Page 55 of Tempt Me

Winslow sat in the chair facing Jamila. His posture was relaxed, one ankle set over his other knee. The berry-pink pants revealed the eye-wateringly bright pastel polka dots on his socks, a total mismatch to his two-tone brogues. He drawled, “What PR emergency has arisen now?”

Jamila raised her hands, palms out. “I swear, I did nothing. I did that interview just like you told me. And I’ve been working like a dog all week.”

Monday night, Jamila had taken me out for a drink like she’d promised, but she’d kept looking at her phone as it blew up with messages. QA had found another issue in the code, and the development team was scrambling to debug it. It was a game of whack-a-mole: as soon as they fixed one problem, another one erupted. It still seemed like someone was working against them—but not Rhiannon. I knew that now.

After one drink, I’d taken pity on her and told her to go back to the office. All I’d gotten was a fleeting kiss on the cheek. Jamila had leaped to help the coders, and there had been no follow-up kisses. I’d had to recycle the ones from Friday at her house to fuel my spank bank.

Not that I was complaining. Those kisses at her place had been incendiary.

“It’s not a PR thing.” I crossed my arms. “It’s an HR thing.”

“Uh-oh.” Winslow chuckled. “I’ll let you two work that out.”

“HR falls under operations.” Jamila raised an eyebrow.

“Not when it involves special cases.” He raised a finger. “I had nothing to do with hiring her. That was all you.”

“I seem to remember your being in favor of hiring a PR specialist,” she said.

He pretended to think. “Nope. No recollection of that.” He sauntered past me and shut the door behind him.

“What is it, Natalie?” Jamila propped her chin on her hand. Shadows gathered underneath her eyes.

Something pricked in my chest. I almost turned around and followed Winslow out to give Jamila a few moments of peace, but this was important. It affected us and the weird friends-with-benefits situation she’d established.

I lifted the envelope. “I told you I didn’t want to get paid.”

She rolled her eyes. “I toldyouyou’re doing work for me. People who do work get paid. I’m paying Hannah even though, technically, no one hired her.”

“I hired her. You need her.”

“Then, ipso facto, you are my employee. I don’t allow non-employees to hire people to work at Jamilow.”

Crap. That made sense.

“But…but what does that mean?”

A smile curled her lips though her eyes remained dull with exhaustion. “Well, baby girl, being an employee means you get a check every two weeks, the government taxes it, and we provide benefits, so if you’re sick, you can go to the hospital.”

“I don’t need benefits or a paycheck. Not if that means you and I…”

“Can’t have the other kind of benefits?”

“Have you ever had benefits with an employee?”

“Sure.”

I waved the check, and the little plastic window rattled. “Withyouremployee?”

“Fuck no.”

“Then I’m going to—” I pinched the top of the envelope to rip it.

“No!”

I froze.

“Nat, I need you. To work here. Things are a lot quieter now.” She glanced out the window. “No more news vans. Because of you. I don’t want you to quit.”

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