Cheater (Curious Liaisons 1)

Ugh, I hated that I was curious by nature.

“Funny you should ask.” He led the way to his office, set his briefcase on his desk, then pulled out a stack of papers and held them out to me.

On the first page was Monday, or Molly.

She had a short pixie haircut that looked killer on her, and with tattoos down her arms and a nose ring—well, she so did not look like a Molly to me, but she was absolutely stunning. Her tattoos added to her beauty, and her smile was wide. She looked normal, too good for him. The bastard.

I turned to the next page. Tuesday, or Tabatha and Cary. “Wait.” I frowned. “Why two girls?”

Lucas glanced over my shoulder. His breath, which unfortunately didn’t smell like an old man’s, kissed the top of my neck. “They’re roommates.”

I took a few soothing breaths. “And they’re okay with this?” I seriously wanted to rip up the paper, set it on fire, and shove it down his pants. What a complete ass!

Lucas’s voice was calm, gentle. I dared not look at him. “They’re flight attendants, they travel a lot, and neither can seem to find time to date regularly. The arrangement works for them because it’s convenient.”

I snorted. “What? So you screw them, and they say thank you?”

“No. Actually, we don’t have sex every time. If you must know, sometimes they just want to relax and hang out, so I make them dinner, rub their feet, and sometimes just please them.”

Had it just gotten really hot in that office?

My face heated to a painful degree. “You . . . please them.”

“Why is that so hard to believe?” He walked around me. I chose to stare down at the paper so I wouldn’t look at his gorgeous hazel eyes.

“It’s just—” Both girls had brown ombré-style hair coloring and seemed to love pink lipstick. “I thought it was all about sex, that’s all.”

“Believe me, pleasing them pleases me.” His voice was gruff. “And in the end, they want to make me happy in bed because of it.”

I took a cautious step back and quickly glanced at the next page. “Wednesday looks . . . way too normal.”

He laughed. “Chelsea’s a teacher.”

I almost dropped the stack of papers again. “But that’s so . . .”

“What?” He placed his hand on the paper and lowered it so I had no choice but to look at him. “Normal?”

“I was going to say typical, that you’d sleep with the help.” I grinned wide. “Let me guess, she works here?”

“No, she works at the low-income school down the road, earns below the poverty line, and volunteers at a soup kitchen every Saturday.”

Well then. Who was the ass now? “Sorry.” It literally hurt my body to apologize to the man.

“You didn’t know.”

“So I’ve already met the new Friday.” I tried not to get jealous as I glanced at Nadia’s picture and moved along to Saturday.

“Whoa.” I stared at the picture. Hard. “She’s . . . um, different.”

“Forty.” Lucas answered quickly. “And yes, Amy’s special, but then each of the ladies has something unique. She’s fascinating, irresistible, loves going for long walks, has three dogs, works at Starbucks headquarters.”

“I hope she gives you free coffee,” I joked.

“Sex in exchange for coffee would be wrong. Where are your morals?”

“MY MORALS!” I yelled.

Lucas burst out laughing. “Don’t get your panties in a twist—I was kidding. Stop looking at me like you want to stab me in the testicles.”

“The idea has so much merit.” I sighed dreamily, holding the papers to my chest. “So these are the chicks you . . .” I waved a hand flippantly in the air.

“Screw,” he answered helpfully. “Yes.”

“And cheat on.”

“They’re well aware of the arrangement.”

“And Sundays?” Not staring at him was too hard; therefore, I focused on the cleft in his chin so I wouldn’t look at his perfect lips . . . or the swell of his biceps. When he crossed his arms, I was almost afraid the shirt was going to rip, and it was a nice shirt, soft, white. Okay, Avery, stop staring at the fabric like you want to make babies with it. That’s weird—don’t be weird.

“Sundays are for my sister, Erin.”

He shifted uncomfortably. Was it my imagination, or did those biceps flex beneath the shirt like he was tensing?

