She patted Dave’s shoulder, and he shrugged and turned back to the questions. “Doesn’t bother me if you objectify my new bosses.”
“Excellent,” she said, sighing dreamily. “Because Brandon’s at, like,peakhotness.”
“I don’t think we should obj— Wait,Brandon?” Mabel twisted her face in confusion. “Jake’s clearly the hotter one.”
Ana screwed up her face right back. “I guess, if you prefer your men dark and handsome and terrifyingly square-jawed.”
“Um, I thought everybody preferred their men dark and handsome and terrifyingly square-jawed.” Mabel did anyway. Shedefinitelydid.
Ana just sniffed. “Some of us prefer more refined features.”
“Oh, you poor thing. You enjoy refined male beauty, yet you ended up with this troll.” She jerked a thumb toward Dave. “Do you make him wear a lucha libre mask around the house?”
Dave reached for Ana’s hand and lifted it to his mouth for a kiss. “That lucha libre mask is a very important part of our lovemaking, what with my wife’s Mexican heritage.”
Ana yanked his hand away. “Oh my God, do not drag my heritage into your weird mask fetish.”
“Are you calling my mask kink weird?”
“Eww, David! I waskidding!” Mabel hollered, slapping her hands over her ears. “Can one of you hit me over the head really hard so I forget the past sixty seconds?”
The Chiltons’ evil laughter didn’t stop until she wrestled the sample trivia questions away from Dave and grimly set to work answering the ones he’d left blank, but even with their combined efforts, a few questions remained stubbornly unanswered.
“I give up,” she announced.
“I don’t.” Dave slid her a glance, then shouted toward the hallway. “Hey! Can I get a consult from our in-house accountant?”
“What are you doing?” she hissed, but her grinning partner just ignored her to address the man who materialized in the doorway.
“We’re working on some trivia questions and could use help from an expert.”
“Uh, sure.” Jake Carey stepped warily into the deejay’s natural habitat, eyes drifting over the yellowed station promo posters and pinned-up leis from a long-ago party tacked to the far wall before landing on her and then Dave. “As long as it’s about banking reform, I should be helpful.”
Mabel let loose with an embarrassingly loud guffaw, then clapped her hands over her mouth, leaving Dave to say smoothly, “Actually, itisabout banking reform.”
Jake glanced at his watch and then shot them a confident smile. “Okay. Hit me.”
Still giggling a little at the absurd coincidence, Mabel read off the sheet, “Which 2002 law created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to cut down on fraud?”
“The Sarbanes-Oxley Act,” Jake said immediately.
This time Ana was the one to burst into shocked laughter. “He’s right!”
“Seriously? Who remembers Sarbanes-Oxley?” Mabel demanded.
“Accountants,” Jake said drily. “Accountants remember Sarbanes-Oxley.”
“Shoot.” Ana stood and snagged her blazer. “I need to run. But I’ll let the trivia committee know that we’re on the right track for difficulty and range of topics. Thanks, all.”
“I’ll walk you out.” Dave grabbed his wife’s hand, and they strolled out of the room, leaving Mabel alone with Jake, who made no move to leave.
“What else you got?” he asked, leaning forward to look at the list.
Was that a little competitive streak coming out? Okay then. She looked down at the last of the unanswered questions on the sheet. “I don’t suppose you know what pop artist recorded a song featuring the line ‘She’s like so whatever’?”
One corner of his mouth lifted into a smile as he reached for the paper. “Don’t you guys do music for a living?”
Her eyes drifted down his arms, which were covered to the wrists by his shirt and suit coat. Pity. After he’d rolled up his sleeves to jump the van, she’d practically had an out-of-body experience ogling his exposed forearms. Accountant Jake Carey hadgooooodforearms.
