Chapter 33
Tuesday morning, and Ian felt like he’d already put in three days at work. He’d barely had the energy to call Sam last night when he got home from his meeting, but he had.
It had been totally worth it. He may not be comfortable admitting everything he may or may not be feeling for Sam, but he could admit that talking to Sam relaxed him. He needed to be able to relax. He had a fuckton of work to do.
Most immediately, he had to chair a huge interagency roundtable meeting and navigate the tricky political waters of district boundaries, protocol overlaps, procedural clashes, and insurance payment share disputes among the fire, police, and ambulance agencies in a three-county area.
His main issue right now was convincing all these yahoos—oh, excuse him, agency representatives—that, seeing as the emergency backup radio frequencies for the first responders were transit’s primary frequencies, yes, they needed to be included in the good ol’ boys’ network.
He could talk that way about these guys; he was one. Totally all right.
Sigh.
Who in hell ever thought he’d be any good at this? He didn’t tend to suffer bullshit and posturing well, and meetings like this were nothing but. He knew from experience; he’d attended enough of them as a representative of the fire district.
Yet somehow, he actually—kinda, sorta—liked this job.
He liked figuring out how to make it all run smoothly.
He even sort of liked the chess-playing air of it all, figuring out what leverage applied by who to whom would get him support.
This was the suckiest part, meetings with multiple parties who thought the simple desire to fuck with each other was reasonable motivation to go ahead and do so.
So why the hell was he in such a good mood?
Like you don’t know.
He smiled guiltily to himself, sitting at his desk, thinking about his boyfriend.
Yeah, he’d thought the word. “Boyfriend,” he whispered out loud. There, he’d said it, too. Suddenly it occurred to him he might need to talk to Sam about that. Hell, how did that work? Was he supposed to clear it with Sam before he used the “b” word? Ian sighed. One more thing to ask his therapist.
He heard Dalton’s disembodied voice say at his elbow, “Mr. Cully? You have a call from Jurgen Dammerung on line one.”
“Dalton, call me Ian,” he called out his open office door.
“Sorry, sir,” Dalton’s voice said at his elbow.
Ian shook his head and picked up the phone. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Jurgen said. “Guess we’re coming up tonight.”
“Yeah, to make sure I’m treating my boyfriend well.” Holy hell, he’d just called Sam his boyfriend to someone else.
“Did you hear what you just said?”
“When I accused you of being all up in my shit? Yeah.”
“Ha,” Jurgen grumbled. “So he’s your boyfriend now.”
“Yeah.” I just need to tell him.
Jurgen was silent a second, probably judging Ian’s sincerity. “We’ll stay home tonight then.”
Ian smirked.
“Shut up,” Jurgen growled. “We’re coming up on Friday. Nik got us all tickets for Exposed Innerds.”
“That band? Sam loves them.” Ian could probably stomach it for a night. He’d bring earplugs.
Jurgen sighed. “Yeah, so does Nik.” He sounded about as excited as Ian felt. “He says you and I have to come up with a date for Miller Harpe,” he added grouchily.
“Make it a good one!” Nik yelled in the background.
“That guy whose head you fucked with last summer because you were jealous?”
“You helped,” Jurgen snapped. “And I wasn’t jealous, I was trying to fix things.”
“You asked me to help you. You’re my cousin—I helped.”
“Shut up,” Jurgen said. “Just come up with a date for him.”
“Where the fuck am I supposed to find a date for him? You’re the one who tried to fix things. You find one.”
After a painful pause, Jurgen admitted, “Nik says all my suggestions are inappropriate.”
“Hell,” Ian grumbled. The idea of Tierney flashed through his head, nearly making him laugh.
Then Dalton appeared in his doorway. “Mr. Cully?” he whispered.
“Call me Ian,” he responded automatically. “Oh, hey. Do you like the Exposed Innerds?”
Dalton’s eyes lit up. “I love that band.”
“I think I got a live one,” he whispered into the phone. “We’re good.”
Once he hung up, he realized what he could do tonight with his suddenly free time. He just had to run a small, personal errand first.
Unfortunately, before Ian could run his errand, he had to finish this damn agenda.
He was sitting at his desk, working on it and eating the pineapple he’d brought from home when Andy walked into his office, holding her ever-present cup of coffee.
He glanced up. “Hey,” he said, then went right back to the stupid fucking agenda he was trying to draft for the stupid fucking meeting.
“Hey.” She stopped next to his desk. “Your eye looks better.”
“Huh.”
“I think I found our last employee. When can you do a final interview?”
“Can it be after this stupid meeting?”
She snorted delicately. “Next week? I think not.”
Ian sighed and dropped his pen to rub his good eye. “I don’t know. Talk to Dalton about my schedule.”
He could feel the sheer wattage of her shit-eating grin heating the back of his head. There was no way he was looking up at her. “Aren’t you glad I made you hire my little brother?” she asked.
Yes. He grunted noncommittally and made a show of ignoring her in favor of spearing another piece of pineapple.
“Jeez, you eat a lot of fruit,” she said.
“Fruit for the fruit.” He could tell by the way her whole body jerked in his peripheral vision that she’d almost spit out a sip of coffee. He smirked up at her.
“Wow,” Andy said, wiping a few stray drops of coffee off her chin. “Since you started seeing your friend you’re sure more lively, aren’t you?” She gave him a sly wink and sauntered off toward the door.
It took him a few seconds to think of a comeback. “Shut up,” he grumbled just before she walked out.
She laughed all the way back to her office.
Later, when he went to see Andy to tell her he had personal business this afternoon, a book shoved into the side of her briefcase caught his attention.
The cover looked familiar. A wild-haired chick clutched to the semi-bare chest of some rough-looking dude with long, brownish hair.
There was a castle on a distant hill behind Rough Dude’s plaid-draped shoulder and some stormy looking skies.
Ha.
“Sooo,” he said, “you read a lot of those Highlander romance novels?”
Her head snapped up, then she looked over at her briefcase. “Oh, shit,” she said, dropping her papers on her desk.
His grin was so wide his cheeks hurt. “Andy, I think we need to talk,” he said, sitting down in the chair in front of her desk. “Now, these Highlander romance thingies, let’s talk about that, uh, what do you call it? Oh, yeah—trope. I need to conduct a little research.”
She eyed him suspiciously for a second, then arched an eyebrow. “This research, does it have anything to do with your boyfriend?”
Hell. “Maybe.”
“I’ll consider that a yes. Now, I think I have just the scenario for you . . .”