Playing Dirty

by Tiffany Snow

  What would Ryker say when I told him my parents wanted to meet him? That was kind of a big step. Would it send him running for the hills? All his friends were married and having babies. Was that what he was looking for in this relationship? Was I?

  I went through the motions of setting Parker’s breakfast on his desk, putting away my purse, and checking voice mail and e-mail without really focusing on what I was doing. I didn’t know if I was ready to be in a serious relationship. All of Ryker’s friends had seemed so close-knit yesterday, whereas I’d been the outsider, no matter how friendly they were (or weren’t, as the case with Anisha had been).

  At exactly straight-up eight o’clock, Parker Anderson stepped off the elevator and came striding toward me.

  It was secretly my favorite part of the day, a guilty pleasure where I could watch him without seeming creepy about it. He was in a good mood. I could tell because he’d worn a light blue shirt rather than white—but not a great mood because he’d chosen a dark tie. If he’d been in a great mood, the tie would have been a light shade like a yellow.

  “Good morning, Sage,” he said, tucking his folded newspaper underneath his arm. He carried his briefcase in one hand and reached for the stack of messages I’d set on the chest-high counter that served as the “wall” for my cubicle.

  “Morning,” I replied, wondering if he’d say anything about seeing each other Saturday. His hair had the usual wave that made a lock of it fall over his forehead, which always made my fingers itch to push it back.

  “Did you have fun this weekend?” he asked, still flipping through the messages.

  A generic kind of question. I decided to push a little. “Yes. A friend of Ryker’s has a boat he invited us on.”

  “Thought that was you,” he said.

  “It was.” I was dying to ask about the woman, but I didn’t dare. It wasn’t like I hadn’t known Parker dated around; I just hadn’t seen a face to put with the fact like I had yesterday. Ever since he’d turned me down so blatantly a few months ago when I’d been up front about wanting more with him, we’d gone back to our professional interaction. Nothing too personal. Just business. I didn’t talk about Ryker, and he didn’t talk about the women he saw.

  “You have a nice boat,” I said, hoping it would coax some more information out of him, but he just smiled and said, “Thank you,” then it was back to business.

  “Conner left a message that he needs to reschedule,” he said. “See what I have open on Wednesday.”

  “You had a two o’clock so I moved him there,” I said, scrolling through his calendar on my computer.

  “I thought I had the Bartholomew meeting with Gash and Knight then?”

  “That’s Thursday,” I said. I knew Parker’s schedule better than my own.

  “Great. And make reservations for two at Everest for tomorrow night, will you? Eight o’clock.”

  “Sure,” I said, jotting it down. Everest was this awesome restaurant I’d been dying to go to. Maybe Parker would bring in his leftovers for me. “Which client am I billing?”

  “It’s not for a client. It’s personal.”

  Reflexively, I glanced up at him. Rarely did Parker go out to an expensive, exclusive restaurant on a weeknight unless it was with a client. I couldn’t remember the last time. On the weekend, yeah, he’d take a date somewhere I guess; I didn’t really know since I never made those reservations for him. He’d take care of those himself, so this was new on two fronts.

  “Um, okay, yeah, sure,” I stammered, my mind immediately flying back to the woman on the boat.

  “Thanks, Sage.” Then he was gone, disappearing through the glass door into his office.

  I made the reservations, having to name-drop Parker in order to get them on such short notice. Then I was immersed in the day-to-day work of my job, filing a stack of trades that had come in from last week, replying to e-mails that Parker sent with requests for documents, and a thousand other things that filled up my morning.

  “So how was your weekend?”

  I turned to see Megan leaning on my counter. She was holding two Starbucks cups and handed over one to me.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking a sip. Megan was awesome—she never forgot to have them add extra whip. “It was good. Went on a cool boat with Ryker Saturday and met some of his friends.”

  “Ooh, the friendship test,” she said. “How’d it go?”

  I shrugged. “It was going better until they found out I work for Parker. Apparently, they all hold a grudge.”

