Page 4 of A Different Kind of Hooker

“I’m going home to get some fucking sleep,” I answered, hoping it was the truth.

“Dude, what are you? Seventy?” Brent asked, laughing at me.

“Close enough,” I replied. “Come talk to me when you’re thirty-three,kid.”

Christian hooted. “Nothing like being twenty-four and in your prime.”

Fuck, I couldn’t even remember twenty-four.

“Give my regards to all those single girls that might end up one of your baby mammas,” I quipped, needing my bed more than I needed to get laid.

With any luck, sleep awaited me as soon as I got home.

*****

Eliza~

My eyes were beginning to burn, but that wasn’t unusual when you sat in front of a computer all damn day long. Luckily for everyone that worked here, the company was very big on ergonomics, so we had comfortable chairs and adjustable computer setups. Warner Medical Associates was one of the largest medical billing agencies on the West Coast, and they offered benefits to their full-time employees, which was a huge blessing if you asked me.

I heard the wheels of a rolling chair, and I had to purse my lips because it could only be one person rolling their chair my way.

“I never thought that two weeks would feel like a million years,” Coops muttered, spinning around in her seat, having only worked here for a little over a year for the extra cash.

My fingers paused on the keyboard as I glanced over at her. “Luckily, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for you,” I pointed out. “I’m going to be stuck here for the rest of my life.”

Coops stopped spinning in her chair. “Maybe we should clean out our savings accounts, run off to Atlantic City, then put it all on black.”

“Why all the way to Atlantic City?” I questioned. “Why not just go to Vegas? Or Reno, for that matter.” I cocked my head. “Hell, there’s also Tahoe and Laughlin. In fact, I’m pretty sure that we can close our eyes and still find something in Nevada.”

“Because I’ve already been to Nevada,” she answered. “If I’m going to lose all my money, I’d rather do it in Atlantic City and have a new story to tell.”

“That new story will probably involve a divorce if you lose all your money in Atlantic City, Coops,” I snorted. “I can’t see Ranger being too happy with that particular adventure.”

The crazy woman just rolled her eyes. “What’s he going to do? Move back in with his parents?” she retorted. “He knows his mom’s evil.”

That got a chuckle out of me. “She can’t bethatbad.”

Coops eyed me. “Heronlyson avoids her calls like the plague,” she drawled out. “Ranger lied about his phone being dead when I went into labor with the twins, Eliza.” I laughed again. “That’s how badly he wants to avoid the she-devil.”

“She has to have some redeeming qualities if his father has been married to her for so long,” I pointed out.

“I’m pretty sure it’s a dom/sub situation going on,” she replied, making me cough on my shocked surprised that she’d say such a thing.

“Christ, you’re something else,” I said when I finally got myself under control.

Ignoring that, she said, “Enough about Satan-Come-To-Earth. I actually came over here to talk to you about something.”

“No,” I automatically replied.

“Oh, c’mon, Zee,” she whined. “You haven’t even heard me out.”

“I don’t need to,” I said as I turned back to my computer screen. “There’s only one thing that you ever want to talk to me about.”

Before she could deny it, Dolly Wend was dropping another stack of folders on my desk. “These need to be archived, Eliza,” she remarked as if I wasn’t aware of how to do my job.

“Of course,” I muttered, knowing that every workplace had a ‘Dolly Wend’.

“Coops, shouldn’t you be at your workstation?” she asked, letting that senior analyst title go to her head. She made a dollar more than the rest of us, but she acted like she ran the place, and there were days when she really was too much.

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