Had I encouraged this meeting partly as an excuse to spend more time with her? Maybe.

“It was glorious. I did nothing but read. I still feel kind of useless because I’m not working, but mornings like this make up for it.”

“I thought this was work?”

She blinked at me slowly. “When I’m not with you I mean. How was your workout?”

“Brutal. But I told him not to go easy because my girlfriend likes my muscles.”

“Whatever…” She was pretending to play it cool, but she stroked her hand down my abs and left it resting on my thigh, forcing me to have a stern mental talk with my dick about staying down. He and I seemed to be talking more these days than we had since I was an adolescent.

I parked in one of the spots right by the door that was reserved for clients. It was Monday afternoon, so the parking garage was full.

Elena seemed amused when they checked my ID at security. When we got in the elevator, she applied the sticker badge to my chest. It was a shame she’d already done her own.

“I’m honestly surprised Chad is your agent after the way he behaved in negotiations.” Elena said.

“He’s not normally like that. Not sure what his deal was.”

“He’s not normally a bro-tastic misogynist you mean?”

“Okay, fair. He is usually pretty bro-tastic, but he swore he was going to apologize.”

Chad’s admin wasn’t at her desk, so we headed for his office, knocking quickly, then swinging the door open.

It wasn’t Chad, but Ophelia we found sitting at his desk. I stopped in my tracks trying to make sense of why she would be here. I glanced at Elena, assuming she would know, but she was as flummoxed as I’d ever seen her look.

She cocked an eyebrow at Ophelia in question. “Seriously?”

Ophelia raised her chin a little higher, and said, “Brad and I had a meeting about one of my other clients and he had to step out.”

“Oh yeah?” Elena challenged. “Which client?”

Ophelia tilted her head in equal challenge. “That’s privileged, Lady Elena. You know better than to ask.”

I had no idea what was going on.

“Chad’s under the desk, isn’t he?” Elena said with an exasperated sigh. It wasn’t a question.

Ophelia scoffed, “Brad is definitely not under the desk.” She said it as though the very idea was preposterous.

“Chad, you can either come out or I’m coming over there to check. You have five seconds,” Elena said, sounding like an annoyed kindergarten teacher.

“One…two…three…f—” Before she could finish counting, there was shuffling followed by thumping under the desk, but when someone crawled out and stood up, it wasn’t Chad. It was Rami.

I’d used the description “stunned silence” before, but had never experienced it so literally. We all just stood there and stared at each other for a moment, then Rami cleared his throat. “Thought my phone was under there. I’ll have to go look somewhere else.”