  “Wow,” she said. “I get friendship and all, but that’s a little much. It’s not like you had anything to do with it.”

  “I know, and they came around. Well, most of them did.” I decided not to worry about Anisha. “But that’s not all that happened,” I added.

  Megan leaned forward, her unerring spidey sense twitching that I had something juicy to say.

  “Tell me tell me tell me,” she said, rapid-fire.

  I glanced around, but no one was near, so I said in a low voice, “Saw some chick with Parker on his boat, which happened to be right next to ours.”

  Megan loved gossip the way I loved Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and she eagerly leaned forward for more. “Really? You usually don’t see his flavors of the month,” she said. “What did she look like?”

  “Thin. Tall. Gorgeous. Big tits.” I rolled my eyes.

  She grimaced in understanding. I’d told Megan about how close Parker and I had come to taking our relationship to a different level, and how he’d turned me down. I’d decided to move on, but it didn’t make seeing his new, beautiful girlfriend any easier.

  “Not surprised,” she said. “It’s not like he’s looking for a woman who can actually walk and chew gum at the same time.”

  I grinned at her description.

  “Wanna go to lunch today?” she asked, but I shook my head.

  “Can’t. It’s Monday, you know. Parker will eat at his desk so I’ll need to get his lunch. I’ll grab a hot dog like usual.”

  “That’s right. Sorry, I forgot it was Monday,” she said. “The day’s been so long it already felt like Wednesday.”

  I laughed. “I hear ya.”

  “Catch you later,” she said, moving off.

  “Thanks for the coffee,” I called after her. She gave me a finger wave and disappeared around the corner.

  At eleven-thirty, I headed to the restaurant where I always ordered the lunch special on Mondays for Parker. I munched on a plain hot dog as I went. A particularly unpleasant mishap with mustard and my blouse kept me from ever adding any condiments.

  By eleven-fifty, I was on my way back and precisely at noon I was putting the finishing touches on folding Parker’s linen napkin in the shape of fan. The aroma of the roasted chicken and mushroom risotto made my mouth water. Parker had stepped out to go talk to one of the managers who worked underneath him, but I expected he’d be back any moment.

  Heading back to my desk, I glanced toward the elevators and stopped in my tracks.

  The woman from the boat had just stepped off.

  She looked like a fashion plate, wearing black trousers and a black corset with a delicate ivory lace overlay wrapped around her tiny waist. A matching ivory jacket cut high with pointed lapels, a heavy gold necklace, and black suede booties with four-inch heels completed her outfit. I felt downright dowdy in my gray pencil skirt and black blouse. Yes, I’d splurged and worn my red platforms, but still.

  “Can I help you?” I asked as she paused a few feet away, glancing around uncertainly.

  “Yes, please,” she replied. She had a heavy French accent and my stomach sank. “I am looking for Parker.” The way she said his name, with the R rolling in the way I never could perfect back in high school French class, had jealousy inching its way into my gut. Yes, I could certainly see why Parker would be dating her. She’d been gorgeous from afar yesterday. Up close, she was stunningly flawless.

  “He’s not available right now,” I said, knowin
g I probably shouldn’t feel as satisfied to be able to say that as I did.

  She frowned, her perfectly shaded coral lips curving down. “But we are to have lunch together,” she said.

  “You must be mistaken,” I said. “Parker never leaves the office for lunch on Mondays.”

  “Monique, glad you could make it.”

  I turned to see Parker striding toward us, all smiles. For Monique, of course. When he turned to me, it was for a dismissal.

  “Heading to lunch, Sage. I’ll be back shortly.” Taking Monique’s elbow he began to steer her toward the elevators.

  “But your lunch is on your desk,” I blurted. I told myself my dismay was because he was wasting the lunch I’d gotten and not because he was taking Monique to lunch.

  Parker glanced back, but didn’t pause. “Oh yeah. Sorry about that. Forgot to mention it. Just toss it, will you? Or you can have it, if you want.” He shrugged, then they were disappearing inside the elevator and I was left staring after them with my mouth hanging open.

