“Why can’t you be in need of temporary accommodation?” He could live with Wren; they appreciated the same things, a rigorously well-organized daily schedule and just enough slack time to exercise and sleep. In other words, very few interruptions to what they both liked doing best—working.
“Because I’d be in need of long-term accommodation at the expense of the state.” Wren craned her neck to look at a cluster of reporters. “I’d kill you, Tom. I love you as a friend and colleague.” He followed her eye line. Was that Jack Haley in that knot of people by the bar? “But I wouldn’t live with you if you were the last man willing to have sex with me.”
He frowned. Wren would never have said that about Josh, and he was gay. “I thought the last man you wanted to have sex with was Spin.” He angled his glass to the bar where the sports reporter Dante Spinoza was no doubt talking about tackle counts. As unlikely as it seemed, Wren and Spin were friends from college days.
“True. I can’t have sex with Spin—it’d feel like incest.”
“Now I’m revolted.” And truly how did he end up talking about sex with his junior colleague? He wanted to talk to Haley if he showed, but he didn’t want to line up for the privilege.
“You’re kind of a bore outside work,” Wren said.
One man’s boring was another man’s insanely satisfied by his career and its eventual lifestyle benefits. “This from a woman whose idea of exhilaration is synchronizing her calendars. I cook. I hike.”
“Which has always surprised me. It’s a plus, but I diet. I’m in mourning for Josh, I’m avoiding Spin and I’m keeping my studio. Oh look, Phil Madden has just noticed Shona Potter is here. That affair is so over. He looks like he wants to punch someone.”
Tom smiled to see the managing editor of the Courier look discomforted. A rare event. There was still no sign of Flick. But that was definitely Jack Haley helping himself to a mini quiche.
Since Haley was laid off from the Courier, Tom hadn’t seen him around at all. His mug shot wasn’t all over the city’s transit and he no longer showed up on TV screens, or on radio, doing his investigative reporter thing, but since he was here, the rumor must be true—Haley was back in business. And that was exactly what Tom had been hoping for.
It’d been a long week full of fifteen-hour days, and there was no need to make it any longer. He’d speak to Haley and get out of here. All he had to do was wait till the man wasn’t surrounded, not that Haley was paying any attention to anyone but the woman who appeared at his side.
“Delia, Delilah?” He should know her name.
“Derelie, rhymes with Merrily,” Wren corrected. “It looks like they survived becoming an internet meme.”
A mortifying moment. Someone at the Courier had caught Jack and Derelie in a lover’s clinch on the day Jack was fired, filmed it, posted it everywhere and next thing you know the Defender of the City was the romantic hero of the moment.
But he had to respect the man. Haley had been shoved off his career path and Plan B–ed his way back, running his own investigative news website with private funding.
“You could Airbnb Josh’s old bedroom,” said Wren.
Tom had no illusions he designed his life to run like a boot camp, everything in its place at the right time, in the right order and the right level of intensity. A parade of strangers in his home...that would end him. He’d rather live with Flick Dalgetty.
“I’m going to talk to Haley. See you Monday.”
He left Wren, skirted a bunch of agency colleagues and that new health reporter from the Times who everyone agreed was an absolute dope, and made his way to Jack Haley. Derelie, not Merrily. Derelie, not Merrily. It wouldn’t do to get that wrong. She worked at the Courier on the lifestyle desk.
He had his opening pitch worked out. They’d have a five-minute chat in which Tom would tempt Haley into digging into some dodgy dealings at Accord Pharma’s biggest rival, and then he could go home and die for a good six hours before he went back in to the office, to put in a half day at his desk.
He could almost feel his head hitting the pillow, and then with his hand out ready to shake Haley’s disaster struck at three times the force of gravity.
Someone knocked him aside and barreled into Jack Haley’s arms with a “Sorry, Tom. You can have him next.”
That’s when he learned that up close, Flick Dalgetty was an out-of-control bumper car, and had pointy elbows to go with her electric-shock manner, and the most outrageously rusty green eyes.
And that alone was enough to give him whiplash.
Chapter Two
Tom O’Connel
l had a hard body, and he put it right in Flick’s way of getting to Jack Haley. He might’ve broken her arm. She wanted to rub her elbow but she wouldn’t give Tom the satisfaction of seeing that. Besides, she was on a mission. She owed Jack a thank-you.
“I’m glad you came, Jack,” she said, ignoring Tom, letting go of Jack’s forearms and stepping back.
Meanwhile, hard-body O’Connell owed her an apology. Which, from a glance at the annoyance on his square-jawed face, wasn’t coming anytime soon. Nor did he back off graciously as the loser and concede space.
He loomed.