Page 11 of S.O.S. Perk

“Then as soon as we hang up, call him. Make the date. Let himknowit’s a date, but that you’ll have a very mama-bear friend coming along who will claw his face off if he steps out of line.”

Now Sloane laughed. She couldn’t picture petite Melissa who’d once given herself a black eye attempting to play badminton, going up against the bigger-than-life Perk. But that’s how good a friend Mel was.

“I don’t think we have to worry about that,” Sloane told her. “The man is squeaky clean. After all, for some of the highly classified jobs he’s had to do, he’s practically been anally probedto make sure he’s got no hidden agendas. Believe me, he’s no danger.”

“To your physical well-being perhaps, but what about your heart?” Melissa countered.

Sloane swallowed the lump that appeared suddenly in her throat. “Uh, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Nobody said anything about involving that organ.”

Again, Melissa didn’t hold back. “Sweetie, this is the first man you’ve been really interested in for almost as long as I’ve known you, and I’m not going out on a limb here to say it looks like you’ve already taken a nose-dive into a deep, infatuation-trench. Just…keep your heart protected until you know exactly what kind of guy he is on a personal level. He might be the shit when it comes to super-spy-agent type stuff, but he could suck on a boy-meets-girl level.”

It was good advice, and Sloane knew it. But she also trusted Perk’s office manager, Mizzay, who she’d known for several years. The woman would never work with someone who wasn’t…nice.

“Fine.” For Sloane, it was time to lighten the conversation. “But can I tell you, now, what I expected you to say when I first spilled?”

“What’s that, Slo?”

“I thought you’d tell me to ditch the whole dating idea, and just screw the hell out of him, which you kind of did mention in the middle of dissecting things.” If she bit her lip any harder, Sloane would be bleeding soon.

“Sure. I would have run with that if it hadn’t sounded like you were actually interested in the guy; that you might have simply been able to bang him out of your system. But sweetie, it seems like you really like him, so we’ll go with plan A, which is a lunch-date. Now are you going to call him, or what?”

“Yeah. I will,” Sloane promised, even though her stomach was doing loop-de-loops at the thought.

“As soon as we hang up, yeah?” Melissa goaded.

“As soon as we hang up,” Sloane agreed solemnly.

“Good. Now get a move on. I love you, girl.”

“I love you too.”

The phone went dead, and Sloane regarded the dormant instrument in her hand like it was a snake.

Fuck. She knew if she let a few minutes pass, she’d chicken out.

Before she could talk herself out of it, Sloane went to her contacts, found his name, and hit the button to connect.

“Am I really doing this?” she muttered, her lip under assault again.

“Sloane!” Perk’s upbeat tone immediately told her how happy he was that she was calling.

“Yeah. It’s me.”

“What’s up?” he asked. “Is this a professional call, or a personal one?” His voice lowered into a deep baritone when he said, “personal”.

“Uh, personal. I was wondering if…”

Sloane sucked in a deep breath. It was now or never.

“Would you like to join me and a friend for lunch next Monday?”

CHAPTER FOUR

Perk knew his shit-eating grin was going to give him away if anybody came into his office, but he couldn’t help himself. Sloane had just called him and scheduled a date. A freaking date! Of course he’d said yes, but…it was only Wednesday. How the hell was he going to fill his time between now and then without going nuts?

“Mistah Perkins.” Mizzay’s voice cut through Perk’s euphoria as she bellowed to him from the front office.

Instead of yelling back or waiting to see if she’d elaborate on what she wanted, Perk quickly got to his feet and beat it toward her desk. He’d found out the hard way, just once, that you didn’t keep Mizzay dangling. He’d had the audacity to ignore her command one time, and had ended up having to clean the entire fleet of company SUV’s for his sins. Inside and out.

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