Page 161 of Sinful Blaze

To my relief, I spy a familiar face. “Mak!”

Mak turns around at the sound of my voice. Initially, he looks a little surprised, but then his eyes widen for a whole other reason. His brow pops up and so does his smirk. “Do I want to know what you’re up to? Or is this one of those couples-only things that will haunt me if I find out?”

I feel my face heat up. “I, uh… uhm…”

“Say no more,” he reassures me with a shudder. “You look like you need some help, though. What can I do for you?”

“You wouldn’t happen to know where Brittany Cleary’s office is, would you?”

Mak catches on. “Ah. Right. Her. Come with me.”

My stomach flips as he offers me his elbow and leads me out of the elevator hall. My daughter, too, does an irritated little flip as if she’s practicing her roundhouse for this bitch who dares try to steal her daddy.

I have to smile just a tiny bit. I have a feeling this kid is going to be one hell of a fighter, just like her mama.

“We’ve undergone some restructuring recently,” Mak casually explains while we walk. “Amid the process, we’ve decided to go in a different direction for our analytics and marketing consultants.”

“Uh… right. Totally. I completely and one hundred percent understand what you’re saying.”

He gives me a nudge. “He fired her ass, Daphne. Brittany, her pops, the whole Cleary Consulting company. Dismissed with prejudice.”

I grind to a halt in the middle of the hallway. “He what?”

Mak is grinning like the cat that caught the canary. “Oh, yeah. Dropped the hammer. Same day she sashayed into his office thinking she could sink her claws into him. Pash made a whole scene of it, really.”

My heart does a somersault. “Oh. I, uh… I didn’t know. Didn’t realize, I guess. I feel kinda stupid now. I came all this way, looking like this, to… I don’t know.”

Mak grins and presses a button next to a lone elevator door I hadn’t even seen. “I’m happy to call her back into the building if you want. I’m sure Pash would love to watch you beat the daylights out of that woman. Wearing a bikini and slathered in baby oil, probably.”

“No thanks. This is cashmere.” And then, in a sudden wave of self-doubt, I sigh. “Besides, I don’t have any real right to be so… so… territorial. We’re not actually a couple, you know?”

When I glance up at him, I have to take a step back. He’s looking at me like I’ve just lost my mind.

“What?”

Mak shakes his head with his own heavy sigh. “Nothing. I’m just wondering if you need your invitation engraved and sealed with wax. Or if a simple email invite will do.”

“Invite to… what?”

“To the pending happily-ever-after you are so obviously a part of.” He holds the elevator door open for me and gestures me inside. “Since living with my brother, carrying his child, and getting what I assume is a daily dose of Vitamin Dick isn’t enough of an invitation to call him yours, would you like it in linen, parchment, or vellum?”

I narrow my eyes at him. Mak grins and leans inside to press another button, but he doesn’t join me.

“This opens up directly into his waiting area. You’ll have to get through his secretary, but something tells me you won’t have a problem with that.”

And with that, the door closes on Mak’s smug smirk.

He’s right—only a few moments later, the door reopens and I’m walking into a luxurious waiting area furnished with velvet lounge chairs and a sleek marble reception desk. A stunningly beautiful blonde woman types away at her laptop, seemingly oblivious to my arrival.

But then her gaze flicks upward and catches me. “Good morning! Can I help you?”

I offer her my warmest smile and make my way over to the desk. “I’m here to see Pash—er, Mr. Chekhov.”

She scans me with a judgmental eye. “Do you have an appointment?”

“No, I just?—”

“No one sees Mr. Chekhov without an appointment, unfortunately.”

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