Faking It with the Frenemy

“Somehow, I’ve lost my appetite.” I give Wyatt a pointed look, then smartly walk out.

Chapter Four

Wyatt

“I knew it,” I say. The second I realized who Salazar’s assistant was, I knew the lunch was going to end in a total disaster.

“You should’ve told her earlier and prepped her,” Dane says to his father, like it’s all his fault, even though nothing would’ve made a difference. If I fell into a well, Kim would push large rocks down after me.

Salazar shrugs dismissively over his scotch. “Don’t blame me. It’s your fault for bringing it up so soon. She would’ve been more amenable after some crème brûlée. She loves that stuff.”

“How are you going to make it right?” Dane demands.

“Me? You’re the one who messed it up.”

I raise my hand. “Stop. There’s no point to arguing. She won’t do it, no matter what.”

“Why not?” Salazar asks.

“She and I have…a history.” Which is putting it mildly. She said I sucked in bed and decided I gave her herpes and dumped me as soon as we slept together. The memory still makes me seethe. Not because I have feelings for her at this point—but because I really, really liked her at the time.

Although, to be honest, I still have some…thoughts about her. Her body, anyway. Her personality still sucks.

But that body…

My cock became chiseled stone every time I saw those tits. And it would love nothing more than to have my hands push them together, so I could drive into the tight, warm cleavage…

When the world ends in a zombie apocalypse and somebody eats my brain. That’s when that’ll happen.

Salazar shrugs. “Eh. I have a history with half the women in the city, and I get along with them.”

Dane looks like he just chewed on some especially sharp glass. “That’s inappropriate, not to mention irrelevant.”

Salazar shrugs. “Just saying.” He opens the menu. “I’m hungry.”

“Me too. See you later.” I stand and walk out. If I’m not impressing Salazar’s assistant—and I’m not even going to try, since it’s Kim—I’m not eating anything off a menu that weirdly relabels fish that have perfectly good English names.

Otoro, my ass.

I stop by a food truck on the way to the office and grab a hot dog. It’s no cheeseburger, but at least it’s honest. No pretensions. It’s objectionable, as it tries to teach women how long and thick a man’s cock ought to be—longer and thicker than the wiener stuck in the bun—and unhealthy, as the cheesy goo on it is probably as nutritious as toxic waste from a nuclear plant.

Easily tasty enough to scarf down before a meeting.

I arrive with ten minutes to spare. The Sweet Darlings office in Los Angeles is new, barely two years old. The company branched out after West Coast operations became too big for the space in San Mateo, and CEO Alexandra Darling decided to move some of the business functions out of the headquarters in Dulles.

The L.A. office occupies the entire twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh floors of a giant skyscraper. I never understood the point of having such tall buildings in L.A., even if land is at a premium. Earthquake evacuation would be a bitch from this high up. But people like to stand on high ground and look down on others, even if it’s only from nine to five.

My temp assistant Melanie waves a well-manicured hand as I approach my corner office. She wears way too much perfume for the office. A thick glob of mascara weighs down her eyelashes, making her green eyes look smaller. Her desk has seven framed photos of her family, including her two boys, and four small potted plants that she dotes on at least once an hour. She likes to bring cookies every Monday, claiming everyone needs something sweet to make the beginning of a brand-new workweek more tolerable. She’s always the first on our floor, if not the entire building, to dash out on Fridays. Her workspace is still littered with cookie crumbs from earlier, and I know they will stay until Friday, when the janitor finally gets fed up and sweeps them off her desk.

“Did you finalize the memo for the meeting?” I ask. It’s a simple one-page document and only needed some corrections I made to an earlier draft entered into the soft copy and printed again.

She shakes her head. “Not yet. Did you get my text? The meeting got pushed back to two.”

I pull out my phone. Nothing. “You sure you sent it?”

“Yeah.” She checks, then frowns. “Oh, wait. Sorry. I sent it to David by mistake.”

I don’t know how that’s possible, since D and W are on opposite ends of the alphabet. First names, last names…either way.