“Did you get all that?” she asked me.
“I did. Guy’s an asshole. I would almost rather represent his cheating bitch of a wife. He keeps me on the phone for an hour every chance he gets. It’s his dime, but I still don’t want to talk to him. You managed to get him off pretty quick.”
“Try pouring on the sweet extra thick. That always throws people off.”
“I’ll have to keep that in mind.”
Emerie looked at her watch. “It’s almost four o’clock. I can’t believe the furniture company isn’t here yet. I’m sorry, I’ve been here all day.”
“No problem. I’ll just add it to your rent bill.”
She smiled. “Fine. But then I’m charging you for my secretarial services. I’m not cheap.”
A dirty flash of Emerie playing secretary with me as her boss popped into my head, and the words tumbled out before I could stop them. “I’d pay a lot for your services.”
She blushed, but then pushed back. “You must be a dick to work for, between your big ego and pervy comments. Good thing you’re a lawyer for when you get sued.”
“Did you just call me a dick?”
She bit her plump lip. “I did.”
I chuckled. “You figured that out pretty quick.”
An alarm on her phone began to buzz. She turned it off. “I have a four o’clock call with a patient I have to take. I’m going to step outside to take it. That way I don’t miss the furniture company either.”
“Why don’t you use my office? Might as well get some use out of that desk before they take it back. I’m hard on furniture. I didn’t want to ding it and screw up your returning it. More privacy to talk to your patient.”
“I don’t want to miss the furniture company.”
“I’ll keep a lookout.”
She hesitated. “You don’t mind?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Go ahead. I’ll play secretary for you now.”
It didn’t take much to convince her. I watched her walk down the hall—correct that, I watched her ass walk down the hall. When she reached my office she stopped and looked back over her shoulder, catching me once again. So I winked. I’m nothing if not consistent.
It was a little after four-thirty when the furniture company finally showed up. Emerie was still in my office, so I knocked on the half-closed door to get her attention. She was writing in a notebook while talking with a headset on. She’d piled her long, copper hair in a messy bun on top of her head, and when she looked up, it was the first time I’d seen her wearing glasses. They were dark frames, rectangular in shape, and screamed fuck-me librarian.
At least that’s what I heard when I looked at them. I stared for a minute, getting caught in my own fantasy as she finished up her call.
Her brows drew down as she said goodbye and slipped off her headset. “Is everything okay?”
Were her eyes always that blue? The black spectacles must have made the color pop even more than her fair skin already had. “Uh, yeah. The furniture company is here.”
She looked at me funny, but then walked out to the lobby. After she signed some paperwork, the workmen followed her to my office. They wrapped the desk in moving blankets and taped them in place.
Emerie sighed, looking on. “It’s a beautiful desk.”
I watched her watching them ready it for moving. “Gorgeous.”
In the last three days, she’d realized she’d been swindled for ten grand, gotten arrested, and found out her dream office belonged to someone else. Yet this was the first time I’d seen her truly saddened. It looked like she’d reached her limit. When I saw her eyes well with tears, I felt it in my chest. It affected me more than I could explain. And obviously it affected more than just my chest, it affected…
My sanity.
Because the bad idea I heard myself suggesting certainly wouldn’t have come out of my mouth had I not had a momentary lapse in sanity.
“Stay. You and your desk should stay. I have plenty of space here.”
Drew, New Year’s Eve, Eight years ago
Some of the best times in life come from bad ideas.
The tall blonde with long legs that stretched like a ladder to heaven? She was definitely a bad idea. I’d been keeping tabs on her all night. She’d come with two friends—all three of them looked barely eighteen. Some local who was a friend of a friend of one of my fraternity brothers had brought them with him. The local had his eye on the blonde, and sometimes his hands, but she seemed to have more interest in getting to know Sigma Alpha guys than him.