Page 19 of Twisted Truth

“And if we don’t?” Emily counters.

“Then we’ve only wasted one night. I can always badger the board for an extension. We will need to cover some ground, so we’ll split into three teams. Each team will hit three to four clubs or bars.”

“It’s a Tuesday night,” Ella says. “Who’s going to be out on a Tuesday night?”

“It’s like you don’t even live in New York,” Matthew says, in fake horror. “You’re on my team, by the way.”

Ella laughs. Again, the sound does something to me, and I have to shift in my chair. It’s all I can do to not adjust my pants. What is it with this woman making my cock twitch like I’m fucking fifteen?

“What do you think, Mr. Langford?” Emily asks me.

“I don’t know what the hell to think at this point. But I do know the idea of heiresses and celebrities and influencers is not the direction I want to go. A normal woman seems like a nice breath of fresh air if I have to go through with this insane charade. And I suppose this is how normal people meet one another.”

“We’ll give it one night,” Matthew stresses. “And if we strike out, we look back at the alternatives.”

“What alternatives, though?” Emily groans.

“The celebrity or influencer route,” Matthew quips. “I’m certain we can find some D-list celebrity who could use some publicity and money.”

“Fine. One night,” Emily agrees.

“Fuck my life,”I whisper to myself, under my breath.

6

ELLA

“Iknew you had an incredible body, but this is even more than I was expecting,” Matthew says, waggling his brows at me.

“Ditto, sir,” I say, nodding at him in his gym shorts and tight tank top as I link my arm through his. We’re at his gym, on the lookout for women, and I’ve just come out of the dressing room. The whole team left work two hours early so we could start this insane escapade and give ourselves as much time as possible.

We split into three groups, and I’m with Matthew and Craig. Emily is with Mr. Langford and Daphne, and Josh, Michael, and Heather make up the last group. The plan is to start with gyms until about six-thirty, then everyone is to go home and get ready as quickly as possible and meet at their first club at eight.

The gym is still a little slow since it’s only three-thirty. We got here quickly because Matthew didn’t want to wait for me to go all the way back to my apartment to change, so he had a lower PA run to an athletic wear store and buy me an exercise outfit and shoes. Craig, luckily, always works out after work, so he already had a gym bag with him.

“If you would have told me this morning that I would be on the prowl for women at my gym today, I would have laughed and wondered if I was high,” Matthew says, surveying the room.

I snort. “Yeah, me too.”

“What are you two laughing about?” Craig asks, walking up to us.

“Just the insanity of a gay man and a straight woman lurking in the gym and trying to pick up women together,” I say.

Craig laughs. “Where should we start? Weights? Treadmills?”

“Let’s start with weights, then treadmills, but our best option is the dance funk class at five,” I say.

“The what, what?” Craig asks.

“The dance funk class. Honestly, do men not notice that a good chunk of the women who enter the gym all end up in the classrooms? Lots of women like the classes, not the machines.”

“Oh, this is going to be so much fun!” Matthew says, tugging me by our linked arms toward the weights section.

“Anything?”I ask Craig, as we meet up by the water fountain.

“No. There’s been some pretty women, but every time I try to get close, they end up moving away. I can’t get any of them to talk to me.” He cranes his head, looking at something. “Matthew doesn’t have that problem, though.”

“That’s because most women hate getting hit on at the gym, and once they start talking to Matthew, they know he isn’t hitting on them. Point out the women, I’ll go talk to them.”