She handed Landon her glass and kissed him on the cheek, then left them for the kitchen. He set the snacks on the coffee table and drank his fiancée’s wine. “Sit down. Take a load off.”
Zoe sat on the comfortable brown sofa, not surprised when Gavin sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulders.
Landon sat kitty-corner from them in a side chair big enough to fit his frame. “Zoe, I need to ask you something.”
She drank more wine. She had a feeling she’d need it to deal with the Donnigans en masse. “Shoot.”
“You sure he hasn’t coerced you in any way to be here? Blackmail, threats? What’s he got on you? I can help.”
“Shut up, Landon.” Gavin glared.
Zoe laughed. “See, now that’s funny. Well, to be honest, he wore me down. So many months of constant whining and begging. I took pity on him.”
“Ha. Thought so.” Landon grinned.
Gavin wasn’t bothered in the slightest. “See? Tenacity pays off in the end. And now, look. Hottest woman at the gym is into me. I amsoThe Man.”
“Well, you’re definitelyaman. I can agree with that.” Zoe held up her wineglass and clinked it with Gavin’s glass. He was such a goof.
They ate veggies with dip, argued over who had the better technique in the self-defense class—which Zoe had to admit belonged to Gavin—and discussed the latest knucklehead in Landon’s office, which amused Zoe to no end.
“These people, they’re morons, right?” Landon growled. “People who demand privileges and special favors because they asked for them, not because they worked to earn those favors.” Landon sneered. “Fu—frickin’ Ed Werner. I had to counsel the douche three times before I could fire him. First he came to work smelling like booze. Then he missed an important meeting. Right there, I would have canned his ass, but corporate policy mandated a strike three. When he showed late—no calls, no texts, nothing—two dayslater, I fired his ass.”
“Wow. Did he say why he’d been gone?”
Landon shook his head. “Apparently things at home, and with the mistress, weren’t going well. His midlife crisis is now someone else’s problem.”
“Nice.” Gavin laughed. “I bet you tore him up.”
“Well, yeah.”
Zoe wouldn’t have wanted to be that guy, facing down a fire-breathing Landon. For all that they were clearly brothers, having similar facial features and mannerisms, Landon seemed the more aggressive of the two. Gavin was more laid-back. Then too, Zoe was partial to dark hair and gray eyes. And that smile on Gavin’s handsome face when he looked at her, like he was now.
“I bet Zoe can be just as tough in the office.” He nodded. “She’s a hard-ass.”
“Not really.” She preened at what she considered a compliment. “Well, there was that one admin assistant at one of the clinics who kept screwing up our training sessions by scheduling her people at all the wrong times. I don’t know if she just didn’t like me or was bad at her job, but she had a real attitude when we’d deal with each other. I tried to be nice. Then I just took her aside and had a conversation, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh? Catfight?”
“Relax, Gavin.” She huffed. “I chewed her out is all.”
Landon leaned back, grinning. “Bet that set her straight.”
“Well, I was professional until she called me a bitch and poked me in the chest.”
“Seriously?” Gavin blinked.
Zoe flushed. “She had some deluded notion that one of the doctors she had a crush on was lusting after me. Not the case at all, but she was too immature, and plain crazy, to see that. Soon as she touched me, I kind of went off on her.” Zoe smiled, feeling the mean. “Nokind ofabout it. I told her to stop thinking with her head up her ass, that she had no shot with Dr. Hottie because he only liked eighteen-year-olds, and that she needed to grow up or get fired, because she clearly sucked at her job. I also might have told her to fix her appearance, because we’re a professional organization, and she dressed like a groupie at a rock concert. I don’t care who you are. No one needs to see that much cleavage.” Before they could say anything, she added, “Holly was maybe an A cup and trying way too hard.”
“Oh. Well then.” Gavin glanced at her. “You know, you could wear V-necks a lot more than you do.”
“Gavin.”
Landon laughed. “That’s what I’m always telling Ava, and she’s professional this, doctoral that.”
“I heard my name,” Ava called out. “Dinner.”
They chatted more about work nightmares, with Ava adding some of her own. Nothing client-related, because Landon was right. She took her job very seriously. But she told some funny stories about what she observed when out in town, putting a clinical spin on the incidents that Zoe found hilarious.
