Page 74 of Feast

Jules, who’d been the business office admin for three years, nodded, making her thick locs swing. “Me, too. I’m going to walk over to the student café, if you want to join me.”

“A walk sounds great,” Maddie decided. Maybe her brain would reboot with some sunshine and fresh air. “How’s the food?”

“Better than you’d think, worse than you’d like,” Jules replied. “I always get a bowl of French onion soup and a side of fries. Pretty hard to screw up.”

“Sounds better than my leftover Chinese,” Maddie said. “Give me five minutes?”

“You got it.”

Jules disappeared, and Maddie saved her work before shutting down her computer. She grabbed her purse from the desk drawer she’d stashed it in and was rising to get her coat out of the small closet when her phone rang. She looked at the readout, praying it wasn’t the head of the chemistry department again. The man had somehow gotten it into his head that as assistant comptroller, she had the power to green-light the electron microscope he had his eye on, and nothing she’d said had been able to persuade him otherwise.

But the readout was an off-campus number—a local one that she didn’t recognize. Thinking Halley might be calling her from her interview, she picked it up. “Madison Hackett.”

“Hello, Madison Hackett,” Spence drawled, and Maddie felt the tension of the last four hours melt away. “How’s your day going?”

“It sucks,” she said cheerfully and sank back into her desk chair. “How’s yours?”

“It doesn’t suck, so better than yours. Anything I can do?”

“How’re your spreadsheet skills?”

“I can enter numbers with one finger, and use the sum function to add them up."

"That’s it?”

“Pretty much. I’m self-taught.”

The note of pride in his voice made her want to laugh. “Never mind, I’ll manage.”

“I have no doubt,” he said in the low, velvet-over-gravel voice he used when he talked dirty.

She had to take a second to make sure she could speak, then said in as normal a tone as possible, “So, what can I do for you, Spence?”

His low chuckle told her she hadn’t quite managed normal. “I’m going to the doctor today.”

She frowned. “You’re sick?”

“Annual checkup,” he corrected, and she relaxed. “Part of which is an STD panel.”

Her heart leaped into her throat. “Oh.”

“Since I just had one in November, I could skip it,” he went on. “Unless there’s a reason not to.”

The knock on her door made Maddie startle, and she looked up to see Jules waiting, coat in hand.One second,she mouthed.

Jules nodded, shrugging into her coat, and Maddie turned back to the conversation. “Um. You could do that.”

“Someone in your office?” Spence asked, clearly amused by the idea.

She cleared her throat. “Yes.”

“How about a yes or no question, then. Do you want me to get an STD panel done today, Mads?”

“I think that’s an excellent idea,” Maddie replied, trying to sound like a professional and not someone making plans to get raw-dogged by her stepbrother.

“Say yes, Maddie,” he prompted, the amusement in his voice replaced with a silken demand that made her thighs quiver again. “I want to hear it.”

“Yes,” she breathed.

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