“You did?” Her voice switched to interested rather than censorious.
Christ, why had he said that? She’d assume the wrong thing; he’d trained her to think of him that way.
Gina went on. “I figured you were calling in because you were hungover, but if it’s because you have some wom—”
“I’m hungover,” Tierney blurted. “Never mind, I’ll be there by nine.”
At 9:18 he presented himself to Gina, standing at attention in front of her desk—he couldn’t avoid walking past it to get into his office—blinking against the light, considering the ethics of asking one of the paramedics to hang a saline drip from the ceiling and put in a line to take the edge off his hangover.
Gina rose from her seat to come around the front of her desk and look down her nose at him, mouth prim. “I thought you were going to be here by nine.”
“I like your new haircut.” It was cute, sort of pixieish.
“Thank you.” She patted her head and smiled. “I’ve had it for weeks.”
Ooops. “Um, I like your shoes?”
“Oh, shut up.” She turned and picked up a manila envelope off her desk. “Here, this is from your brother, and I’m not allowed to read it.”
Tierney groaned. It could only be one thing: projected earnings for the fourth quarter. “How bad is it?”
“Believe it or not, when it’s sensitive financial information, I keep my nose out of your paperwork.”
“If I give you a raise, will you look at it for me?”
“No.”
“C’mon,” he whined. “You’re letting Chase bribe you with a raise, why not me?”
“Because if I let you bribe me every time you wanted me to do something you don’t want to do, the company couldn’t afford my salary.”
No argument for that. Tierney inspected the envelope in his hand while Gina went back around her workstation and pulled out her chair. “Go sit at your desk and look at it. You have ten minutes until you need to be at your father’s office.”
“I want to look at it here,” he said.
She sat down, flicking a hand at him. “Whatever, just don’t bug me. I have things to do.”
Well, fine then. He turned and opened the door to his office, grateful for the soft carpeting that muffled noises and the relative dark—his blinds were mostly shut. Gina must have done that. He probably wouldn’t be as nice to him if he were in her shoes.
They were cute shoes.
Tierney didn’t look at the projections, other than opening the envelope and finding the graph that showed income falling. Again. Fortunately, he had a possible assist for them. He spent his ten minutes sending careful inquiry emails to a couple contacts and poking around a certain county commissioner’s website.
Which was how, a half-hour later, he was able to say to Father and Chase, “I have one new potential revenue stream.”
“Go on,” Father said. He sat sideways behind his desk with his arm propped on his blotter, tapping his fingers in random patterns. It seemed like he wasn’t paying attention, which he reinforced by leaning back and mostly focusing out his window, but it was all vanity—he liked visitors to his office to think he was a Very Important Captain of Industry, so he affected an air of bored superiority to cover up his shortcomings. Reality was, he was going deaf in his left ear, so he needed to keep the right one toward the conversation.
Well, at least Tierney knew where he got his own worst trait. “Marlyle District One isn’t going to bid to renew their ambulance contract, so the county will issue an RFP at the beginning of the year.”
“Have they announced it yet?”
“No, I found out through Jerry Brown, but it’s supposed to be kept under wraps.”
For one moment, as they chuckled at the idea of anyone in their little community successfully keeping a secret, Tierney felt like they were a family.
Then Chase said, “Well, do your job and make sure we’re in a position to turn in a bid they’ll accept.”
Tierney scowled at him. “I’ll do my job, if you do yours,” he snapped.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chase sat forward, glaring.
“It means the last time we bid for the city contract, I had to come up with an explanation for why your response rates were out of compliance more than twelve perc—”
“Boys,” Father barked. “Try to remember we’re on the same team.”
“I will if he will.”
Chase rolled his eyes. “Grow up.”
Father rubbed his forehead. “Go back to work, for God’s sake.”
“Your friend called,” Gina said when he got back to his office. She was typing away at her computer, focused on her screen.
Dalton. Tierney halted, dizzy for a second, not sure where the idea had come from, but— “Um, who?”
“You know the one.” She lifted one hand off her keyboard (cutting her seventy words a minute typing speed to, like, sixty-five) and flapped her hand at him. “Your college friend. Ian.”
Jesus. The clenching of Tierney’s gut totally distracted him from objecting to her implication that he only had a single friend.
“Wants you to call him back,” she continued, squinting at her screen, then holding down the delete key.
Some craven part of him nearly didn’t return the call, but he had to. Forget the dude being the love of his life or whatever the fuck, truth was, Ian was his only real friend. If Tierney didn’t phone, that’d be over, wouldn’t it? But if he did, there was a pretty good chance Ian would forgive him. Tierney’d been a big prick in the past and Ian had gotten over it, so . . .
He dialed the guy’s cell before overthinking, because that shit always got him in trouble. Sitting at his desk, one hand fisted on the surface and the other smashing his receiver against his ear, he listened to it start to ring.
“Dude,” Ian answered immediately. “Your grandfather died.”
“He did?” Christ. “I mean, I know, but how’d you know?”
Ian’s voice went bone-dry. “You told me in the message you left. In the middle of the night.”
His drunken apology. “Okay, yeah. I’m a douche bag, man. I’m sorry.” But had he said anything about—
“How long are you going to keep doing this?”
“Doing what?” he asked through a suddenly cotton-filled mouth.
“Being an asshole, drinking, hiding in the closet. Apologizing to me and expecting me to forgive you. All of it.”