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She’s eating her pancakes when the apartment buzzer sounds. “I bet Mrs. Cooper locked herself out again.”
She hurries to the intercom to buzz the seventy-year-old neighbor into the building then reaches for her sandals. “I’ll make sure she gets in. Don’t let your pancakes burn.”
As soon as I hear her leave the apartment, I reach for her phone.
Normally, I wouldn’t snoop.
But the fact that Lacey wouldn’t or couldn’t give me the name of her date gave me a bad feeling.
I scroll through her messages and stop when I see the notification from last night. She went onto one of those websites where you can rent a man.
Her date tonight isn’t really a date.
He’s a male escort.
I can’t fathom why the hell a woman as beautiful and alluring as Lacey would ever need to pay for sex.
I’m still puzzling it over later as I sit at my desk. I’ve looked up the website where Lacey got her “boyfriend” and even managed to pull some information about their business license. Everything checks out.
But I’m still pissed off.
I thought when she brought up the masquerade, she wanted to go with me. The invitation was on my lips then she blindsided me with that date shit.
Despite the late nights we’ve spent together, Lacey is hard to read. I can never quite figure out what’s going on in her head and it drives me crazy. The curvy nineteen-year-old is constantly keeping me off-balance.
She also had a letter on the counter from the Asheville School of Arts. I wanted to ask her about that, but she can be so evasive that I wasn’t sure I’d get a straight answer anyway.
There’s a sharp knock on my door then Eric, Lacey’s older brother and my best friend, enters the office.
He’s in charge of the cyber security here and our jobs rarely require us to interact except on special occasions.
“I want you to take a look at this.” He passes me a folder.
I skim the contents while he takes a seat. I wonder if he knows his little sister hired a male escort.
Somehow, I doubt it.
The two of them aren’t particularly close. If anything, Eric ignores Lacey’s presence. I’ve seen the hurt in her pretty blue eyes from his dismissal. Each time it makes me want to take him to the mat.
“Everything looks in order here,” I say. I’ve already read over this proposal repeatedly. It’s in the final stages and there’s nothing more for me to do.
“I wanted your thoughts on paragraph seven in section C again.” Eric frowns at me, clearly irritated that I’m only scanning the document.
There’s another knock on the door and I glance up to see Lacey. She chews on her full bottom lip, the same one I think about kissing every night when we’re on the couch. “Is this a bad time? I can come back.”
I hate the uncertainty in her gaze and the way she hesitates around Eric.
“It’s a great time.” I shoot her brother a dark look, daring the bastard to contradict me.
She approaches my desk and steps to the side of it. She’s close enough that I can catch a whiff of her floral scent. The smell reminds me of earlier today when I held her in my arms and suddenly I’m hard again. Fortunately, I’m behind the desk so she doesn’t notice.
“Darlene said she needed your signature on the final forms right away.” She passes me a pen and I try to ignore the way her brother is staring at us.
I scrawl my signature on the documents she indicates.
She gathers the papers then frowns. “Wait, you missed one.”
Lacey leans over to point out the space where my name should be. Her blouse gapes and I can see the swell of her large breast over the top of a blue satin bra. If Eric weren’t here right now, this little girl would be in very big trouble.
