by Max Monroe
“We have an understanding.”
I raised an eyebrow, and it pulled one corner of my mouth up with it involuntarily. “You have an understanding?”
He flashed a secret smile. “Yeah, he understands that whatever he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
I smiled full out. “Kline Brooks would lose his shit if he saw this.”
A hand went to his hip. “Well, good thing he’ll never know, right?”
“Cool it, diva,” I teased. “I won’t spill the deets on your shrine to One D.”
He feigned offense. “Oh, no, honey. You did not just call me a diva.”
“Oh, but I did,” I said, walking over by Mila.
“You’re lucky I refuse to corrupt the young and innocent. Otherwise, you’d be dealing with a full-on catfight, Cassandra.”
“Knock, knock,” I announced as Mila and I opened the door to Thatch’s office.
He glanced up from his computer, and a giant smile consumed his face.
My chest grew tight at the sight of his radiating affection, and I inhaled a cleansing breath to ease the discomfort.
Man, I probably needed to see a doctor. No one under thirty should be experiencing chest pain. Well, unless they dabbled in cocaine and attended drug-fueled raves on the weekends. Which, obviously, I didn’t.
Although, I could probably make good use of glow sticks with a naked Thatch. I’d rave all over his Supercock, minus the drugs of course. That man didn’t need any performance enhancers. Any increase to his stamina and my pussy would need a cane to hobble herself onto his dick.
Mila let go of my hand, ran around his desk, and hopped up into his lap. “Hi, Uncle Thatch!” she greeted and placed her hands on each side of his face before kissing his nose. “Ready to go?”
He nodded and kissed her forehead. “What’s on the agenda today, sweetheart?”
She jumped off his lap and handed him a T-shirt and hat out of her backpack. “You have to change your clothes first so everybody matches.”
He tilted his head to the side and glanced up at me. His eyes made the circuit down my body and then back up again—paying particular attention to my T-shirt that read, Liam is my spirit animal. They were fully amused by the time they met my gaze again.
“I’m supposed to wear these?” he asked Mila.
She nodded. “Yep. You’re gonna look so awesome!”
Five minutes later, Thatch was walking out of the en suite bathroom in his office and lifting Mila up to carry her piggyback style. He looked outrageous with a Niall is my boyfriend T-shirt stretched tight across his huge chest and a One Direction baseball cap worn backward on his head.
“How do I look, Mila?” he asked.
“So cool!” Mila said, resting her chin on his shoulder.
His eyes met mine and he grinned. “Next time, Aunt Cassie and I are going to switch. I like Liam more than Niall.”
“No way,” I disagreed, running a hand across the words on the front of my shirt. “You’ll have to fight me for this dreamboat.”
“I have no issues with wrestling you, Crazy.” He winked.
“Can we go?” Mila asked impatiently. “I’m hungry.”
Thatch grabbed his new wallet, keys, and phone and slid them into his pockets and managed it all with Mila still hanging from his back. “Let’s hit it,” he said and grabbed my hand, leading us out of his office and toward the elevator.
As we rode the cart down to ground level, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling as I looked at Thatch, decked out in One Direction fan gear, with Mila on his back. No man in his right mind would subject himself to this willingly.
But Thatch wasn’t a normal kind of guy.
He was different.
And I really liked his kind of different.
“Call on line one from Mr. Sanchez,” Madeline buzzed in as I closed the first-quarter financial statement for Hughes International. They were a relatively new client, so I’d been scouring the details of their money management and hiring expenses and comparing it to their investment portfolio in an attempt to map out a new system of checks and balances. They’d had a plan in place, but they obviously hadn’t been making optimal financial decisions for a while. In fact, the best one they’d made was paying me to get them back on track.
“Thanks, Mad,” I responded after saving my spreadsheet. I kept backups for backups, but I wasn’t particularly keen on having even a chance of losing weeks’ worth of work.
“Hey, Carl,” I greeted one of my longtime clients as I clicked on to the line. “What can I do for you?”
“In a hurry to get me off the phone, Thatch?” he greeted, his voice amused.
“No way. Just a man with many tasks and know you’re the same. I also have a feeling you’re calling to invite me on an all-expenses-paid vacation, and the sooner I get off the phone with you, the sooner I can get a tan in the Southern California sun.”
He laughed and I smiled and rubbed at the edge of my desk. He started talking about a new plant in Encino and all of the questions they had about what that kind of long-term investment would do to their long-term financial goals, so I picked up a pen and doodled on the edge of my calendar as he ran through the particulars.
Squiggles turned into a sun, and before I knew it, a stick woman with a fantastic rack appeared with a bouquet of roses next to her. I scribbled it out and dropped the pen before I ended up dropping Carl’s financially motivated ball.
“I know it’s short notice, but I’ve got the projections team creating a mock plan, and this is the only date our contractor can walk the property for the next six months.”
“When did you say you needed me there again?” I asked, knowing I hadn’t been paying enough attention to hear it the first time.
