Page 34 of Cruel Offer
“Did you forget about the meeting?” Becker asks with a bit of bite in his voice.
“Ah, well, yes. Kind of.”
“Sorry!” a female voice in the background calls out.
Just then, Blair sprints across the room in the background, wrapped in a bed sheet. Becker lifts a brow and clears his throat.
“Looks like we’re interrupting,” he says dryly. “Is this a bad time, Argos?”
Reaching beside him for a shirt, Sebastian pulls it over his head and grins unapologetically. “Nah. It’s all good.”
I’m tempted to toss my drink back and go for another. I can’t shake the lingering desire for Piper that annoyingly pulses through my body. She’s not the first woman I’ve made come in the front seat of my car, but you’d think she was, given how much I’m thinking about it. Was that the first time a man put his fingers there and stroked her plump little clit…made her squirm and moan like that?
“Nate?”
My attention snaps to Theo’s voice.
“Did you hear what I said, bro?”
Becker saves me from having to pretend I wasn’t daydreaming. “You claim you need an assistant, Theo, but we all know you won’t want to delegate any of your work. I’m not letting you hire someone for a redundant position.”
“That’s not true,” he retorts. “I can delegate! Don’t act like I’m some kind of control freak.”
We all look at him, even Sebastian, whose eyebrows arch skeptically on the screen.
Theo looks at us with confusion. The thing is, he is acontrol freak, though he might not recognize it. He holds onto his job running The Regent with iron fists and often spends the night at the hotel just so he can start work earlier the next day. All his employees have his personal cell number, for fuck’s sake. He’s up The Regent’s ass twenty-four-seven. I’m not even sure why he’s requested an assistant in the first place. Maybe he’s realizing he could have a little more free time if he had someone around to take on a few of his responsibilities. He could certainly use a break.
“Make a list of things you’re willing to delegate, and we’ll revisit it,” Becker says.
Theo rolls his eyes. “A list? Really?”
“Really.”
“Come on.” Theo leans forward in his chair. “Did Nate have to make an expense list for his pet project with the Barclay chick? We might never see a profit from that.”
They all look at me. Sebastian makes a noncommittal sound.
I’m instantly irritated, but it fades quickly because Theo isn’t wrong. There’s a lot riding on my plan.
“I think I saw something about your date with her, actually,” Sebastian says. “How’d it go?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I get up and pour another drink. “The date went well. Everything will work out, Piper will be auctioned, and she’ll make us a shit ton of money. Maybe not the boon we’re used to, for sure, but enough to make my time and effort worth it.”
“Piper?” Blair’s voice echoes from the background. “PiperBarclay?”
Sebastian looks at her over his shoulder. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
She leaves the room, shutting the door quietly behind her. Becker narrows his eyes. “Our clients are confidential, Sebastian. You know that.”
He makes a face. “Right. Get married and try to keepanythingfrom your wife, then tell me how that works out for you.”
I suppress a shudder. Marriage. I can’t think of anything worse than being tied to one person for the rest of my life. I prefer my women to leave before they fall asleep in my bed and expect me to cuddle or make them breakfast the next morning.
“In other news, I dug up some shady intel about two of our new potential clients,” Sebastian says, rubbing his hands together.
“Who?” Theo asks. “And what intel?”
“There are ties to the Russian mob, unfortunately,” Sebastians says. “Which is why the vetting process is so important.”
