That, at least, was enough to get him out of bed. Well, that and the sun shining directly in his eyes.
He crossed to the bathroom, showered quickly, and then got dressed.
As promised, an email from [email protected] was waiting in his inbox, containing a list of furniture stores, along with their styles, their inventory that was able to be shipped that day, and their location relative to his condo.
Tristan was scarily efficient.
Then again, after having recently met Sebastian—Clay’s former assistant who had moved up in the company and trained Tristan—his friend didn’t seem to accept them any other way.
Furniture shopping.
Yay.
Every grown man’s dream.
Snorting, he tucked his cell in his pocket, grabbed a jacket, and got down to furnishing his condo.
Thankfully, the process wasn’t too painful, and after a couple of hours Jet had a couch being delivered later that day, a bed frame and new mattress coming the next, and had filled his cart at Target to an obscene amount with new sheets and blankets, towels, pillows, and an area rug.
Even a man who’d spent more of the last few years in tents and sleeping on the ground, at worst, or an air mattress, at best, could be tamed by a walk through the home goods aisle at Target.
Now he was home, had mounted the TV to the wall, unpacked most of the bags, thrown the new sheets in the wash, and was moving his limited furniture to the side to make room for the kick-ass sectional he’d picked out. If Jet was becoming domesticated, he figured he might as well be comfortable at the same time, and so the pieces he’d chosen were solid and comfortable and had taken a giant chunk out of his paycheck.
Worth it, though.
If he was serious about wanting to settle down and have a family, he’d need furniture.
And it wasn’t like he was going to be bringing a woman back to his place to get busy on an air mattress.
Come home with me, baby. I’ll try not to fuck you hard enough to deflate the bed.
Yeah, that would be super smooth.
The buzzer rang, and his next hour was spent helping the guys bring the furniture in and then logging into all of his streaming accounts on the TV. Clay arrived with beer and the pizza in hand—having intercepted the guy in the hall, and they turned on a baseball game while making a respectable dent in the six-pack and extra-large pizza.
It was probably the most normal night he’d had in six years.
A friend, a game, some food, plenty of shit-talking.
“How’d it go with Trix?” Clay asked as they were carrying the empties into the kitchen.
“We going to have heart-to-hearts now?” Jet countered.
“Well, we already discussed in length how I’m severely pussy whipped,” Clay said. “The least you can do is tell me my matchmaking efforts were successful.”
Jet rolled his eyes. “Seriously?”
“Come on, man. She’s perfect for you. She’s smart, not interested in that giant wad of money your parents left you, and bonus, absolutely gorgeous.”
Those were all true statements. Ones he knew, of course, being that he’d spent almost a year of his life learning everything he could about Trix—everything she’d allowed him to know, that was. The trouble was, Clay didn’t know about that year. In fact, he doubted anyone did. Not only had their work often separated them, taking them on different assignments to different parts of the world, but during the times they were together, they’d needed to be discreet—not only because it was against policy to fraternize, but because some of the places they’d been were culturally different and they wouldn’t have appreciated an unwed couple with a standing evening sex appointment to be administering their care.
It had been tricky.
It had been exciting.
He’d fallen deep and he’d fallen fast.
But Clay didn’t know any of that.
And Jet wasn't willing to share it with the class.
“She’s a nurse, Jet,” Clay added when he didn’t say anything. “She’s traveled. She did the whole doctoring abroad thing like you, but for even longer. Heather hardly saw her for a full decade before she moved back home.”
Jet knew all of that. Well, not the not seeing her sister part, though he supposed that wasn’t too much of a surprise considering how all-encompassing that world had been. When they were on an assignment, it was hard to think of anything but what was right in front of them. Not only was it tough and exhausting, but oftentimes they weren’t near any place where they could call home, even if they’d had the physical or mental energy to do so. But he knew the rest of it, that she’d lived abroad from almost the moment she’d graduated from nursing school, that she was brilliant and talented and could suture a wound better than he could.
He knew she could have been a doctor, would have probably been a better one than he was.
She was just that good.
But she’d barely been able to afford to put herself through nursing school.
Somehow despite being the daughter of George O’Keith, money had been tight. Jet didn’t know the story as to why, whether O’Keith had refused to pay, or whether she’d refused, not wanting to be tied down. Yet, that probably as much as anything else, illustrated exactly why he and Trix couldn’t work out.
A year together and he hadn’t begun to understand her relationship with her family.
He shoved the pizza box into the trash and turned to face Clay. “She works at the hospital.”
Clay’s brows rose. “Which hospital?”
“My hospital,” he said. “In the same department. It’s too messy, even if she was interested in me. Which she’s not.”
“Did you even call her?”
Jet started sticking the empty beer bottles into the recycling can. “I saw her at the hospital.”
Clay rubbed his chin, the bristle on his jaw making a loud scratching sound. “That is dicey. You guys work at the same time?”
He nodded. “Sometimes.”
“Hmm.” Clay shrugged. “Well, Heather’s going to be disappointed. She wants everyone around her happy and paired off.”
Jet straightened. “I want to be happy and paired off, but as much as I like Trix, I’m not going to pursue something that puts both of our jobs at risk.”
“Sometimes things work out better when you work together.”
“That’s easy to say when you’re the boss,” Jet said. “Meanwhile, I don’t think my boss would be so happy about that scenario.”
Clay grinned. “That’s a fair point.” He turned and grabbed his jacket off the back of the couch—which, note to the universe was really fucking comfortable. “You know what the solution to this is, right?”
Jet trailed him to the door. “What?”
“You become the boss, and then you get to do what you want.”
Jet snorted. “So says the man with the giant HR Department.”
Clay winced, hand on the knob. “It is obscenely large.”
Jet paused, lips twitching. “Almost forty, and still so tempted to make a that’s what she said joke.”
Clay snorted. “Never too old for bad jokes.”
“True.” They shook hands. “Next time you need to forget you’re missing your wife, I’m around.”