And apparently, I had.
I dealt with entitled millionaire jocks on a daily basis and yet I’d let a little girl get under my skin.
If I had to be honest with myself, I’d paused on what felt like fifty different occasions by now, just to concentrate on getting an image of her out of my head. Variations of “she’s Adam’s sister” and “she’s just a kid” played in my mind whenever I remembered that body, and they worked with less and less impact each time. It was fucking maddening.
But thank Christ, it was also over.
At least it would be soon.
Because the bright side was that she didn’t have my cell and luckily, her brother was as staunch as I was about sharing that kind of information. Our time as agents was precious, in-demand, and we had full systems in place to keep just anybody from being able to reach us. Which meant if Holland ever called my office, she’d never make it past reception let alone my secretary.
And if she ever asked her brother to help get my attention, I doubt he’d be of much help.
We were both busy people, and considering how Adam was the bare minimum of involved in his sister’s life growing up, he’d likely be the last to be offended if I went ahead and ignored her indefinitely. So pissed as I was right now, I could at least take comfort in knowing that I was set. I’d dealt in full with this problem.
And in all likelihood, I was never going to have to see Holland Maxwell again.
6
HOLLAND
Exactly forty-eight hours after the delivery of The Bed and I was still stewing.
It was partly because I’d forced myself to sleep on the scratchy couch the past couple of nights, and partly because I didn’t even want to go into my own room anymore.
But more than anything in the world, I was pissed I couldn’t even deliver a simple “fuck you” to Iain.
Like a true elitist prick, he had made himself completely unreachable to me after having me fired from my job and sending me an unwanted gift that retailed for well over two thousand dollars, because two thousand dollars was the price of just the bed, which included the headboard and bed frame on which I’d originally planned to throw my lumpy futon mattress, whether it fit right or not.
But no, he hadn’t just gotten me the bed.
He had gotten me that and the memory foam mattress with king-sized down pillows and two sets of Egyptian cotton sheets that were still sitting in two huge, luxuriously crisp white Stone Pine shopping bags in my bedroom—which I was still treating like a medical quarantine, because stepping foot in there would involve reluctant admiration of The Bed and the risk of wanting to unwrap the insanely pretty sheets so I could touch them, and doing either of things right now would constitute as accepting the gift, and I had very much not.
In fact, the only thing I would accept at this point was for Iain to arrange to have The Bed removed from my home, my futon replaced with literally the cheapest possible model, and my job reinstated. That was all I wanted in order to carry on with my life.
And I very much wanted to relay that message to Iain—along with a couple other choice words—but to my deep, fist-balling irritation, I had no way to contact him.
Zero.
Just none whatsoever.
I knew one of his emails growing up, but there was a fat chance he used it anymore. I never had his number, but even if I did, it had most definitely changed, and considering how hard it was to get a hold of my brother at Engelman Sports in Los Angeles, where he was a senior agent and not even the owner, I wasn’t going to bother calling the even bigger offices of Thorn Sports and Entertainment.
Again.
I wasn’t going to bother doing it again is what I mean because I’d already tried twice. It had happened in a fit of blackout rage after I’d stared at The Bed for a good five minutes, only coming to when I realized that the delivery guys had just left, and that they had taken my old mattress with them.
It was right about then that I considered calling Adam.
But for some reason, I hated the idea of running crying to my brother. Plus, I was way too worked up and history had proved that Adam had no patience for my whining calls unless I had a clear, succinct question with a feasible solution he could provide, and not some ranting, meandering vent session that he didn’t know how to help with. I’d found this out after one too many rings to his office to complain about Mom, and far too many offers from him to just pay for my first six months in a new city—so long as I moved out of the New York-New Jersey area, and preferably “across the country from her like I did, because anything short of that is a goddamned waste.”
So yeah, I didn’t call Adam.
I wound up spending the rest of my Sunday being mad, quiet and grateful that Mia was home to keep me company, even if it meant that every so often, she’d drift past my room, peek inside and mutter, “I still can’t believe it. Mr. Ass. The Mr. Ass!”
“So, wait—remind me again how he knew this was the bed that you wanted?” Mia asked.
She was doing it again—just standing outside my room, shaking her head as she stared inside. But after a couple more seconds, she was back on the couch with me, still in her sweats and sipping an Irish coffee.