Stir (The Sizzle TV Series Book 5)

Chapter 8 – Finn

Natalie Casteel is girlfriend material, the kind of woman I have no business getting involved with. I know better. She’s too good for me, but I can’t stay away.

How the woman can be so utterly unaware of her appeal baffles the hell out of me. Anytime I said something vaguely suggestive or even just flirtatious, she looked surprised. As though she didn’t believe I was talking to her.

Confusing. The puzzle of it is almost as intriguing as the incredible chemistry between us. Kissing her cheek to say goodbye felt like foreplay. Tuesday feels light years away.

Taking a page from Natalie’s book, I head for the gym instead of going straight home. Too much energy to burn, too much heat built up. Might as well put it to use.

An hour later, I’ve lifted all the heavy shit I can for the day. The air is sharply cold walking up to my apartment, invigorating after the work I just put in. Steaming in the winter air, but cooling off fast, I haul ass up the stairs.

Tossing my keys on the table by the door, I drop my gym bag and head for the bathroom to start the shower running. I’ve just pulled my shirt off when I hear a knock at the door. Steam billows out of the shower, tempting me to ignore whoever it is with the shitty timing, but if it’s Callie, or Sully, or even maybe Weston, I don’t want to miss them. I shut the water off.

My next-door neighbor is about the last person I expect to see.

“Hey, Finn,” he says.

“Hey, Nic,” I say. “What’s up?”

His answer is slow in coming, and I realize two things at once. First, I’m not wearing a shirt. And second, the last time I saw Nic was in the lobby of the Sizzle building where he checked me out. Thoroughly.

My nipples harden painfully tight. Because it’s fucking freezing, obviously.

He’s a good-looking man with a fine sheen of money, good breeding, or high-class something-or-other that I couldn’t buy with a winning lottery ticket. Light brown hair, messy in that way that takes expensive haircuts and products to achieve. He’s maybe an inch shorter than me, leaner too, but with muscle, if the fit of his rumpled button-down shirt is any indication.

“You working today?” I ask, since he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to tell me why he’s knocking on my door on a Sunday evening.

He’s staring at my chest. My skin starts to prickle.

Because it’s cold, dumbass, I think. But I’m not feeling chilled.

“Not at the moment,” he says. Which, duh. Obviously, he’s not working if he’s standing at my door. “Is now a good time?”

“Good as any,” I say. “You want to come in?”

Tell me why that sounds like a come-on. Tell me, because it fucking wasn’t. But I’m not wearing a shirt, and he totally checked me out the last time I saw him, and I’m pretty sure he’s checking me out again right now, and I don’t know what the fuck to do about that.

Flexing probably isn’t the answer, though. Nic clears his throat and looks away.

“No, thank you,” he says. He focuses on the hall behind me. “Just don’t want to keep you from anything.”

“Just central heating. What can I do for you?”

That question brings his gaze to mine. “I have a problem. Somebody broke into my office this weekend.”

I stand up straighter. “Have you called the police?”

He nods. “There’s not much they can do at this point. Nothing was stolen, as far as I can tell, but I’ll have to check with my assistant in the morning to confirm.”

“Natalie.”

“Yes,” he says, his voice going as frigid as the air I’m letting into my apartment. “Natalie. She tells me you’ve met. Natalie is why I’m here.”

“Obviously, she told you I asked her out,” I start, defense at the ready. I had been a perfect gentleman with Natalie, apart from every second or third thought in my head. Those don’t count.

“She did not.” Every syllable is razor-sharp. “Though I have no reason to suspect another break-in, I am concerned with keeping her safe. Are you working?”

I look down at my half-naked self.

“I mean, in general,” he continues. “When we met, you mentioned working as a contractor, freelance. Are you on a job right now?”

“Oh. No.” I have absolutely no idea where he’s going with this.

“I’d like to hire you for security,” he says, his back straightening, chin rising, almost defiant about it.

“Seems a little like closing the gate after the cow’s already escaped.”

“Perhaps,” he says, arching a brow. “But there’s more to it than that. I’m being blackmailed.”

I blink. “Are you shitting me?”

“I shit you not,” he says smoothly. Hearing him swear feels wrong, somehow. It clashes with that panache I’ve come to associate with him. The effect is jarring. “The police have been informed. I’ve also hired a private investigator. No threats to my safety or Natalie’s have been made, but I prefer to be proactive. I’d like someone to be present at all times during business hours in case I have to leave the premises.”

“What are you being blackmailed for?”

Nic arches that single brow at me, and that something stirs again. “Not relevant. Are you interested in taking the job? If not, can you recommend someone who might be?”

Time was, Sully would have taken a job like this in a heartbeat. And yeah, I’ve moonlighted as security a few times. My old boss, Jesse, is exactly the guy Nic’s looking for.

