”
She rolls her eyes. “So fucking much. I’m exhausting.”
“I believe it. What’s your number? Where can I pick you up? Your parent’s place?”
“No,” she chuckles. “Definitely not there. And not my dorm. Too many people would recognize you.”
“Here.” I hand her my phone. “Get yourself in there. I’ll send you my address. You can meet me there. I’ll send a car for you.”
“You don’t have to send a car for me. I can drive.”
“Whatever you gotta do to get there.”
Mila’s manicured, pink fingers work quickly over my phone. She doesn’t take any time in my contacts to snoop, and maybe it’s because she’s trying to play it cool but I think it’s because she really doesn’t care. She’s not about to be jealous and that’s almost as hot as the feel of her tight body going all tender under mine.
“There,” she says, handing my phone back. “You’ve got
me.”
I glance at the screen still lit with her info. When I read her name, I nearly double over laughing. “‘Badass Bitch’?”
She smiles proudly. “I couldn’t use my name. What if someone looks in your phone and sees all the desperate texts you’re going to be sending me?”
“Oh, I’m gonna be desperate, am I?”
Mila steps in close to me, just shy of our bodies touching, and smiles with a feline grace. “Tyus Anthony, you’re gonna be losing your fucking mind over me in under a week. I guarantee it.” She kisses my cheek fleetingly. “I’ll see you later.”
I stand stone still as she brushes past me down the aisle. Her scent follows after, leaving me lonely. Horny. I have to fight the overwhelming instinct to go after her. To kiss her. To lick her, inside and out. I’d make a feast of her body, savoring her for hours. Days. Weeks. I want to hold up in a room with her and never come out, because she’s right. She’s deadass right.
I’m gonna lose my fuckin’ mind over this girl.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MILA
November 11th
The DAK Agency
Los Angeles, CA
Answering phones is harder than it sounds. You go into it thinking, ‘Yeah, okay, I’ll pick it up when it rings, pass it on to the person it goes to, and then finish that article on the staffing shake up over at the University of Florida. No big.’ But, no. Big. So big. Especially when you screw up. Like when you send a tennis player to Hollis who knows nothing about tennis. Or you transfer Colt Avery to the wrong number three times and he calls back to ask you to just please, for the love of God, call Sloane out to reception to take his call ‘cause he just can’t anymore.
At least Colt was nice. Not everyone is nice.
“I’m so sorry, Berny,” I swear the second he comes down the hall. “I fucked it up, I know.”
He gives me that old man look. The grandpa one.
I immediately realize my newest mistake. “I messed it up. I know.”
Berny smiles, sweet and forgiving. “That’s alright, hon. Jason’s a handful on a good day.”
“He sounded angry the first time he called, before I even had a chance to fu—udge. Fudge it up.”
“His wife is leaving him. It puts a man in a bad headspace.”
“Why is she leaving him?”
“Because he’s cheating on her with a Cavalier’s cheerleader!” Hollis shouts from his office.
“Seriously?! Which one?!”
“If you kids are going to insist on having this conversation this way,” Berny warns, “I’m going to have to turn down my hearing aide.”
Hollis comes down the hall looking like a Banana Republic ad. He’s tall, thin, gorgeous, and gay. His boyfriend, Demarcus Sawyer, came in to take him to lunch on my first day, and my heart almost stopped when I saw him. He looks a lot like Tyus. I mentioned it to Sloane but she says she doesn’t see it, probably because their personalities are so different. D, as she calls him, is one of kind in her mind. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she had a thing for him the way she talks about him, but her man, Trey Domata, is not the kind of guy you take for granted. Besides, you just have to see them together once and you know immediately how head over fucking heels Trey and Sloane are for each other. It’s almost disgusting.
I’m not a hundred percent sure why Sloane was so worried about bringing in a receptionist that would try to seduce everybody. Half their clients are taken, even Kurtis Matthews. The other half are either single for a reason (i.e. assholes) or married. There’s not a very deep pool to fish in here, and that’s fine by me. I don’t need distractions right now. Between school and this job, I’m as busy as I can handle.
Plus, there’s Tyus. I don’t know what’s going on there but whatever it is, I’m digging it. It’s forbidden and fun and so hot I can hardly stand it. I get weak just thinking about him. I want to see him again, and soon, but there’s one little problem with that – I don’t have his number. He has mine, but it’s been days since we saw each other at Target and he’s not using it. I don’t know if I should be pissed or relieved.
“Mindy,” Hollis answers about the cheerleader. “Mindy… Something, I can’t remember her last name. Anyway, they’ve been having an affair since August. They took a trip to the Caribbean together in September.”
I snort in disgust. “I would castrate him.”
Hollis smiles. “His wife’s in the process.”
“Did she just find out?”
