Cuddle Bear, page 18
“We’ll take care of it.”
I huffed. “This is the kind of shit I was worried about. They know about us, and now they’re being brave and bad-mouthing you.”
He rubbed his hands over my knees. “It’s only one person, and this had nothing to do with us being together.” He gave me another tight hug and I couldn’t bring myself to be upset about him holding me because it felt too good. He smelled amazing, too. Everything about him was a bright shiny spot in this craptastic situation.
“Oh, Hartlee and the sycophantic goblins who kiss his ass signed off on it. Didn’t you see it was sent on behalf of Xadrian and his crew?”
Wick snorted and sat back to smile up at me. “I’m going to fire them.”
“Okay.” I nodded, feeling murderous.
He shook his head and glanced at the computer screen. “I can’t really fire them because they have contracts. Plus, they’re too good. Xadrian has been here for several years.”
I groaned and ran a palm over my face. “Please just do it.”
He snickered and snatched my hand away from my cheek to hold it. “I’ll talk to Xadrian and see if I can’t give him something to keep him occupied. Clearly he doesn’t have enough work right now or he wouldn’t have time to send out snide emails.”
“You’d be surprised,” I grumbled. “I can find a lot of time for things that bring me joy.”
Wick combed his fingertips through my short beard, and I loved the sensation of his nails tickling against my skin. He teased me closer with a nudge under my chin, and I leaned in for a smooch that was more cathartic than a scream.
“You should get up off the floor before someone comes in here and thinks you’re doing something you aren’t.” I prodded him with my knee.
“Maybe I should lock the door and do it.” He bit his lip and waggled his eyebrows.
My breath caught, but I glanced at the stack of paperwork next to my computer and sighed, shaking my head. “No, not today.” The kisses he pressed to the tips of my fingers almost swayed me toward a different answer, but I shook my head.
He grinned. “Okay, I surrender to your work ethic. I want to get out of here at a reasonable time tonight. We can continue this later.”
Cupping his cheek, I traced my thumb across his lips and sighed again because it really wouldn’t have taken much for him to talk me into doing something we shouldn’t. “Lacey invited us out for drinks. There’s a new bar she wants to try—the Bus Stops Here. Apparently someone put together eight double-decker buses and remodeled the interior for an upstairs and downstairs bar. She was over the moon about it, talking about architecture as art. You might enjoy it.”
He perked up like a rabbit and I could almost imagine his nose wriggling. “Where is it?”
You are so cute. I leaned in and gave him a fast kiss because I couldn’t resist. “Just outside of town. Not too far from Mr. Heyward’s fireworks shack.”
His eyes gleamed. “Mm-hmm. They probably couldn’t get a permit for that type of construction in the city. You know, I did miss the fireworks display at the summer bash. We should have more fireworks for the holidays this year. Are Thanksgiving fireworks a thing?”
Fighting off an eye roll, I groaned. “You can’t guarantee good weather in the late fall.”
“It’s Louisiana.” He ran his hands along my legs and scooted a bit closer. “Tolerable weather is a gift any time of year. We would just have to take our chances.” His gray eyes were shiny with his future plans, and while I had nothing in particular against fireworks, the bill was outlandish.
“I won’t let you write them off unless the party is for work.”
He scowled. “Were you always this good? What the tax man doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
I nodded. “Yes. I’m not letting you get into trouble over something so ridiculous. Do you want to meet Lacey at this place?”
“Yes, please,” he chirped, and I could see him trying to figure out something in his head, but I waited for the smile that bloomed across his face, rather than asking what he was thinking. “How many people from the office have to be there to qualify as a work function?”
“You have to invite everyone. Even dumpster-fire email writers.”
“Done!” He beamed at me, and I patted his cheek, sensing another two or three weeks of hellish preparation in our futures.
