When I first met her, I wondered how such a beautiful woman had never settled down with a family of her own, but I realized really fast that Annabelle Kingston is married to her work, and at fifty-two, she is perfectly content with her clients being the children she never had.
I grab my bag, pulling out my phone as I walk to the door and checking my messages as I climb into my car and start the engine. When I left Nate’s house earlier this afternoon, he had said he was going to stop by Dirty but would be home for dinner. Seeing that it’s now five, he’s either finishing up there or already back at the house. Either way, the state of his fridge is scary, so my first stop will have to be the grocery store.
After the night of my house fire last week, Nate had been spending less time at Dirty, something that seemed to just happen naturally, even though it had been a big stressor in his life. He still goes in every day, but it is rare that he’s there past midnight.
“Hello?” I answer, not looking at the display when my phone starts ringing through the speakers.
“Hey,” Nikki says, her voice low and a little wobbly.
“Hey, you. What’s wrong?”
She sniffs and I frown. Nikki isn’t a crier. I often joke with her that her tear ducts are broken, but she just says it’s a side effect of her black soul.
“I broke up with Seth.” She sniffs again before blowing her nose loudly into the receiver. “Found that jerk in bed with some chick from his gym.”
“Oh, Nik. I’m on the way to Nate’s. Meet me there in ten, okay?”
She sniffs again, it coming out more like a snorted wheeze, but agrees before hanging up.
Pulling up to a light, I grab my phone and press Nate’s name before placing it back down on the seat next to me. While I wait for the light to change, the phone rings a few times.
“Is it time for phone sex already,” he drawls in a sexy rumble over the line, and I hear some deep masculine laughter break out around him.
“One of these days you’re going to answer the phone like that and I’m going to make sure I had been playing with myself for long enough to just come in your ear as a response,” I smart with a smirk when he grumbles a complaint.
“Get the fuck out of my office,” he barks, and I hear his heavy breathing as footsteps echo and the sound of his door closing. “You’ve been told not to take my sweetness, Ember. Do you need me to remind you who that * belongs to?”
“Yeah, yeah, promises and all that. Listen, big man, Nikki’s upset so she’s coming over. Is that okay?”
“I told you that you don’t have to ask permission to do shit. I want you to feel at home.”
I roll my eyes. The same argument we’ve had since I all but moved in. “I’m still asking. It’s your house, Nate.”
He mumbles something, but his words are too low for me to make them out.
“I just wanted to warn you that you might be coming home to some pretty high estrogen levels and all that.”
“What’s wrong with Nikki?”
“All I know is that Seth cheated and they broke up. I told her to meet me there. I figured I could feed her ice cream and wine, the normal post-breakup comfort foods, and then see what else I could get out of her.”
“Sounds good, baby. I’ll stop by the grocery store when I leave here in ten. I have your back.”
I laugh. “I’m pretty sure you’re going to regret encroaching on a scorned woman’s emotional breakdown time.”
“Pfft. Don’t doubt me, woman!”
He hangs up as my laughter booms around the cab, and by the time I pull up to his house, I’m actually looking forward to helping my friend if only for the reason that I know Nate has no idea what he’s getting into.
“AND THEN SHE JUST KEPT bouncing around on his dick like it was the next best thing to sliced bread. Just bounced and bounced. I really was worried that one of her fake freaking boobs was going to pop!”
“What did Seth do?” Ember asks, her voice low and comforting. My eyes keep pinging back and forth between them, trying not to focus too long on Nikki for fear of my life when she gives me one scary ass look.
Nikki doesn’t even notice Ember, though. She’s too far gone remembering walking in on her man fucking some chick. I shift when she gives me another squinty-eyed look of contempt just because I have a dick.
“He didn’t do jack crap because his hands were tied to the bed!” she screams, still looking at me as if she would carve my eyes out with the spoon she’s eating her ice cream with.
You would think that she would be thankful; I mean I did stop by the grocery store and buy them ten different flavors of ice cream, but nope. The second I walked into the house, she looked like she wanted to murder me along with her ex.
“So,” I start, attempting to make my excuses and escape into my bedroom with some SportsCenter, but I snap my mouth shut when she stabs the air with her spoon. I watch Bam follow the utensil helplessly hoping that something, anything, will fall to the ground for him before looking over at Ember and praying she has the answers as to how I can get out of here.