Page 8 of Playing His Game

Ohno.

“A few think it was the first time—that you succumbed to your lust at last for one wild night. But pretty much everyone agrees that was a passionate embrace on the sidewalk last night.” They paused. “Well, that or they think you were about to put your fist in his mouth in, like, the non-sexy way.”

“Sage,” Mo said desperately, “please tell me the Internet doesn’t think I’m dating?—”

“Adam Murphy? The one and only!”

Mo let out a noise like a dying rhino and plunked his head onto the counter.

Phoenix was not a hockey hotbed. Even if it had been, only small subsections of the Internet cared about the sport beyond game outcomes. Unfortunately, Mo had been born into the Kardashians of the Phoenix real estate world—famous for being rich. The first openly gay draftee and the son of the people who drafted him—the one who stood there and smiled and handed over the jersey and posed for photos? It was the start of a romance novel. The fact that Mo had barely been fifteen and Adam eighteen hadn’t deterred speculation, much to baby Mo’s chagrin.

“Why did it have to be him?”

“Just to clarify, this is you squashing the rumors of a torrid love affair and/or bar fight.”

Mo tipped his head so he could see Sage’s smug face—and more importantly, they could see his—and glared. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask such a horrible, gut-churning question. Because thinking about it might actually make me puke.”

“I think that might be the hangover, sweetie.”

“Ughhhh.” He turned his face so that his whole cheek smushed the counter. The cool stone felt nice on his overheated skin. “Did you call me just to gloat about this?”

“Oh, honey. I’m not going to waste my gloating while you’re like this. What kind of friend would I be? This is a warning shot.”

Ugh, Mo thought again, without moving his face.

“Because ifIwas getting screenshots of your mug on TikTok this morning, you know the Du Ponts are already on the warpath.”

Mo let out a pathetic mewl and peeled himself upright. Sage was totally correct. Mo needed to sober up more before Orson and Claire Du Pont sicced the PR firm on him. “This is the worst birthday present ever.”

“Up and at ’em,” Sage said sympathetically. “I’ll pray for you or whatever.”

Mo hung up without saying goodbye and headed for the coffee maker.

He was just smearing concealer on the bags under his eyes when his phone played the opening nine notes of “The Imperial March”: the ringtone he’d assigned to messages from the Du Ponts’ PR attack dog.

Joy.

Sending a car for you at ten. Please be ready.

Mo muttered direly and reached for his toothbrush.

All things considered, he’d pulled himself together remarkably well with caffeine and cosmetics by the time he stepped out of the car at Du Pont Property and Holdings. Plus, they lived in Arizona; no one could blame him for wearing sunglasses. He wouldn’t have said he was ready foranything, but he had experience disappointing his parents. He hadn’t become a professional athlete, hadn’t gone to law school after business school, hadn’t gone to work for the company. But on the other hand, his parents felt such distaste for his undergraduate thesis that they put him on an allowance to be a professional socialite and slacker, so now he got paidnotto work.

One more year, he reminded himself. One more year and then he’d turn twenty-five and they’d fork over his trust fund and he could bid them goodbye forever and do whatever he wanted with the rest of his life.

Provided they didn’t disown himtoday, of course.

In the meantime?—

“Hi, Miss Daisy,” he said politely to Orson’s receptionist, a woman who seemed to have been in her sixties for her entire life. She used to give him lemon candy while he waited for Orson to be done in the office.

Miss Daisy turned her face up for a kiss on the cheek, which Mo delivered.

“How much trouble am I in?”

She pursed her lips around a smile and shook her head slightly. “You’d know better than me.” But then she opened her desk drawer and produced a candy, so he figured it was pretty bad.

He pocketed it for later. Orson would disapprove of Mo having anything but apologies in his mouth for this meeting.