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She smiled and held out her hand. “Give me back ten.”
“Is that the way we’re going to play this?” I asked.
“Fair is fair,” she said with a smile.
I happily pulled out a ten. It was worth it a hundred times over to lighten her mood and see that smile.
“When the Coast Guard said they had no explanation, all I could think of was a West Coast Bermuda Triangle, and I could be next. I haven’t been on a boat since. My therapist said I need to focus on something else, something positive, so after graduation I started back at the company. It’s what Daddy always wanted me to do, and here we are. Now you know my fucked-up past.”
Chapter 33
Nicole
The wet lickon my ear woke me Tuesday morning. “No, Echo,” I mumbled as I pried open my eyes. The room was still dark.
“Is that any better?” Josh asked before he licked my ear again.
I cringed at the cold as he blew on my wet ear, and I rolled over to face him. “You’re a goofball. You know you could just say good morning.”
“Early morning is a time for nonverbal communication.”
He was like a kid refusing to listen to reason.
I lowered my hand and grabbed the morning wood I found. “Is this nonverbal enough for you?”
“That’s the idea.” The hitch in his breath said more than the words about how he liked it.
With my hands on him, I had some of the control. “Let’s go back to the boob squeeze if you can’t handle words.” I gave him a hard yank.
It didn’t faze him.
He seemed to always wake before me, but I’d broken him of leaving me behind in bed after a few days. The first morning, he’d woken me by squeezing my breast. He’d nearly ended up with a broken nose when I jerked awake and head-butted him. The nipple-pinch mornings and tickling mornings hadn’t gone much better, but this was like having a slobbery Echo wake me up.
Josh pulled away and rolled off the bed. “I’ve got to go into the Benson Newport Beach office early. Winston is downstairs, so don’t freak out.”
Winston was Constance’s partner, and the two had been trading off watching over me.
“He is?” I mumbled.
“Remember I told you I had to go in early today?”
“Yeah, I forgot.”
He’d mentioned it when he got back from DC on Monday, but that was two wonderful days of Josh ago, and not enough of our time in bed had been spent sleeping. I rolled over to get more shut-eye.
A few hours later, when the sun was up, I got ready for work and headed downstairs.
As promised, Winston was at the table on his computer. “Good morning. Coffee’s hot if you want some.”
“Morning. You know you don’t have to come over here at the ass crack of dawn.”
He grunted. “It’s the job, and it beats surveillance.”
* * *
Josh
After several boringhours on the freeway, I walked up the stairs to the Benson offices before nine and asked for Ben Crenshaw, the CFO candidate Harold had suggested I interview for my opening at Rossi’s.
