“To what do I owe the honor?” I asked. “It’s not like you two to make a house call.”
“Opportunity is knocking,” Price said. He opened my door for me and gestured for me to enter.
Kade, oblivious as always, walked right in front of me as if Price had opened the door for him.
I settled in behind my desk, where I had to resist the urge to log in to my computer and start checking emails right away. Multi-tasking had never been a speciality of mine. I was prone to tunnel vision on every level of my life. If I had four tasks for the day, I’d often get so fixated on completing the first to absolute perfection that I’d only realize I had left no time for the remaining three when it was too late. On a larger scale, I’d fixated on landing the career I wanted all through school at the expense of having a social life. Once I started the company, I had continued to ignore everything but work. If I hadn’t taken on the Bob Smith persona to avoid my step-sister, I wasn’t sure I would have ever felt I had the time to spare to date again.
I wondered if Lilith had any idea how much trouble she was in by becoming my latest fixation. Worse, I wondered if I would even be able to keep my life on track when all I wanted to do was see more of her, to taste more of her.
I clenched my hands tightly around the armrests of my chair. I knew Price was talking, but all I could hear were the soft, desperate breaths of Lilith as I worked into her and drove her to ecstasy. It was hard to imagine wanting or caring about anything else, like I’d just had my first real hit of a drug I knew was going to consume me. The frightening part was that I was absolutely ready to let her take me over, even when I wasn’t sure how my life could come crashing down around us.
“So?” Price asked.
“He was zoned out,” Kade said. “Speaking from experience on that. Didn’t hear a word you said, I guarantee it.”
“I was absolutely listening,” I said.
“Then give me the plagiarized high-school essay version of what I just said.”
“You… were telling me about a business opportunity.”
Price sighed. “No, asshole. I was telling you I had to get an endoscopy because I couldn’t take a shit for three days and I was getting worried.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“Yeah. Turned out it was just this new protein shake I was trying. Not enough veggies or something. Fiber, all that kind of stuff.”
Kade nodded wisely. "Fiber is important. Helps keep you regular. Yogurt is good too. Good bacteria for your gut, but if you have lactose problems like me, you can always go with the probiotic route."
“Is this seriously why you two waited outside my office? My bowel movements are perfectly fine, thank you.”
“No,” Price said. “It’s called small talk. Normal people do it before they talk business with their friends.”
“Actually,” Kade said. “I don’t know how normal it is to talk about that kind of stuff. It’s funny. We all do it, but everybody wants to sweep it under the rug like having a bowel movement is a big conspiracy.” He chuckled and shook his head. “Sometimes you just want to come out and scream it at the top of your lungs, you know? ‘Hey! I shit! And I’m proud of it!’”
Price and I sighed at the same time.
“Kade,” Price said. “You’re the weirdest man I’ve ever met. There’s a reason we don’t let you meet clients, and that comment was a prime example.”
Kade pointed at Price while he looked to me with raised brows. “See what I mean? He wants to sweep me right under the rug because I talked about it.”
“Whatever you say, Kade,” Price said. “The real reason we came by was to tell you that we’ve got a big fish on the line. She’s the liaison for a multinational corporation, and they have a juicy stock package they give to all their higher-ups. If they incorporated our packages to their compensation programs, we’d be looking at close to double what we’re pulling in now, just like that. Think about it. One deal, and double everything, maybe more. Because who knows what a big ass company like that could do for our reputation.”
“So you’re saying we would make a lot of money from them.” I spread my hands. “But if there wasn’t a catch, you wouldn’t be trying so hard to convince me this was a good thing.”
“A small catch,” Price admitted. “I know you prefer me to do all the wheeling and dealing for you, but this lady wants to meet with you personally. She said she doesn’t want the sales pitch. She wants to see straight into the mind behind these packages. Control freak, I guess.”
“I see. Figure out the details of what she’s expecting and get back to me. I’m not taking her to baseball games or something ridiculous. We can have a meeting in a professional setting. I’ll bring my laptop and run her through the process. But I’m not doing more than that. No bullshit cartwheels or powerpoints.”
“People like powerpoints,” Kade said. “Think about it. When you were in school, the day your teacher pulled out a powerpoint was the best. Next to watching a movie, at least.”
Price and I both looked at Kade like he was an idiot, which, in all likelihood, he really was.
Price turned back to look at me. “Not even a little persuasion? Your anti-social grunting techniques aren’t going to work here. This is a big payday. Not just for you, either. Think about all our employees. The guy who works the front desk. The secretaries. The grunts who plug in the numbers. My team who busts their asses every day to scout new clients. Think about it, man. All that rides on you gripping those big balls of yours and pretending you know how to be persuasive.”
“Come on, Price,” I said. “I know you well enough to know you don’t care about the employees, so don’t pretend you do.”
“But you do.” He pointed at me and gave an obnoxiously knowing grin. “There’s a reason I’m a good salesman, Liam. It’s because I can figure out people on the fly. I can hit them where it matters. I’ve known you way too fucking long to need to figure anything out, so just give up before I have to pull out the big guns and really start getting persuasive.”
