Page 66 of The Egomaniac: A Romantic Comedy

Jordan smiled and took Elizabeth’s hand in both of hers. She was blonde but of a more platinum variety than Elizabeth’s strawberry shade. Jordan was pretty with a heart shaped face and bright green eyes. At first glance, she didn’t seem to fall from the same angry, grouchy tree Adrian had. But I happened to know from personal experience that she had a nasty streak. After all, she was one of the few women who had broken things off with me. She even had the nerve to imply I was obnoxious. Clearly something was wrong with the Terranova family tree, but I still felt obligated to stick around and keep them out of jail all the same.

“The broody one over there is Adrian,” I said, pointing as everyone took their seats around the table.

“The one you let think he’s the boss?” she asked.

Adrian’s cold green eyes shifted to me and one of his eyebrows arched up—just barely. Getting married had tamed the man only slightly. Catch him in the wrong mood and he was still just as icy as he’d always been.

I templed my fingers and cleared my throat. “So I’ve gathered you all here today because—”

“I called for this meeting,” Adrian said. “After you told me you decided it was a good idea to tell Mrs. Glass’ right hand woman what we’re working on. Or did you already forget?”

I tilted my head, showing my infinite patience with a quick smile. I lowered my voice and tried not to move my lips much so only Elizabeth could hear me. “We’ll just humor him on this one.”

She didn’t look entirely amused but stayed quiet.

“So I’ve brought Elizabeth in. I think you’ll all find her entirely trustworthy and reliable.”

“How do you know she’s trustworthy?” Jordan asked.

“Well, we’re sleeping together and madly in love.”

Elizabeth made a small, choked sound as three pairs of eyes snapped to her. “What he means is we’ve worked together and developed a healthy professional relationship and mutual respect.”

“If you’ve developed any form of respect for Travis, I have to question your judgment,” Adrian said.

“Do you see the way they treat me?” I asked. “It’s almost like they want to pretend I’m not the cornerstone of everything we’ve accomplished.”

Noah grinned. “You are the stone, Travis. And if you’re the stone, Adrian is the builder, Jordan is the realtor, and I’m the architect.”

“Oh, please,” I said. “The only thing you ever architected is a crash course on how to scare women away with your dorky laptop.”

“Architected?” Jordan asked, chuckling. “Sometimes I wonder how you made it through high school, then I remember you’re you.”

“And I’ll consider that a compliment.”

“Enough,” Adrian said. “We’re all in this now. Noah, Jordan, I want you to share what you have with Elizabeth and Travis. Then you’ll tell us what you can do to help us, Elizabeth.”

“He’s bossy,” I muttered to Elizabeth, but she looked unfazed. I had to remind myself she had probably dealt with his type plenty of times on her climb up the business ladder. Hell, Mrs. Glass herself was bossy, too. But I had seen a thousand times how Adrian’s looks in combination with his bossiness completely unnerved people.

Noah cracked open his laptop and started running down a boring list of facts and email conversations he’d apparently lifted from Mrs. Glass and her attorneys.

“You have their personal emails?” Elizabeth asked, cutting him off after a few seconds. “That’s not even remotely legal.”

“Correct,” Noah said. He continued with his briefing as if she hadn’t spoken. “Jordan?” he said once he’d finished.

“I got a job at her attorney’s office,” Jordan said. “They are putting the case together against us and planning to push it through to trial in a week or two. They’ve got more than enough evidence to screw all of us, by the way.”

“Thanks for letting me know all of this as soon as you did, asshole,” I said, looking straight at Adrian.

“So you could blab it to the first woman you get distracted by?” he asked.

“I don’t blab. I strategically revealed information to Elizabeth. My choice only slightly revolved around not wanting to screw up the beautiful physical and emotional relationship growing between us.”

I saw Elizabeth slowly bring her fingertips to her forehead at my side. I guessed her cheeks were red, too.

Biting back a grin, I continued. “I also think you’ll be impressed to find Elizabeth knows everything there is to know about Mrs. Glass. In other words, I’ve not only made a wonderful addition to my personal life, but I’ve brought all of us a secret weapon. Go ahead, Lizz. Tell them what she knows about us.”

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said plainly. “Mrs. Glass has never talked to me about any of you or shared any kind of information about an investigation.”

Well, that’s probably why I should’ve talked to Elizabeth about what she knew on the drive here instead of telling her about the whale documentary I watched last night. “As I said, she’s got the potential to be our secret weapon as soon as she finds some of that information out.”

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