“No, she’s known, but she kept quiet about it until last week.”
“Why? What happened last week?”
“I got him a new contract coaching the Eagles.” Berny sifts slowly through the candy jar on my desk. “He signed it last Thursday. Four years. Twenty-four million.”
“If they divorced before he signed, his wife wouldn’t get a dime of that,” Hollis adds.
“But now that he has, she gets half.”
I study Berny as he searches the jar. He’s moving so slow! Finally, I pull it away from him, dig a York from the bottom, and hand it to him. “You knew, didn’t you?”
He casts me an innocent glance, his fingers tearing cleanly through the shiny silver wrapper. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. You knew she knew and you didn’t tell him she was waiting for him to sign.”
“That’s insane. I’d be going against the best interest of my client.”
“Uh huh.”
Berny pops the small chocolate and peppermint patty into his mouth before smiling at me warmly. “Well, I’m off to lunch. You kids be good.”
When Berny is gone, I look meaningfully at Hollis.
He laughs, shrugging his shoulders. “He appreciates the sanctity of marriage. I wouldn’t be surprised if he fucked his own client.”
“He totally did.”
“Maybe Jason shouldn’t have been fucking Mindy.”
“How come you get to say ‘fuck’ all over the place and I can’t?” I demand.
“Because, Miss Greene,” he answers loftily. “I’m the boss.”
“I thought Sloane was the boss.”
“She sure fuckin’ thinks so,” he mutters, just to rub it in. He smacks the high counter in front of my desk with an open palm. “I’m going to head to lunch too. Then I have a meeting across town with the people at Fila. Don’t take any messages for me. Just send everything to voicemail.”
“You got it.”
“If you go to lunch before Sloane gets back, remember to lock the door behind you.”
“Of course.”
“And set the voicemail.”
“Yep.”
“And the alarm.”
“Okay.”
“And shut off the lights.”
“Right.”
“Water the plants.”
“Sure.”
“Feed the dog.”
“Obviously.”
Hollis smiles. “Am I forgetting something?”
“To get the fuck out of here,” I reply blandly.
He laughs, knocking his knuckles on the counter before launching himself away from it. “That’s what it was. Thanks, Mila.”
“Happy to help.”
When Hollis is gone, I immediately open Google to search for Mindy Something on the Cleveland Cavaliers cheerleading squad. She’s easy to find. There was a big article about the affair just this weekend, two days after Jason sealed his fate with that Eagles contract. There’s a picture of them together on a beach in what I can only assume is the Caribbean like Hollis said, but it is not flattering for her. She’s short and stacked, Hispanic in some way with almost white blond hair that definitely came from a bottle, and that shit is not handling the humidity well.
“Damn, Jason,” I mutter, squinting at the screen, “you should have called Becky with the good hair. This bitch is basic.”
The agency phone rings shrilly in the silence. I think about letting it go to voicemail and pretending I’m already at lunch, but that f
eels like a slacker move on what is essentially my third day working. I’ll wait until I’ve been at it at least a week before I start cutting corners.
“Dawe, Ashford, and Kane Agency. How can I help you?” I answer sweetly.
My sugar is met with silence.
“Hello?” I press. “Are you there?”
“You’re really doing this, aren’t you?”
I sag back into my seat with a smile. “Daddy, what’s up?”
“I had to hear for myself. You said you were working there but I just…” He chuckles. “I had to hear it for myself. So, it’s true?”
“Why would I lie about this?”
It’s a stupid question because a year ago I lied about everything. I lied about where I was, including which country. I lied about who I was with, including which Kardashian, though it would have been easy to figure out. It was always the bad one. But that was then and this is now, and I’m a whole new girl, so I feel a strange confidence in asking him why I’d ever lie to him about anything.
“It’s surreal,” Daddy answers.
“It feels surreal.”
“How is school going? Are you balancing the two alright?”
“I only work when I don’t have class. I’m not cutting and I’m studying when I have free time here. They told me to bring my books and do my homework at my desk.”
“That’s generous of them.”
I shrug because I don’t know. “I guess, yeah. They’re nice people.”
“Trust me, it’s generous, sweetheart. I would never let Maggy have school books or magazines on her desk here.”
“Aggie,” I correct. “Your receptionist’s name is Aggie.”
“No, it’s not. It’s Maggy.”
“No, it’s Aggie. You just hate the name so you pretend that’s not it, but it is.”
Daddy is quiet for a second. “That might be true,” he finally admits.
“It is true. Mama hired Aggie because she has a gap in her teeth, split ends, and you hated her name. You said it was stupid. Mama took that to mean you wouldn’t sleep with her.”
“She’s half my age! Of course I’m not sleeping with her.”
“Also, you’re married,” I remind him.
“Yeah, of course. It goes without saying.”
