Banking the Billionaire (Bad Boy Billionaires Book 2) (30 page)

“Hey,
Thatch
,” she said dramatically, and my eyebrows pulled together.

“Thatcher?” I heard from her phone and immediately understood. “What’s that motherfucker doing there?”

I moved around the desk and into Georgia’s space until my big head came into the shot beside hers. “Hi, honey. Nice to see you too.”

She rolled her eyes and smiled at the same time. “I just didn’t know you were gonna be there.”

“Yeah, baby, I have a meeting with Wes,” I replied, and then noticed Georgia’s eyes go comically wide out of the corner of my own at the unexpected genuineness of my endearment.

“Oh, okay.”

“Hey, I meant to ask if you’re going to be home early tonight?”

Georgia’s head moved back and forth between us, but I tried not to notice. Instead, I watched Cassie look over her left shoulder and talk to someone out of frame and back again, her dark hair pulling across the top of her low-cut shirt as she did.

“Yeah, I should be done with this shoot in the next couple of hours. What about you?”

“Yep. I’ve got to run back to the office after this and work on a couple of third-quarter plans that I’m almost done with, stop by and open up for Frankie, and then I’ll be home.”

“Okay, I’ll see you there. Need me to pick up your dry cleaning on my way?”

“That’d be great, honey. I’ll get dinner.”

“Perfect.” Someone called for her attention in the background again, and she whipped her head back and forth once more. “I have to go,” she said directly to me, and she
almost
looked disappointed. “I’ll talk to you soon, Wheorgie. Let me know if you need me to do any last-minute stuff for Big Dick’s party.”

“I need you to cook,” Georgie teased, and Cass just flipped her off.

“Let me know if you need me to do something I’m actually capable of.”

“Like give blow jobs?”

Cassie smiled as she made a slicing motion across her throat.

I took the opportunity to interject. “I could actually use your help with one of those.”

“Just how many of those are on your to-do list?” she asked, pretending to be annoyed. “Every time I check one off, another one gets added to the bottom.”

“Yeah, it’s more of a perpetual to-do.”

I heard someone speed-talk about something from off to the side of her, and her eyes snapped back to us. “I really have to go now. Later.”

And then she was gone. I missed her immediately.

“Picking up your dry cleaning?” Georgie questioned, and I waved her off.

“Georgie.”

“No, Thatch, that was as domestic as I’ve ever seen my friend in the history of, well, ever, and she didn’t even seem pissed about it.”

“She’s just determined not to let me win in a war of wills,” I downplayed in an effort not to talk about it. I was pretty sure Cassie was on my wavelength, feeling all the things I was feeling, and I hoped my instincts were right.

“True enough, but this is not that.”

I took a deep breath and changed the subject. “Where are we with Kline’s party? All set?”

“Nice subtle avoidance,” she mocked. I shook my head and stared directly into her gentle blue eyes.

“I wasn’t trying to be subtle.”

“O-kay,” she agreed, the motion of her mouth exaggerated.

She turned to her computer and opened a document that had a checklist of party details two pages long.

“Jesus,” I remarked. It was supposed to be to myself, but judging by the aggressive eyes she turned my way, I hadn’t been successful.

“It’s mostly just the details of what I’ve been telling Kline. You know he’s too smart for anybody’s good, and I’ve been trying to avoid getting caught in a lie.”

“Especially because you’re a shit liar.”

“How do you know I’m a shit liar?” She pouted.

“Honey.” I tilted my head. “Everybody knows.”

“Goddammit. I’m gonna be good at it one day.”

I shook my head with a smile and tucked a stray hair behind the ear of Kline’s perfect match. “No. You won’t. And that’s a good thing. We are who we are for a reason. You’re the perfect fit for my friend because you are the way you are. I’m pretty sure he’d be pissed if you changed.”

She smiled, and the sincerity of it lit up the room. Yeah, Kline had picked well.

“Why are
you
the way you are?”

“How exactly am I?”

“Knock, knock,” Wes said from the door, looking from Georgia to me curiously. “I’ve been waiting for you for at least five minutes, dude. I had a suspicion I might find you here, though.”

“Just saying hello,” I dismissed, leaning down to place a friendly kiss on Georgie’s cheek.

“Does Kline know you like to kiss his wife?” Wes teased.

“As a matter of fact, he does, Whitney.” He didn’t fucking like it, but he
knew
. And it wasn’t like I was giving her open-mouth tongue with a side of tit grab.

Georgia just shook her head and threw up a jaunty wave. “Bye, boys.” Her eyes moved to me, a piercing promise of this-conversation-isn’t-anywhere-near-over rolling tumultuously in their depths.

Wes and I both waved before moving down the hall toward his office.

“What did I interrupt?” Wes asked as we stepped inside and he closed the door behind me.

“Nothing.” I pulled off my suit coat and took a seat in the chair in front of his desk. “We were just talking about Kline’s birthday.”

“It didn’t sound like that.”

“Jesus.” I rubbed at my head. “What are you, the conversation police? It was nothing.”

“So it doesn’t have anything to do with your roommate?” he pushed with a smirk.

Narrowing my eyes, I told him the truth. Well, at least half the truth. “No. It doesn’t.”

He pulled out the chair from behind his desk and moved to sit down.

“And how do you know she’s my roommate? I’m pretty sure you were still out of town when that happened.”

“I was. Kline wasn’t.”

