Page 15 of The Arrangement

I gnawed at my lower lip while I shoved the cat bag down into the trash bin and crossed my arms over my chest, a chill running up my spine despite my thick sweater.

There was no way I was actually considering this, right?

Right?

Chapter 9

Sebastian

"Hey, did you know Georgia Clark worked here?" Fletcher whispered, nudging my elbow with his own and nearly spilling my ridiculously priced latte.

I looked up quickly to see Clark sprinting to the back storage room, brown hair in a mess on the top of her head and bangs plastered to her forehead. She looked kind of cute, in a disheveled way.

"No, she normally works at the bookstore next door." I shrugged, taking another sip before nodding to another of my grandfather's business associates who walked in. My grandfather Charles was one of the real estate moguls, among other things, who owned half of the city, and what he didn't own, he invested in. So when he said to be at this hole-in-the-wall coffee shop at 2 p.m., I was there. I carefully adjusted my cufflinks again, checking to make sure the bold black tattoos didn't peek through. They were higher up on my forearm, but it still made me anxious. It's just another little rebellious stunt I pulled in my early twenties that also worked fantastically for my line of work.

"Have you thought about asking her?" Fletcher piqued up, winking over his coffee cup obnoxiously. I gave him a hard look that just made him smirk devilishly. "I don't know, man. It sounded like she had been putting in the hours. Might be looking for a guy just like you."

"Jesus fucking Christ, Fletch, do you ever shut your mouth?" I hissed, looking around with a fake smile plastered on my face.

He rolled his eyes and leaned against a high table with a grin. "Everyone is trying their hardest to suck up to your grandfather. No one gives a shit about us."

I looked around to see the high-level executives milling around my grandfather like flies to shit. I hated that man. Tall, imposing, and sporting the sharp jawline that I had inherited. He looked every bit like the American capitalist dream—a self-made millionaire (billionaire if you counted the millions stored in offshore accounts) who was at every ribbon cutting and shaking the hand of every corrupt senator, all while sharing a house in the oldest gated neighborhood in the state with a wife twenty years younger than him, whom he had left his wife for (hushed, of course—that would've been a scandal).

The only hitch to his perfect life? His daughter, my mother. She ran off at twenty years old with a con man from Oklahoma, got herself knocked up, and refused to come home as she raised her children in a rural community until I was ten years old. That's when things really went to shit; we hadn't been rich or even middle class, but I’d loved my mother and sister with all of my heart, and they had it good, at least to a ten-year-old kid. I didn't see my dad much. He worked in oil and was only home a week out of every two months; it was my mother's job to raise us. It wasn't until the FBI came knocking on a particularly hot day that I remembered it like yesterday. I was pushing my sister Maria on the swingset outside when I saw two large black SUVs pull into our cramped driveway through the chain link fence around the property.

It was then that my mother found out her husband had another family in Texas. And that he owed thousands of back child support to the other woman he had claimed to marry legally. Of course, that wasn't why the feds were there. No, it was because my asshole of a sperm donor had not only committed bigamy but federal tax fraud, which they only found out after his employer audited his accounts to find misallocated funds spanning over six years. Long story short, my joke of a father was in prison for a very long time while my motherended up back home and at her father's mercy. Until a car crash killed her and nearly killed my sister.

Charles Quinn adopted us officially and changed our last name from our father’s back to his. He held the fact that he paid for our home, education, and food over our heads like a scythe. For the most part, Charles left my sister Maria, a tiny thing with a nervous tendency, alone and put all of the pressure and familial hopes on me. I had to be the best at everything: my grades, my social life, and whenever I was too injured to continue to play lacrosse? Man, it was like someone had just told him I had adopted a cocaine habit.

And so here I was, pushing a sixty-hour work week as an account manager for my grandfather's real estate company while moonlighting as an online sex worker to stockpile money to finally be able to give the old man the middle finger. Charles had paid for my college at Portsmouth and reminded me every day that I needed to pay him back, that I was an investment that he expected to be paid off. That working for him was an honor. So I made it my mission while in college to find some sort of independence and a way to earn money that my grandfather had no claim over, not just for me but for my sister, who was currently in her senior year of high school and already looking at colleges.

I could've left whenever I wanted, to be fair, but some deep, demented part of me felt like I did owe him. And Ihatedowing people. So I would pay off my college tuition and the car he bought me so he never had anything to hang over my head again—a clean cut. My reverie was interrupted as the sound of something falling had me blinking away my unfortunate childhood memories, and I watched as Fletcher’s face appeared a little drawn as a cell phone with an impressive steel case fell from his inner pocket.

“Jesus, Fletcher, do you have two phones?” I laughed, kicking it over to him while he picked it up with a wry smile.

“Yeah, one for work and one for the ladies. I am a gentleman afterall.” He winked and tucked both devices away as I rolled my eyes.

"I'm telling you, I was right about Natalie…" Fletcher whispered as he jerked his head over to Georgia, who had changed aprons and looked like she had fixed the claw clip hairstyle while she was in the storage room.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure Clark hates me," I whispered back, running my tongue along my teeth and trying to get rid of the sugar-coated syrup taste from my mouth.

Fletcher choked back a laugh. "Sometimes that makes it better! Weren't you two neck and neck for valedictorian?" He shook his head. "I remember you watching her in the library like you two were in some sort of competition for the nerdiest people in the class."

I rolled my eyes. "That's exactly what valedictorian is, you dumbass." Tossing my coffee cup away, I took my time near the trash can to watch Georgia's flushed face as she steamed a macchiato. The vision of her in a towel, shivering in the hallway of my apartment, made an unwelcome appearance in my head. The shape of her calves while soap dripped down from under the towel?

I shifted, feeling my pants grow tighter at the thought. Fuck, now I was being creepy. Shaking my head, I turned back to Fletcher, who had a knowing gleam in his eye. "When she says yes, I want 10%."

Chapter 10

Georgia

Iwas considering it. I was actually considering it.

I flipped the card in my hand over and over. I had peeked over at "Wolfe's" page earlier to reveal nothing but some solo videos, just like he said.

I chewed my nails anxiously; what would it mean if I did this? Besides money? I would have a mask on, and so far, he had done a good job of keeping his identity a secret. I set the card down and stared at it for a moment more before taking my phone and texting the number of Sebastian's reference. I sent it quickly, before I could talk myself out of it. It's not like I was committing to anything by texting this person; I'm just doing my research. And research is something I'm very good at.

"Hi, I got this number as a reference for Wolfe?"

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