Jake clenched his jaw. “I’m aware of my professional confidentiality requirements, thanks.”Fucker. He let the paper slip between his fingers to land on the desk in front of him. “I’m out. See you tomorrow.”
Before he left the building though, Jake was drawn back to the recording studio, where he discovered that Dave had joined Mabel in the booth. He watched through the glass as they spoke into the mics, making goofy faces and feeding off each other’s energy. A whisper of envy curled through his brain. Sure, he had friends in Chicago. Work friends and friends from school. His sister and her social circle. Milo. But Mabel and Dave had the most natural partnership he’d ever seen.
Then his envy vanished in a wave of unease. Brandon wanted to pull these two apart? These good partnersandgood friends? The thought was monstrous. His chest clenched, and he spun away from the window. He needed to get a grip on himself before their outing tomorrow.
Seven
This was a bad idea. She should put up a token effort to get out of it.
“Honestly,” she said when Jake arrived in the greenroom to collect her, “the furniture’s fine. There’s no need—”
He shot her a censorious look and, without breaking eye contact, walked up to the desk and applied the lightest bit of pressure to the front corner. It tilted crazily, and all the contents started to slide toward the edge. “Fine, you say?”
“Ugh, point taken.” She snatched up a pen that rolled across the surface on the way to the floor. “Let’s do it.”
Not like this was a punishment. She was playing hooky on a sunny Friday in September, and she was doing it with a gorgeous guy. A gorgeous, off-limits guy, but still.
“Want me to drive?” She jangled her keys at him, but he shook his head.
“Driving helps me learn the city better, but I’ll take a furniture store recommendation if you’ve got one.”
“Sure,” she said, snapping her seat belt on as the Jeep roared to life. Skip’s voice poured from the radio, introducing the next set of Brick music, and she turned to him with a grin. “Aww, you listen to the station in your car?”
He slid on a pair of sunglasses, hiding his eyes from her. “Of course. What did you expect?”
She rooted through her mess of a bag in search of her own shades. “I don’t know, NPR maybe? Or, like, aggressive jazz?”
“Jazz? You think I’m a jazz guy?”
He sounded so genuinely offended that she reconsidered her flippant assessment. “It just goes with your fancy suits and super-serious numbers job.”
“Wow,” he said. “Jazz and suits and numbers. You make me sound like a real Renaissance man.”
She flicked her eyes sideways and played with fire. “I’m sure it’s a turn-on for the ladies.” She heard the flirtiness in her tone and couldn’t bring herself to regret it despite it being a clear violation of her rules.
“Mmm, yes,” he said drily. “As we’ve discussed, chicks dig my twelve-hour workdays and single-minded pursuit of a partnership at my firm.”
He didn’t elaborate further, and because her wrist still burned with the memory of his fingers pressing into her skin the day before, she kept pushing when she should be changing the subject. “Okay, but what about high school? I know you don’t date much now, but I bet the prom queen/cheerleader set loved you back then.”
His laugh didn’t hold much humor. “That’s abigno.”
She gave a theatrical gasp and clutched her hands to her chest. “Were the girls at your high school all tragically robbed of the power of sight?”
“Not really their fault.” His eyes didn’t stray from the road. “I didn’t try very hard with any of them, and I was busy with my after-school jobs.” He flicked his gaze over to her. “Also, it took a while for me to grow into my nose.”
Mabel studied it, straight and high-bridged. “It’s a good nose.”
“Well,now,” he said with a faint smile.
“That reminds me so much of Dave.” She looked away from his profile to stare at the road. Time to pull it back in. This was a work outing, and ogling the driver could only lead to trouble. “He was scrawny when we met in college. I swear, I could’ve beaten him up and taken his lunch money when we got paired up on a project in our first radio class.”
That pulled a bigger smile from him. He glanced over at her while they waited at a stoplight, but she only saw her own reflection in the mirrored lenses of his aviators.
After a moment, he asked abruptly, “Have you ever done the radio thing without Dave?”
“You mean like when he’s sick?”
“No, I mean have you ever had a show on your own, full time?”