  I stood there like an idiot for a moment. The ugly twisting sensation inside my stomach felt too much like bitter jealousy, but I wanted to focus on that rather than the feeling of utter sadness that lurked right behind it.

  Hurrying into his office, I grabbed the plate and napkin, channeling my jealousy and despair into anger. The least he could have done was tell me. It wasn’t like this was a new thing. I got his lunch every single Monday and I’d done that for almost two years. It wasn’t like him to be so thoughtless.

  I’d worked up a good head of steam by the time I got to the kitchen and I viciously tossed the whole plate, chicken and all, into the sink. It shattered into several pieces, the silverware ricocheting off the side. I stood there, staring at it and breathing hard.

  Did this change in his usually sacrosanct schedule mean he was serious about Monique?

  No, he couldn’t possibly be. He’d told me he didn’t do relationships. This was just … an aberration, that’s all. A one-time thing.

  I shouldn’t care. I was with Ryker and had just been wondering this morning if I wanted things to turn serious between us. Begrudging Parker the same thing was just … really small of me. And not fair to Ryker, either.

  Upset and confused, I went back to my desk, throwing myself back into work and barely glancing up when Parker returned ninety-seven minutes later. Not that I was keeping track. And no way did I log in to his credit card account to see if he’d made any hotel charges today (he hadn’t).

  I knew I was in a sullen, bitchy mood, so I avoided conversations until I could shake myself out of it. Which might not be until tomorrow, I realized with a sigh. Thankfully, it was quitting time and I’d managed to go the whole rest of the afternoon without having to talk to Parker.

  “Sage,” Parker called over the intercom. “Can you come in here, please?”

  Shit. I’d nearly been out the door. Setting my purse back down on my desk, I steeled myself. Plastering on a pleasant expression, I walked in his office. “Yes?”

  “Did you make those reservations for me?” he asked.

  I gritted my teeth. He could’ve asked me that over the intercom, or better yet, e-mail. “Of course,” I said. “Was there anything else?”

  “Sorry again about lunch today,” he said.

  I shrugged and forced a fake smile even though my cheeks felt like they were carved in wood. “It’s not a problem. Will this be a weekly thing?” The question popped out of its own accord.

  “Maybe. I’m not sure.”

  I kept smiling, my lips stretched tight. “Okay then.” I turned to go.

  “Sage—”

  “Yes?” Please just let me leave …

  “Monique thought you were quite pretty,” he said. “I just thought I’d let you know that.”

  Dear God, kill me now. “How … sweet of her,” I said. “She’s … striking. Wherever did you, um, meet her?”

  “A client introduced us,” he said. “She’s from Lyon. She’s a model.”

  I’d been right. Not only the real-deal French, but an honest-to-God model. I hated her with every fiber of my being.

  “That’s so nice,” I lied. “And you’re taking her to Everest.”

  “She’s French. She’s a foodie.”

  “Of course.”

  An awkward silence descended, but I was too irrationally upset to bother trying to break it. I just stood there in front of his desk, waiting.

  “How are you and Ryker doing?” he asked.

  “Fine,” I said stiffly. “We’re fine.”

  More silence.

  “Was there anything else?” I asked.

  He studied me, the blue of his eyes piercing, until I flushed and looked away.

  “I don’t mean to be curt,” I said, trying to push back my emotions and react the way any normal person would in this situation. “I’m glad you met her. She … seems nice.”

  Maybe it hadn’t been that Parker didn’t want a relationship. Maybe he just hadn’t wanted a relationship with me.

  The thought hurt, which made me feel even worse. I’d thought I was over Parker, over wanting anything between us. I cared about Ryker. A lot. Maybe I was even falling in love with him. So why was I so upset that Parker had maybe found someone, too? I should want him to be happy. If I really cared about him, I’d want him to be happy no matter what.

  With that echoing inside my head, I blurted, “I hope you’re happy. With her, I mean.” My throat thickened and I swallowed hard.

