Cheater (Curious Liaisons, #1)(14)

“So I’ve already met the new Friday.” I tried not to get jealous as I glanced at Nadia’s picture and moved along to Saturday.

“Whoa.” I stared at the picture. Hard. “She’s . . . um, different.”

“Forty.” Lucas answered quickly. “And yes, Amy’s special, but then each of the ladies has something unique. She’s fascinating, irresistible, loves going for long walks, has three dogs, works at Starbucks headquarters.”

“I hope she gives you free coffee,” I joked.

“Sex in exchange for coffee would be wrong. Where are your morals?”

“MY MORALS!” I yelled.

Lucas burst out laughing. “Don’t get your panties in a twist—I was kidding. Stop looking at me like you want to stab me in the testicles.”

“The idea has so much merit.” I sighed dreamily, holding the papers to my chest. “So these are the chicks you . . .” I waved a hand flippantly in the air.

“Screw,” he answered helpfully. “Yes.”

“And cheat on.”

“They’re well aware of the arrangement.”

“And Sundays?” Not staring at him was too hard; therefore, I focused on the cleft in his chin so I wouldn’t look at his perfect lips . . . or the swell of his biceps. When he crossed his arms, I was almost afraid the shirt was going to rip, and it was a nice shirt, soft, white. Okay, Avery, stop staring at the fabric like you want to make babies with it. That’s weird—don’t be weird.

“Sundays are for my sister, Erin.”

He shifted uncomfortably. Was it my imagination, or did those biceps flex beneath the shirt like he was tensing?

As if the tensing wasn’t bad enough, he cleared his throat and blinked way too many times for a man who was being completely honest about his sister.

“Huh.” His shirt really was nice though—stain-free. How did he manage it with all the sex and lipstick? “So you were being honest about that?”

“Honesty,” he said, “is necessary when you casually date seven women, right?”

“Oh please!” I locked eyes with him. “You’re excusing horrible behavior by saying the girls are aware, but the whole sex without strings doesn’t exist. That’s a fantasy like Santa Claus or the Easter bunny.”

“Holy shit! Santa’s fake?” He winked. “And they’re all okay with it. Besides, it’s not like I’m sleeping with you.”

I hated him for saying it.

Because immediately I had a vision of his mouth on mine, clothes on the floor, and every forbidden fantasy I’d had throughout high school flared to life, fanned by the words that he’d just released into the universe, words that would be impossible to take back.

I sucked in a breath, and he licked his lips, his eyes focusing on my mouth.

It was wrong.

And a small part of me liked that feeling, the wrongness of being in my boss’s office, the history, but it was only 1 percent.

Ninety-nine percent of me still wanted to nail him to a wall and use his balls as target practice with a shiny, new aluminum bat.

Lucas took a step toward me. I took a step back.

He stopped approaching, instead shoving his hands into his pockets and offering a lazy smile. “That’s rare.”

“What?”

“A girl running in the opposite direction.”

“I’m not one of your desperate women grateful for little cheap crumbs—plus there are only so many days in a week.” I tried to sound cheerful, like it wasn’t a big deal that he was a lying, cheating asshole of a man, and not the man I used to know.

“Pity,” he whispered.

“Hey, you two, meeting in five.” I jumped a foot at the sound of the feminine voice, and then Lucas became all business.

I scurried back to my desk and shoved the papers into my purse just in time for Lucas to lead me to the conference room.





Chapter Seven


LUCAS

I hated Saturday meetings—they threw off my entire week—but this time, I’d looked forward to going to the office on my day off.

And it had everything to do with a certain spitfire currently drawing a horrible stick figure that I could only assume was me, with an arrow going through its head, and then the heart. An airplane was going down in flames in the drawing, and it was about to flatten said stick figure that had my name written above it in giant block letters.

Nice.

“Lucas.”

I glanced up, acknowledging the speaker at the head of the table.

Bill was my boss. Hell, he was everyone’s boss. He was the founder of Grant Learning. This announcement had to be big for him to call in all the VPs like this. “I know you typically do a four-ten if you can, but I’ll need you to move back down to five-eights.”

Avery frowned.

“No problem.” I suddenly had no issue with being in the office more. Besides, I usually had so much work, it was rare that I could take Fridays off anyway.

“Thank you, everyone, for meeting on your day off. I know this is very last minute, but I have an update on the new tutoring app that I think you should be made aware of.”

I leaned forward. The app was my idea. I’d hired the tech team to build an app for students. It worked a lot like Uber. Whenever a student needed help with a homework assignment, he or she could check to see if a tutor was in the area. The tutors were all screened by us and put into our system, and with his or her parents’ permission, a student could hire a tutor immediately. That made it easier for students who lived far from our franchises to get help.