Eight Brothers Fiancee (Love by Numbers 7)

Sadie and I stopped by my satellite office to drop off some papers and then headed down to the parking garage. Sadie gave me a kiss on the cheek and then left for her car and I approached the valet desk. A young man sat behind it, with headphones in his ears, not paying much attention.

“Um.” I knocked on the desk. “Hello.” He was looking at his phone and didn’t see me. Finally, I just leaned over the desk and tapped his phone. He jumped and yanked the headphones out of his ears. “Hi,” I greeted.

“Hi! I’m so sorry.” He shoved his phone under the desk. “How can I help you?”

“My name is Alexa Storm, I’m the new Company Liaison and Head Anchor. Quentin told me that I could mention I need to get to Foxx Towers and someone would drive me over.”

“Oh! Of course! He told me you’d be starting today. Let me just grab the keys.” He entered a code into a lockbox and pulled out a set of keys. “Follow me.”

He led me to a black BMW parked near the desk he sat behind, and opened the back door for me to climb in. I got in and made myself comfortable, noticing that the car was in pristine shape. The young man ran around to the driver’s side and climbed in. He looked back at me. “My name is Todd Johnson, but you can call me T.J.”

I smiled and nodded. “Nice to meet you, T.J.”

Foxx Towers wasn’t a far drive from where the event planning office was, but traffic could be nasty downtown. I considered just hopping out and walking, but I felt bad disrupting T.J. for no reason. Instead, I decided to take the opportunity to poll yet another person about the Foxxes and their true selves.

“Hey, can I ask you a question?” I started.

“Sure!” T.J. kept his eyes on the road.

“Do you like working for the Foxxes? How are they? As bosses I mean?”

“It’s awesome here,” T.J. responded without hesitation. “The Foxxes are great bosses. I have other friends in the valet business who don’t get paid half of what I get paid. I was struggling to get a job after I got out of… um… after some things, and Mr. Keaton Foxx, used to come to the same bar as me. I was drunk off my ass, slumped over a table, and Mr. Foxx walked right up to me and goes, ‘How would you like a job at my company?’ I mean, can you believe that? Under those circumstances.”

I thought back to Rogan telling me that Keaton had the uncanny ability to look at a dumpster fire and know it was going to be worth something. He sees a drunk guy, recently released from jail, struggling to get a job and just offers him a job blindly. I could see why that would stress his brothers out pretty badly, but talking to T.J., he seemed like a great kid. That sort of built in, fail-safe intuition was very difficult to come by.

“That’s awesome,” I responded.

“Are you nervous to work with them or something?” T.J. asked.

“You could say that.” I stared out the window until we were finally pulling into the Foxx Towers’ underground garage.

T.J. parked the car and then looked over his shoulder at me. “Don’t be. I know what the media says about them, but I’ve never seen more inaccurate stuff. Trust me. The Foxxes are great.”

I smiled, unable to believe I’d gotten another glowing review. “Okay, well, thank you. Um…” I started rifling through my purse, but T.J. held up his hand.

“No tip necessary. The Foxxes calculate an auto-tip based on how many times a week I drive and how far and it’s just added to my paycheck every week.”

“How generous.”

“Yeah, it’s to keep the people I drive around from feeling the need to tip me. I sometimes transport clients and such, and it’s really good for business when I can tell them I don’t accept tips.” He smiled brightly at me. “If you need to get somewhere else, the valet here’s name is Arthur. His desk is inside.”

“Thank you.” I grabbed my things and climbed out of the car, waving a final goodbye to T.J. I turned around and jumped a little. Harley was standing right there waiting. “Hi.”

“Hey. I hope you don’t mind me coming down to meet you. Quentin told me you were on the way.” He put his hands in the pockets of his suit pants and I was beginning to think his entire wardrobe was made up of suits. “He also told me that you were unhappy with his calling and texting you this morning.”

He turned around and started for the elevator and I followed. “It wasn’t so much the calling and texting, it was the fact that he called me in the middle of the night to tell me he wanted me in an hour and a half early, I didn’t get the message until my alarm went off, and then when I got there he said I was late, when really I was almost an hour ahead of when I was supposed to arrive. I told him and I’ll tell you the same. I’m an employee, not a slave.”