Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 124971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
“I wasn’t being snarky. I know how much you love this city. That should show you how much I care!” he protested. “I gave you permission to do something that’d hurt me badly so you can reach your full potential. This is the ultimate sacrifice. You marrying someone else.”
Permission. Someone needed to buy the man a calendar. And a clue. We weren’t in the nineteenth century anymore.
“Cheers for the help again, BJ. Have a grand night.”
“So we’re not even gonna hook up before I leave? One last time for the ride?”
I hung up the phone, shaking my fist at the ceiling of my five-hundred-square-foot Madison Avenue flat.
God had failed me. He could well forget about me ever going on Lent again.
It was half past midnight when I cabbed it from FAO Schwarz to Gretchen’s ritzy flat on the Upper East Side. If I were lucky—which, as you could suspect by the way this evening was unfolding, wasn’t a characteristic of mine—she’d be fast asleep, and I could quietly dispose of the wrapped gifts.
“Must be a special birthday girl to get so many presents.” The cabdriver eyed me in the rearview mirror. I was buried in pastel-colored gifts—anatomically correct baby dolls, Barbie fanny packs, a ride-on unicorn, and a life-size kangaroo. (Was civilization ever going to address the fact that kangaroos were aggressive arseholes and not cute? I needed their PR person.)
“Wouldn’t you think,” I muttered, peering out the window as skyscrapers zinged by. Manhattan was especially lovely at night. Elegant, gritty, and dewed with promise and opportunity. “Throwing money at children isn’t love. It’s an admission of guilt.”
The cab pulled up at the curb. I saluted Terrence, the doorman, as I zipped past him. He was used to my coming and going at all hours of the night. After practicing mindful breathing and telling myself that the worst of the night was definitely behind me, I stuffed myself and Lyric’s gazillion presents into Gretchen’s elevator.
When the elevator slid open, I was greeted by four overrun garbage bags my boss had decided to position outside her door. Gretchen once explained to me she didn’t believe in taking out her own trash. As though keeping her flat tidy was aliens or cryptids.
Sidestepping the leaky things, I balanced Lyric’s gifts as I punched in the code that unlocked Gretchen’s door.
I swung the door open. The bloody kangaroo slipped from between my arms to the floor. I tumbled over it, diving headfirst on a gasp. Luckily—and I use the term loosely—I landed on the fluffy thing. My dress rode up, giving my bum some airtime. To make matters worse, I was still wearing the sexy knickers I’d bought last week in hopes BJ would propose tonight. Black and lacy, with a red bow just above the crack.
With my face buried in a kangaroo’s knob (of course I didn’t fall atop it missionary-style; that wouldn’t have been quite as humiliating), I thought tonight really, truly, undoubtedly couldn’t get any more disastrous.
Yet again, the universe rose to the challenge.
Because as soon as I lifted my face from the kangaroo’s crotch, I realized what I had walked into.
My married boss having sex with a man who definitely wasn’t Jason.
CHAPTER TWO
DUFFY
The image was imprinted on my mental hard drive before I could hit the delete button.
Of my ballbusting boss—the woman who’d moderated the last presidential debate—with a scarf balled and shoved inside her mouth, as a tall, bizarrely well-built demigod slammed into her, his arse muscles contracting each time he did. Her pencil skirt was bunched around her waist, her knickers haphazardly tugged to one side. Her tits bounced happily through her torn shirt. Lovely.
Assuming Jason hadn’t become a six-foot-four deity with buns of steel, Thor’s build, and shaggy, nineties-heartthrob blond hair in the three weeks since I’d last seen him, this was definitely a paramour of some sort.
“Nice panties,” he greeted me midthrust, not bothering to stop shagging my employer. “Please tell me you’re wearing a matching bra.”
“I am,” I announced, refusing to appear embarrassed. “They were on sale.”
“Great investment.” He groaned, obviously on the edge of a climax.
Were we actually exchanging pleasantries while he was defiling my boss? And people said the Brits were overly polite.
“WHAT THE FUCK, DUFFY!” Gretchen shoved the man away, her bare feet slamming against the marble floor. She dashed toward me like a bullet, trying to cover her tits with her torn blouse. I scrambled to my feet, tugging my dress down as I peered at the man behind her, because obviously, ogling hot men was of great importance in that moment.
Bloody hell.
Where did she find this bloke? Not anywhere I’d been frequenting, that was for sure. To say the man was hot was like saying hell was pleasantly sunny. Sizzling was more like it. His cheekbones and jawline were comically sharp, his lips pomegranate red, pouty yet well proportioned. And that body . . . hello, Michelangelo’s David. But with much better equipment.