Dr. Stud

“It really is a beautiful ring,” she sighs wistfully. “Like… I almost wish I could keep it.”

“But you —” I start, then stop. She holds up the ring to me, tucking it against the palm of my hand and folding my fingers back over it before I get the words out.

“We did a good job, boys!” she declares. I stare into her face in the quickly fading light, trying to make out what she's thinking. Is she relieved? Glad to be done with the charade?

“Well I guess, um, oh wait,” she says, pulling her phone from her handbag. “It's Hannah calling… I have to take this.”

She walks away, drawing the phone to her ear. Dillon scowls at me, stepping forward confidentially. “What the hell just happened?” he asks quickly.

“I don't… I don't know, man, okay?”

“She gave you the ring back?”

“Well, yeah, she gave the ring back. Wasn’t that the plan? This is all just… fuck. I don't know. What was I thinking?”

“Were you thinking something different was going to —”

“Guys, I gotta go,” Bella interrupts. Dillon and I separate as though guilty.

“What do you mean?”

She holds the phone up, shaking it back and forth with a sour look on her face. “It's Hannah. Something about the merger. I gotta go talk to her, like, now. Could I… maybe use your car?”

“Sure, sure,” Dillon shrugs, shaking his head in confusion. “We’ve got two here. Pick the one you like best.”

“Okay, guys, sorry!” she says in a hurry, pressing her fingers to her lips and blowing kisses at us like nothing just happened.

Before I even really figure out what's going on, she gets in the car and the driver pulls away into traffic, leaving us both feeling like we just lost something very important.

Chapter 39

Bella

As I ride the elevator up to Hannah's office, I draw my shawl closer around my shoulders and try to stifle an involuntary shiver. The air-conditioning is blasting, but I don't think that's it. I haven't talked to Hannah in days, and I don't really feel like starting right now.

But, hell, I'm a goddamn professional. If I've learned anything about myself in the last few weeks, it's that I'm apparently as ambitious as all get out. I don't need Hannah's dragon lady stare trying to wither my straight-backed resolve. She's not going to get on my nerves today. She's just not.

But when I walk into her office, tentatively brushing my knuckles against her open door, I'm surprised at the look on her face. She is standing next to her desk with a glass of some brown alcohol in her hand, grinning from ear to ear.

“There's my star! There is my brilliant sidekick!”

She raises her glass in the air to toast me, then drops it back on her desk and refills it, plus the glass next to it. I try to stifle my reaction to the word sidekick and walk carefully across the floor to accept the glass.

“Did you already see the… event?” I ask her carefully.

“Who hasn't?” she giggles, rolling her eyes for dramatic effect. Her cheeks are pink and I can see she’s already heavily invested in celebration whiskey.

“Well… did you think it went off okay?” I ask her, squinting over the rim of the glass. The liquid is hot and pungent, nearly burning the tip of my tongue.

“Okay?” she repeats incredulously. “The whole thing was just live streamed from a dozen different people. You had celebrities on the bridge, did you know that? Somewhere out there, Amal Clooney was live streaming you! Amal fucking Clooney!”

“Well, she's no Gwyneth Paltrow, but…”

“Tell me about it!” Hannah exclaims, wobbling around the side of her desk and plopping extravagantly into her leather executive chair. It tips back dramatically and she kicks off her stiletto heels so she can cross her ankles on the corner of her desk.

It would probably be wrong of me to take a picture of her right now. Probably wrong. Tempting, but wrong.

“Okay, so I guess it was definitely good. The windows in the building were a nice touch, I thought.”