Chapter 6
Devon paced in the foyer of TLC, waiting for Addison to arrive. He’d stopped at her hotel the night before to see if she wanted to get dinner, but the older woman at the desk had told him Addison was out. No where. No with whom. No idea when she’d return, just that she’d left carrying a yoga mat. He wasn’t sure if she really didn’t know or if she didn’t want to tell a strange man where her female guest had gone.
There were six yoga studios in downtown Charleston, and he’d thought about going by every single one to find her. He managed to stuff his crazy down long enough to realize there was no guarantee she’d even gone to a studio, and wandering around Charleston looking for a woman carrying a yoga mat was over-the-top psycho. Figuring a yoga class couldn’t be more than an hour, he’d asked if it would be okay for him to wait for her return. The woman told him to knock himself out, so he had.
For two hours. Then another twenty minutes, because he appeared to have masochistic tendencies, before finally giving up and leaving.
Graham had sent out a group text for an eight a.m. meeting, which Addison had been part of, so here he waited. The longer he waited, the more amped up he became.
“Son, you’re going to wear a hole in that tile, if you don’t calm down.”
Devon glanced at Graham Senior, sitting behind the huge reception and security desk, sipping coffee from a mug that read, “Every Day I’m Sparkling.”
“’Bout time for a mustache trim, isn’t it?” he asked.
Senior lowered his mug and brushed the edge of his mustache with his hand. “If I trim it, I can’t filter out the grounds of my coffee, now can I?”
He shook his head. “How come you didn’t give any hair to Aiden?”
“You’ll have to talk to his mama about that.” He ran a hand through his thick, gray hair. “Her daddy’s as bald as a newborn. Aiden’d have some hair if he didn’t shave it so close.”
“Yeah, but then he’d look like George Costanza,” Devon said.
“Who’s that? New recruit?”
Before he could explain the character reference, the front door swung open and Addison strolled through, a tote bag slung over one arm and a to-go coffee cup in the other hand. “Morning.”
“Where were you last night?” he asked. It sounded harsh even to his own ears.
Judging by the way her eyes widened and then narrowed, it sounded harsh to her, too. “Excuse me?”
“I stopped by to see how you were doing and whether you wanted to go to dinner, but you weren’t there,” he said.
“I went to yoga.”
“For three hours?”
She shifted her weight, placing it all on one leg, which cocked out a nicely rounded hip. “I went for coffee with the instructor after dinner. Is there a problem?”
He knew—knew—he shouldn’t answer that question, but he was apparently too intent on digging this hole. “We need to have our heads in the game, not be going on dates with yoga instructors.”
Her eyebrows rose, and she pursed her lips, shooting a look at Senior before turning back to him. “Well,sherealized I was upset and offered me a sympathetic shoulder. I didn’t realize making friends and having coffee wasn’t allowed. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
She strode past him, her long legs eating up the distance, before disappearing down the hall.
“Damn it,” he muttered, running his hands through his hair. He deserved the attitude she’d thrown him.
“You’re not a bright one, are you?” Senior asked.
Devon sent him a self-deprecating look. “Not one of my best moments.”
“That the way you meant it to go?”
“Of course not.”
“Better go fix it.” Senior pointed toward the hall with his coffee mug.
“Yeah.” Fuck, he was a dumbass.
