The old guy pats his crotch. “Keep my assets right here.”
Ooo-kay.
Vik clearly inherited his sense of humor from his dad.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Vik
I MAKE HARPER NERVOUS. She fidgets with the folder she’s holding and then twitches the sassy bow tie on the front of her blouse. Fuck me, but that blouse is killing me. The woman has a serious fetish for all things bow-tied and I’m torn between wondering how she’d feel if I showed up at her place wearing just a bow tie and nothing more, and asking her if she’d let me tie her up.
Or untie her.
One swift tug and that bow comes undone. It taunts me as she sashays across the room toward me, all long legs in that prim, black skirt. Am I hard? Fuck yeah, especially when she slides on a pair of glasses. Today’s glasses are bright green, beer bottle green, grass green, fucking Emerald City green. A man can only hope she’s got the panties to match.
“You got a different pair of glasses for each outfit?”
Harper opens her mouth, maybe to shoot me down, but my dad busts in first.
“So how long have you two known each other?”
Getting my dad here this morning took a combination of bribery and blackmail. Given his never-ending interest in my love life (which is nonexistent, unlike my sex life), I may have let him think that Harper’s potential girlfriend material and that he’d be doing me a favor by giving me an excuse to visit her office. Given his unwavering interest in pairing me off, he was happy to help.
Harper looks at him over the edge of her glasses. “Is our being acquaintances a problem?”
“Not at all. You two make a cute couple. You want my blessing, you got it.” My dad polishes off doughnut number two as he drops that conversational bomb, and I don’t think the look of satisfaction on his face has anything to do with the maple glazed he just consumed. Nope. He’s convinced that I’ve finally found me a girl—and he’s not wrong. It’s just that we’re fuck buddies rather than lovers, and he’s gonna find that disappointing.
Harper inhales sharply. Yeah, she’s got something to say. “Your son and I are friends, Mr. Ilin.”
It’s cute how she pokers up. Unfortunately, her righteous indignation is wasted because with each agitated breath she takes, the buttons on her blouse gape. Her eyes sparkle with something. Ire, gas, sheer orneriness—I don’t care. She’s beautiful. Plus, there’s no way I don’t admire the show she’s putting on for me. I lean sideways just a little. Can’t quite tell if that’s a beige bra or a white bra she’s rocking.
“Eyes up here,” she says drily.
See? I still blame her.
My dad nudges me. Any harder and he’d crack a rib. “Always listen to the lady you’re dating.”
Harper’s gaze swings toward him, a look of complete what the fuck painted on her pretty face. She’s not taking the news of our coupledom without some protests, it seems.
I stretch out my legs, my boots invading her space beneath the desk. She jumps like I’ve goosed her and glares at me. Go along with it, I mouth silently.
She jerks her attention back to the folder in front of her. “I’m not sure how we can help you.”
I don’t miss a beat. “I can make suggestions.”
The look she levels on me is glacial. Christ, that just makes me want to warm her up. “Perhaps you should step outside while I discuss your father’s finances with your father.”
I shake my head. You know, just in case I’m no longer speaking English. “I stay.”
She shoves her glasses farther up her nose and gets this cute, irritated look on her face. “Give me a reason.”
Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t be wrong about asking me to leave. But these aren’t normal circumstances. Sure, my old man mistakenly thinks that Harper and I are dating. He also routinely thinks it’s 1955, that it’s Monday and that he has a bank account full of dollars just begging to be spent. Oh, and he also hasn’t filed a tax return in five years.
I lean forward, cross my arms over my chest. Harper’s eyes fly to my chest and then shoot back to my face. Since we’re at her work and we’re not alone, I do my best to ignore her interest. I’ll remind her about it later. What Harper really likes are numbers, so I’ll give her that.
“Item one? He’s my dad. That trumps everything as far as I’m concerned. We’re family, so I’ve got him. Item two? He’s been supplementing his social security by making personal loans to his neighbors in Happy Vegas Valley Trailer Park. And since he charges 27 percent interest, he hasn’t done too badly.”
“It’s like them small incubator start-up thingies where you crowdfund crap,” my old man says defensively. “It was practically public service, if you ask me.”
“Item three,” I continue, “he stores his profits in a fucking shoe box. For diversity’s sake, he also has ‘accounts’ in his mattress, his bookcase and under his sofa as previously mentioned. That means he’s got lots of cash, and no idea how to get it back on the books.”
Harper visibly winces. I’m guessing that the shoe box organizational system is her idea of the seventh level of hell. She starts asking my dad a series of questions about how much income he’s interested in seeing from his investments and how risk-averse he is.
I snort. My old man and risk are best friends.
For a few seconds, there’s nothing but blissful quiet in Harper’s office. My dad works on polishing off his muffin, and Harper works out my dad, shifting papers from one stack to another. Where I see a mess, she sees a goddamned puzzle—and she’s about to fit the pieces together. And when my dad excuses himself “to find