I twisted and lifted my leg so that my right ankle rested comfortably on my left knee and tried to tamp down the nervous swell in my stomach. Talking about everything with Cassie with other people made it real. And being real made me feel like I had everything to lose. My mind had rerouted the end goal, and winning a prank war wasn’t my focus. I wanted to win
her.

“He sure has made a flawless transition from Perfect Paul to Gossip Gabe.”

Wes smirked. “He’s just happy he isn’t the center of attention anymore. It was never his thing. But you should feel at home here.”

Both my hands raised to shoulder level in a gesture of
what can you do
. “I can’t help it if I’m endlessly interesting.”

His body shook with laughter as he reached for the files on the corner of his desk. “So I have a few guys I really want. And I need to find the number that’s going to make that happen comfortably. A couple of them are coming to the end of their contracts with the Seahawks, but one kid is just finishing college.”

“No draft?”

“He tore his ACL pretty early in this last season. And he’d been sitting second-string to that Pulchek kid for most of the first three years of his college career. No one else has even thought about touching him. At least not since his All-American years in high school.”

“So why are
you
thinking about touching him?”

He raised a brow suggestively, so I flipped him off.

“Because he’s fucking good.”

A shocked laugh burst from my lips. “Well, fuck. I’d say that’s a good reason.” I held out a hand. “Here, let me see his file.”

Wes pulled it from the bottom of the stack and passed it to me, leaning back in his chair and running a rough hand through his hair.

“You know it’s not your job to help me pick people, right? I just need you to make sure I’m paying them the right amount of money.”

“Oh, I know it’s not my job. I do it as a favor out of the goodness of my heart.”

“I don’t really need—”

“To thank me?” I interrupted and pointed at him. He narrowed his eyes. “You’re right. It doesn’t need to be spoken between friends.”

He just shook his head as I opened the folder, and I didn’t bother to hide my smile. He was too easy to play with, and with the way I wasn’t in control of anything else in my life right now, it felt good to be in control of this. It felt normal.

Recognition had me jumping to my feet when I saw the picture on top of the papers inside.

“Holy shit! Sean Phillips?” I’d had a flicker of a memory from Portland when Wes had said ACL, but it was a really fucking common injury and I wasn’t expecting to be this lucky. I figured I’d have to drop hints about Sean to make Wes think it was his idea at some point, but this really saved me the trouble.

Wes’s face scrunched in amused confusion. “Yeah. You know him?”

“Ha!” I shouted, a goofy smile making me feel nearly drugged. “Yeah. I know him.”

He’s gonna go fucking pro!

I tapped the folder almost aggressively. “This is Cassie’s brother.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” Wes said through a laugh. “That kid is black.”

I shook my head and chuckled. “I said the same thing when I saw his picture on her phone a couple months ago. I figured she was bullshitting me, but she wasn’t. I was just at her parents’ house, and this is her brother, Sean.”

“Well, I didn’t see that coming.”

Fuck, I didn’t see anything coming anymore. The thought made me smile.

“L
isten, Phil. I need you to be cool,” I said, fluffing up the dog bed I’d picked up on the way home. Following the mini-pig breeder’s instructions, I placed the bed in the corner of the master bedroom with lots of blankets for him to root through. Since it had been nearly two decades since I had Dad, my childhood pig, I was a bit rusty on my pig-owning skills.

“Shit will probably go down once Thatch gets home, but if I’m cool, and you’re cool, we should all be cool as a motherfucking cucumber.”

The little guy snorted in response and proceeded to nudge my leg with his tiny pink nose while his little tail wiggled back and forth.

After straightening his bow tie, I stood up and pointed down at Phil’s new bed. “This is where you’ll sleep.”

He grunted in response, his tail abruptly stopping its excited movement while he proceeded to just stare at the pile of blankets on top of the bed.

I sighed. “You haven’t even tried it yet.”

Another grunt.

“C’mon,” I instructed, kneeling down and picking him up. “Once your little ass hits this cotton cloud of heaven, it will be love at first touch.” I gently placed him on the bed, and he just sat there, looking at me.

“Philmore, you need to try better than that, dude.”

He snorted but proceeded to root through the blankets with his nose. I watched avidly for a few minutes until he appeared to be enjoying his humble new abode.

I sat down beside the bed and softly ran my fingers over his back. “I think you’ll be really happy here, buddy. New York is a pretty cool place to live. The rent is exorbitant, but yeah, that shouldn’t concern you since you’ll be mooching off us. Well, Thatch. Technically, I’m kind of mooching off him right now too. That makes you and me tight. An unbreakable bond, okay? Even though I bought you for him. Between me and you, it’s solely because I’m focused on out-pranking the prankster, but I can’t deny you’re one cute little bastard.”

Yeah, but your main focus isn’t on pranks and one-upping Thatch anymore…

Okay, so maybe my focus had changed. Maybe my focus was just
him
, plain and simple. Well, confusing and complicated was probably more like it, but it didn’t change the fact that I truly loved screwing with him. I fucking
loved
keeping Thatch on his toes.

Phil lay down on the bed, resting his chin on my thigh, and looked up at me.

I took in his little piggy face and grinned before continuing to give him the ins and outs of the city. “The food is phenomenal, but skip the sushi at Duane Reade. I made that mistake once and nearly shit my brains out for a week.”

In hindsight, I really should have known. But I’m the kind of person who actually needs to touch the hot stove to confirm it’s hot, even though you already fucking told me.

“I should probably warn you that pigs are illegal in the Big Apple, but don’t worry, I found a way to get around that rule,” I said as I rubbed the prickly hairs of his back.