“Hunt,” I greeted him as we walked side by side to my personal elevator. Yes, I had a personal elevator. I couldn’t stand to be stuck in a tin box with twenty other people crowding me, each one wearing a different cologne or coughing and sneezing all over the goddamn place.
Mason stuck the key into the lock and opened the doors so that I could step through ahead of him. I put my briefcase down and sat on the red velvet couch that stretched along the interior wall. The ceiling and each wall was mirrored to make the small space look bigger. Bigger was always better.
“So, how did it go?” he asked as he pushed the button for the fortieth floor and took a seat on the opposite end of the couch.
I’d been single for quite some time, and Polly had been relentlessly trying to set me up on dates with women she considered to be a good match for me. To stave off her attempts, I finally broke down and told her that I’d been secretly seeing someone that I’d met on one of my trips to Los Angeles. She bought it and stopped trying to play matchmaker, but then she started hounding me about wanting to meet the mystery woman. Usually I could give someone “the look” and they knew to back off, but not Polly. She wasn’t the least bit intimidated by me. I’d told her that I was going to ask my mystery lady to move in with me last night—you know, just in case I actually found something I liked at Foreplay and followed through on making a purchase, which I had.
“She said yes,” I answered. “I told her to leave all of her stuff behind and I flew her in last night. She’s at the house now.”
“What? That’s great!” He clapped me on the shoulder, his congratulations for the major step I’d taken.
“Yeah, I’m pretty psyched about it,” I said with a smile, because it was true. My dick hardened minutely of its own accord to further prove the point.
We spent the rest of the ride in polite conversation. Mason was never one to pry into my personal affairs unless Polly threatened to withhold sex if he didn’t at least try to get something out of me. I threw him a bone every now and then to keep him out of the doghouse, but he never pushed me. Today was no exception. He knew she was there, but I still hadn’t told either of them who she was.
Mason reminded me that Polly would be stopping by my house after lunch to tend to the shopping and check on the household staff. That freaked me out. Delaine and I hadn’t discussed the specifics of what story we were going to give to my acquaintances, or whether she even wanted to go by her actual name, for that matter. I knew the maids would keep their mouths shut and do their jobs, but not Polly.
I stepped off the elevator and nodded to a couple of other employees in polite greeting as I passed them on the way to my workplace suite in the west corner. Mason’s desk was set up just outside my office. All the exterior spaces had floor-to-ceiling windows, red carpets, and white walls with green accents in the décor—the same color scheme as the red lotus.
I swung open the heavy wooden door to my office and closed it behind me before rushing over to my desk and picking up the telephone to dial my own home. I had to talk to Delaine and make sure we hashed out some details before Hurricane Polly showed up. Polly would start her supersleuthing and would put two and two together, and the truth about our arrangement would be out before I’d even had the chance to get my dick wet. In hindsight, I probably should’ve had all this figured out before I decided to purchase a woman, but you know what they say about hindsight.
There was no answer at the house.
Of course there was no answer. Delaine probably didn’t feel comfortable answering my phone, but I was now beginning to sweat in my suit, imagining all the ways this could blow up in my face when Polly arrived to do her job.
In a panic, I picked up my briefcase and walked back out the door, dialing Samuel on my way past Mason’s desk and telling him to swing back around to pick me up. Mason stopped me before I could make a break for it. “Daniel called and said he’s waiting for you to let him know if you’re dropping by today,” he said, confused.
Daniel Crawford, my uncle the doctor.
“Shit, I forgot all about that. I’ll call him from my cell. Not sure what time I’ll be back, but I have to take care of some things,” I said as I pushed the door open and slipped out into the hall.
You’d think Delaine had sucked out all of my fucking brain cells last night, the way I was screwing up. Maybe she had.
And there was that damn hard-on again …
“Crawford!” David’s voice boomed from the other end of the hall, where his office suite was located, before he started making his way toward me. “What the hell is this about?”
I sighed and turned toward him, my hand already balling into a fist and ready to rebreak his nose if he started trying to push my buttons. For the most part, we were able to stay out of each other’s way, but because we were partners, it was impossible to avoid each other entirely.
“What?” I asked with my teeth clenched.
“Ten percent of what we earned last quarter was sent to charities!” He held the quarterly report out toward me as if I hadn’t already seen it.
“Yeah, so?”
“We agreed on five percent.”
“I don’t know why I bother having the same discussion about this every time I turn around, but here goes nothing,” I spat out in irritation. I really wasn’t in the mood to deal with his shit right now, but then again, I never was. “With the bad economy, charities need our help more than ever right now, Stone. The huge tax write-off, not to mention the fact that a good deal of our clients sign on because of our generous charitable efforts, proves even further why donating is not only the right thing to do, but a smart thing to do. Besides, we have more than enough money to spare and you know it.”