The Pact (Winslow Brothers 2)

In an instant, she’s gone, but left in her wake is a smile on my face that stretches from ear to ear.

If she gets that adorably worked up over seeing me in a towel through the fucking phone, what’s it going to be like when she’s actually in my apartment, living with me?

Looks like it’s only a matter of time before you find out.

Monday, April 15th, Los Angeles

Daisy

I adjust the nonexistent wrinkles in my silk blouse and check the time on my phone for the fourth time in as many minutes. 8:55 a.m.

Only five more minutes of anxiety about the sick feeling I’m going to have when I try to explain this mess to Damien. I laugh at myself, briefly, before going back to focusing my breathing so I don’t hyperventilate. I have pre-anxiety to my anxiety. It’s the ultimate moment of my millennialism rearing its ugly head.

With one glance over my shoulder and into the conference room where Damien is spearheading his weekly morning agent meeting, I see that everyone appears to be in the process of standing up and grabbing their belongings.

Immediately, I move my gaze back to his office door and force as much oxygen into my lungs as I can. Holy shit. It’s about to go down.

After doing a little reconnaissance via Damien’s main assistant, Carrie, I know that his schedule is open for the next hour. Which means I have sixty minutes to convince him that me relocating to New York and handling staging the properties on the East Coast for the next three or so months is a really fan-freaking-tastic idea. That it’s going to do the work of a spam email Nigerian Prince by enhancing both his ahem and his bank account. And I somehow need to do this without spilling the beans on my visa debacle.

No big deal, right?

Even though it feels like I’m getting ready to be shipped off to war, that’s probably a completely irrational reaction. I hope.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my favorite little secret-keeper.”

The sound of my boss’s voice behind me spurs an urge to cringe so strong that I have to dig my teeth into my bottom lip to keep my facial expression halfway normal.

Slowly, I spin on my favorite secondhand black Prada heels and ready myself as Damien strides toward me with a terrifying smirk etched across his handsome face.

“Morning, Dame,” I say, trying like hell to keep the nervous titter out of my voice. Everything is on the line here.

“Morning, doll.” He smiles, slides open his office door, and gestures for me to come inside. “Finally ready to spill the details of your Vegas adventure? Because I’m dying for a taste of tea…and a baguette.” He chuckles at his penis joke, and all I can do is giggle back, almost painfully avoiding how very aware I am that his point was not at all about a morning beverage and snack. But whatever. Avoidance is all I have to keep myself emotionally afloat right now.

I hold up the to-go Starbucks cup clutched in my left hand and punctuate the gesture with a wiggle of my wrist. “I don’t have tea, but how about a morning caramel macchiato?”

An amused laugh jumps from his lungs, and he sidles around his massive all-glass desk to sit down in his black leather desk chair. A desk chair, mind you, that’s a ten-thousand-dollar Arne Jacobsen Egg Chair that’s exactly sixty years old and has the kind of perfect patina on the leather that would make any interior designer or vintage furniture lover weep tears of joy.

The man has impeccable taste. Expensive-as-hell, but impeccable, nonetheless.

“Party pooper.”

I shake the frilly coffee drink again, and he sighs.

He curls his index finger toward me. “Hand over the macchiato, and no one gets hurt.”

I set the still-warm drink on his desk and take a seat in one of the chairs across from him. “You’re welcome, by the way,” I add as I watch him enjoy his first sip.

“Thank you.” He winks. “But if you’re not here to gossip, what has you bringing me my favorite drink and pacing outside my office for the last thirty minutes on this lovely Monday morning?”

“I wasn’t pacing.”

“Weren’t pacing? Dais, I’ll probably have to have someone come out and refinish the Brazilian hardwood in front of my door.”

I roll my eyes, and he laughs.

“Fine. Maybe I was pacing…a little.”

“Come on. It can’t be that bad. I mean, what? Are you here to tell me you want to quit?” He laughs at first, the presumed absurdity of his statement laying on his funny nerve. When I don’t say anything, though, his mouth drops open.

“Oh my God! Daisy Diaz, you’re not trying to quit your job, are you? Because I swear on everything, I will—”

“No, no, no,” I quickly respond. “I don’t want to leave. I… I just… I…” I pause, trying like hell to figure out a way to verbalize what I actually do need.