Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 101840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
“Anyway, I really wish you’d come with me. You need a vacation even more than I do.”
“I’m on vacation,” I said. “The Paxis players don’t show up until Friday.”
Her laugh was clear over the line, familiar and comforting for all that she was making fun of me. “A couple of days in the villa to prep for your silly gaming week is hardly a vacation. Besides, I might believe you if you tell me you haven’t checked in with the office today for more than a few minutes.”
I ignored her implication, my eyes sliding to the balcony doors and back away from them. The old gilt mirror on the wall by the suite door caught my attention. My grandmother had checked her lipstick in that mirror every time she’d left the suite.
“It’s weird being here,” I admitted.
“But you were already there in January, right?”
“It’s not the same. With everyone coming, I’m the host. They moved me into the primary suite.”
“Is Willow there, too?” I could hear the hesitation in Celeste’s voice.
“No, why?”
“I don’t know. So you won’t be alone? She’s not my favorite person, but then again, I haven’t spent much time with her.”
“Which is fine because we’re not dating,” I said peevishly, my eyes moving back out through the balcony doors like little torpedoes whose navigation was completely fucked-up. Jett was leaning over, gathering a rogue branch from under a bush. Shorts pulled tight across his ass, and his hamstrings curved along the back of his thighs.
“Well, maybe if you were dating someone, they would be a comfort to you right now,” she snapped back. “And maybe you wouldn’t be such a fucking asshole to someone who loves you.”
I blew out a breath and closed my eyes. “I’m sorry. I just…” I opened my eyes and let them find Jett again. “I haven’t found anyone who’ll let me be who I am.”
“I’m not sure you’ve actually been looking,” she pointed out.
That was probably fair. I didn’t have the bandwidth for it.
“Who are you, Johnny?” she asked gently, using the nickname she’d used since she’d heard my fourth-grade teacher mistakenly call me by my first name. Jett had been righter than he knew when he’d teasingly called me John. “Tell me.”
My sister and I had always been close. Maybe with the exception of the years when I’d been in college and she’d still been in high school, held in my mother’s socialite thrall. But when I’d gone to London for graduate school and she’d done a semester at Oxford, we’d become close again, bonding over the impossibility of feeling sorry for ourselves while also having everything we’d ever asked for.
“’Cept decent parents,” I remembered her muttering while sitting on the floor next to a half-eaten pizza in a takeout box.
“Except that,” I’d agreed.
“Thank god for Grandpa,” she’d added.
“Yep.”
I dragged in a breath and thought about confiding in her. Telling her I was having a midlife crisis a decade too soon. Telling her I’d gone full Richard Gere and hired myself a Julia Roberts… er, a Julian Roberts.
But it was a bell that couldn’t be unrung. If I told her I’d found one man temporarily attractive and intriguing, she’d try to set me up with every gay man she’d ever met.
And that wasn’t what this was.
“I’m a happy workaholic,” I said, stretching my legs out in front of me and reminding myself I needed to do some kind of exercise if I wanted any chance of sleeping tonight. “My first priority is Maris. And not many women are happy to take second place to the job. Or men. You know that.”
She laughed again. “For a minute there, I thought you meant men as in you being with a man.”
I squeezed my back teeth together. “Ha.”
My eyes flicked back outside. To the man who was now carrying a patio umbrella out to a table, his biceps popping and shoulders catching the sun.
“You’re not wrong,” she continued wryly. “My new idea is to date someone at the office. We can be workaholics and still see each other.”
Considering she worked for Maris, I was not impressed with her idea. “Absolutely not.”
Her laughter rang out enough that I could picture her assistant smiling to herself through the door to her own office.
“Locke, I’m hardly going to harass an employee. It was a—”
“Everyone at Maris is my employee,” I reminded her. “My responsibility. And we have rules for a reason. Promise me, Cellie.”
She was suddenly quiet on the other end of the line. Enough that I pictured her silently fuming and began to feel like an ass.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Wow. An apology from a Maris. I should buy a lottery ticket.”
The old joke made me smile, but I was glad she couldn’t see me. “I just—”
“I’m going to pretend you don’t actually think I would date an employee,” she interrupted. “It was a joke. You, of all people, should know that. This call is over. Feel free to try me again when you remember who I am, Locke.”