Ro coughed, staring pointedly at me. “Remember telling me something about staying on task today?”
“Hush,” I said, patting her on the head again. It seemed to drive her crazy when I did this, and I got a kick out of that.
We went to grab coffee first. The good kind, not the basic stuff in my office.
The three of us walked into the kitchen and stopped dead.
Two naked women, Blondie and Red from the day before, were sixty-nine-ing each other on my kitchen counter.
CHAPTER FOUR
“WHAT THE FUCK, Thorn?” Dair burst out, sounding disgusted.
“What?” I shot back, sarcasm coming out on auto-pilot. “Look how generous they’re being with each other.”
And then I remembered Ro.
My hands clapped over both of her eyes exactly one second later.
Fuck. I was doing a hell of a job of not corrupting Ro.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
With my hands still over her eyes, I guided her away from the kitchen down, down, down the hallway and into my office.
Dair was hot on my heels like he couldn’t get away from the flexible nymphos fast enough. Which was fair, since he had a smokin’ hot wife at home that put both of those women to shame.
“I apologize for this unfortunate incident,” I told them both solemnly, and for some reason I had a hard time so much as looking at a blushing Ro as I said it. “I’m not sure what’s going on in there, but I’ll see to it right away.”
I started to leave and noticed Ro was following me.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“Don’t you need help?” she asked back.
My eyes tried to bug out of my head. “You should have never seen that. I’m very sorry that you did, and I don’t want you to see any more, okay? So sit tight. I’m going to ask them very nicely to leave, and then I’ll be right back.”
She didn’t try to follow me when I left that time, and I did exactly as I said I would.
The naked women, predictably, tried to talk me into joining them.
For some reason I wasn’t even tempted. Perhaps because I was a bit mortified by what my house had turned into, and how it made me look in front of Dair and my new assistant.
I couldn’t even blame this on these random women. I had no idea why or how they were there, but it was a fact that I’d fucked both of them together and separately, and they had every reason to believe I’d enjoy the little show they’d staged for me.
When they realized that I wasn’t going to play today, they left with reasonably good grace, even getting dressed first.
I walked them politely to the door, waving goodbye.
“How did you get in here?” I asked their backs.
“Veronica let us in before she left,” one of them said. Their backs were to me and I couldn’t even tell which one said it.
Good to know. So I didn’t need to change the locks. I just needed to quit letting random women come inside in the first place. Noted.
I made a quick call to my housekeeper, and she agreed to come sanitize the kitchen as soon as humanly possible.
No one should have to eat in there after that, particularly Ro.
“They’re gone, and the kitchen is going to get a good scrubbing,” I told Dair and Ro as I re-entered my office.
“That’s reassuring,” Dair said dryly.
Ro was behind my desk, sitting in my chair like she owned the place. Dair was lounging in one of my comfy leather chairs. I sprawled out on the room’s biggest sofa.
“Sorry Ro, I hope you don’t quit on me now,” I said with mock solemnity. “I’ll do better, I swear.”
“I find you exceptionable for too many reasons to list,” she said flatly, not looking up, “but I’m not quitting.”
“That’s not even a word!” I told her.
That clearly tickled her. She looked at me and smirked. “I’m sorry to burst your bubble there, English boy, but perhaps your command of the language isn’t what you thought it was.”
I shook my head. “Nope. Not a word.”
She grinned. “Look it up.”
“I don’t need to look it up. I know.”
“If you’re so certain, look it up.”
I looked at Dair. “Back me up, man.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. Look it up.”
With a sigh, I did.
“Oh, now I recall,” I said as my search quickly proved her right. “It was the way you pronounced it that threw me off.”
“You’re full of it,” she said smugly.
I pointed at Ro. “Look at her, Dair. She already thinks she runs this place. This isn’t even her office. That’s my desk.”
Ro, working busily on my computer, looked up at that, arching a brow. “You know you asked me to work on your emails, right? And my office doesn’t have a computer yet.”
I cursed. All the ways I’d been goofing off today, and I’d completely forgotten to get another computer. “Do you want a desktop or a laptop?” I asked her.
She appeared pensive for a moment before answering. “Let me look online. I’ll find something, and you can tell me if it’ll work.”
I shrugged. “Whatever you want. In the meantime you can work there, and I’ll work on my laptop over here.”
Ro went back to work, and I turned my attention to Dair.
He waved a hand between me and Ro. “This seems to be going well. It’s already the most productive working relationship I’ve ever seen you in.
I realized he was right. Hands down, Ro was killing it compared to her predecessors.
“I could do with less naked people having sex on counters,” Ro piped in.
Unhelpful, I thought.
“I said I was sorry,” I told her sullenly. Saying sorry was hard enough. I hated repeating it.
“Hostile work environment,” she muttered, not looking up from the computer.
“I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again!” I told her.
Dair was shaking his head at me. “How do you not get sued more?” he asked me, sounding like an exasperated parent.
“Fuck if I know. Ro, are you going to sue me?” I asked her.
“Not today,” she replied.
I sent her an affectionate smile that she didn’t look up to appreciate.
When I turned back to Dair, he was studying me with an odd look, like I’d done something out of character. I ignored it. “So tell me about your WIP,” I said, staring up the ceiling. “Shoot some ideas off me.”
We brainstormed for about an hour. I watched Ro while we worked, but she never glanced up once. Little miss professional.
I started sharing some detailed, juicy, shocking gossip with Dair just to get her to react. “They have to go to strip clubs so he can get hard enough to fuck her,” I finished telling him a random story about a dysfunctional couple I knew.
Dair was shaking his head as I watched Ro for a proper reaction.
Fourteen seconds passed while she completely ignored me.
Yes, fourteen. I counted.
When she finally looked at me, I could see her internal struggle not to say something.
“Yes?” I asked her with an innocent smile.
She shook her head and went back to work.