Just as he was getting to his feet, Shelby popped open the door to the hallway and slid inside. She looked the same as she did most days, in a professional button-down shirt and khakis, and her long hair was up in a ponytail that had made its way over her shoulder. The second she laid eyes on us her eyebrows climbed her forehead. She smiled until her nose wrinkled, and then she pointed at Wick. “Mr. Guidry, were you—”
“No,” we both said at the same time, but he dusted off his knees, which didn’t help matters.
Shelby giggled till she snorted before she sighed with her whole body, shoulders slumping. “You should know Xadrian has been talking trash about you to customers and telling them you’re trying to drive up costs unnecessarily.”
“We saw the email, but there was nothing like that in there,” I said.
She shook her head. “He has a private email he uses with customers, too, and I was mistakenly added into an interesting conversation on Slack. I took screenshots, but I wanted to give you some context and let you know what was going on before I forwarded everything to you. I figured that would be a hell of a shock without some warning first.”
“Shit, he seems like he’s out to cause trouble.” Wick frowned and crossed his arms. His foot tapped away while he stared at the floor.
“That isn’t what happened in the last round of team meetings. Wick informed him that he couldn’t be lazy with his designs. There wasn’t a word uttered about a desire to increase the final project costs.” I massaged my temples and stared at the painting of a starry night and pond across the room that was supposed to be soothing but did nothing to bring my blood pressure down out of the sky.
Wick grunted and checked his watch, the gold winking in the afternoon sunlight cutting through the windows. “What time did Miss Lacey want to meet us?”
“I don’t know, in about an hour probably,” I mumbled. “This is going to take all night. Should I tell her we can’t make it?”
He shrugged. “No, we can let the matter rest until Monday.”
“You know, this seems like a conversation that isn’t meant for a peon like me.” Shelby winked and backed out of the door, sending us awkward finger guns on her way out that had me grinning. Wick waved at her, and she spun around to hustle off.
“We can’t let this go because we have plans,” I said with a sigh.
Wick growled and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I have to decide if I really want to fire him or not.”
“What?” I asked, incredulous. “He’s calling into question your integrity with clients! You have no choice.”
He shrugged. “If I’m not firing him, it can wait. If I am firing him, I must take the time to work out his severance, and that will have to wait until I can talk to my lawyer and see if I can knock the payout down due to the crap he’s pulling. Either way, I am done today. Let’s go meet Miss Lacey.”
“You’re serious here?” I stood and shoved my glasses up the bridge of my nose as he shuffled between me and the desk, then powered down my laptop with a sneaky poke of his finger at the keyboard.
“Absolutely.”
I smiled when he straightened my tie, then grabbed my suit jacket from the back of my chair to hold it up for me. It was a little strange to slide my arms into the jacket. I wasn’t sure why, but it always made my face hot when he helped me, and today was no different. I cleared my throat as I smoothed down the lapels, and he ran his hands across my shoulders before I turned to face him again.
“Shall we?” He held out his hand, and I took it. His smile was worth the pain in the ass that would be waiting for us to start the fresh week on Monday.
“Fine. Let’s just leave everything in the office. I can’t imagine letting this go until Monday, though. I want you to decide what we’re doing about Xadrian tonight, and we can come back in tomorrow and—”
“No, I want us to take the weekend off.” His mouth firmed, and I got the feeling this might turn into an actual fight if I tried to push it.
I stared up at him. “Why? You never really take a full weekend off.”
He shrugged. “I never had a reason to make sure I took the appropriate time for myself, and now. . . I regret that I made you work so much. There were obviously better things we could’ve been doing on the weekends.”
Smiling, I glanced toward the door since we’d already had one surprise visitor, but he snagged my chin with two fingers and turned my mouth toward himself to lay a kiss on me.
“All right, you talked me into it. Let’s go.”
“Excellent choice.” He dragged me by the hand around the desk to the door.
“Wait! Did you take care of your office? Lock things up? What about our computers?”
He shrugged. “It’s all fine. Leave it.”
“But Wick!”
