Page 76 of Dead Serious with Benefits
“If you’re going to give me a free show, I’m going to pay attention,” Will said, winking at us in the mirror. “All I’m doing is driving around and waiting to find out where we’re going.”
“That is the million-dollar question,” Ward muttered.
I thought about it, mostly because I wasn’t sure how I felt about not being as subtle as I’d hoped. I had to give it to Will; he had done a good job pretending to mind his own business. Atleast he’d waited until it was done and hadn’t offered to join us; clearly, he could read the ‘room’ and realized I wasn’t trying to do anything with anyone but Ward.
Ah, wait, there was something else I could offer other than backseat road head.
“You could...stay at my family’s hotel,” I said. “They have a couple of private penthouse floors. And since it’s my family, they could ensure you’re not bothered if I asked them.”
“Now, why would you do that?”
“Because I want to.”
He snorted. “Now there’s a straightforward if not necessarily informative answer.”
It wasn’t the time or place for me to admit I was starting to picture him in my life more and more clearly with every passing day. Or that I was beginning to fear that I might not have a place in his, and while in any other circumstance, I wouldn’t want a place in a life like his, I might be willing to make an exception if it was his.
“Fine, but I’ll need a room for Will as well,” Ward said. “Preferably dank and cold, do you have a boiler room?”
“Blow it out your ass, Reddington,” Will called companionably from the front.
“I prefer things blown up it actually,” Ward said, taking my hand and looking at me. “I guess I get to meet the family then, huh?”
Oh.
Shit.
WARD
“Oh, this is starting to look like one of my parties,” I said as I looked around the lobby at the people. Several were my age or younger, a good chunk of them dressed in very little due to the warm weather, others looking like they were prepared to go out for a night of dancing, drugs, and God knew what other kinds of trouble they could find.
“Summer holiday always brings in the people here,” Arlo said calmly beside me as we made our way through the crowd. “The past few years have seen an influx of the younger crowd. Especially after the Elijah and Milo fiasco.”
“Fiasco?”
“I’ll explain where there aren’t ears.”
“Ah, of course.”
“Hi, Arlo,” the girl behind the desk said, grinning when she saw him.
“Hi, Rebecca,” he said, looking around. “Is Moira around? I spoke to her earlier.”
“Ah, right, she had to go...deal with something,” she said, her eyes flicking toward me almost imperceptibly.
“Oh,” I said with a low chuckle. “You don’t have to worry about me in the slightest. I can assure you that nothing that could have happened here would scandalize me in the slightest.”
“Uh,” Rebecca said, looking even more uncertain since I had caught her holding back because I was there.
Arlo sighed. “He’s had a hard day, if it’s something particularly...ugh, scandalous, it might give him some brightness.”
“Never thought I’d see you spending time around someone like that,” Rebecca said, leaning forward and dropping her voice. “Turns out, one of the groups here got into a bit of a fight. I guess someone’s boyfriend slept with someone else’s boyfriendandsomeone else’s wife...at the same time. There was a huge brawl on the third floor, and Moira’s been up there for the past hour with the cops sorting the whole thing out. A couple of times, you could hear someone screaming from the stairs, the cops already took a couple of people out, and from the looks of one of their noses, someone started swinging.”
“Ah,” I said, beaming at Arlo. “You know me so well, nothing quite like the dramatics of other people’s lives to make you feel better about your own.”
“We do not share that sentiment,” Arlo assured her almost sternly...but then I felt him bump me with his arm and I knew he was amused. “We can wait. Please don’t call her.”
“Absolutely not, let the woman do her job and deal with us later,” I said with a wave. “But I do see there’s a bar over there.”
