Chapter 15
“I still can’t believe he owns a hotel and casino in Monte Carlo.” I shook my head.
Callie chuckled from where she sat across from me on her front porch swing. “I know. But if you ask him, he doesn’t own it. Ashbourne Investments does.”
“And he owns Ashbourne Investments.” I rolled my eyes with a good-natured grin. “Leave it to Lucas to downplay something like that. He’s too humble for his own good sometimes.”
Callie had been in Monaco the last few days.
Lucas had to close a deal on his new business venture there, and since it was her birthday, he asked her to go with him.
Lucky bitch…affectionately, of course. Since I missed her birthday, I stopped by that night on my way home from work with some red velvet cake—her favorite—and a bottle of her favorite wine, both of which we were indulging in on the porch swing.
“How are things going with you two anyway?”
Callie grinned at my question, and I couldn’t help but smile in return when I saw it because I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen her so happy. “Good,” she said. “Really good.”
I felt a sudden spark of hope in her answer.
For months, I’d been not-so-secretly hoping Callie would decide to remain in Bayport once she finished with her mom’s estate.
When she first came back, she was adamant about not staying, but with things between her and Lucas going as well as she said, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe she was having a change of heart.
But I didn’t want to ask, afraid of the question dredging up things she wasn’t ready to talk about yet.
And because I wasn’t sure I was prepared to hear her answer, knowing I wouldn’t be able to hide my disappointment if she said she hadn’t changed her mind and wasn’t staying.
“How about you?” Callie asked, pulling me from my thoughts. “How’s the dating game going? Anything exciting happening?”
“Oh, it’s, uh…it’s going. I guess…not really, but…”
“Well, you can’t still be in your slump.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You haven’t been as cranky,” she answered with a chuckle.
I scoffed through a laugh. “No, I mean…there’s been a little action on that front, but nothing serious or anything like that.”
“I need the deets!”
“Oh…pfft.” I waved her off as casually as I could. “It was just some guy. Nothing really to tell…”
I hated lying to her. Callie and I told each other everything.
She was a bit more reserved than I was with things like intimate encounters, but as for me, I typically gave her every last TMI detail.
But I couldn’t tell her that Wesley and I had made a mutually beneficial arrangement, and he was the “some guy” I was referring to.
In the month since I showed up at his apartment that night, Wesley and I had only slept together once.
Well, twice if you count the night we made the deal.
I didn’t want it to be an all-the-time kind of thing.
No part of me wanted to give him the satisfaction of becoming dependent on him for anything, especially an orgasm, even if that was the point of the arrangement.
I’d gone on a few dates since, thinking that now that I had this thing with him to fall back on, surely the universe would throw me a bone and send me a normal, decent guy who would get me out of having to rely on Wesley Callahan to keep me out of a slump.
Instead, it felt like the universe gave me the middle finger because I managed to land dates worse than any of my previous ones.
It was as if I was being taunted for being so desperate.
You made this bed. Lay in it. Thanks universe. Fuck you, too.
After a date I had two weeks ago, one I thought was going to be promising but turned out to be horrid, I reached out to Wesley for the first time since we made the deal.
We’d actually exchanged phone numbers that night for the first time in our three years of knowing each other so we could reach out when we wanted.
I sent a simple, two-word message.
You busy?
He’d responded almost immediately.
No. Come over.
It was that easy.
And I knew that could become dangerous.
As Callie and I finished our slices of cake, gravel crunching beneath tires pulled our attention. We both looked over to see Lucas’s Maserati pulling into her driveway. When he emerged from his car, I glanced back at her to see her biting her lip through a lovesick smile as she watched him.
I couldn’t help but shake my head with a chuckle. “You, miss ma’am, are so far gone.”
“Hush you,” she whispered through a laugh before looking at him with a grin, practically glowing as he walked up the front porch steps. “Hi.”
“Hi, baby.” He smiled and looked over at me. “Hey, Morgan.”
“Lucas,” I said, dipping my head.
Callie asked him how his day was, and I sat there listening until my phone chimed with an incoming message. I picked it up and glanced at the screen.
WC
What are you up to?
I wasn’t typically shy, but for some reason, getting that message from him and knowing what he wanted had my cheeks heating up. We were keeping this thing between us a secret, and two of our best friends were feet away from me while I was, quite literally, getting a booty call from him.
I didn’t even realize I was laughing at the situation until Callie spoke. “What’s so funny?”
My head snapped up from my phone, and my cheeks heated further. “Huh?”
Lucas and Callie were both looking at me with curious smiles. “You’re staring at your phone and laughing…”
“Oh, it-it’s, uh…it’s nothing.”
Lucas chuckled. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so flustered.”
“I am not flustered, Lucas.”
“Sure,” he said disbelievingly with a nod.
They gave me another look before going back to chatting. I glanced at my phone again and typed out a response.
Sitting at Callie’s with her and Lucas.
Come over.
Don’t tell me what to do.
Don’t be a brat about it.
You really need to work on your people skills and how to approach someone in a more friendly manner when you want something from them.
Nothing about you and I is friendly, Princess. Now, are you going to come over or not?
I tensed my jaw at the nickname. It’s what he put me under in his phone, and I only knew that because he made it a point to show me just to irritate me.
***
Omg, you’re so fucking impatient.
And you’re testing what patience I do have. I don’t recall giving you a hard time when you were the one to message me…
He had a point there. When I messaged, he told me to come over with no sarcastic remarks or questions asked. Clearly, he was just horny, but still.
I’ll be there in 10.
Good.
Good. I shouldn’t have expected anything less. Actually, yes, I should have.
“Alright, you two lovebirds, I’m heading out.” I stood from the porch swing.
“You don’t have to go,” Callie said. “You can stay and have dinner with us.”
I smiled. “Thanks, but I don’t want to crash your night.
” Even if I hadn’t agreed to go to Wesley’s, I wasn’t in the mood to third-wheel it.
And based on the subtle smirk I saw curl on Lucas’s lips, he was glad I declined the offer to stay so I didn’t interrupt whatever plans he had for her. “I’ll see you guys Saturday.”
I walked to my car and slid in, waving as I backed out of the driveway, and then made my way to Wes’s apartment.
When I arrived, I knocked on his door, which swung open a moment later. “I know you hate me, but I hope you don’t plan on being this much of a pain in my ass whenever I message you,” he said, stepping aside and holding the door open.
I smirked as I walked inside. “I don’t hate you…” The door shut as he scoffed at my words, looking at me with a disbelieving expression. “I just don’t like that constant inhaling and exhaling habit you have.”
He snorted. “You mean breathing?”
“Precisely.”
“You’re such a shit.”
“I know…”
We bickered the whole way down the hall to his bedroom.