I chuckled and shook my head. “Fine. But I’m not agreeing because I think you can persuade me. I’m agreeing because you’re so stubborn that I know you’ll bore me into submission if I try to resist.”
He reached across my desk and patted my shoulder. “That’s the spirit.”
13
Lilith
I met Claire at a coffee shop near my apartment. I hadn’t actually seen her since the night at Galleon when I was manning the front desk on William’s orders. I hadn’t actually expected to see the woman again. I’d lost count of how many times a casual acquaintance had said the fateful, “we should totally hang out sometime.” Of course, “sometime” was another way to say hypothetically. It was more like saying, “I don’t ever plan to rearrange my life to make time to be your friend, but hypothetically, if I was willing to do that, I’m sure we’d have fun.” So when Claire had taken my number back at Galleon, the last thing I expected was to get a phone call from her.
Claire sipped her coffee, eying me over the brim of her cup. With that black hair and widow’s peak, I found myself a little jealous of her natural villain look. I put a lot of effort into making myself look like somebody you would be hesitant to approach, but Claire seemed like my polar opposite. She was naturally gifted with mischievous, frightening eyes and a twist to her mouth that made it look like she’d just finished whispering lies about you. Yet she dressed in bright colors and an outfit that seemed to scream to the world that she was sweet and innocent.
Then there was me. I had spent most of my childhood being told I looked like a princess. I was groomed to be a modern-day princess. Some dolled up enigma designed and engineered to snare a wealthy man. I pushed back the whole way, but the ghosts of that expectation were never far from my mind.
Every morning, I did my best to cover that memory up with makeup and a practiced expression of indifference. I didn’t want to look like a princess. I didn’t want to be a princess. I want
ed to be me, but even I didn’t know who that was anymore.
“Surprised you came,” Claire said.
I came about five times before I lost count last night. The dirty little voice in my head hadn’t stopped connecting everything to last night with Liam. It was worse than a middle schooler who had just discovered the power of “that’s what she said” and couldn’t stop compulsively using it after every sentence. I had to force an awkward smile and think about black and white baseball to calm down the growing heat in my stomach. The man had been like electricity, and ever since he put his hands on me last night, he’d turned something on that I didn’t know how to shut off.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. I cleared my throat. “You seemed kind of cool, so.”
She shrugged. “I’m not cool at all. Honestly, I wanted to come clean with you. I had a big falling out with my friends, and I am pretty much desperate for some human contact lately. Even waiting a few days to call you was like pulling teeth. I just didn’t want to creep you out and seem too desperate.”
“Too late. I’m creeped out.”
She laughed. “Sorry. I thought I could just tell you were someone I’d get along with. It’s always so weird trying to make friends as an adult. It’s like asking someone on a date, practically.”
“If I’d known this was a date, I would’ve brought my cleavage.”
She looked at me with a mischievous grin and flicked open one button on her shirt. “I came prepared to adapt.”
“So, you said you had a falling out with your friends?” I wanted to change the subject, because for a minute, I wasn’t sure if the woman was actually trying to hit on me. I didn’t have anything against girls who were into the whole rug burn thing, but it wasn’t my style, and I didn’t want to give her the wrong idea.
Her gaze sank to the table. “Yeah. I did something stupid. I misread somebody, and I really pissed him off. And then I made it worse by kind of trying to get him back for embarrassing me. Basically, all my friends hate me now.”
“Did you try apologizing?”
Her eyes flicked back to mine, and I saw a startling determination there. “I’m not the apologizing type. I tend to double down, even when I’m in the wrong.” She laughed, and all the fierce intensity in her expression was gone again. “Sorry. This is exactly how you scare away potential friends. I guess it’s good that you get to see the real me, warts and all. Right?”
After coffee with Claire, I headed to work. It admittedly felt kind of good to have some normal girl talk. My best friend had been out of the country for months, and she had been my only source of female drama. Of course, I’d always pretended to hate it when Emily unloaded her drama and vented to me, but I think it secretly scratched an itch.
Claire ended up asking me about my love life, and oddly enough, I'd felt like sharing. I didn't go into much detail, but talking about how unexpected my new love interest had been and my feelings for him was strangely therapeutic. Talking to Claire actually helped me sort through my feelings about Liam and how I hoped our relationship would develop. Go figure. Maybe the girl-talk ritual had some practical use, after all.
Even at work, my mind went straight back to Liam. So much so that I'd forgotten about William's stupid little birthday party that night. Of course, William didn't let me forget it when I got to work, and neither did Grammy, who had, unfortunately, decided she was going to hang around Galleon until the birthday preparations were set up to her expectations. She'd even wheeled over one of the intern's chairs to my desk and made it her second home, complete with the knitting magazines that she spread over my keyboard, even though I knew for a fact she didn't knit.
“Can you maybe not sit so close to me? You smell like a retirement home,” I asked. She actually didn’t smell, but the only thing that made the woman tolerable was if you kept her on her feet by insulting her first. She’d never admit it, but she enjoyed the back and forth. I might have kind of enjoyed it a little, too.
