I swiped my shelf clean with my arm, sending sculptures, special editions, and paintings crashing to my office floor with a piercing smash. “What was she thinking?”
“She was thinking that you’re engaged-to-be-married to someone else, and she doesn’t want your fucking pity presents.” Oliver sprawled over a massage table in the middle of my office, unfamiliar with the concept of boundaries. “It’s called a spine, Zach. Some people have it.”
“Why does one have to be on that woman?”
I turned to my desk screens, ripped one from its cables, and readied to hurl it out the window before remembering my staffers were currently picking up twenty-three packages of designer sneakers.
One for every year of her enraging existence.
“Because if she were like everyone else, you wouldn’t have liked her,” Oliver murmured into the face-hole of the massage table while a huge Swedish dude dug his thumbs into his shoulder blades.
I slammed the screen back down, cracking the display in three. A nice new dent graced the imported desk.
My feet thudded on the rug as I marched to the window, glaring at the mess she’d made on the lawn beneath.
The worst part was, I’d thought for sure that after Farrow realized I’d remembered her birthday—took the time to gift her things she’d actually use, gifts that also happened to be a wink to the time we’d met—she’d seek me out.
Slip into my bedroom during the night.
Practice our touching.
My fingers clawed the windowsill as I hunted for a glimpse of her outside, knowing I wouldn’t find her. I’d checked the footage of every security camera on the property, and nothing.
Nada.
Where the hell was she?
Still on my payroll, that’s fucking where.
“Steam’s coming out of your ears, bud.” Ollie chuckled behind my back. “What did you expect?”
“A professional employee?”
“She was there for your surprise engagement party. Standing next to your fiancée. After you fucked her in that sauna less than a week ago.”
“I didn’t fuck her.”
Not yet.
But I wanted to. More than anything else on this goddamn Earth, the Mona Lisa included.
“Well, still. Don’t expect the Boss of the Year award. You acted just as unprofessional.”
I turned from the window to scowl at him. “She knows it’s not real.”
“Seemed real to me.”
“I’m marrying Eileen out of necessity. Everyone but my mother knows it.”
I was going to grind my molars into dust if I wasn’t careful.
“Sorry, buddy. ‘Mommy made me do it’ is not the compelling argument you think it is.”
“You are in no position to lecture me, Oliver. Your most lengthy relationship is with your anal beads.”
“I’ll have you know—I replace them every other week to ensure high hygiene levels for my sexual partners.” Oliver sounded scandalized. “Not that I’ve been getting a lot of action recently. To be honest, yesterday I found myself running with my flip-flops down the hallway just to remember what sex sounds like.”
“You had someone over two days ago. You literally sent us pictures.”
Much to my chagrin.
“Time is subjective.” Oliver shrugged beneath the Hulk’s diligent fingers. “Point is, you earned your spot in the doghouse. Enjoy the canine snacks.”
I shot him a look. “You’re an insult to the species.”
He raised his smug face from the face hole and smirked at me. “Now use this same energy to grovel your life away, Zachary.”
“I do not grovel.”
“You’ve been glancing at that Go board like a photo of a lost loved one.”
That was because the little witch hadn’t even bothered making a move this morning, and it was her turn.
She never missed a move.
“I. Will. Not. Grovel.”
What did groveling even look like? What did he expect me to do?
“Better clean that mess up.”
How?
“For the last time, I do not—”
Oliver waved me away, sticking his head back in the hole. “Natalie, hey, yoo-hoo. Please make yourself useful and bring me another cocktail.”
