Page 22 of Café Diablo

Olivia:You two are incorrigible!

Connor:Irredeemable, inveterate, recidivous.

Olivia:Why did you just turn into a thesaurus?

Arie:Long story. I’ll tell you another time.

Connor:Or ask Ned. He may not tell me about his hot nights, but I tell him about mine.

Arie:You told your brother about that?

Olivia:I’m ‘hanging up’ now.

I stuff my phone in my pocket, knowing if I say anything else it will just turn down an even dirtier road than it already has.

My entire chest is hot pink and I want to blame it on the sun, but honestly, it’s because I want to walk up into that office and see Edwin again. And worse, Connor and Arie’s barrage of indecent messages have me thinking about all sorts of things I shouldn’t. Like what would it be like to be on my knees in front of him—only not drunk this time? What if I hid under his desk while he talked to his clients? Do I have the balls to ask him to taste my tart? If “me winning” is his cock down my throat, what wouldhim winninglook like?

See, this is what hanging out with Connor and Arie does to a person!

And maybe Connor is completely wrong. Maybe the last person Edwin wants to see is that black-haired girl who handcuffed him on his birthday.

I grab the box of tarts.

There’s only one way to find out.

11

Ned

Sunlight streams in through the open picture windows behind me and sets my neck to burn. It highlights the fact that today has been a marathon of putting out one fire after another: witnesses calling to revise statements, paralegals running around like headless chickens, errors on documents that have to be resent. Normally, I’d be ready to fire someone, but honestly, it’s kept my head on straight after a week of being distracted by Olivia.

The chaos helps to keep me focused on something that’snother—and that mouth, or that wry smile, or the way she flips her hair before saying something infuriating. If I’m thrown fire after fire, then there isn’t time to think about anything else, just react and bark instructions and get through the afternoon.

I don’t like things out of order.

And Olivia is the epitome of a curve ball throwing my life out of balance.

Did I mention I’m shit with women?

Did I mention that the things that happen to Connor don’t happen to me?

Did I mention I can’t stop thinking about the party and the sin of her mouth and now I get sweaty and agitated just sitting in my office in the middle of the day? I literally can’t focus for more than ten minutes without that dark hair and those brown eyes haunting me. As a result, the entire office is officially in hyper-vigilance mode.

That means we check everything three times, then check it again.

No room for error.

Discipline.

I click my pen, over and over, with my thumb. The metallic noise calms me as I reread the depositions—again. That’s right, vigilance, rechecking, looking for sinkholes that could sideline this case because I was distracted—when a loud buzz shoots through my concentration. It’s the intercom on my phone, clenching a knot in my shoulders.

“Delivery,” says my office assistant, Judy, on my speaker, her motherly voice echoing through the room. “Shall I send it in?”

I press the glowing button on my phone, not looking up from the sentence I’m circling. “Is it the Rockford-Bellamy files?”

“Better.”

I frown. “What does that mean? Did Rockford send over a settlement?”

---