“Just right. A secret for us geeks.” He grinned.
Donahue was next, but he only signed his initials. I waved at them again and was relieved when I managed to make it along the hallway and through the golden doors of the elevator without seeing anyone else who would want to talk about my cast. I arrived at the executive suite and made my way into the slightly intimidating space occupied by Casey’s assistant, Raven. The smell of pine hit my nose first thing from the potted tree near the small waiting area, and it was a weird thing to be reminded of forests when I was in such a high-gloss office space.
Raven sat perched on an ergonomic chair behind her long, curved desk. Her fancy purple dress with fluttery sleeves reminded me of psychedelic mushroom caps, and she had a string of matching beads at her throat. Already hard at work, she stopped typing to adjust her headphones tight over her ears. My heart kicked up and raced as I edged toward her desk. Casey was visible in his office through the glass behind her, with his shoulders hunched. Whatever he was working on must’ve made him mad because he had his teeth gritted like a bear ready to attack.
My lips twitched.A bear. A big Casey bear in his number crunching den, where he gnaws on ones and zeroes like bones.
“Oh! Hello, sweetie,” Raven said and stood. I jolted my attention back to her. “Casey said you need someone to help you with arrangements for your father?” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “He’s extremely busy this morning, but he asked me to tell you he’d like to take you to lunch today, if that’s convenient for you.” Her smile slipped. “Actually, he said to tell you he’s taking you to lunch today, but he can be so rude sometimes,” she said, raising her voice. She turned to stare daggers through the glass at him, and he waved his hand in our direction but didn’t look away from his work. It sucked being ignored, even though he was busy.
I took a deep breath. “Okay.”
“Great.” She swung back around to focus all her very intense attention on me, and I cringed. “Now. What sort of trouble is your father in?” She laid her headphones aside as if she knew this wouldn’t be a short problem.
My tongue felt massive in my mouth and I reached up to turn the ring in my lip back and forth with the tip of my finger. I was taking too long to speak, and the more time dragged by, the more difficult it became to answer, until I just wanted to get back in the elevator. “Oh… I… I can just take care of it,” I murmured.
Her smile hardened. “Nope. Let me tell you something. This is personal, I know it.” She eyed my cast, but I was grateful when she didn’t ask more about it. “Take the help. It’s difficult to do things by yourself when you don’t know where to start. If it makes you feel better, I’m not doing this as an assistant for Mr. Uhlig, but as a person who knows what it’s like dealing with family members who have brushed up against the prison system. Casey knows that about me. I’m happy to help.”
“How did he know? About your problems, I mean.”
She tilted her head and called over her shoulder, “You dating this boy or what?”
Casey snapped his head up and finally met my gaze. My face burned as he smiled at me. “Just help him,” he bellowed back through his open office door.
“I’m his sister Nevaida’s wife.” She held up a hand with a golden band on it and beamed in my direction. “Don’t be shy with me.”
She might have thought she was being helpful, and maybe she was, however, my awkwardness knew no bounds, and now I had a whole new reason to be nervous. She was Casey’s family? “I’m not sure I can help it. The shy. I am shy,” I said.
She laughed, and I made my way around the desk as she wheeled another chair out from Casey’s office and placed it beside hers.
Casey.I shot a quick look over my shoulder through the glass into his inner sanctum. Again, he didn’t seem to care I was here. I wanted to go in and simply say hello, but he was staring so hard at his screen he must really be into whatever he was doing. I knew how it was to get jolted out of my workflow. Still, I wanted him to notice me, which was scary and different—and made my body tingle happily. I almost never wanted anyone to pay attention to me. I set my coffee down and stared in confusion at a protein bar Raven dropped in front of me.
“In the family, there’s only Nevaida and Casey who are gay. His parents don’t mind Nevaida, but he’s never really said anything to everyone. He talks to Nev, though, so we knew.” She practically bounced as she sat on her chair. “That must have been one hell of an apology he laid on you yesterday.” Her pretty brown eyes sparkled with interest.
I stared down at the tips of my Vans. “Uh… it was.”
“Well, I won’t go on about it. Let’s get things figured out for you. What did your dad do?” She wheeled her chair closer to me, and I stared at the tapered ends of her satiny purple heels tapping on the floor.
“Uh… I’m honestly not sure. Last night was… weird.”
Casey came out and my body flashed hot. The woodsy scent of his cologne swirled into the room with him and had me thinking about the way he smelled last night when I was in his arms. He slapped a card on the desk in front of me, and my sex-swamped brain didn’t register what it was at first, but then I recognized the emblem for the New Gothenburg Police Department.
“Sorry. I have to get this file to a client by noon. Eat,” he said and patted the protein bar. He didn’t touch me, but my stomach warmed at the smug smile he gave me before he turned around and strutted right back into his inner office. He left his door open, like he was making sure I did what I was supposed to do, and my face flushed as Raven drew the card across the desk. She picked it up with her glossy purple fingernails and held it like it was poisonous.
“Oh, these cops. They’re so shifty,” she muttered. “Why didn’t they just say last night what was going on? They didn’t talk to you, sweetie?”
I shrugged, not sure how much I wanted to tell her.
“Do you want to call?” she asked, and I latched on to her unspoken offer like a lifeline.
“Can you do it? I….” The tech tablet slipped out from under my arm into my lap, and I held it up to her. “Introvert. Not good on the phone.”
She laughed, and I was surprised when she picked up the handset of the big landline phone near her computer and passed it to me. She put on her headset. “We’ll do it together. We can both be on the line this way.”
She dialed, and I waited. It turned out there wasn’t much to say when you had Raven at your side.
“I have his son here,” she snapped at Officer Rollan once he was on the phone with us. “Say something.”
“Hi,” I mumbled, and then she was off leading the call. She talked a lot and asked a bunch of good questions. Dad had initially been charged with disorderly conduct and public intoxication, which wouldn’t have been much, but then he bitched out the cops and decided throwing beer cans at them was a good idea, and it had all gone downhill from there. He must have been even drunker by the time they showed up than he was when he hit me before I left. Guilt bathed my insides in acid. He shouldn’t have been alone, but he’d hurt me. What else could I have done?
