Page 10 of A Conflict of Interest

oh my god she’s not a dumbass!!But before I could protest that Veronica was absolutely a dumbass, she sent a row of laughing emojis.you’re so nice to me, Nic… I really appreciate you

She absolutely did not. Also shouldn’t have. I could really only keep this up for so long before she found out who I was, and she’d absolutely blow a fuse and murder me when that happened. But maybe I’d just go switch jobs again once that bomb dropped anyway. I was overdue for a switch.

And at least this way I got to talk to Kelcey again before I did. Like one last sweet little farewell.

∞∞∞

I desperately needed to get laid.

It was the biggest thing on my mind when I woke up in the morning, despite a pile of work that needed doing and a pile of cleaning chores I’d put off in my house. I hadn’t had anything since Kelcey had shot me down brutally, and I figured if anything was going to help, it was getting fucked into the mattress by a stranger so hard my ovaries exploded, so I didn’t even bother rolling out of bed before I dredged up my dating app profile, popping it back to public and updating it.

looking for a hookup to help me get over the girl I fucked things up with by having a short attention span

Along with some of my sexiest photos, I figured that would do the trick. Set it to look for women, men, any gender if they were horny—that wasn’t an option so I just picked all—and satisfied myself that the profile would let the girlies know I knew how to make them come and let the boys think I was a manic pixie dream girl, because for some reason they went wild over that. Swiped right on every face I thought might look nice between my legs for a night, and I texted Anna as I was getting into the kitchen to start up breakfast.

do you have any events coming up I can crash?? I need to get laid

She texted back quicker than I expected. She was usually busy at work this time.For goodness sakes, Veronica, go do it at the bar like the old-fashioned way, you don’t want the people I spend time with.

Ah, shit, I’d texted Grandma by mistake again.sorry Gram that was for Anna

She sent back a thumbs-up emoji. Gram gave me a lot of those. Really needed to change Anna’s contact away fromGrandmaster. It had been too long since she’d last let me whoop her ass in chess for me to make fun of her with it anyway, and it just led to confusion. I texted Anna instead, forwarding the message from Grandma’s chat, and Anna replied by the time I was done making a cappuccino and fighting for my life to peel hardboiled eggs.

is there no limit on the unhinged shit you’ll text Grandma?

I wasn’t trying to,I sent.now answer the question

you are not invited to any events

Bingo. That meant there was one. Otherwise she’d just say no and leave it at that.at the same event center as before?

Veronica, don’t.

That meant it absolutely was. I smiled to myself in the mirror for a minute to make sure my dumb-pretty-girl face wason, which was going to show on the phone, and I pulled up the number for the event center, calling them.

“Hi there,” I said in my best silly-lost-girl voice once they picked up. “Sorry, I’m just trying to confirm the time and date of the event that Lakeshore is hosting? Do you know, or, uh… jeez, do I have the right place?”

It was an older man on the other side, which meant he was fully suckered in. I just laughed along with his little comments while he poked around, giving him the most attention he was getting from a woman all month, and I fished the deets: tomorrow at six. Seemed like something comms and outreach were putting on in collaboration with some investors to try buttering them up, which wasnice.Investors meant overconfident men in suits with tons of money and insecurities they could only ply by spending that money on women. One in a million chance to find a woman there, but it was worth it if I did—ladies in finance were hot as fuck and left nothing to be desired. The type who weren’t shy about telling you exactly what they wanted. No matter how the odds played out, it was good news for me.

And I wasn’t going to think about Kelcey once. Even though I was thinking about Kelcey by trying not to think about her.

Ugh. Dammit. That girl was a virus and a hard one to shake. Maybe I needed to go back to the fetlife weirdos and get to another orgy. Although honestly, if Stephanie was hosting it again, I’d mostly just be there for the food… had never realized mashed potatoes could be that delicious. Had barely even noticed the orgy.

I huddled up in warm, fuzzy things after breakfast and got my laptop open to do some work—since apparently I had tokeep workingmost days of my adult life, which seemed like a fucking scam to me—and opened a message from Danielson.

Any updates on Kelcey Huntington?

Dammit, I was thinking about her again. I didn’t want an orgy… I wanted to wake up in Kelcey’s cute bed again. Mostly because it was a luxe apartment and I had expensive tastes. Partly because Kelcey had some fantastic boobs that were great to wake up to on the nights we’d fallen asleep naked. A lot because she had a bit more of a dominating streak in the mornings and she was such a blushy little bottom most of the time that it was exciting when she suddenly got bossy. Partly because she had good food in her apartment.

No other reasons. Those were the only ones. Kelcey Huntington’s eyes did not shine a special kind of blue I’d never seen before in the way late-morning light hit the window, and seeing her with hair falling at odd angles over her face and smudged traces of last night’s mascara that had evaded the makeup remover did absolutely nothing to me.

We’re completely sold on the project,I said.Got Kelcey totally in our pocket, and got a sample script together that impressed her bosses too and got them on board. Green lights across the board.

He replied right away. Guy never did real work, always just sitting waiting for a company communication to respond to and feel all important.Damn, Vern. Nice work.

Does this mean I get to take off the rest of today? Good progress on that project.

Uh-huh. And all the other projects we have on right now?

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