“You do realize it’s your job to greet people when they walk into the office…?” I prompted.
“Madeleine’s gonna eat him up,” she warned me, “and she always gets the best ones, which is really not fair. She’s too old to get the best ones. And Ididgreet him. He asked foryou.”
“Jolie…” I begged, as she opened the door.
“Unicorn,” she wheeze-whispered, and before I could utterchickenshit, she was gone. Vanished, out my door and up the hall, probably to hide out in the kitchen or a closet—as far away as she could get from Ashley Player without leaving the building.
I groaned inwardly.
This was the problem with working with family members. You couldn’t really fire them.
Of course, I was currently hiding behind a door. Jolie wasn’t the only chickenshit in the house.
Before I could lose my nerve, I forced myself to step into the open doorway—to find Ashley Player staring at me.
OhJesus. I sucked in a breath.
He did resemble a unicorn. Metaphorically speaking.
All stunning and special.
I had this weird urge to grab him and drag him around town, show him to all my friends, so I could sayLook! He’s real!
He also looked all kinds of out of place in Madeleine’s office. The reception area was bright, glossy and white, with blush-pink and pale-yellow details.
He was dressed entirely in black.
Vans skate shoes, tight, ripped jeans, and a T-shirt that clungverynicely to his hard chest, with nothing on it but two words:Fuck Steady. His short black hair was edgy and sexy. The tattoos all over his sculpted arms featured a topless mermaid, with long white-blonde hair just covering her nipples, and arm bands on his biceps that readFuck Bitches / Get Money.
I’d already seen them in detail, online.
“Excuse me,” I said.
Then I dipped back into my office to collect myself, shutting the door. Well, I freaked out a bit. Then I collected myself.
Fucking Daniella.
This was all her fault.
She’d insisted to me that she wasn’t interested in seeing him again. She’d made that pretty clear to him, too… I’d thought. In my books, she’d been perfectly nasty to him, and yet, for whatever reason, he wanted to see her again.
And now I was all caught up in the middle of it—which, unfortunately, I had been before, way too many times, as Dani’s twin.
Once again, here I was, forced to deal with the repercussions of my sister’s actions.
But I pulled my shit together. Jolie was right. I could not just hide out in my office and leave him to Madeleine. Very bad idea. Cringe worthy.
So I took a breath and opened the door.
“Hi.” I breezed into the reception area and looked him directly in his crazy-blue eyes, starting over. “How can I help you?”
His eyebrows kind of twitched together. He looked me over, but not like he was checking me out. More like I was acting like a weirdo.
Of course, if I really was my sister, Iwasacting like a weirdo.
However, I wasn’t Daniella Vola. And I needed to set him straight about that, fast.
I could do it nicely, though.