He didn’t stop. “It’s fine.”
I held in a sigh, and he grinned at me, not letting my hand go, not even when we encountered a group of people leaving. My face flushed, but he only smiled and waved at everyone on the way out the door.
The drive to the bar wasn’t long, and it was easy enough to find the Bus Stops Here, which was exactly as it had been described to me by Lacey, only a thousand times better. Each of the eight buses that had been fitted together to make up the “building” that housed the business had been painted a different vibrant, metallic color, creating a rainbow. The front end of the first bus and the rear of the last bus had been left intact, so the result looked like a mega party bus; however, the structure sat firmly on the ground and the wheels were purely for show. The pink-tinted windows allowed us to see directly inside, and a good part of the bottom floor seemed to be dedicated to booths and dance space.
“This seems fun,” I said.
Wick nodded. “Don’t know if it would be good in a windstorm, but it’s fine for now.” He eyed up the place, and I chuckled.
“You don’t have a lot of faith.”
“Yes, well, I wasn’t involved in this project.”
I slapped his shoulder, and he stuck his tongue out at me as we entered. The atmosphere reminded me of a street party with the multicolored lantern lights strung along the ceiling on each side. At the far end near a small DJ station a disco ball glittered overhead, and Wick pointed at it. “Someone must be reliving their glory days. I haven’t seen a real disco ball in years.”
“You aren’t old enough to have ever seen a real disco ball, are you?”
He gave me a narrow-eyed glare. “I’ll have you know that Tangerine used to have one.”
“That old club in the Pleasure District they tore down in the late nineties? You never went in there.”
He chuckled. “I snuck in once. Got kicked out ten minutes after I weaseled through the front door.”
I gave him a side hug. “You’re lucky you weren’t arrested.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it—my name did.”
I rolled my eyes as we made our way to the pink steel bar directly across from the door. “Seems like it’s wider inside than one bus, doesn’t it?” I asked Wick over the dance music blasting from a speaker far too close to us.
He nodded and grinned. I let him order our drinks without any input from me, and I texted Lacey to find out where she was hiding. I’d barely sent the message when my phone buzzed in my hand.
Lacey: Upstairs. All the way in the back.
I showed Wick the screen and leaned against the bar.
“Hey, Maurice!” I turned and spotted Cooper resting an elbow against the other end of the bar. He gave me an enthusiastic wave that had me smiling, and I returned the gesture. Cooper was dressed for a night out in a nice white shirt with the top buttons undone and jeans that hugged his thighs and hips. A woman standing behind him was staring at his ass without an ounce of shame, and the bartender blasted him with an extra-wide smile as he passed over a bottle of beer.
“He’s cute. How do you know him?” Wick asked, and I had to laugh because he wasn’t doing a very good job at looking uninterested in my answer. His eyebrows dove as he studied my face like it held all the mysteries of the universe.
“That’s for me to know.”
His mouth fell open.
I laughed.
“You’re terrible. How do you know him?”
I shook my head, and he slid his arm around my shoulders, doing his best to mark his territory without pissing on me, but I didn’t mind him staking a claim. It made me happy inside when Cooper caught my eye and gave me a thumbs-up.
After the bartender passed us mugs of a dark beer that smelled like coffee, Wick and I found a light-lined set of spiral stairs to the left of the bar, which would surely be a hazard to anyone who’d had too much to drink, and we climbed to the second floor. It was much quieter and relaxed on this level with mellow acoustic guitar music buzzing in the background, but the gentle sounds were losing the war to the noise of the party below. We moved toward the back of the room and spotted Lacey at a square iron table someone had taken the trouble to paint pink.
When we reached her, I was confused because a scowl twisted her lips to the side. I’d never seen her looking this ready to go off on someone without an argument already in full swing. She’d curled her hair and the bouncy strands hung in spirals around her head, making her resemble a doll. She tugged at the strap of the purple dress that clung to her curves and dragged it back on top of her shoulder.
