Page 14 of Gluttony
“Max!” More shuffling, then the sound changed. “Okay, okay. I’m in another room. What do you need?”
He paused. “I want information on one of Max’s employees.”
“Bailey?” she teased. “The same woman you so gallantly offered to go and speak to a few months back?”
“She’s the bodyguard Max assigned to help me. I don’t trust her. I want every piece of information you have on her.”
“Well, it just so happens that I’ve already presented my background checks on Max’s staff, so I’ll just shoot that information through.”
“Presented? When did you do that?”
Sloan paused. “The other day at a family meeting.”
“Without me?”
“Don’t act so surprised. You were probably told.”
Except, he didn’t think he was. They’d just stopped asking. And he’d stopped pretending it didn’t hurt.
Four
It wasone thing for a client to act cocky, but it was another for him to strip before you and offer to share a shower. What was with men today? Did Bailey have a sign over her head that saidHit on me?
In her small kitchen, Bailey stewed over the fact as she prepared herself a Cosmopolitan. She also tried not to think about his perfect torso and disarming smile.
Honestly, what kind of man said things like that?
Tony Lazarus, that’s who.
Bailey measured out the cranberry juice and poured it into the cocktail mixer. She added the ice, vodka, triple sec, and lime, then popped the cap on and shook the damn thing like she was Tom Cruise, or rather Tony Lazarus in his latest college-boy film.
She scoffed and shook her head. The man was blessedly endowed with all the right physical traits, and any woman would have jumped at the prospect of having a shower with him, but she wasn’t a one-hit-wonder kind of woman. She liked to take her time.
Her ex-partners had called her intense. She just knew what she wanted, and Tony couldn’t give it to her. She liked it long and slow, not hard and fast. She liked it to last all night.
Unless you’d like to join me.As if they could get any satisfaction with a quickie in the shower before heading out to a party. But then Tony had sardonically added,Didn’t think so.
Which irritated her more, and she didn’t know why. It wasn’t like she was disappointed... was she?
Absolutely not.
She retrieved a martini glass from her cupboard and placed it onto the speckled kitchen bench. She poured the canister contents into it. Then she washed her cocktail shaker and upended it on the sink. When she returned to the Cosmopolitan, she didn’t pick it up. She touched the cool rim. A drip trickled down the stem and a memory rose to the surface.
The condensation on the inside of a car window, trickling. Her heated breath. Wind buffeting outside. Metal creaking. The pain in her chest at the cold, vacant stare of her dead best friend, her body half through the windshield. Bailey dug the heels of her palms into her eye sockets and inhaled deeply. On the exhale, she glared at the Cosmo glass.
I will not let you ruin me.
You destroy lives.
I am better than you.
For another two minutes, she watched her drink and reminded herself of all the pain alcohol caused in her life. The loud angry slurs late at night. Her friend’s hair fanned out on the hood of the car. The empty harrowing hallway of the rehab center when she’d visited her mother. The gravestone of her parents at the cemetery.
What a waste.
Heartache wrapped around her chest and she used the feeling to steel her resolve before crippling doubt set in. Two minutes was all she allowed herself before she turned her back on the drink. She leaned her butt against the bench and folded her arms.
Her living room wasn’t much to look at, but it was homey. It featured a cozy high-back winged lounge chair she’d found at a thrift store. Cushions and throw rugs galore. Crossword books on the coffee table—the kind you could win a prize with. A modest flat-screen television on the wall, and two paintings of a tropical hideaway graced the other walls. There was a matching set in her bedroom. In all her time working abroad with the agency, she’d never visited a tropical island. It had been the dreary parts of Europe, and not exactly what she’d envisioned when signing up. One day she would visit those places. She’d just rather not do it alone.
