Chapter Two
Tom O’Connell had a hard body, and he put it right in Flick’s way of getting to Jack Haley. He might’ve broken her arm. She wanted to rub her elbow but she wouldn’t give Tom the satisfaction of seeing that. Besides, she was on a mission. She owed Jack a thank-you.
“I’m glad you came, Jack,” she said, ignoring Tom, letting go of Jack’s forearms and stepping back.
Meanwhile, hard-body O’Connell owed her an apology. Which, from a glance at the annoyance on his square-jawed face, wasn’t coming anytime soon. Nor did he back off graciously as the loser and concede space.
He loomed.
She had to do something about that. Flick took the flyer that she’d crumpled into her jacket pocket and shoved it at Tom. It was a discount coupon for a strip club that a guy had pressed into her hand on the street. Maybe Tom would get the hint and take his disagreeable self off to brood elsewhere.
While Tom was distracted with the paper, she focused on Jack. “I can’t thank you enough for making that call for me.” She’d needed a high-profile person who could talk her up without endangering her current position by talking out of turn over the months of interviews.
Having Jack Haley vouch for her proved she was well connected, a serious player, an asset to the team. Dream job nailed. She couldn’t be happier if she’d been born taller.
“You can never invite me to a networking function again,” Jack said.
She’d convinced him to come tonight on the basis that it would be good for his new business to show his face around. “Stay half an hour and you never need to come again. Everyone who ever thought the champion of the people was a dead duck will know how wrong they were.” That was half the reason why there were so many reporters, lobbyists and communicators here tonight. The rumor she’d started that Jack might show was a heck of a draw card.
Jack didn’t quite laugh, which meant he was probably onto her. She’d brought Jack to hacks and flacks, and she’d also brought the who’s who of the industry to him.
“I’m trying to give up smoking. If I crack tonight, it’s your fault, Flick.” He gestured to the woman by his side. “This is Derelie Honeywell. Derelie, Felicity Dalgetty.”
Flick put her hand out to shake Derelie’s. “Nice to meet you, Derelie. You give good meme. Jack helped me get a new job, my absolute ‘would’ve given a leg and definitely a kidney for’ job, and I get to keep both.”
Derelie smiled, but it was more at Jack. Flick turned to still-looming, disapproving Tom O’Connell. “You both know Tom? I might’ve taken out Tom’s ribs in my haste to get to you.”
And that was being generous to the Great Wall of Tom, who’d nearly knocked her into outer Mongolia.
“Tom,” said Haley, “been a while.”
“Nice to meet you, Tom,” said Derelie, thrusting her hand at him. “Who do you write for?”
“He’s a flack, a hot shot with Rendel PR. He’s part of the furniture there,” Flick said.
Oh, did the temperature plummet? Yes, it dropped about ten degrees. Brrr.
“Did you really just answer for me?” said Tom. The big suit had a way of making affronted sound like a good spanking. Well, bring it, dude, and next time look down from the mountain and watch where you’re going.
She looked at Tom full-on for the first time. Pissed off with a headwind. Shoving the coupon at him probably didn’t help. “You looked stunned. I wasn’t sure you had words in you.”
“You do know it’s incredibly annoying to answer for someone.”
“I do. Men do it to me all the time. But apologies for the elbow in those very solid abs.”
“Ah.” Derelie took back the hand Tom hadn’t reached for, making him scramble to do so. She gestured past them. “I’m going to excuse myself and go talk to my old boss, Shona.”
Derelie took a step away and Jack caught her hand. A solitary moment stretched into eternity as they gazed at each other. There might as well not have been a single person angling for a favor, sweating on an ill-advised sexual dalliance or thick-headedly aggrandizing themselves in the room, before Jack let go and Derelie moved away.
Flick sighed. They weren’t a stupid romance meme, they were the real deal. How incredibly rare and wonderful.
“You got the job,” Jack said, voice lowered. His eyes were still on Derelie somewhere over Flick’s shoulder.
She met his tone. She wasn’t ready for this to be common knowledge yet, but she trusted neither Jack nor Tom, who was still hanging in there, would cause her any trouble. “I’m moving to Washington. There’s just resigning and a pesky three-month notice period to work through, and then I’m off.”
Jack’s eyes bounced back to hers. “Well done. Nothing I did got you that job. I only told them you didn’t have two heads and you’d never sold state secrets and I thought you were trustworthy. Finding accommodation in Washington might be interesting.”
“Finding it here is proving equally as challenging. You don’t happen to know anyone who needs a temporary housemate, do you?” There couldn’t be too many people left in the room who didn’t know she was looking for a room. She’d made it tonight’s priority to find one. It was the one bug in her life. Well, that, the fact her family thought of her as a bank, and not ever having anyone look at her like Jack had looked at Derelie.
She switched her gaze from Jack to Tom, who exuded frostbite. Why was he still here when there were happy endings at Club Xquisite? “My lease is up. I can’t renew short-term. I’m shipping my stuff ahead into storage. I just need a bed and a bathroom for three months.”
“You could come bunk with me, but Derelie and I only have the one bedroom, and Martha and Ernest haven’t sorted out the cat-dog roommate divide yet,” Jack said.
Jack Haley had pets. She’d known him professionally for years, but that personal detail was so amazing she nearly missed Tom saying a bald “No.”
But hold up. Tom O’Connell shared with Josh Lam, and Josh Lam had shipped out to Beijing. Hacks-and-flacks mixers had their benefits. Everyone knew about Josh’s promotion, about Tom being next in line to take over Rendel’s Chicago office.
“But didn’t Josh go to Beijing?”
“Yes, he did,” Tom said. “No, you can’t.”
