Playing Dirty (Risky Business, #2)(13)

“Sage—”

“Yes?” Please just let me leave …

“Monique thought you were quite pretty,” he said. “I just thought I’d let you know that.”

Dear God, kill me now. “How … sweet of her,” I said. “She’s … striking. Wherever did you, um, meet her?”

“A client introduced us,” he said. “She’s from Lyon. She’s a model.”

I’d been right. Not only the real-deal French, but an honest-to-God model. I hated her with every fiber of my being.

“That’s so nice,” I lied. “And you’re taking her to Everest.”

“She’s French. She’s a foodie.”

“Of course.”

An awkward silence descended, but I was too irrationally upset to bother trying to break it. I just stood there in front of his desk, waiting.

“How are you and Ryker doing?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said stiffly. “We’re fine.”

More silence.

“Was there anything else?” I asked.

He studied me, the blue of his eyes piercing, until I flushed and looked away.

“I don’t mean to be curt,” I said, trying to push back my emotions and react the way any normal person would in this situation. “I’m glad you met her. She … seems nice.”

Maybe it hadn’t been that Parker didn’t want a relationship. Maybe he just hadn’t wanted a relationship with me.

The thought hurt, which made me feel even worse. I’d thought I was over Parker, over wanting anything between us. I cared about Ryker. A lot. Maybe I was even falling in love with him. So why was I so upset that Parker had maybe found someone, too? I should want him to be happy. If I really cared about him, I’d want him to be happy no matter what.

With that echoing inside my head, I blurted, “I hope you’re happy. With her, I mean.” My throat thickened and I swallowed hard.

“Sage—”

“Yeah, I gotta go,” I managed, backing toward the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.” I didn’t wait to see if he had more to say; I grabbed my purse off my desk and jumped in the elevator just as it was about to close.

I had to get a grip, I decided as I unlocked my apartment door and headed inside. Control my emotions, not the other way around. Chocolate would help with that. Specifically, peanut M&M’s.

Digging into my cabinet, I pulled out the cookie jar my mom had given me one year for Christmas. I never put cookies in it, because frankly they wouldn’t last very long, so I filled it with peanut M&M’s. Dangerous to have around, which is why I kept it on a high shelf in the back of my pantry as a deterrent, which didn’t matter one little bit when I wanted them. But I could still pretend.

Ryker called as I was heating up a microwave dinner and sipping on a glass of wine.

“Hey, babe, how was your day?” he asked.

“Fine. The usual,” I said. I never went into great detail about my work or mentioned Parker at all, if I could help it. “You?”

“Cracked a case, made an arrest. Think we even got enough evidence to put him away, which is nice.”

“Congrats,” I said.

“Another day in paradise,” he joked.

“Speaking of which, my mom called today.” I reached for another handful of M&M’s.

“How’s she doing?”

“Fine,” I said as I munched. “But her and Dad are going to be in town tomorrow night and … they want to take us to dinner.” I swallowed and took a breath before blurting the bad news. “They want to meet you.” I had no clue how he was going to react to this. We hadn’t discussed being serious or even exclusive, but had let the relationship kind of progress at its own speed.

“That sounds great,” he said.

“Really?”

He laughed, a low chuckle that thrummed in my ear. “Yes, really.”

I smiled into the phone. “Okay then. They said they’d be here at seven.”

“I’ll probably have to meet you at the restaurant,” he said.

“Okay. I’ll text you as soon as I know where we’re going. Are you coming over tonight?”

“Gotta take a rain check on that, too,” he said. “But I have a few minutes if you want to talk dirty to me.”

I snorted. “Yeah. That’ll happen. Go arrest some bad guys. I’ll talk to you later.”

We disconnected and I went back to my M&M’s and wine, which wasn’t as bad a combination as it sounded.

*

The next morning, I’d resolved not to think at all about my confused feelings for Parker. How I was able to compartmentalize, I had no clue, but work went on as usual. Megan showed up at my desk for a mid-afternoon gossip break.

“So how’s Todd?” I asked. Todd was relatively new to the company, an attorney from Omaha who’d wasted no time in asking Megan out a few months ago.

Megan grimaced.

“Oh no. What happened?”

“We had a fight,” she said, looking glum. She leaned her hip against my desk as she scooted a little closer. “About his ex.”

“What about her?”

“They’re still communicating,” she said. “You know, decided to be friends or something because he wanted to move here and she didn’t, so they broke it off.”