Page 34 of Best Served Hot
‘What?’ Nicole pressed.
‘No, it’s dumb. We can’t do it.’
‘You want me there like last time?’
Alex shrugged with an appealing shyness. ‘Yeah. I kind of liked having that backup.’
‘Are you scared of him?’ Nicole asked with concern.
Alex burst out laughing. ‘No. Not at all. But it just feels like this whole thing is… You and I are…’ She stopped nervously.
‘We’re a team.’
Alex looked at her feet. ‘Yeah.’
Nicole nodded. ‘Damn right we are.’
Alex looked up again, reassured. ‘Yeah. Damn right.’
They exchanged a smile. ‘Well, I can’t be there for this one,’ Nicole said reluctantly. ‘But I want to hear every word. Can we use your phone? I can listen in if we put it on call, right?’ Nicole asked.
‘Yes, let’s do that,’ Alex replied, buoyed. ‘But what if I get stuck? What if I don’t know how to handle whatever he throws at me next?’ Alex asked. ‘It’s going alright so far, but…’
‘For a start, I don’t see that happening. You’ll acquit yourself; I know that. I’ve seen it. Every time you interact, he’s the one who seems like he might have a heart attack. His sweat glands alone…’
Alex grinned. ‘I know. I hope he’s hydrating because the losses seem dangerous.’
Nicole laughed. ‘But anyway, if you don’t know what to say, or you feel like it’s getting too much? Walk out. What’s he gonna do? Nothing,’ Nicole said.
‘Right. Yeah. I’ll just fuck off out of there. Then we can regroup.’ Alex nodded to herself. ‘OK. I’m going over there now. Let’s get this show on the road.’
Nicole patted her on the shoulder affectionately. ‘That’s what I like to see. The tiger out of the cage.’
Alex snorted shyly. ‘I don’t know about that. Maybe a hamster.’
Nicole laughed, and she felt that affection for Alex wash over her again. This time, she couldn’t keep it in. ‘It’s times like these that I’m really glad I caught you having an affair with my husband.’
Alex gave this long slow smile and said, ‘And I’m glad that if I was going to be someone’s accidental mistress, you were the wife that caught me.’
They exchanged grins for a moment before getting embarrassed and breaking the look.
Then Alex said, ‘OK, enough niceness. I need to be unpleasant. Let’s fuck Ethan up.’ She pushed half her salad away, stood, and walked off in the direction of the offices on the other side of the studio.
And who can say why, but that was the tipping point for Nicole Penrose. As Alex walked away in her confident stride, Nicole watched her move, and a thought popped up in Nicole’s head that shocked the living daylights out of her.I wonder what it would be like to kiss Alex Torrence.
Twenty-Two
Alex had a moment there where she thought she was going to say, ‘Can I kiss you?’ She came very close to speaking that wish aloud. Her body had the instinct, and her brain had concurred that trying to snog Nicole was appropriate and possible. There had been a period lasting about a second where it felt as though it might make it out of her mouth.
Luckily, her sanity returned. ‘OK, enough niceness. I need to be unpleasant. Let’s fuck Ethan up,’ she said quickly and left Nicole before the madness could take hold again.
Alex was almost glad she was going to speak to that dickhead. She needed to cool her jets. If anyone could kill this terrible rising passion, it was Ethan.
She paused at the door to the office, giving Nicole a call. ‘Here. Going in now,’ Alex whispered into the phone, popping it into her pocket. She knocked on Ethan’s office door, and he called her in.
He was leaning back in his overpriced office chair, lazily staring at something on his laptop. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, surprised.
‘You told me to come,’ she said irritably.
