The Pact (Winslow Brothers #2)(33)

“If your firm sells in New York, then I’m thinking it’s possible that you relocate to New York for a while.”

Her eyes turn wide. “Relocate to New York? Why would I do that?”

I almost want to laugh, but I swallow back the urge. “Well, babe, we do have to show proof of living together. And the only way to do that is to actually live together.”

“Oh…Oh my God,” she mutters and slaps a palm to her face. “Of course. Duh. You probably think I’m the biggest idiot right now.”

“I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

Worked up and emotional? Yes. But an idiot? Not at all.

“Move to New York. To live with you,” she says more to herself than to me. Like she’s testing it out on her tongue to see how it sounds out loud. “I have no idea how my boss would take something like that.” She digs her teeth into her bottom lip. “But it’s not like I haven’t helped with staging properties on the East Coast before…”

Daisy looks away from the screen of her phone, sighs, and when her eyes meet mine again, the depths of green appear lighter, closer to a jade gemstone than the deep green of the forest.

“Are you sure you’re okay with that?” she asks, and my answer is far simpler than I would’ve ever thought it would be.

“Yes.”

Her eyes search mine for a long moment, and then, they flit down to my bare chest. “Holy hell, are you naked? Like, you’ve been talking to me this whole time while you’re naked?”

I almost want to laugh at how quickly her mind changes topics. “I just got out of the shower.”

Her jaw drops wide open. “So, you are naked?”

“Not entirely,” I say and tilt the screen down slightly to show my towel.

“Oh, cool,” she mutters, and her eyes flit between my face and chest some more. “Cool. That makes sense!” she exclaims a little too loudly, and her cheeks flush pink. “People take showers all the time, right? I mean, I do. I take showers. Lots of them. And you take showers, and we’ll have to take showers in New York because that’s what people do, right? Ha. They shower. Which, you know what, that’s exactly what I have to do right now. Yep. It’s shower time! Okay, I’ll talk to you later. Bye.”

In an instant, she’s gone, but left in her wake is a smile on my face that stretches from ear to ear.

If she gets that adorably worked up over seeing me in a towel through the fucking phone, what’s it going to be like when she’s actually in my apartment, living with me?

Looks like it’s only a matter of time before you find out.





Monday, April 15th, Los Angeles

Daisy

I adjust the nonexistent wrinkles in my silk blouse and check the time on my phone for the fourth time in as many minutes. 8:55 a.m.

Only five more minutes of anxiety about the sick feeling I’m going to have when I try to explain this mess to Damien. I laugh at myself, briefly, before going back to focusing my breathing so I don’t hyperventilate. I have pre-anxiety to my anxiety. It’s the ultimate moment of my millennialism rearing its ugly head.

With one glance over my shoulder and into the conference room where Damien is spearheading his weekly morning agent meeting, I see that everyone appears to be in the process of standing up and grabbing their belongings.

Immediately, I move my gaze back to his office door and force as much oxygen into my lungs as I can. Holy shit. It’s about to go down.

After doing a little reconnaissance via Damien’s main assistant, Carrie, I know that his schedule is open for the next hour. Which means I have sixty minutes to convince him that me relocating to New York and handling staging the properties on the East Coast for the next three or so months is a really fan-freaking-tastic idea. That it’s going to do the work of a spam email Nigerian Prince by enhancing both his ahem and his bank account. And I somehow need to do this without spilling the beans on my visa debacle.

No big deal, right?

Even though it feels like I’m getting ready to be shipped off to war, that’s probably a completely irrational reaction. I hope.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my favorite little secret-keeper.”

The sound of my boss’s voice behind me spurs an urge to cringe so strong that I have to dig my teeth into my bottom lip to keep my facial expression halfway normal.

Slowly, I spin on my favorite secondhand black Prada heels and ready myself as Damien strides toward me with a terrifying smirk etched across his handsome face.

“Morning, Dame,” I say, trying like hell to keep the nervous titter out of my voice. Everything is on the line here.

“Morning, doll.” He smiles, slides open his office door, and gestures for me to come inside. “Finally ready to spill the details of your Vegas adventure? Because I’m dying for a taste of tea…and a baguette.” He chuckles at his penis joke, and all I can do is giggle back, almost painfully avoiding how very aware I am that his point was not at all about a morning beverage and snack. But whatever. Avoidance is all I have to keep myself emotionally afloat right now.

I hold up the to-go Starbucks cup clutched in my left hand and punctuate the gesture with a wiggle of my wrist. “I don’t have tea, but how about a morning caramel macchiato?”

An amused laugh jumps from his lungs, and he sidles around his massive all-glass desk to sit down in his black leather desk chair. A desk chair, mind you, that’s a ten-thousand-dollar Arne Jacobsen Egg Chair that’s exactly sixty years old and has the kind of perfect patina on the leather that would make any interior designer or vintage furniture lover weep tears of joy.