  “Sage—”

  “Yeah, I gotta go,” I managed, backing toward the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.” I didn’t wait to see if he had more to say; I grabbed my purse off my desk and jumped in the elevator just as it was about to close.

  I had to get a grip, I decided as I unlocked my apartment door and headed inside. Control my emotions, not the other way around. Chocolate would help with that. Specifically, peanut M&M’s.

  Digging into my cabinet, I pulled out the cookie jar my mom had given me one year for Christmas. I never put cookies in it, because frankly they wouldn’t last very long, so I filled it with peanut M&M’s. Dangerous to have around, which is why I kept it on a high shelf in the back of my pantry as a deterrent, which didn’t matter one little bit when I wanted them. But I could still pretend.

  Ryker called as I was heating up a microwave dinner and sipping on a glass of wine.

  “Hey, babe, how was your day?” he asked.

  “Fine. The usual,” I said. I never went into great detail about my work or mentioned Parker at all, if I could help it. “You?”

  “Cracked a case, made an arrest. Think we even got enough evidence to put him away, which is nice.”

  “Congrats,” I said.

  “Another day in paradise,” he joked.

  “Speaking of which, my mom called today.” I reached for another handful of M&M’s.

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Fine,” I said as I munched. “But her and Dad are going to be in town tomorrow night and … they want to take us to dinner.” I swallowed and took a breath before blurting the bad news. “They want to meet you.” I had no clue how he was going to react to this. We hadn’t discussed being serious or even exclusive, but had let the relationship kind of progress at its own speed.

  “That sounds great,” he said.

  “Really?”

  He laughed, a low chuckle that thrummed in my ear. “Yes, really.”

  I smiled into the phone. “Okay then. They said they’d be here at seven.”

  “I’ll probably have to meet you at the restaurant,” he said.

  “Okay. I’ll text you as soon as I know where we’re going. Are you coming over tonight?”

  “Gotta take a rain check on that, too,” he said. “But I have a few minutes if you want to talk dirty to me.”

  I snorted. “Yeah. That’ll happen. Go arrest some bad guys. I’ll talk to you later.”

  We disconnected and I went back to my M&M’s and w
ine, which wasn’t as bad a combination as it sounded.

  * * *

  The next morning, I’d resolved not to think at all about my confused feelings for Parker. How I was able to compartmentalize, I had no clue, but work went on as usual. Megan showed up at my desk for a mid-afternoon gossip break.

  “So how’s Todd?” I asked. Todd was relatively new to the company, an attorney from Omaha who’d wasted no time in asking Megan out a few months ago.

  Megan grimaced.

  “Oh no. What happened?”

  “We had a fight,” she said, looking glum. She leaned her hip against my desk as she scooted a little closer. “About his ex.”

  “What about her?”

  “They’re still communicating,” she said. “You know, decided to be friends or something because he wanted to move here and she didn’t, so they broke it off.”

  “That’s not good,” I said. “What if she changes her mind? Or he does? Is he still in love with her?”

  Now Megan looked downright dejected. “Yeah, I think so. I told him I wasn’t comfortable with him still being so close to his ex—I mean they text like all the time—but he said they were just friends and I shouldn’t worry.”

  “Which means you should worry.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And to top it off,” she continued, “Brian’s been turning up again, sending me random texts about work stuff.”

  “No way is he texting you again,” I said in disbelief. Megan had crushed on the eccentric and socially awkward IT guy for quite a while before giving it up as hopeless.

  “I know, right?”

  We commiserated for a while on the sometimes inexplicable behavior of men before we had to get back to our mutual jobs. But Megan talking about Todd still being hung up on his ex had me thinking about Natalie.

  A few months ago, I’d found a photo of Ryker, Parker, and the woman I’d assumed to be Natalie tucked away in a dresser drawer in Ryker’s bedroom. Keeping something like that made me think that maybe Todd wasn’t the only one still hung up on an ex. And I was confused as to the conflicting reports I’d heard about Natalie. Ryker made her seem akin to a saint when he spoke of her, whereas Amy hadn’t appeared to like her very much at all.