CHAPTER27
TANNER
Frank, my financial advisor, was a great guy. Fuck, he was responsible for making me a billionaire, so I could hardly complain about him, but my meetings with him always took it out of me.
Today, he’d put me through a four-hour information session and presentation on the options out there for me. He’d been telling me to diversify my investments, which was the same thing Jeremiah kept hammering on, but four fucking hours of telling me about everything else that was out there to invest in had fried my brain.
All I wanted to do was kick my feet up on the sofa, drink a beer, and watch some mindless show on TV. As I was about to let myself into my apartment after the meeting, though, I heard laughter coming from across the hall at Jeremiah’s place.
His door was slightly ajar and the sound of two female voices caught my attention. One of the voices belonged to Steph, but the other sounded suspiciously like Larisa’s. Too curious to stick to my plan of heading straight for my fridge to grab that beer, I turned and went over to his place instead.
When I walked in, I realized I was definitely right. That was Larisa’s voice, and it was coming from their kitchen.
“Oh my God. I just can’t believe it. It’s such a small world,” she was saying. “I only saw the back of your head at the auction. Then you guys were kissing, and after that I looked back at the stage.”
I frowned. What the hell?
Stephanie, Jeremiah, and Larisa were gathered around their breakfast bar, talking and laughing like they’d known each other for years. A shockingly intense pang of jealousy tightened my gut when I walked in just as Larisa cracked up at something Jeremiah had said.
I’d known they were meeting today, but I definitely hadn’t expected this. Jer looked up, surprise flickering across his features for a split second when he saw me coming toward them. Then he grinned and waved me over.
“Hey, bud. I thought you were supposed to be with Frank all day,” he said.
Larisa and Steph only seemed to notice there was someone else in the room when he spoke, and they turned simultaneously to face me. Steph tossed me a friendly wave and murmured a greeting, but I hardly even saw it because, as Larisa turned, she actually smiled at me. Warmly.
The jealousy faded away and suddenly everything was okay again. “Hey, guys. What’s going on here?”
“Hi, Tanner,” Larisa said, softly but definitely more fondly than the curt businesslike tone she’d had at lunch the other day at our meeting. “I hope this is okay. Jeremiah and I finished the tour, and then we ran into Steph in the hall on our way out. It turns out that she’s actually an acquaintance of mine. We spent some time hanging out together back in college.”
“I invited her in to chat and catch up,” Steph added with a meaningful look at me. “Larisa and I even used to take some classes together. We haven’t seen each other in years, though. I hardly even recognized her at first. It was only when we got to talking about the tour and their meeting that we realized the other was familiar.”
“Right,” I said slowly. “What tour are you guys talking about?”
“Oh, Jeremiah gave me a tour of your apartment,” Larisa said, and I shot a quick glare at him. He took her into my apartment without telling me?
I couldn’t even remember if I’d put my fucking underwear in the hamper this morning before I showered. The least he could’ve done was to give me a heads-up. Jeremiah smirked at me despite the fact that I was glaring daggers at him.
Irritation started simmering in my stomach until I realized Larisa seemed really happy about it. Well, I guess I can’t be too mad if it made her happy.
“Thanks for letting me have a look around there,” she said when I brought my gaze back to hers. “I'm finally starting to get some really great ideas now that I’ve seen your home.”
It didn’t look like she’d noticed me glaring or him smirking. Instead, she was looking into the middle distance like she could see exactly what she was talking about as she explained. “I’m so happy to have some kind of frame of reference now. We can keep your style exactly as-is in the new place. You’re going to walk in and feel like you’ve been living there as long as you’ve been in your apartment.”
Steph smiled. “Isn’t she great? The best part of all is that you can trust her when she says you’re going to feel right at home. I didn’t connect the dots that I knew her when my friend recommended her, but she said walking into her place after Larisa redesigned it felt more like coming home than it had felt even when she’d decorated it herself. Now that I know who she is, I can totally see that happening. This girl has always just had an amazing eye.”
She turned back to Larisa. “Wasn’t it also you who rearranged all the furniture at that one frat party?”
Larisa laughed, covering her face with her hands and groaning as she nodded. “That was me. I still can’t believe I did that, though. I didn’t even know any of the guys in the frat. I only went because a friend of mine insisted, but I couldn’t relax when they were using that space all wrong. I mean, who just piles furniture in like that?”
“Uh, frat boys?” Jeremiah suggested, and both women burst out laughing again. He gave me the smuggest fucking grin I’d ever seen, then waved me over. “Why don’t you join us? The girls have decided to have a drink and hang out for a while. We might even get takeout later.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, but when I glanced at Larisa to see if she noticed how obvious he was being about what he was doing, she’d gone back to chatting with Steph. Nodding as I crossed the distance to the breakfast bar, I took a seat next to her and across from Jeremiah. I leaned over as I cocked my head at him.
“Did you at least check that my dirty laundry wasn’t lying around everywhere before you took her in there?”
“Last I checked, it wasn’t your physical dirty laundry that got you in trouble with her,” he murmured in response, still looking smug as hell. “I did check, though. What do you take me for? A barbarian?”
“Some days,” I said. “Did you talk to her about the metaphorical dirty laundry?”