As if the tensing wasn’t bad enough, he cleared his throat and blinked way too many times for a man who was being completely honest about his sister.

“Huh.” His shirt really was nice though—stain-free. How did he manage it with all the sex and lipstick? “So you were being honest about that?”

“Honesty,” he said, “is necessary when you casually date seven women, right?”

“Oh please!” I locked eyes with him. “You’re excusing horrible behavior by saying the girls are aware, but the whole sex without strings doesn’t exist. That’s a fantasy like Santa Claus or the Easter bunny.”

“Holy shit! Santa’s fake?” He winked. “And they’re all okay with it. Besides, it’s not like I’m sleeping with you.”

I hated him for saying it.

Because immediately I had a vision of his mouth on mine, clothes on the floor, and every forbidden fantasy I’d had throughout high school flared to life, fanned by the words that he’d just released into the universe, words that would be impossible to take back.

I sucked in a breath, and he licked his lips, his eyes focusing on my mouth.

It was wrong.

And a small part of me liked that feeling, the wrongness of being in my boss’s office, the history, but it was only 1 percent.

Ninety-nine percent of me still wanted to nail him to a wall and use his balls as target practice with a shiny, new aluminum bat.

Lucas took a step toward me. I took a step back.

He stopped approaching, instead shoving his hands into his pockets and offering a lazy smile. “That’s rare.”

“What?”

“A girl running in the opposite direction.”

“I’m not one of your desperate women grateful for little cheap crumbs—plus there are only so many days in a week.” I tried to sound cheerful, like it wasn’t a big deal that he was a lying, cheating asshole of a man, and not the man I used to know.

“Pity,” he whispered.

“Hey, you two, meeting in five.” I jumped a foot at the sound of the feminine voice, and then Lucas became all business.

I scurried back to my desk and shoved the papers into my purse just in time for Lucas to lead me to the conference room.

Chapter Seven

LUCAS

I hated Saturday meetings—they threw off my entire week—but this time, I’d looked forward to going to the office on my day off.

And it had everything to do with a certain spitfire currently drawing a horrible stick figure that I could only assume was me, with an arrow going through its head, and then the heart. An airplane was going down in flames in the drawing, and it was about to flatten said stick figure that had my name written above it in giant block letters.

Nice.

“Lucas.”

I glanced up, acknowledging the speaker at the head of the table.

Bill was my boss. Hell, he was everyone’s boss. He was the founder of Grant Learning. This announcement had to be big for him to call in all the VPs like this. “I know you typically do a four-ten if you can, but I’ll need you to move back down to five-eights.”

Avery frowned.

“No problem.” I suddenly had no issue with being in the office more. Besides, I usually had so much work, it was rare that I could take Fridays off anyway.

“Thank you, everyone, for meeting on your day off. I know this is very last minute, but I have an update on the new tutoring app that I think you should be made aware of.”

I leaned forward. The app was my idea. I’d hired the tech team to build an app for students. It worked a lo

t like Uber. Whenever a student needed help with a homework assignment, he or she could check to see if a tutor was in the area. The tutors were all screened by us and put into our system, and with his or her parents’ permission, a student could hire a tutor immediately. That made it easier for students who lived far from our franchises to get help.

“We’re out of the beta testing and ready to launch.” Bill grinned wide. “Good job heading this up, Lucas. The results have been outstanding.”

Pride swelled in my chest. “That’s fantastic.”

Sure, I was a jackass, I “cheated” on women, or just dated multiples, depending on one’s perspective, but I loved kids. Adored them. They were still so damn innocent. They had the whole world ahead of them, and I wanted to make sure that they had every opportunity possible. My parents had given me that—I wanted to pay it forward.

Just thinking about Patty and Bill had me itching all over.

God, it had been way too long since we’d talked.

And I only had myself to blame.

Things were still tense—years later. It burned that my own parents still held me responsible for what had happened with the Blacks. Like I single-handedly ruined a twenty-year friendship on purpose.

What? Did they think I wanted to destroy lives?