CHAPTER TWELVE
Owen
I was a mess.
Days-old mugs of half-drunk coffee littered my desk. Files that were ordinarily kept in labeled folders and hung in designated cabinets were scattered across the upholstered chairs reserved for clients. Most of my pens sported new fresh teeth marks on their heads, and crumpled sticky notes decorated my office floor like urban tumbleweeds. Even my framed degree, which had hung in the same spot on the west wall since I’d leased the space three years before, was crooked. Mercifully, I had no in-house appointments booked or I would have run the risk of frightening off any new investable acquisitions.
The blinking screensaver digitally denoting the current time glared at me from my desktop, reminding me I’d wasted almost another full day of work. I glared back. Some may have found the neat, angular numbers motivational. I found them hateful. My career had always come easy to me and been much less like work and much more like an enjoyable — sometimes stressful — puzzle to put together for eight to twelve hours a day. I juggled calls, meetings, presentations, demonstrations, research, and review without breaking a sweat or losing my drive. This week, however, I didn’t care, and I hated that I didn’t care. Worse, I kept revisiting my time with Tabby, and I liked it, and I hated that I liked it.
What was happening to me?
I wasn’t the guy who pined after a woman. I certainly wasn’t the guy who dismissed advances because I was pining after a woman. Twice since Tabby left, though, I’d been approached in public by women hoping to end up on a date with me, plus a voicemail from a past conquest, and I hadn’t engaged any of them because…
Because why? Because they weren’t Tabby?
It was sick. I was sick.
The last time I’d reacted in such a way to the opposite sex had been in college. She was vivacious and athletic and loud — even her hair was loud with its orange-tinted redness — and though her name was Darla, she insisted everyone call her Holly. We dated for two years. My attraction to her had been the same as it always was… difficulty. She was a legend on the softball team, the life of any campus party, and sported the looks to boot. To be the one to wrangle her in a sea of willing guys was a major ego boost. Of course, my ego had been deflated into a blob when I spotted her leaving a bathroom with swollen lips and Ray Hildegard during finals week, and when my junior year ended so did my desire to have a girlfriend. I’d stayed loyal to the rules of casual sex since. The Blackjack Club was my saving grace in that sense because it offered me exactly what I was looking for… contracted anonymity and a slew of women who took emotions off the table and left only physical satisfaction.
I’d broken my own rules, though. Not only had I found every excuse I could to spend time with Tabby, but I’d bedded her, and I’d done it without first getting her to The Club. And while I hadn’t engaged in the behaviors that held the risk the NDA protected me against, I still hadn’t taken the steps to avoid emotional attachment and growth. Now, I was suffering the consequences with a brain fogged by the memory of her scent, the way her body curved too well against mine, and the snappish allure of her quick-witted tongue. I hadn’t even gone back to The Club since my venture there with Tabby, which was unusual for me.
The quirky nymph had wormed her way into my life, and I’d let it happen. Idiot.
My office door flew open, drawing my gaze from the computer screen to the entrant. A bald head and a grin more pubescent than manly greeted me.
“Whoa.” Howie’s eyes scanned the mess that had taken over my workspace. “Nadia on vacation?”
“What? No. Why?”
“You might want to think about replacing her,” he said. He didn’t bother to close the door behind him, and I hoped his voice didn’t carry down the hall to Nadia’s cubicle. “An assistant is supposed to help keep you organized, which she’s clearly not doing.”
I rolled my eyes and obligatorily snatched some of the discarded sticky notes off the floor. Tossing them in the almost overflowing trash bin in the corner, I told him, “Cleaning up after me isn’t one of her duties. It’s my job to keep this place in order.”
“Well, maybe you should think about interviewing for your replacement then,” he jibed.
Not in the mood for Howie’s jokes, I ignored him and scooped a mass of mismatched papers into a neat pile. He wasn’t to be deterred. Striding forward, he leaned against one of my client chairs and rested his elbows on the curved backrest. “You haven’t been to The Club in a while.”
“I know.”
“I heard the last time you were there was with that girl from the casino,” he went on. “There’s been a lot of talk about her.”
