Page 10 of Sunshine

I opened the chat. I’d missed two more “babes” and two actual sentences in the short time I’d been focused on Talia, so I tapped a response.

Sunshine:

Julian. How are you bored?

Don’t you have a fire hose to lift or wind sprints to run?

I hit send and realized my mistake.

Almost immediately he replied.

Julian:

You can lift my hose any time you want

I rolled my eyes, and then sent an eye rolling emoji for good measure. Julian could be hyper, and we had the same weird sense of humor. Days of silence followed by one of us being dramatic over text message was nothing new. I turned back to my computer as it gave a beep when it finally finished its updates. Then my phone pinged again.

Julian:

For real though what are you doing?

Something sexy?

I almost made a joke about him going into heat early, but I knew his heat schedule already. He wasn’t due for another two months. Julian flirted over text without ever being graphic, but in person he mostly kept it platonic.

Sunshine:

Only if you think invoicing is sexy

I would rather chew broken glass

Julian:

:(

Anything you do is sexy, but sadness for hated tasks

How many invoices do you have?

I opened my browser just as Ember stuck her head into my office. Her red hair was down today, and she looked like the chaos gremlin of mischief that she was. She grinned. “Hey, favorite cousin.”

“Your leftovers are in the breakroom fridge.”

Ember loved Logan’s cooking as much as I did, and I made sure to steal her a plate when I did events.

“Raina is on a tear today. Something about her computer systems being down.” Ember gestured down the hall to the rest of our offices. “I’d finish your invoices if I was you.”

“I’m trying.” I waved at my computer. “It just took twenty minutes to update.”

“Do McCullen’s now,” Ember said. “I’ll buy you time to get the rest done by tonight.”

“I owe you.” Relief rushed over me. I didn’t want to know what Ember was going to do to distract Raina, but I would take the stay of execution.

“Get Logan to make me more of that Sex in a Pan?—”

“—that’s not what it’s called,” I started. “It’s a Pudding Bar Cake.”

“—and we’re even.” Ember left before I could argue with her about the name of her favorite dessert.

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