“Where do you work now?”
“At an art gallery. I was an art major in school. I didn’t get a chance to finish, but I guess it was enough.”
“Well, either that or daddy’s name,” I smiled sweetly.
Alec pinched my side and I flinched slightly, turning to him with a smile. “Down, tiger,” he muttered.
“So, how did you two meet?” Tessa asked, switching topics.
“We grew up together,” Alec said. “We’d been kicking each other’s asses for years-”
“Playing basketball,” I said quickly.
“Right, on the court. And then one day, this asshole,” he said, nudging Craig, “knocked me down hard and I smacked my head on the concrete. Florrie never left my side as I recovered. She was with me every single day, refusing to leave my side for anything.”
“Wow,” Tessa said in amazement. “Was it a serious head injury?”
“Well, it was serious enough that I was worried about him. See, I had this secret crush on him, and I had for a long time, but I didn’t think he saw me that way.”
“But I had been in love with Florrie pretty much my whole life,” Alec admitted, his eyes burning into mine. My heart fluttered and I momentarily forgot that we were working a job right now. Still, it worked with our cover, so I went with it.
“So, after that, you were together?”
“Secretly. I didn’t want everyone to know we were together. We’d been friends for so long, and I didn’t want everyone to be around for what happened. I mean, if it went south, it would be hard on everyone.”
“So, when did you find out?” she asked Jamie.
“Oh, uh, not for years after. I mean, I was busy and I was too caught up in everything to know what was going on. It was…just last year that I found out.”
“Wow. That’s such a great love story. Just like ours,” she smiled up at Jamie.
He smiled back and kissed her, and it pissed me off how he didn’t seem to be acting, but genuinely liked her. She was too fake for me, too good and wholesome. It wasn’t that I didn’t want Jamie with anyone, I just wanted him with the right person, and she didn’t strike me as the right person.
CHAPTER EIGHTAlec
“You want to tell me what that was about back there?” I asked as soon as we were through the door at our hotel room.
“Here we go again,” Craig muttered, bringing up the rear.
“What are you talking about?”
I grabbed Florrie by the arm and swung her around to face me. “I’m talking about that shit with Jamie. How you were practically fawning over him.”
She rolled her eyes at me and yanked her arm out of my grasp. “Get over yourself, Alec. I wasn’t fawning all over him. In case you didn’t notice, I was wrapping myself around you.”
“And yet you got mad every time that woman touched him. Tell me what the fuck that was about.”
“Look, we’re here to do a job, and I’m doing it,” she countered. “Jamie asked us to judge her and get a feel for her. That’s what I was doing, and I didn’t like her.”
“You didn’t like her from the moment she walked through the door. The truth is, you like him and you’re judging who she is based on the fact that you don’t like her for Jamie.”
“So what if I am? He’s a good guy and I want to be sure that she’s not screwing him over.”
“That’s not what your job is. You can’t be thinking as his friend right now. And I won’t even get into how pissed that makes me.”
“Right, because I shouldn’t have any male friends.”
“Not ones that look at you like they want to fuck you,” I growled.
“No other man can look at you,” Craig said in a low voice, trying to mimic me. “You can’t tell me who to be friends with,” he said, mimicking Florrie’s voice.
“Shut up,” we both snapped.
“Hey, I’m just saying, we never should have taken this job. Talk about bad karma. I should have told Cap to give us the job with the old lady and her puppy. At least then I wouldn’t have to listen to you two bitching at each other.”
“Look, Alec, I like Jamie as a friend. It’s nothing more than that. He knows that too.”
“His eyes wandering all over your body would say otherwise.”
“He’s a friend, and that’s all it will ever be. Do you really think that I would just walk away from you, after everything we’ve been through?”
“Then why the fuck are you getting so pissed when she kisses him? Or when she looks at him with that dreamy stare?”
“Because I don’t think she’s good enough for him!”
“That’s none of your fucking business. The job is to find out if she’s screwing him over with her father, not to find out if her googly eyes are real. He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”
“And if one of your friends was being screwed over by a woman, you wouldn’t want to step in and say something?”
“The difference is that I’m not looking at any of my friends like I want to fuck them.”
She scoffed and took a step away from me. “Is that what you think? You think I want to go fuck Jamie?”
“I don’t know if you want to or not. What I do know is that you care just a
