Chapter 19 #3
I wait in the meeting spot near the café and he walks around the corner, smiling broadly. He laughs and pulls me into an embrace and picks me up and spins me around.
“Hey, hot Doc.” He holds me at arm’s length and looks me up and down. “You are especially smoking today.” He winks.
I laugh and he pulls me into an embrace, and we walk down the street with his arm casually draped around me. Why do I feel so comfortable with him?
“Why have you been ditching me?” he asks.
“I haven’t. I’ve just been really busy that’s all,” I sigh.
We eat lunch in comfortable silence, and I am painfully aware of the security trailing us. I have had lunch with Jes heaps of times over the last couple of months and yet now I’m freaking out that someone is going to tell Joshua.
“Have you been going out much?” I ask.
He nods as he shovels in his food. “Yeah. You?”
I shake my head. “Not really. I have just been hanging at the hospital every chance I get.”
“I’ve been training a bit. I’m fighting again next week.”
I roll my eyes. “Please don’t talk to me about your ridiculous sport. It’s embarrassing that you would think I would be remotely interested.”
He smiles broadly as he shovels in another mouthful of food. “My trainer rang me today to tell me that your ex-boyfriend is back in the country and that today he registered to fight.”
I stop with my fork midair. “What?” I stammer as my eyes widen. “He is the only person who has beaten me so far and I have gotten a lot better since then.” I look at him, mortified.
He fake punches his fist. “Can’t wait to take the idiot out.” Holy fuck…can’t be. I grab his arm. “You can’t fight him,
Jesten, he will kill you.”
He narrows his eyes. “Thanks for your confidence but I’m thinking I might kill him instead.”
My eyes widen in horror. “Jesten, I mean it, you have no idea how crazy he can get. When you told me to think of you when I had sex with him, he went insane.” I swallow nervously.
He smirks. “Can’t wait to bait him again.” Oh. My. God.
“So, did you?” he smiles. I frown at him. “Huh?”
“Did you think of me when you had sex?”
“You’re deluded.” I shake my head. “No. Definitely not.” He fake punches his fist again as he smiles.
If I tell Jesten that I am trying to get back together with Josh, he will go crazy and try to kill him and if I don’t tell him he is going to try and kill him anyway.
Who am I kidding? Joshua will kill him first in either situation.
I put my head in my hands as I try to think of a solution to this dilemma.
Shit, shit, shit. This is a frigging nightmare.
My phone beeps a text and I look at the screen. Joshua. I smile broadly.
What are you doing?
My stomach drops and I look around nervously. Shit, is that a trick question? Have the bodyguards told him I am having lunch with a man and told on me. I swallow nervously and text back.
Having lunch with a friend.
What are you doing?
I nervously wait for a reply.
“Have you heard from him?” Jesten asks.
I glance back at my phone as I wait for his text. “Huh who?” I mumble.
“Your ex-boyfriend.”
My eyes snap up from my phone to look at Jes. Shit, another trick question. If I tell him before the fight that I have been seeing Joshua it will only make him angrier.
“Umm, you know, not really.” Why am I such a terrible liar?
He frowns at me. “What does that mean?”
My phone beeps a text and my eyes flick to the screen. Joshua.
Just thinking about how hot you were last night.
My face nearly splits open with glee. “Huh?” he asks again.
I frown, oh shut up, you’re annoying me. I want to be sexting Joshua right now.
“Jes, I don’t go out with anyone who cage fights. End of story.” I stand.
“I need to get back to work,” I say nervously.
“I’ll walk you back.” He gestures to the door and follows me out of the restaurant.
My eyes flick to the bodyguard who is with Max, who is he? And what is he thinking? Is he a snitch?
We get back to work and Jesten grabs me affectionately in an embrace. I stand rigid and evasive as I feel the glare of others on my back.
“Tash, I want to take you on a date,” he whispers into the top of my head.
Huh? What the hell? I pull back. “Jesten, you want to sleep with me, and I am not that kind of girl.”
He smiles. “Can’t you be that kind of girl for one night? We would be so good together.”
“Seriously, Jes, go out with someone else. I am not interested in you that way.” With that I break out of his grip and punch him playfully in the stomach.
I turn and walk into the hospital and immediately take out my phone.
Right, back to more important things. I sit in the foyer as I think what to text back.
I narrow my eyes as I look at the ceiling deep in thought.
Joshua is telling me that he wants sex only but after the tenderness last night I now know that’s just not true.
And the whole wanting me to stay at Mum’s to keep me safe thing is his way of over-the-top caring, so he has blown the not-caring act out the window as well.
Do I want to push him for some kind of communication with me about our relationship or should I just play along and not scare him off? I know he cares for me and I don’t feel anything but affection when I am with him. Let’s just see what happens. I smile and text back.
It was you who was hot Mr. Stanton.
Is this a disguised booty call?
I bite my lip and wait.
Totally
I smile again and text.
I’m thirty, seventy wanting to see you tonight
What’s your closing argument?
I smile as I wait for a reply.
Meeting just started.
Got to go.
I smile at my phone. He’s calling me later. This is going very well indeed.
Joshua
It’s 11 pm and I am in Tatiana’s office doing a backup of the hard drives for the company’s computer systems before we close them down.
Adrian and Alex are in the office next door and the offices are dead silent and deserted.
Why did I agree to do this shit job? The security guards are outside and I have allocated extra staff to watch over Tash at her mother’s house.
I haven’t had a minute alone to call her back yet.
Tatiana has been fawning over me all day. Why does she have to be so damn attractive? It’s very… distracting. I narrow
my eyes at the screen when I see in my peripheral vision her stretch out next to me.
She’s wearing a skintight black secretary number that’s low cut with the biggest cleavage I have seen, and I know she has a suspender belt on underneath it.
Adrian pointed it out earlier when he was making fun of her.
“Would you mind if I stretched out on this desk and had a little nap?” she purrs.
I keep my eyes on the screen. “Not at all.” Void of emotion.
She’s been giving me double-meaning phrases all day.
This is sexual innuendo at its best.
“So, are you still with your girlfriend?” she asks.
“Wife actually,” I murmur as I keep typing, my eyes not leaving the screen.
“Hmm,” she replies. “You don’t seem like the marrying type.” I raise my eyebrows, just fuck off and let me finish this job.
“Why do you say that?”
She fakes a laugh. “Don’t you remember how you were dancing with me at the wedding? That was no married man dance.”
I roll my eyes. “I was trying to make my wife jealous actually.”
“Hmm. Does she get jealous very often?” she purrs again.
My eyes flick to her and she is practically lying across the desk and she has unbuttoned her two top buttons. Fuck.
I look back at the screen nervously. I need to get out of here. “You know I never understand why someone would want to get married and tie themselves to one person when there is so much pleasure to have in other beds.”
I swallow. “Really,” I answer flatly. I’m not having this conversation with her.
“You know, I was wondering,” she runs her hand up my arm, “seeing as we are going to be working all crazy hours while we do this upgrade, if we should try to get to know each other more intimately…if you know what I mean?” She slowly licks her lips and leans over me.
“No one will ever know.”