“Tomorrow. I went ahead and put a hold on a ticket for you out of JFK at noon, but I can have Ashley change it if that doesn’t work for you. We walk the plant on Thursday morning.”
I glanced back at my scratched out doodle and the clock on the wall. Just about twenty-four hours away. The trip actually sounded like a nice reprieve from my uncharacteristically empty apartment.
I’d lived there alone for nearly seven years, and now, two days without Cassie while she was on a shoot in Las Vegas, and the place seemed hollow. We’d transitioned into a different place in our relationship sometime during the last week, coexisting in the same apartment so naturally, it was almost scary.
Our mornings always started with a cup of coffee together, after an initial superficial battle over having woken her up, and our nights ended with Cass cuddled inside my arms whether we were watching TV or catching our breath after orgasms—or both. We filled the time in between with frequent texts and phone calls and making plans for dinner or something to do for the evening.
Cass had even taken it upon herself to pick up my dry cleaning on Monday afternoons, and I’d found myself in the checkout line at the grocery store with a cart full of random, girly bullshit that she’d added to our list more than once.
Sure, we still pushed at each other with pranks and surprises, but I was really fucking enjoying it. It made things interesting, and I couldn’t seem to get enough.
We’d even started a little joint prank of our own, texting Kline from her number with the same kind of bullshit subscription messages she’d sent me what seemed like a lifetime ago. She was seriously gifted at coming up with different shit to say, and when I found out over dinner one night that Kline didn’t know her new number yet, the opportunity to mess with him was too good to pass up.
“I’ll be there. I’ll expect donuts and coffee on Thursday morning, though. No industrial tour is acceptable without them.”
He laughed openly. “You drive a hard bargain, but it’s done. I’ll make sure there are donuts and coffee waiting.”
“Fantastic.”
If anything could pull me out of my funk, it’d be sweet treats and a run under the California sun to burn them off.
As soon as my desk phone landed in the cr
adle, I picked up my cell and unlocked the screen.
Me: How’s Las Vegas?
Cassie: Hotter than a ball sac.
Me: Is that your chosen analogy because the actual temperature of a ball sac is fresh in your mind?
Cassie: Huh?
Me: Have you been fondling anyone’s balls?
Cassie: Fuck no. Do you have any idea how quickly I’d have to make contact after showering to avoid ball sweat? It’s pretty much impossible, and I’m not really into that kind of thing like Georgie.
Me: Wait…what about Georgia being into ball sweat?
Cassie: Nevermind. It was a whole thing during the Kleorgie breakup debacle. I think you had to be there.
My thumb hovered over the little phone icon when a banner for another message crossed the top of my screen. I tapped the icon to open my messages again instead.
Cassie: I gotta go. My entourage is calling. Say hi to your boner for me.
Me: He says hi back. And he misses your tits.
I miss you. I sighed and took a deep breath as I stared at my phone for an embarrassingly long amount of time before accepting there wouldn’t be any more messages. She was busy working, the very thing I should have been doing, but my concentration was pretty much shot.
There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell I’d be able to get my head back into third-quarter analytics and projections based off my suggested budget cuts and advertisement allocation for Hughes International.
I considered calling Kline, but I knew he’d actually be working.
I dialed Wes instead. He answered on the third ring.
“What’s up?”
I spun in my chair to face the window. “Just seeing what you’re up to, Whitney.”
“On the West Coast again.”
“Ah. Back for another round. Where are you this time? I’m headed toward that end of the country tomorrow.”
“Seahawk territory. I’ve got a couple of meetings with guys coming to the end of their contract.”
“A Tuesday afternoon and everyone is actually working? I don’t understand.”
“It’s that whole being an adult thing. I can see why you wouldn’t be familiar with it.”
“Ha-ha,” I mocked.
“Why aren’t you working?”
“My eyes were starting to cross,” I lied.
“Ah. Well, sorry I can’t spend hours on the phone giving you a cuddle.”
“I’m flipping you off right now, in case you were wondering.”
“We don’t have time for that either. Go get something to eat. Preferably at my restaurant.”
“Discount?” I asked even though I knew his answer.
“Fuck no.”
“You know, it’s okay to admit you’re in love with me. It won’t make you less of a man.”
“Bye, Thatch.”
I laughed as I pulled the phone away from my ear. That had actually made me feel better. Fuck, I have weird comforts.
I looked down at my phone once more before deciding to be done for the day. I had work, but I didn’t have meetings, so I could pretend I had nothing.
Shutting down both of my monitors, I grabbed my suit jacket from the coat hook and filled my pockets with my keys, wallet, and phone.
Madeline looked up as I walked out. “I’m gonna take off for the day. I just got a last-minute meeting with Carl Sanchez, so I’m headed out there tomorrow on a noon flight out of JFK.”
“I’ll book you a car,” she replied, making a note on a convenient stack of Post-it notes.
“Thanks. Feel free to work from home while I’m gone, okay?”
