Page 3 of Bad Enough

Then there was the long-standing fuckery of one of his teammates, Nemo, who irritated him simply by breathing. They’d only been back from Roatán for a few hours, and he’d already been the victim of two confetti cannons, an air horn, and a skeleton popping out of a closet at him. TB wished that the snake the idiot had recently battled with would have bitten him on the dick instead of the ass.

You know you need to stand off to the side when opening any door in the office, dumbass.

Internally, he sighed. Putting on his club persona, Lobo, was usually an easy task. He spent most of his adult life using codenames, nicknames, and aliases in his undercover work in the Israeli military and then again in his self-contractor role over the dark web. Going to work for Tribe five years ago had added another name to the resume. Being someone else was nothing new, but lately, it was exhausting and a little like he no longer knew who he was.

Perhaps the worst part of why he was in a crap mood right now was his current conversation partner. Tilly, the club name for internet influencer Matilda Moll, a young twenty-something from the Valley, had sashayed over to him at the club and tried to flirt with him. She was a regular at the club and overall a sweet thing when she wasn’t being a brat, but TB didn’t like sweet things.

Flame is a sweet thing. You like her.

Shut up, goody-two-shoes, or I’ll throat-punch you right out of my head.

I’m frustrated. I need something to work my frustration out on. Tilly would be perfect in brat mode.

The trouble was, all he wanted was to swat her away like an annoying mosquito.

Sighing internally, he realized he should have skipped the club and stayed home to chat with Flame. That’s what he had wanted to do, but he chickened out like a total pussy and forced himself to come here. Flame was too sweet. Too nice for the likes of someone like him. She deserved romance and a man who would be home every night to make love to her. Not a jaded fuck like him. His hands were far too bloody to even think of being in the same room with her.

And yet, it was what he desperately wanted. Through their online chats, he discovered she was harboring such naughtiness in her head, all he wanted to do was muss her up. It didn’t even matter that he had no clue what she looked like. He’d honestly fallen in love over a computer chat. Him. The love bug had bitten Mister Asshole, and he was so infected, his brain kept trying to come up with scenarios where he deserved his little Flame in his life every day.

But every scenario he came up with was a bust, and when his team leader threw in the towel on the best thing that ever happened to him? TB knew an omen when he saw one. That was the only clue he needed to remind him that relationships were not for men like them.

Technically, relationships were forbidden. One disastrous project involving Waters’ sister, Sarah, brought that on. For a brief while, however, the team had looked on at the off-the-wall chemistry of Waters and the spitfire film director, Kubrick, and had been rooting for them. They’d all been believers for a short while. And then, poof! It went up in smoke.

Internally, he snorted at the direction his thoughts were running. He was such a hypocrite. Not too long ago, he’d been telling his team leader to seize the opportunity instead of turning his back on the possibilities with a woman he’d fallen for. For a brief while, it looked like he’d done it. Now the poor bastard was sulking in his office at Tribe, his tail between his legs, and TB was ignoring the very advice he’d given his team leader.

Well, my situation isn’t the same.

Really? Exactly how is it different?

He hated when the voices in his head argued with one another. He always felt like he was stuck in the middle of some weird ménage à trois. It was creepy.

I’m not a nice guy, and Waters is.

Nice? You remember the project in Somalia, right? He’s the one who taught you that trick with the handsaw.

And I hope I never have to use it. That even gave me nightmares.

Raising his glass to his mouth, TB took a generous swallow of his water. He never drank while at the club. If he took part in the club’s upper-level activities, nothing should interfere with those experiences. But right now, Tilly’s never-ending chatter was making him wish for a heavy dose of Scotch and a sharp pencil to stab through his eardrum to his brain and end the misery.

“I desperately wanted to dump my energy drink on his antique desk since he was being such a total prick, you know? Apparently, I didn’t set my phone alarm last night, or else I slept through it. I mean, I was up really late helping my friend through her latest man disaster. But what else was I supposed to do? Girl code says you don’t let the bestie down, no matter if you have to go to work the next morning or not. So what if I was fifteen minutes late?

“Then the boss was mad because I allegedly misplaced some files he needed for a client today. I found them eventually. He spends the first five or ten minutes shooting the shit with them about their golfing, or their fishing, or whatever stupid old-man hobby they have, anyway. The client wouldn’t even have known it had been missing.

“And to top it all off, he claimed I double-booked his lunch appointment today with his mother’s birthday lunch date. If he let me merge his personal calendar and his business calendar into the frickin’ computer app, I wouldn’t have to remember to check both of them before scheduling anything. Who cares if the rest of the staff can see his personal schedule? We’re all too damn busy to be poking around in his private life.

“Besides, even if I did all those things, everyone has bad days, right?”

TB didn’t bother to reply. He knew she wasn’t really expecting an answer, and her dialogue would continue.

“You look a bit like you’ve had a bad day yourself. I like the broody look myself, so I don’t mind. Goes with all the black clothing, the leather jacket, and your dark hair. Totally smokin’. And your eyelashes! I know a lot of women who would kill for eyelashes like yours, so thick and dark. I bet you’d be really hot if you smiled more.”

He barely refrained from rolling his eyes.

“I mean, not that you’re not really hot now. You totally are,” she corrected. “I know you’re really built, and I bet you spend a lot of time at the gym. That’s hot, too. You don’t see a lot of guys your age who take such great care of their appearance. I like that. Normally, I wouldn’t be interested in someone so much older than me, but you’re different.”

Guys my age? I’m thirty-seven, not seventy-seven.

“So, are you?”

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