“At my expense, obviously,” Alex said. Her eyes flashed with anger. I remembered when they were soft and luminous even in the harsh overhead lights of the locker room. Her face was flushed, just like it was right before she came. I wanted to see that again.
“Look, Calvin didn’t tell me anything about his new bride,” I said. “So in all fairness, I didn’t know about you.”
“How easily you seem to forget anyways,” she replied. I wasn’t sure, but I thought that I detected the slightest bit of hurt under the brittle anger. I felt bad about my earlier comment, but even though I did remember her, what did she expect? It was a one-night thing. She had been the one who seemed intent on making sure it stayed that way. Why was I the one feeling guilty?
“How about we compromise?” I said. The gears in my mind were spinning. “If I let you look over my books, maybe you can tell my dad that I don’t any help.”
“It sounds like you do, though,” she countered.
I shrugged it off. “My dad overreacts about a lot of things-. My finances are fine. But it wouldn’t hurt to have a second opinion. That way you can do what he sent you here to do, and I can get my dad out of my hair. Deal?”
I could see her processing my words. “If I find anything that needs to be addressed, I stay. And you don’t get in my way. You cooperate,” she said.
“Are you sure you aren’t a lawyer?” I winked at her. I liked a girl that drove a hard bargain.
She smiled. She was drop-dead breathtaking when she smiled. “I prefer numbers over people.”
I saw Maury shaking his head at me from the ring. It was clear that he was less than pleased at the interruption, and I knew that I needed to get my head back in it. “I’ll get you my bank account info and my most recent receipts, okay? We can talk more later. Right now, if I don’t get back in the ring, that old man is going to kick my ass from here to next Tuesday.”
Alexa turned and caught the tail end of Maury’s glare before he turned into a bland expression and offered her a half wave. She looked back at me. “Scary.”
“Don’t I know it,” I said with a heavy, fake sigh.
“Is there somewhere I can work? I need to download some files from the office network to get started,” she asked.
I pointed toward the back of the gym. “There’s a few empty offices back there. Take your pick. Wifi network password is ‘icerocks’, so it’s easy to remember.”
She shook her head. “Thanks.” She started to turn when I caught her arm. It was a clumsy gesture with my gloves on, and I caught a whiff of her perfume. It was something musky and sweet, and it made me want to dig my nose into her curls and breathe it in deep.
“So you’re going to be my new stepsister. And last week, we just…”
She put up her hand to stop me. “Don’t remind me,” she said, closing her eyes. “That was a mistake, and believe me, it that won’t happen again. This is strictly professional.” She headed toward the office space, her heels making a distinct clacking noise on the concrete that drew eyes all over the gym to her like a magnet
A mistake? Since when was fucking Ice Malone a mistake?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN –ALEXA
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed the sides of my temples. I had been squinting at my laptop screen for hours poring over spreadsheets and trying to match the random stacks of receipts in front of me into coherent categories.
Shayne was clearly deluded. He was hemorrhaging money just like Cal said, and that was just my assessment of the receipts in front of me. After my excruciatingly embarrassing introduction to my new client and stepbrother, I had tried to stay out of the way as much as possible. It was difficult at first trying to work with the sounds of the gym outside, but eventually, I got used to it. Stacey joked that she was going to stop in to take her to lunch just so she could ogle all the muscled meat; including Shayne.
Speaking of Shayne, I let my gaze wander out the glass window in front of me The office I chose was the only one of the three at the back of the gym that offered any kind of natural light and didn’t make me feel like I was inside a cave. It also meant that I had a front row view of the gym on the other side of the glass, and more often than not, Shayne and his coach were in the middle ring. Sometimes they were sparring, often it appeared they were arguing.
It was my third day on the job, and I finally felt as if I had a handle of what was going on with Shayne’s finances. I remembered Cal’s tirade about wanting his son set up for the future when his MMA career was over. I understood it completely now. There was no way that Shayne was equipped to keep his own books, no matter what he thought.