She smiled, and I knew it’d been the right move to offer. She worked really fucking hard for me no matter where I was or what time I called. I had other people who worked for me in a sense, but she was the only other one I kept in the office, and she did a pretty bang-up job of managing my entire life.
I spent a large portion of my time out of the office, meeting with clients and doing a lot of it after hours. The time clock never really stopped, but no matter how much I took on, it never turned into a group activity. When these people came to me, they paid a very large premium to get financial advice or planning from me—not someone working for me.
She smirked. “I would have done it with or without your permission.”
I laughed outright. “See, Mad, that’s why we work well together. You don’t take any of my shit.”
“I’m also an organizational genius.”
“That too.”
“Have fun in L.A.,” she said in dismissal, and I laughed.
“Okay, I get it. I’m going now.”
She just raised her brows.
I jumped toward the exit and laughed while raising my hands in the air. “Okay, okay. Geez. And in my own office.”
L.A. looked pretty much the same as the last time I’d seen it. Bright and bustling and filled with traffic.
Big palms lined the streets, and the sun beat down on the exposed skin of my forearms. The intensity of the rays seemed stronger here, but at least it didn’t feel like you were being choked by the humidity.
The overwhelming odor of piss also wasn’t as strong as in New York. It existed, kind of lingering in the background, but it wasn’t nearly as pungent.
Pulling my arm back through the window and into the cab, I grabbed my phone from my pocket and opened up the text messages. I hadn’t heard from Cassie since yesterday.
Me: Rule #40: Take at least one recreational trip to L.A. a year.
Cassie: Recreational? Are you talking about drugs, Thatcher?
Me: I’m here on business. I’d rather be here for fun.
With you.
Cassie: How did I not know you were going to L.A.?
Me: I just found out I was coming yesterday. After we talked.
Technically, I’d found out before we talked. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t said anything, but it was probably more because she’d cut the conversation short than anything nefarious.
Cassie: Oh.
My eyebrows pulled together at her uncharacteristically normal—simple—response.
Me: Everything okay?
Cassie: Yeah. It’s nothing.
Me: What’s nothing?
Cassie: Just my assistant. It’s not really worth going into it. We had a little disagreement earlier today, but I think it’s resolved. Honestly, it’s nothing.
It seemed like she was trying awfully hard to convince someone. I didn’t know if it was her or me.
Me: Call me. We can talk about it.
Cassie: Thanks, but I can’t right now. About to start shooting.
Desperate to make her laugh, I typed out a message.
Me: With your camera, right? I know how much you’re dying to shoot some kids.
Cassie: Ha fucking ha. The FBI is probably monitoring both of our phones now.
Me: You better send a tit shot, then. That’ll save us.
Cassie: Put your boner away, Thatcher.
I smiled then and started to type a message when her text bubbles stopped me.
Cassie: Would I ever be able to manage your ego if I told you I missed you?
I smiled and typed the least funny thing I’d ever been excited to say.
Me: I miss you too, honey.
I needed a new assistant. That much was clear to me.
Over the past two days, Olivia had started to show her true colors. Her motives for turning the tables were unclear, but whatever the reason, her professional attitude was sorely lacking and she seemed to enjoy doing the exact opposite of everything I asked. When I’d needed the lights dimmed, she had blinded everyone on set by making them fluorescent. When I’d asked her to let two of the male models know we’d changed their shoot time, she had made sure their arrival was two hours later than I needed.
If she could break it, she would, and she did.
And I was beyond tired of her shit.
Normally, I wouldn’t sweat something like this; I’d just fire her and be done
with it.
But this was a girl I had generously taken under my wing and shown the ropes. She’d been with me for more than a blip in time, and I had given her an all-access pass into my career in hopes that it would help her once she started to establish herself.
Obviously, that had been a big fat fucking mistake.
Olivia was a user. Rather than utilizing what I’d offered respectfully, she had chosen to try to screw me over. I’d found out from one of my close friends at Men’s Health that she had already started reaching out to my contacts and worming her way into their good graces. The girl appeared hell-bent on destroying me and then taking my career.
I hated that this was bothering me as much as it was. I hated that I was letting this cunt get the best of me. And I hated that I’d even tried to make nice with her yesterday. I should’ve kicked her lying ass to the curb and been done with it.
I plodded through my hotel suite at the Wynn and grabbed my phone off the nightstand. As I stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the Vegas Strip, I wasn’t real sure what to do with myself.
I felt pathetic. I mean, fuck, I was in Vegas, and I was holed up inside my suite. I should have been out on the Strip, grabbing a drink, playing a little blackjack. Basically, anything but moping around like a sad sack.
The desert sun shone down across the concrete utopia, glittering rays bouncing from one ornate building to the next, and instead of thinking of something fun to do, all I could think was, I wish Thatch were here.
Maybe that line of thinking should have surprised me, but it didn’t. He had barged his way into my life—or maybe I’d barged my way into his?—and I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted him to leave.