Page 14 of A Little Christmas 4: Teller
“Do I look like a liar?” I took off my suit coat and walked over to the door, placing it on the hanger before I turned around to glare at my assistant.
“Uh, I’m not sure how one can pick out a liar from a crowd. What’s going on?” She took my topcoat, hung it in the closet in my office, and closed the door before sitting in the chair where the coat had been tossed.
I sighed. I hadn’t slept worth a shit the previous night, trying to figure out what Teller meant with his tantrum. I forgot mywallet. I forgot my cash. I would pay him back, but he didn’t seem to believe me.
I opened my desk drawer and grabbed the cash and my wallet. “I asked to borrow money from my date last night, and he now thinks I’m some sort of deadbeat con man. I’ll be back. Get Barrett to go through all of that when he gets in. I need to clear something up with my date. I’ll be back.”
I grabbed my suit coat off the back of the door and stormed out of my office, heading to the garage. Once I was in my car, I hit the Bluetooth button on the steering wheel. “Call Barrett.”
It rang twice. “Hey, Briggs. I’m just pulling into the garage,” Barrett answered.
“I need directions to the building where Maizie lives. I want to see it.”
“I’ll pick you up and take you. Be there in a second.”
I jerked the keys from the console tray and stepped out of the car as Barrett’s Lexus pulled next to my Mercedes. He rolled down the window. “Hop in.”
“Thanks.” I slammed the door, and Barrett sped away before I latched my seatbelt.
“You didn’t bring me coffee?”
“I didn’t bringmecoffee. Get us to the Shitty Arms, and I’ll buy you breakfast after I straighten out something.” I was fuming, and the adrenaline kept me pissed. That wasn’t good.
I turned to Barrett as we pulled out of the garage. “I have a question, and please don’t give me that bullshit ofit’s not your story to tell. You know Teller Buchanan, Maizie’s friend, correct?”
Barrett merged onto the highway toward Hillsdale Heights. “Yes, I know Teller. We’ve taken him to Leather & Lollipops with us. Why? How do you know Teller?”
“He waited on me at Bloomfield’s, and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He mentioned he worked at O’Malley’s, and I went thereto see him. It’s a long story, but I’d love to take him on another date. I took him to Gateway Steak last night, and I forgot my wallet, so I had to borrow money from him to tip the servers, and he thinks… Well, he thinks I’m a liar.”
Barrett chuckled. “Didyou lie to him?”
“No. I didn’t lie. I forgot… He seems to think I’m some sort of opportunist out to get money from him. I can’t figure out where I gave him that impression.”
Barrett laughed as he turned onto a dead-end street and stopped in front of a rundown building. I gave him a double-take, unsure if he was taunting me.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Tell me you don’t let your little girl live here.” The structure was peeling yellow brick with a broken terracotta roof and a security door with plywood covering the center because the window was busted out.
“Fucking hell, I haven’t been here for a while because I send a car service to pick her up and bring her to me since she usually gets off work earlier than me. Maizie told me things were getting better, and I took her word for it. I had no idea it was this bad.” His mouth was open, much like my own.
“Look, Briggs, I want my girl to move in with me, but I can’t kidnap her. The rent for their studio apartments is nine hundred dollars a month. There are four of those, two up and two down. The other apartments are a one-bedroom and a two-bedroom, one of each on each floor. It wasn’t this bad two weeks ago when I brought her home from a weekend in Chicago.”
I exhaled before I exploded. It wasn’t my place to criticize how he cared for his little girl, but no way was my boy going to live in this fucked-up disaster.
Stepping out of the car, I leaned against the side, taking in the sight of the neighborhood before I concentrated on the building. There were broken glass bottles on the sidewalk and in the grass. “How long has it been like this?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll find out. I’m not happy about this either. I’ll be getting to the bottom of it in a minute. She kept this from me. Which isn’t cool.” Barrett stormed up the sidewalk and pressed the buzzer for the intercom system by the front door.
“Hello?” It was Maizie’s voice.
“It’s me. Open the door right now.”
Barrett was pissed. So was I, but I didn’t have the right to pitch a fit the same way my friend did. If I had that right, a sexy young man would be over my knee in a heartbeat.
I turned to Barrett. “Which one is Teller’s?”
“Two-oh-three.” He pointed to the numbers on the door of Maizie’s apartment. One-oh-three to confirm that my boy was a floor up.
When it opened, the girl’s face was pale. “Daddy?”
