“Not much to tell,” I replied, hoping my cheeks weren’t stained with my overactive blush. It was a trait I wished I could eliminate.
“Why do I think that’s complete and utter bull?”
Well, now. We had a straight shooter on our hands.
“What do you want to know?” I asked.
“How’d you find yourself sleeping in this house last night?”
I glanced at the kitchen counter. That hadn’t been sleeping. That had been . . .
I shook off the memory because here it was—the protective, stay away from him because he’s class and you’re trash speech. Not a first for me. It had just been a while.
“Levi offered me a place to stay when I had some trouble at my apartment.” I held back the rest of the words that wanted to bubble forward. The ones that would assure him I had no designs on Titan, or his ridiculous number of dollars.
“He’s a good boy. Good heart.” Jerome’s gaze narrowed further, and I could swear his thoughts were being projected into the air in front of his head. Something along the lines of You aren’t going to get the money that way either, girl.
“Levi works for me. At Dirty Dog.”
Jerome’s skeptical expression morphed into confusion and then something altogether unexpected. Surprise and warmth radiated from him as he said, “You’re Yve.”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“I didn’t put it together. Young Levi has talked about you since he started at the store. You’re the one with the keen eye for fashion and a bargain. And you were also the one who sold him a pair of impossible-to-find Chanel enamel earrings that matched the ones my sister lost thirty years ago. According to Levi, you were going to keep them for yourself and he begged just enough for you to concede and sell them. Thank you for that.”
I knew exactly what he was talking about. They’d been mint green, enamel flowers with the little Chanel logo on one petal. Cute as hell. I’d gotten them for a steal, and was just about to put them on when Levi had started gushing about a woman he knew who’d lost the pair her husband had given her after the Korean War. The husband was dead, and she’d worn the earrings in their engagement photos.
Jerome gave me huge smile. “You made me the best brother on the face of the planet with those earrings. She cried rivers when I gave them to her.”
“I’m glad she enjoyed them.”
Obviously they were much more sentimental to her than to me, so I didn’t mind giving them up. I was a sucker for a story like that; God knew I didn’t have enough of them in my family. Our stories mostly went along the lines of I didn’t really have skills to get a job other than fucking a man, so I did that instead. Now he buys me pretty things.
If Jerome only knew the illustrious line of mistresses I’d come from, he’d probably toss me right back out that door because he’d think for sure I was trying to get my hooks into Titan.
He’d be dead wrong. I wasn’t sinking my hooks into any man. Except maybe that banker I planned to meet with. Him I would corner and cajole until I got the loan I needed. Because Yve Santos wasn’t going to earn her dreams on her back. No. She’d earn them on the heels of stilettos while dressed in a power suit.
Which were in my apartment. That someone had been inside. And maybe that someone had been Jay. Shit.
I needed to woman up and go home and call a locksmith. And that was exactly what I’d do. After work. And maybe I’d work late. Because . . . that’s what a good manager did.
“Ms. Santos, your omelet.” Jerome slid a steaming plate in front of me.
Yum. An excellent way to take my mind off the things I couldn’t control.
Speaking of which. “Should I wait for . . . uh . . . Mr. Titan?”
Jerome’s kind smile seemed perfectly at home on his face. “You can call him Lucas, my dear. And there’s no need. Who knows how long he’ll be?”
Before I lifted the first bite to my mouth, I stopped. “Aren’t you going to join me?”
He looked marginally surprised, but smiled. “Thank you, but I’ve had my steel-cut oats and coffee already.”
It was awkward to dig in while he stood and watched, and I hesitated. As if he felt my discomfort, he turned, poured two cups of coffee, and joined me at the kitchen island.
“So, tell me more about this Dirty Dog of yours.”
I DROVE AWAY FROM THE repair shop and told myself not to look in the rearview mirror at the woman I couldn’t think about without getting hard. Yve was sexy, headstrong, and had a body that could stop traffic.
Sure, I’d been attracted in an academic sense to Vanessa Frost, even though it made me sound like a dick to admit it. She’d been the perfect Southern belle, all blond and curvy with a perfect pedigree.
The upper crust of New Orleans society was a closed group I hadn’t been able to break into on my own. I’d needed a leg up, and blackmailing Vanessa to get me into events that would help me solidify my contacts had been an effective but assholish move. A few more events and maybe I would have been prepared for the open-ended favor that Johnson Haines wanted. As it was, his request pissed me off. I wasn’t the kind of man who would ever willingly let someone else have the upper hand.
I needed to narrow down my list of pedigreed former debutantes to continue my push to the heart of NOLA’s moneyed and influential families. There was one who had floated to the top, Valentina Noble, daughter of Judge Harold Noble. But I couldn’t find the necessary enthusiasm to make the approach. Valentina was the kind of woman you courted and married, and I had absolutely no desire to go down that path.