I’ve been ducking Jesse’s calls for the last couple weeks. He’s been hinting around that I should come back to work full-time for a while, steady-like, and that is definitely not my jam. I have a feeling he was fixing to make an offer I’d have to refuse, and what can I say, I’m not looking forward to telling him no.

This one-off kind of thing, guarding Nic and the luscious Natalie for the short-term? This job is right up my alley.

“Just security for your office?” I ask to clarify. “Not at home?”

“In my office, during working hours only.” He looks left, toward his apartment door. “It seems a bit redundant to have you in my apartment.”

I prop my shoulder on the doorframe and shove my hands in my pockets, thinking. The job is straightforward enough. Nine to five, high-end office, low risk; all that adds up to easy money. And I’d get to see Natalie every damn day.

Just for the hell of it, I say, “I’m seeing Natalie. Is that going to be a problem?” I have way overstated what so far has been a couple of hours over coffee and an upcoming dinner date, but the suggestion is out there, and I don’t bother to clarify.

Nic’s jaw tightens, and the fleeting idea that he might throw a punch crosses my mind and thrills me. Bring it, neighbor. I wouldn’t mind sparring with this guy. My skin prickles, my hair rising at the sudden tension.

“Natalie is a professional. I have nothing but the utmost confidence in her abilities to behave as such.” He dials that upper-class snootiness up to eleven. “Can I say the same for you, Mr. Hale?”

He couldn’t condescend to me any more if he’d been sitting on a throne.

“No problem, boss,” I drawl. “I’ll behave.”

His eyes narrow.

“Tomorrow morning, then,” he says. “Eight-thirty sharp.”

I nod. “See you then.”

Nic levels a look at me, nods once, and lets himself into his apartment.

Oh, ho. Tomorrow is going to be fun. Something about the guy makes me want to get under his skin. Not a great way to start a new job, but that’s the perk of being a contractor—we only have to live with each other in the short term.

That bit about Natalie hit a nerve with him, I could tell. If he hadn’t come on to me at the elevator, I’d bet my last ten bucks he had his eye on her, not that people always swung one way or the other. There’s plenty of middle ground when it comes to sexy. Maybe he’d just been jerking my chain, but my skin prickles again at the memory of that slow once-over. If that was fake, I can’t imagine what it looks like for real.

I can hear him moving around just inside the door when I step inside my own place. The walls aren’t terribly thick between our apartments, but so far, it’s never been a problem. Guess I’m more aware of him now since we’re about to be seeing each other on a regular basis. I track his movements from the front hall, deeper back into the apartment, hear him talking, I assume to his cat or maybe on the phone. Or hell, maybe he’s got somebody in there.

Nope. Not going there. If I’m going to make myself presentable for some highbrow office tomorrow, I’ve got too much to do to think about Nic and who he might be talking to in the privacy of his place.

Next morning,the office is easy to find, and easier to access than it should be. The security guy at the front desk barely notices me as I sign in, but maybe Nic’s already arranged for me to be let through. Somebody ought to be paying better attention. The elevator ride is uneventful, though the car I share contains at least two people who look vaguely familiar to me, which is unremarkable—this city just isn’t that big—until I realize they work for Sizzle. I only recognize them because I’ve seen them on TV.

I’m going to have to text Alex. He’ll get a kick out of me working here. It’ll give him a good excuse to visit Joelle at work, him and Elliott. I’ve seen Alex recently, of course, but I haven’t seen his spouses since their wedding. The idea I might get to see them all just working in the same building has me feeling warmly about the place, and by the time I get to the office door marked Pendergrass Law, it makes me smile.

The knob turns, and there’s Nic and Natalie, and my heart about stops. The desk is wide, antique by the look of it, no modern credenza to hide her curves. A low-slung sofa sits across the room to my right, and the books… books everywhere. Floor-to-ceiling shelves, full to bursting, except for a few spots holding busts of old men I don’t recognize.

Nic and Natalie look like a still shot from a film noir set—his suit, her blouse, skirt, and heels. They’re standing in front of that desk, looking like a matched pair if ever I’ve seen one.

“Good morning, Finn,” says Nic.

“Nic,” I say.

Natalie’s mouth drops open in surprise.

“What are you doing here?”

I glance at Nic.

“Of course, you two have met.” Nic’s voice is glacially polite. “Mr. Hale is going to provide security for the office for the next few weeks.”

She blinks, looking between him and me. “Since when do you need security?”

“Please don’t be alarmed. Someone broke into the office yesterday.”

“Are you serious?” Natalie looks around, as though she might catch the perpetrator in action. “How? What happened?”

“I am perfectly serious. I’m not sure how. The police have requested yesterday’s footage of our floor from building security.”