“Maybe because I live in one, dipshit,” Grammy snapped.
“It’s called a shower,” William said. He had popped out of his office and leaned on my desk in the middle of our exchange.
“I’m sure I know more about showers than you know about combs,” She said. “Look at that ridiculous hair. It looks like you drove to work with your head out the goddamn window. It’s just too bad you didn’t high-five a street sign with your teeth.”
I snorted. Grammy could be savage, especially when it came to William. The pair had an ever-escalating insult war that seemed to forever wage on between them.
William smirked. His hair was kind of crazy, but he had the type of face that meant it didn’t matter. I still enjoyed seeing Grammy give him hell. “I gave you a ride to work. Why the hell do you think I stuck my head out the window? Shower. You should try it.”
She tried to hide it, but I saw a smile threatening to spread her lips. “If skipping a shower means you’ll stick your dumbass head out the window for the whole car ride, then I’ll have them shut the damn water off in my room.”
“You’re the one who insisted on me giving you a ride. I offered to pay for an Uber.”
“I don’t want your dirty money, pencil dick.”
He threw his hands up in frustration. “I’ve told you so many fucking times. Pencils come in all sizes and shapes. That’s not even a good insult. This guy used to come do SAT prep in high school, and he carried a prop pencil with him that was five feet tall and a foot thick.”
“Is your ass jealous?” Grammy asked. “Because so much shit is coming out of your mouth, it must be wondering if it’s getting laid off.”
William tried to fight it but finally chuckled. "Shitbag," he murmured before stalking back to his office.
It was a pretty typical exchange between the two of them. They’d trade insults until somebody unofficially won. Usually, Grammy won through pure stubbornness and refusal to quit.
“He’s a good kid,” she said.
“You ever tell him that?” I asked.
She made a dismissive noise. “You think I’m going to tell the man who thinks he’s God’s gift to the Earth that I like him? Hell no. Maybe on my deathbed. Maybe.”
“I thought you weren’t planning on ever dying?”
“Exactly.”
I grinned. “Fair point.”
“So, when are you going to spill the beans? I can smell dick on you. You got laid, and you’re not telling me.”
“Please tell me that’s just a figure of speech.” I lifted my armpit and sniffed, but all I could smell was a faint hint of my deodorant.”
“You know what they say, once a hoe has the scent of dick in her nose, she can smell it from a mile away, even in the water.”
I scrunched up my face. “What? No. Nobody says that, Grammy. I think you just mixed together like three real facts into some special brand of bullshit.”
“I know you got laid because I know. One day, when you’ve lived to be as well-aged and dignified as me, you’ll understand that young people aren’t nearly as sneaky as they think they are. You turds wear your feelings on your face, and I can read you like a book.”
“Then why do I need to spill the beans if you already know?”
“Listen, you little shit. You’re going to tell me what happened, how long it took, how big he was, and what dirty little things he whispered in your ear. You’re going to tell me willingly, or I’m going to psychologically torture it out of you.”
“You mean you’re going to be your normal self? How is that even a threat?”
“You haven’t even begun to see the depths of what I’m capable of, Lilith. I could make a grown man cry with nothing but six words.”
“Good thing I’m not a grown man, I guess.”
Grammy raised her eyebrows at the challenge.
As it turned out, I only lasted two minutes against her methods before I spilled everything.
Liam met me at Galleon that night for William’s surprise birthday party. Everyone who c
ame for the party met on the 36th floor, and we’d finally convinced Hailey to invite William to “secretly” meet her there for a little clandestine husband and wife bangery.
Liam’s business partners, Price and Kade, had come along. Price looked like what every used car salesman imagined they looked like. Sauve, rugged, and dripping with charm. He had a sharp nose with piercing brown eyes, and he looked like he’d taken a page from William’s book on casual fashion.
Kade was what I imagined a statue would look like if it woke up one day and became spontaneously sentient. He looked like he could’ve dunked a basketball by standing on his tiptoes, and he had a face that vaguely reminded me of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Price shook my hand and looked at Liam with raised brows. “So this was your type all along? No wonder you never hit it off with those girls I set you up with.”
“What type am I, exactly?” I asked him.
He flinched back at my tone, then laughed and waggled his finger at me. “That’s good. She’s good, Liam. Scary, but with that little edge of sexy. Yeah, I can see why you like her.”
“You look like the kind of man who would scream like a girl if he got stabbed.” I leaned a little closer. “Want to prove me wrong?”
He did a full body shiver and shook his hands out, laughing a little nervously as he looked between me and Liam. “Jesus, man. Did you get her as a guard dog, or a girlfriend? I can’t tell which.”
“Lilith has a low tolerance for bullshit,” Liam said. “So you might want to avoid speaking near her.
“You know,” Kade said. “I used to have a this thing with lettuce. If I saw lettuce or especially if I heard the sound of lettuce leaves crunching around, my lip would curl up kind of Elvis style. I couldn’t help it. Especially if it was kind of papery lettuce, that was the worst. Crazy thing was, I love lettuce. Always have. I just had to look like the King while I was eating it.”
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