“Father Christmas?” Foxoffered. “Oh! President Lincoln. Joan of Arc. Queen Elizabeth.”
The glare I shot him wouldhave stopped anyone else in their tracks, but not Fox. He always did like toplay with fire, and he knew my secret.
My secret being that underthe two hundred pounds or so of muscle, I was actually a giant teddy bear whenit came to my friends and family.
Fox was a man I thought ofas family, so he could annoy the shit out of me all day and I’d still love himat the end of it. He took advantage of that without remorse.
“Was it Justin Trudeau, anddid you give him my number?”
“He’s Canadian.”
“Lincoln isdead, and you didn’t object to him.”
“Do you wanna know, or not?”I asked.
“Of course,” Fox responded. “Sorry.”
He wasn’t even a littlebit sorry, but I didn’t expect him to be, either. Under other circumstances,ones were I wasn’t stuck in my own head thinking about the situation I wassuddenly in, I would have been in tears with laughter by now.
I saw the same realizationdawn over Fox’sfeatures, his whole face suddenly serious. He was really listening, now.
“It was a guy I hooked upwith on Saturday.”
Across the room, Foxbreathed a sigh of relief. “Is that all? You had me worried it was some awfuldemon from your past for a moment there.”
“The guy is the client!” Isaid.
“I assumed, yes. Quite thecompliment, if he’s willing to pay your going rate on the off chance you throwprofessionalism into the wind and fall into bed with him again.”
We shared a look as we bothcame to the conclusion that the chance was actually pretty high. Fox and I weresimilar in that we were both used to coasting on the fact that we wereeffective at our jobs—too effective to seriously reprimand for minor shit, atleast.
Neither of us had everdeveloped a particularly strong sense of the rules, except in terms of how farwe could push them.
I wasn’t entirely clearon how against the rules sleeping with a client was. On the basis that I was myown boss now, I got to make the rules. The problem was, I’d never quite figuredout what they should have been.
“You’re not taking this veryseriously.” I folded my arms on the desk in front of me, aware of how patheticI sounded. Yesterday had caught me off-guard, and I wasn’t used to that.
I’d been sosureMiles was just intown for a conference or something.
“Because it doesn’t look allthat serious from here. You didn’t even sleep with himwhilehe was a client.This is a non-issue.”
Huh.
When he put itthatway, I wondered if maybe Fox was right. It didn’t matter, did it? It wasn’tas though either of us didn’t know who the other was, now.
And I’d accepted thejob, so…
Maybe that was that?
Yeah, I could live withthat.
My phone vibrated on thedesk just as I was finished having that thought. Unknown number.
“Someone’s popular,” Foxsaid. “Are you being called on to perform early-morning services?”
Unknown: Could I ask youto drop by my apartment when it’s convenient?
A second text came throughwith an address in Midtown.
