“Actually, no. Tyrone told me about yesterday. He said you spent quite long in your apartment.”
“And is that a problem?” I crossed my arms. I didn’t like them butting into my affairs so much. Sure, I lived in their house and cooked breakfast for them, but we haven’t made anything official yet. We maintained a sex-buddy status quo… for now.
He leaned forward and propped his elbows onto the desk, crossing his fingers together. “I’m your boss.”
“And… what does that have to do with anything?”
“As the boss of this company, it’s my job to know the whereabouts of my employees.”
I sighed, not buying his half-assed argument, but answering anyway. “I was cleaning up the apartment.”
He raised a brow, indicating he didn’t believe me. “For so long? I didn’t know you were such a messy person, to leave so much junk behind.”
I scowled at him. I wasn’t exactly a neat freak, but I had standards and left things reasonably clean. “It wasn’t me. My ex-boyfriend came in and made a mess of the whole place. That slob. I had a week’s worth of his crap to clean up.”
The teasing expression of his face immediately fell. His lips pressed into a hard line, and the look he had turned into one of deep annoyance. “You never told us you had an ex-boyfriend.”
I gave out a laugh of disbelief. “I’ve had plenty, thank you.”
Irritated, Riley let out a rough noise. “What was he doing in your apartment?”
“Begging for us to get back together, like a sorry piece-of-shit.” The thought of me ever kissing that unsympathetic as**shole again sent a shiver of disgust through my gut.
“We can send him away, you know, through legal or illegal means.” He then brightened up a bit. “Speaking of which, we’ve gotten that issue with your ex-boss settled.”
“What issue?”
“He punched you in the face, remember?”
“Oh, yes, that.” I’d nearly forgotten about that. Riley’s ice pack was surprisingly effective; the bruise lightened so much, I barely noticed its presence after the first day.
“Kristie helped us take some photos when you were sleeping for some evidence,” Riley continued, “but we decided the court would go too easy on him and settled for easier, less-troublesome, non-legal means.”
He spoke nonchalantly, which was probably the reason why he seemed even more dangerous. “You really don’t have to,” I said, waving my hand to dismiss his idea. “I’ve already settled that. I sent his wife a picture of him cheating on her. That’ll teach him his lesson.”
Surprised, he said, “Oh? You never mentioned that. It’s a little too late now. He got fired from his job yesterday.”
I felt bad for my ex-boss.
For, like, two seconds.
That as**shole deserved every last bit of what happened to him. He fired me for not letting him get into my pants. The twins had simply given him what he’d been dishing out to his staff the last few years.
I grinned, knowing I shouldn’t have been that sadistically happy, but not caring anyway. “How did you manage to do it?” Why bother asking? The Crawford brothers must have had strings attached all over the place.
“Another one of our subsidiary companies has dealings with your old firm. We called them up, offered a nice deal, and they snatched it. I just added in a word about having a grudge with that scumbag.”
“Nice.” I was doing somersaults in my head. “He totally deserved it. Thank you, by the way.”
“No problem.” He went back to flipping through his files. “One more thing. I’m heading off to Paris this week for a four-day conference. Wednesday to Saturday. Schedule that in for me.”
Paris? That was the first I heard of it. “Is Ryan going along with you?”
“Yes.” He continued to read his files—how he managed to keep up with the conversation while talking boggled me. He was definitely more unsociable when busy, but being able to talk while not getting distracted needed a god-like level of multitasking skills.
“And I’ll still be living in your house?”
“If you want.”
I mentally pumped my fist into the air, feeling like a teenager who had just gotten free reign of her house from her parents. I tried to think about all the things I could do in that mansion.
Walking around in my underwear while baking brownies with their top-grade chocolate? That sounded nice.
Not that the twins would have any qualms about my state of undress when they were around, but I liked having my reservations.
He put the sheet of paper down and studied me. “Don’t go too crazy.”