The Billionaire Boss Next Door(98)

Rubbing a hand over my face, I forced my eyes opened and snatched the phone off my antique nightstand. I barely resisted the urge to slam it back down, thus breaking it into a million tiny pieces. Luckily, my rational thinking wasn’t as sleepy as the rest of me and realized the amount of work that would result from such an impulsive decision.

Cleaning and shopping and transferring my contacts, oh my.

Yeah, screw that.



BAD_Ruck (2:09AM): It’s NOT my dick.



It’s not his dick?

What the double actual fuck?

No. Nope. This was so not the right time to deal with this bullshit.

Not. Answering.



The sides of my pillow exploded upward with the force of my punch and made the perfect cushion for my face when it slammed down beside my hand. I had so much shit to do at work tomorrow, and dealing with BAD_Ruck and his proclivity for awful crotch selfies and unintelligible responses was not going to be on my agenda.

I was focused on getting shut-eye, confident that sleep and I would spoon the fuck out of each other until the sun rose the following morning. I channeled Buddha for my inner Zen, humming my way toward unconscious bliss. It was either that, or grab my vibrator and participate in a ménage à moi.

Thankfully, my return to sleep came easily that night. No hands-on approach required.

The next day, while I was getting ready for work, I decided to give BAD_Ruck a piece of my mind. I spit toothpaste into the sink, rinsed my mouth out with water, and turned off the faucet. Striding into my room with purpose, I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and sent the dick gremlin a response.

Suck. On. That. Buddy.





TAPRoseNEXT (7:03AM): Then it’s someone else’s dick? WORSE. Threat Level EXPLODED.



“Good morning, Mr. Brooks.”

“Good morning, Frank,” I replied, picking my head up from the crime scene on my phone just long enough to meet his honest amber eyes before sliding into the soft leather seat of my Town Car.

Fucking Thatch.

I swear, somehow he took doing what would already be really fucking annoying and advanced it to the next level. If he didn’t have the same ability with money, I probably would have dropped him by now.

To the bottom of the ocean. With a cinder block attached to his ankles.

She was right, of course. Sending a picture of someone else’s dick was considerably worse than sending a picture of your own.

Especially this one.

Three rings trilled in my ear before his sleep-laden voice forced one hungover syllable past his lips. “’Lo?”

“A dick, Thatch? Really?” I asked immediately, pinching the bridge of my nose to stave off a headache.

No amount of lingering alcohol could stop his answering laugh.

His throat cleared a little more with each chuckle, and by the time he responded, he was speaking clearly. “You’re the one using my picture for your profile, bro. It was only fair that I unleashed the gargoyle dick.”

Gargoyle dick. Too fucking right. A winglike knob, a hunchback, and questionable coloring all lent themselves to his description. I’d left my phone on the bar without hawk-eyeing it for two fucking minutes, and the asshole had somehow managed to send one of the world’s worst illicit pictures to some poor—now blind—woman in that time.

“That profile was only payback for the last awful thing you did to me.”

“Which was?” he asked, altogether too amused.

“Who knows,” I admitted, staring up at the passing high-rises and shaking my head. “I can’t keep up.”

“Then join in, K. Live a little, for fuck’s sake.”

The burgeoning sun glinted off of a pane of perfectly smooth glass at the top of a building and reflected a rainbow right into the window of my car.

“I’m living just fine,” I argued.

“Yeah.” He laughed and scoffed at once. “Say hi to Walter for me.”

That was Thatch’s version of calling me a cat lady.

“Hey, fuck you!” I said, only to be met with dead air. I pulled the phone away from my ear to discover he’d ended the call.

“Fuck that guy,” I muttered, somehow calling more of Frank’s attention to myself than I had with all the yelling.

“Sir?”

“No worries, Frank.” I paused for a second and looked back out the window. “You wouldn’t happen to know a hit man, would you?”

I glanced up front in preparation for his reaction.

“Um,” he murmured hesitantly, flicking his eyes between me and the road in the rearview mirror. “No, sir.”

I shook my head as I smiled, a brief chuckle tickling the back of my throat.

“Good. That’s good,” I remarked, just as we pulled up to the curb in front of my building.

Flexing the door handle in my hand, I shoved the door open with the toe of my shoe.

“Mr. Brooks,” Frank started to protest, as usual, jerking into motion in order to hop out to help me, but I just couldn’t get into the mindset where his and my time was well spent waiting on him to walk around the car just to do something my opposable thumbs and lack of paralysis made shockingly simple.

I smiled in response before he could get out, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror before exiting.

“Have a good day, Frank. I’ll see you at six.”