Fast & Hard (The Fast 1)

“Bye, Nanny,” Jack calls after her.

“Bye, Nanny,” Matty joins in.

Three

Mallory

How many sweaters do I need? London can be chilly but I can’t fit all the sweaters into my moving boxes. Plus, we’ll be traveling all over the world and it’ll be warm in a lot of those locations. I pull one sweater back out and put it into the ‘donate’ pile.

Lots of flying, I need more leggings and comfy pants for flying.

“Aria,” I bellow toward the hallway from my tiny bedroom back in New York, “do you have my favorite black leggings?” I swear she’s going to be naked and starve to death when I leave and there’s no one to grocery shop or do the laundry.

“What do you need, babe?” Aria comes sauntering into my bedroom, staring into the screen of her rose gold laptop and paying me no mind.

I sigh. Aria is a bit… flighty, but she’s my bestie and I’d walk through fire for her. We went to college together and she’s been my roommate for ages. Leaving her is the hardest part of taking this job.

“Focus, Aria,” I scold her, “my black leggings. Do you have them?”

“How can I focus on leggings when I’m looking at this?” She huffs and flips the laptop screen toward me. The full resolution is a paparazzo picture of Lennox Gibbes walking on a beach, god knows where in the world, looking like he’s auditioning for Baywatch. Except Lennox has blue trunks on and I think they were red on Baywatch.

“Seriously? We’re doing this again? I barely have time to pack and get everything sorted before I leave and all you’ve done is Google that jerk and show me every photo you want to drool over.”

“But I’m so jealous,” she whines and flops onto my bed, on top of the heaped pile of donate clothes, and continues scrolling around on the laptop. “He’s so hot.”

“Nothing to be jealous of, he’s a huge asshole.” And that is a mouthful. All athletes have egos and act like every woman in existence sits around waiting for them to grace her with his penis, but Lennox Gibbes is next level asshole.

“Huge dick, too, if the rumors are to be believed. Look at this perfect little treasure trail.” I turn to look at her, not the laptop, and she’s petting the screen. If I roll my eyes any harder they’re going to circle back around and start spinning like I’m in need of an exorcism.

“The fact that he has dick pics online should tell you everything you need to know about him, Grade A douchebag,” I move onto my closet and start rifling through hangers and more sweaters I can’t possibly bring with.

“I haven’t found the dick pics yet but I’m not done searching. I need more visuals, Mallory, give them to me. Spare no detail.” Aria turns on the bed and puts an elbow under her head.

I haven’t found the dick pics either, but I’m not getting into that with Aria. It’s my job, I was looking for work reasons, mostly.

“I already told you, sweaty, gross, total pig.” Tall, sturdy but lean, half-naked in the gym, electric green eyes and abs for days. But still, total pig.

“Tell me the story again about how he said he was going to get you all hot and sweaty,” she begs like the horny twenty-something she is. Aria tends to have a different guy every week but she has high standards and apparently, none of the guys she brings home have measured up yet. I’ve certainly never met one who deserves her.

“Which scarf?” I ask, ignoring her request and holding up two possible wool options. In reality, I probably need neither but I like to over-prepare.

I’m leaving NYC to go straight to Melbourne but my moving boxes should be waiting in my flat when we return to London. It’s a small but lovely little unit in an old brick building Sandra said is corporate residence housing. The drivers, some staff, and some executives have units there for staying at headquarters which is in a sleepy British town about an hour outside of London. It’s the kind of place where one reads a book and drinks tea while rain drips down the leaded glass windows.

I need to learn about tea. I smile that I can now call my apartment a flat, too. Tea, flats, and wankers.

Speaking of wanker, Aria continues her lewd googling and turns her head sideways to try and make out whatever photo she’s found of him now. God knows there’s enough material. Lennox at the beach with a supermodel. Lennox at a club with several supermodels. Lennox autographing women’s breasts. Or my personal favorite, Lennox drunk at a New Year’s Eve party doing a Facebook Live video with some fan who is trying to, as far as I can ascertain, clean out his inner ear with her tongue.

And I get to clean all this up.

He’s got the horny women fans on his side, I’ll give him that. But that’s all he has going on for his reputation and that is not what Celeritas is looking for to bring in sponsors. Unless they want me to pursue condom brands or Axe body spray - actually, scratch that, we should look into a spo

nsorship by whatever magic cologne he uses that so successfully masked his sweaty pig scent last week.

“The gray one,” Aria brings me back to reality and makes my scarf decision for me. “Promise me you’ll send me nudes, of him obviously, as soon as you can.” She’s dead serious.

“Stop it,” I giggle because she’s so outlandish I can’t help it. “There will be no nudes sent from me and hopefully not on Google anymore, either.”

“You won’t be able to resist, I’d climb this man like a tree.”