This revelation earned my attention, and I looked up at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“A lot of the members, the ones who were there the night you brought her anyway, have been asking if you were going to bring her back,” he explained. To my dismay, I saw interest well beyond curiosity twinkling in his eyes. “They’re hoping she’ll be in an auction. Of course, no one is sure if she’s yours or not, so they might be hoping for nothing, but there it is.”
I felt a snarl curl in my throat. I wanted to tell him that, yes, she was mine — all of her belonged to me, and nobody, Club member or otherwise, was going to get his hands on her. That wasn’t true, though. She wasn’t mine to claim no matter how much my mind tried to tell me she was, and it was entirely possible I was never going to see her again anyway. It also didn’t escape my notice that in the past I would’ve been smug knowing everyone lusted after the woman I’d had on my arm, but this time I was… jealous.
Frankly, I was smug too. Tabby was a catch, and not in the trophy wife standard like the women Club members toted around. I enjoyed knowing most of them wouldn’t have a clue how to keep up with her razor tongue and broad intellect and creative musings. Even the idea of Howie attempting to charm her with his usual methods of name-dropping and wallet-flashing amused me.
“So, are you?” he pressed.
I raised a brow at him. “Am I what?”
“Are you bringing her back?”
“Not to be in the auction,” I zinged.
Howie’s face fell slightly, but he nodded like he understood. I knew him too well. The nod was only to demonstrate his devotion to our friendship despite his evident cravings to bid on Tabby and have her for an evening.
“I did send her an invitation for this Saturday, though,” I continued.
He colored in surprise, and his eyes widened to epic proportions. “To come to The Club?”
“Yeah.” I resumed cleaning the mess on my desk, pouring the contents of some of the coffee cups into others and stacking the empties beneath the full ones.
“I think Amanda still has a couple openings…” he ventured.
This was tricky territory. Again, I wanted to snap at him that Tabby was mine and like hell would I let anyone else have her, but doing that would not only be admitting I’d developed some feelings toward her but also would be revealing those feelings to a man who, despite being my best friend, had the emotional capacity of a sixteen-year-old. The likelihood that he would support me and have a helpful discussion with me while I tried to work those feelings out was zilch. If anything, I would’ve found myself on the pointed end of a very long taunting stick.
“I don’t think I like the idea of putting her into the auction,” I told him carefully. I made sure I didn’t look up from the file folders I was sifting through in case my face gave anything away. “Anybody could end up winning her, and you know as well as I do there are at least a few guys in The Club we don’t like to be alone with ourselves. It would be immoral to subject her to the company of one of them in solitude.”
“If you’re talking about Bruno, he’s in Seattle until Sunday,” Howie pointed out.
While the news was hardly disappointing, it still didn’t make me any more likely to suggest to Tabby she participate in the auction. “Not just him,” I said vaguely.
I saw Howie frown in my peripheral vision, and then he let out a slow whistle. I glanced up and found him grinning at me again. “Oh, wait a minute. This isn’t about certain members. You just don’t want her with anyone else.”
My heart seemed to freeze in my chest for a split second. Was he really more insightful than I’d given him credit for?
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” he elaborated. “Any man in his right mind would want the first test drive before letting someone else get behind the wheel.”
The tightness between my ribs eased, but I wasn’t entertained by his analogy. I hadn’t told him I’d already slept with her, that I had started figuring out which buttons to push to drive her into the kind of insanity I craved to witness, and I wasn’t about to. Nevertheless, the suggestion that someone else would “get behind the wheel” brought out my fangs.
“I’m not going to test drive her then pass her to the highest bidder,” I snapped before I could stop myself.
He raised both eyebrows, causing a trio of lines in his forehead, and the grin didn’t completely die from his mouth. I turned away in my swiveling chair under the guise of shuffling more papers into their appropriate folders, though in reality I just didn’t want him to see the frustration blooming over my face because I’d done such a poor job hiding the feelings I was trying so hard to deny.
After a beat, I heard him ask behind me, “Did you hear back from her yet? About the invitation?”
“No.” I didn’t tell him I hadn’t included a number or an email to reach me. It was my hope the lack of a means of contact would drive her to accept the invitation and show up Saturday afternoon, and that was a hope I was going to cling to.