Did she want to push this, to say it out loud? She had a week to find somewhere to live or she’d need to pay a hideous amount of money for an extended-stay apartment or take up professional-league couch surfing with Airbnb. She was going to her dream job for less salary in a more expensive city where she didn’t know anyone. “So you might have a room?”
“No.”
Interesting. He wouldn’t look at her. Tom wasn’t a great dissembler and he didn’t like being put on the spot. He stood stiffly, and since he was made of iron bars or granite boulders he presented a challenge. He’d rather be anywhere else but in this conversation, but he wouldn’t walk away while Jack was here.
She really needed someone to have a room. Anyone. Any room. “You rented it already?”
“I don’t plan to rent it.”
“But plans can change, right?”
“Not mine.”
“Ah, come on, Tom, colleague in temporary housing distress,” said Jack. “She’s a lobbyist, you’re a flack. You’re not in a competitive situation. Let the woman rent your room.”
“I can be very quiet,” Flick added.
Both men laughed so robustly, the room went still for a second. She shushed them. “I can. I am multidimensional. I can chameleon-shift with the best of the lizards. You wouldn’t even know I was there, Tom.”
“You, Flick Dalgetty, are your own worst press,” Tom said. “That is the fakest news I’ve ever heard. You couldn’t blend in with a riot.”
She ignored the insult. She could tolerate unfun boulder-built Tom O’Connell, because she’d soon have a new career in a new city. “I’ll hardly ever be there. I won’t have friends over. I won’t take up much space. I’ll pay the total up front, in advance. And I’ve got a plane ticket out of here and a start date at the new job, so it’s not like you won’t be able to get rid of me.”
“I’m planning on living alone.”
And rigid as a railroad track about that. “I see.”
“Come on, Tom. Do a colleague a solid,” said Jack, with a backslap that made Tom shift uncomfortably. “Flick, good luck, stay in touch. I’m done with social experiments. I’m going to find my girl and get out of here.”
They both watched Jack go. “I wanted a word with him,” Tom said, at the same time as Flick said, “I’d be grateful if you’d consider renting your room to me.”
“No.”
No doubt about his intention there. “You really mean yes, but you need to think about it.”
“I really mean no, and I don’t need to think about it.”
“But you’re thinking about it.”
“I came over to pitch Haley a story and you scared him off.”
“No one scares Jack Haley off.”
Tom grunted. “I believe you could do it.”
“I’m taking that as a compliment.”
“You would. You don’t take no, do you?”
“Only when there’s zero alternative.” And the alternative to rigid stick-up-his-ass, boulder-that-wouldn’t-roll-over Tom O’Connell was money she didn’t want to spend or a back complaint she didn’t want to get. “Whatever your house rules are, I’ll follow them without a grunt of protest.”
“Really.”
She made a bring-it gesture.
“No pets—”
“I only have a small iguana named Ferdinand. He doesn’t eat much.”
“No pets.”
No sense of humor.
“No inviting your strip-club friends over.”
She groaned. He’d read the coupon and she deserved that.
“No smoking, no drugs. No possessions left all over the place. No mess in the kitchen. No parties, no loud music, no coming and going all times of the day and night. No loud sex. No sex anywhere but in the bedroom. No sleepover partners. Thinking about it, my preference is that you live like a cloistered nun who has taken a lifelong vow of silence.”
“Why didn’t you cut to the chase and say no fun?”
He looked at the ceiling. “Have I made myself clear?”
Clear that he was a sad individual. She stuck out her hand and his eyes went down to her hand, then up to her face, hand, face, hand, face. “Perfectly. When can I move in?”
He put his hands in his pants pockets. “You’re not moving in.”
She waved hers between them. “Come on, Tom. You’ve got a spare room, I’ve got a small problem. Neither of us are secret bomb-building psychopaths. I don’t bite, scratch or smell bad. I don’t have a partner. I am a sexless desert. I have to give up all my friends anyway, because they’ll all promise to visit, but we know how that goes. I can get a head start on being lonely by living with you. I’ll eat out. I won’t mess up the living space. I’ll wear headphones and a blindfold at all times I’m on the premises. I’ll leave early and come home late, stay out on weekends. Once I resign next week, Cassidy Strauss is going to squeeze every ounce of blood they can get from me before I go. You’ll hardly know I’m there and I’ll be gone before you can wish you were nicer to me.”
“You’re not moving in.”
“I so am.”
“Sheer force of will does not make it so.”
But it goes a heck of a long way. Her motto in life; she’d had it inked on her ribs. “You just don’t realize how much you need me, Tom.”
“I need you about as much as I need a discount lap dance or a pet iguana called Ferdinand.”
She laughed. A lap dance might loosen him up. “Well, fancy that, you do have a sense of humor. There’s hope for you yet.”
He gave a resigned sigh and looked at his feet. “Why do they call these mixers happy hours? No one here is happy.”
“Jack and Derelie are.” They were headed for the door hand in hand. She waved and Jack stopped, spoke to Derelie and detoured toward them.
Tom’s eyes were still on his mirror-shined shoes. “See, now you’ve gone and made it worse by reminding me you chased Jack away.”
“What if I could bring him back so you could have your huddle? You’d rent me your room then?”
He slapped his hands on his thighs and leaned toward her. “No chance.”
“Good to see you two worked it out,” Jack said.
Flick grinned at Tom, daring him to wriggle out of this now. “He’s my hero.”
“Tom, you wanted a word earlier?” Jack said.
And that’s how Flick saved her money and her back and Tom O’Connell got himself a private audience with Haley and a roommate he didn’t want.
There ought to be a coupon for that.