What in the world is wrong?
Lacey stared over her shoulder at the corner of the room, but there was a couple standing at the next table over talking, and I couldn’t see who had pissed her off so much.
“Is the service that bad?” Wick joked as he pulled out a seat and sank down. We set our beers on the table together, almost as if we’d practiced it, and I took the seat next to his.
Some of her bad mood finally vanished as she spun around to look at me. “No, but the clientele is. We should leave. I already had to deal with him, and I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“One of your exes?” I asked, racking my brain to dredge up anyone she’d dated who was bad enough to warrant this kind of reaction.
“Not mine.” She lifted an eyebrow and tilted her chin down as she stared at me, and I shifted around uncomfortably. She glanced over her shoulder again. “Damn it, I made eye contact.” She whipped back around toward us and covered her face while she scrunched her shoulders.
Confused, I stared at her until someone came around the people behind our table and pulled out the seat at her side—and then I gaped. There was nothing else I could do. Matthew sat across from Wick, and it was like looking at a ghost from my past that still haunted me. He was the same as ever with a wide smile and big brown eyes, and he gave me a grin that showed off his dimples and made his bright lips even more apparent. His brown hair was longer than he used to keep it, pulled back into a ponytail at the base of his neck and sun-kissed with blond that was probably from spending time outside. The clingy red shirt stretched across his chest showed off his muscles, and he wasn’t shy about leaning his elbows on the table and grinning at me.
“Long time, no see, Reece. I didn’t think you were still alive.” He leaned his cheek on his hand and somehow managed to resemble a sweet puppy, which was half of what had snagged me in the first place when we’d met.
“Uh.” I nervously picked up my beer and sipped it. The hops hit my tongue and jump-started my brain. “How have you been?” I set the mug down and spiraled into a hellish pit in my head. Matt looked better than ever, and it made me feel awful when he smiled again.
I hadn’t done any of the things I’d told him I wanted to do when I left him.
I hadn’t hit the gym and lost all the weight.
I was still more or less the same guy.
He was probably judging my lack of integrity. I had trouble breathing. He’d made me feel so used.
“You’ve slimmed down,” Matt said, frowning a little as he darted his gaze over what he could see of my body. “Are you dieting?”
“Funny, I was just thinking I haven’t changed at all, but you have.” I cleared my throat.
“Excuse me,” Wick loudly interjected, shoving his hand at Matt, who shook it with a frown. “We haven’t met. I’m Wick Guidry.”
Matt dropped Wick’s hand as if he’d been scalded. “Matthew Bankrift.” He turned to look at me again, and I felt like a bug under a microscope, even though he was simply being friendly and not acting in any way I could take issue with. “If you have a minute, I would really like to talk to you. I didn’t like the way we left things, and this is the first time I’ve seen you out. You’ve been keeping to yourself, and Lacey more or less said I was to blame for that. It’s been what? Three years?”
“Five,” I replied, then winced. Why did I do that? He didn’t need to know he’d hurt me so bad I kept count.
“Damn it, Matt. I told you that so you would leave,” Lacey hissed, but he ignored her.
“You want to do what? Apologize?” I felt uneasy, but overall he didn’t seem to be doing anything awful. He’d never been a terrible guy. Anxiety twisted my stomach into a writhing ball of snakes and each one wanted to squiggle away in a different direction.
“Talk here.” Wick slid his hand under the table and squeezed my thigh, which made everything inside me simmer down a bit.
Matt frowned at him, and I finally saw some of the real irritation I knew he was capable of. It was almost comforting to get a peek at the man I’d lived with until I couldn’t take it anymore. “This is a private conversation, friend.” He flashed Wick a toothy grin.
“Sure. Okay,” I said.
Wick’s grip on my thigh tightened until it was nearly painful.
With a smile, I shoved Wick’s hand off. “I want to know what you have to say for yourself because I don’t feel like I ever did get a good explanation from you.”
