“Harsh.” He frowned. “Tell me how you really feel.”
“See? That right there. You still love your couch, right? My opinion hasn’t swayed you at all? Not even a little? You don’t suddenly hate it?”
“No,” Nigel said, carefully combing his fingers through Pickles’s hair.
“And that’s entirely my point. I’m not the one sitting on your couch every day or paying for the space that it occupies. And I’m not the one planning a wedding and a future with your fiancé, so my opinions aren’t important.”
“Well… that’s not true. I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t value your input.” Nigel gently put Pickles back into her kennel and shut the door, making sure it was secured. He frowned down at his shirt and attempted to brush the cat hair off himself.
“Come on. There’s a lint roller at the front.”
He followed me to the main reception area, and I grabbed one of the lint rollers we kept tucked away. “Pet hair is a hazard of the job. I don’t mind because I’m generally covered in pet hair anyway, but I still keep a few on hand for the staff.”
Danish padded along behind us, still staring up at his hero, Nigel. He was hoping for more treats, always convinced that people were holding out on him and if he looked away for a moment, he’d miss out.
Nigel used the lint roller and got most of the cat hair off his shirt. “I swear cat hair becomes part of other surfaces. It magically welds itself to things.” He handed the lint roller back to me and took a moment to bend down and pet Danish, who was all too happy to absorb the affection from his favorite human.
“If you’re worried that you’re rushing into things, you could always postpone the wedding.”
Nigel shook his head. “I’m fine. Thanks for letting me hijack your morning.” He straightened up and stuffed a hand in his pocket. Pulling out his car key, it was his signal that he was about to make his excuse to leave. “We should have breakfast again soon. Maybe you can introduce me to your boyfriend before the wedding.”
“Maybe. He works odd hours sometimes.”
“What does he do?”
My brain came to a crashing halt as I tried to think of what to tell Nigel. Did Perry tell people he was a porn star? Or was that information he kept to himself? I didn’t want to lie to Nigel about him. More lies wouldn’t help the situation, but before I could think of what to say, Nigel’s phone buzzed and he looked at it, then looked at me.
“I have to run, but we’ll do this again, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Great, text me the next time your boyfriend is free, and we’ll do lunch or dinner or something.” He headed for the front door and threw the lock to let himself out. I locked the door behind him and let out a long, slow exhale. Danish’s nails clicked as he walked back toward my office where his dog bed was. No doubthe was going to have another sniff for any fallen crumbs, leaving me alone to watch Nigel get into his car and spend the next ten minutes sitting in the parking lot on his phone before eventually leaving.
When he was gone, I got back to work checking on Pickles and catching up on paperwork and not obsessing about Perry or planning our next date in my head.
TWELVE
PERRY
The honorof choosing our third date went to me. The only problem with that was that the only proper dates I’d been on had been with Rex, so the experiences I had to draw from were limited. Which explained why I’d shown up at Lukas’s house on a day when I wasn’t working, but I knew Blue would be there.
Blue and his boyfriends, Asher and Jax, filmed a lot of content together. It wasn’t how they met, but it was kind of how they got together. It was romantic in a porny kind of way.
I sat on the floor of the green room in Lukas’s basement, my legs splayed out in front of me and a very content dog nestled in the space between them. With her head on my thigh and her tail intermittently thumping as it wagged, it was clear that I wasn’t going anywhere for a while.
Blue walked in, finally, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw me from the corner of his eye.
“Shit! Perry, what are you doing here? Besides fucking lurking in corners, scaring the shit out of people.”
“I need help with Rex.”
Blue whirled around. “What kind of help? Did he do something? Boss or no, I’ll murder him if he hurts you.”
“Holy shit, Blue. Down, boy. Nothing like that.”
Blue visibly relaxed and dropped down onto the couch. He sat close enough to reach down and pet Lara, who loved the attention.
“It’s my turn to pick our date, but I don’t know what to do. Where do I take him? What do we do? He’s put so much thought into our dates that it seems lame to just be like hey, I’m taking you for dinner. I want to do something Rex will like.”