“For goodness’ sake,” she says, crossing her arms. “Is anything missing? What did they take?” She assumes, as I had, that thieves were responsible. I wonder whether Nic is going to let her in on the tiny but crucial detail of his being blackmailed.

I’d been speculating on that all night, on what secret my new boss is keeping that he’d pay to keep quiet. The suit, his sexy-as-fuck Audi, the fancy antiques in the office, all that adds up to money. Which makes me think drugs first, but I dismissed that straight away. He’s just not the type, but I don’t have the best track record of seeing people’s failings, so I’m withholding judgment just yet.

The suit he’s wearing this morning is bespoke. It probably costs more than every car I’ve ever owned combined and is tailored to fit so well I that can see the muscles in his arms flex. The suit, the office, that sexy-as-hell car he drives—somebody has clearly marked him as an obvious cash cow. Vindictive ex-lover, maybe? But that doesn’t really explain the break-in.

My current pet theory is some deep dark family secret, which I decided on sometime in the night after I’d woken up from dreams I couldn’t remember, but that left me feeling deeply confused, like I’m missing something big.

“Nothing was taken, as far as I can tell,” says Nic. “I have reason to believe this might be personal, but please, don’t worry. I’ve hired Finn as additional security, just to be on the safe side. The building security staff has also been put on alert. I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble, but I want you to know your safety is my first priority.”

Natalie blinks again, her big eyes again looking between us. The faintest hint of color appears on her cheeks. I’d give a limb to know what she’s thinking right now.

“I appreciate that,” she says. She frowns at Nic. “You said it’s personal.”

Nic looks back at her, steady, impassive. I guess they don’t do “personal” here. Good for Nic; better for me. If I worked with this woman every day, I’d be doing personal on every surface in the office.

A vision of the pair of them in a clinch, her skirt rucked up around her hips, his belt open, going at it hard and hot on that desk flashes before my eyes before I can block it, and I shove my hands in my pockets to cover my reaction. The action draws attention from them both.

I’m not a creep. I’m not going to harass the woman while she’s working, for God’s sake. But damn, if the thought of somebody getting busy on that wide desk doesn’t do it for me more than anything has in a long time. The fantasy would make any man hard.

If it’s weird I pictured her with Nic instead of with me, well, I’ll think about it later. Or never. Never works, too.

Whatever that wall is between them, it holds up even though Natalie is clearly asking what Nic meant by “personal,” and she turns back to her desk.

“How does this work?” she asks, aiming the question at both of us. “Do I need to find you a desk, Finn? Or should I say, Mr. Hale?”

My dick twitches at that. Knock it off.

“That’s not necessary, Ms. Casteel,” I say, grinning and winking when she looks back at me. “But I’d like to see the rest of the office, if you don’t mind.”

Nic holds out a hand toward the open door leading to his private office. It’s spacious enough, roomy, without being overlarge. Big desk, comfy client chairs. One of those leather couches that looks like it’s got a million buttons all over it. I always liked the look of them. Chesterfield, maybe. My fingers graze the leather; it’s the real deal. This close, I can smell it.

Tell me why that’s a turn-on. Don’t get me wrong, I like sex, maybe more than I should, but I’m not into super kinky shit. Why, all of a sudden, I appeared to be kinked in the direction of an office, I couldn’t say.

“You get many visitors here? Client meetings, whatever.”

Nic shakes his head. “Maybe a handful a week. I try to schedule them for mornings only. Usually, it’s just me and Natalie here.”

All that time alone with her, and they’re not together? Yeah, sure, they’re professionals, but this is Natalie.

It’s all too easy to picture him sprawled out on that couch, his back to the window, all upscale indulgence as he lets his lover go to work on their knees before him.

Jesus. Get a grip, Finn.

“I’ve seen enough,” I say. Nic follows me back out to Natalie’s desk. “I’ll stay up here to watch the door, unless there’s something you need from me. We’ll keep the office door locked if it isn’t already. Let me know your schedule each day. I’ll ID your clients outside as they’re expected. I’d also like to have a word with your building security manager.”

Nic nods as though he’s already thought of this, looking at Natalie. “He’s scheduled for my ten a.m.” She taps on the computer and nods once in confirmation.

“Good,” I say. Efficient. I suspected he would be, that both of them would be.

Eight hours later, that fact has been confirmed a hundred times over. Nic and Natalie are a well-oiled machine, and I definitely have an office kink. If it weren’t for the potential threat to these people, it would have been one hell of a distraction. The threat appears minimal, but Nic hired me to keep them safe, especially Natalie, and I’ll be damned if I let my dick get in the way of something so important. Sex can wait until after hours.

But Tuesday night can’t come fast enough.