The Best Friend Scandal - Lucia Jordan Page 0,53
are my knight in shining armor, my protector.”
“Does that make you my virginal princess?” he teased.
I playfully smacked his chest. “Not anymore,” I laughed.
Still, though, even in the middle of this tender moment, I was worried about the implications of what Arlo had done. “Do you think he is really going to sue you?” I asked as the corners of my mouth turned down into a frown.
“Yes, I definitely think he’s going to try to. And honestly, he would be in the right to do so. It doesn’t matter what he said, he didn’t physically touch me, and I attacked him. That probably won’t go over well with my legal team.”
“What are you going to do?” I asked, feeling bad that this was kind of my fault since it was my reputation Arlo was trying to protect.
“Well, I’ll probably have my team reach out to Cai and offer him some sort of payout in exchange for dropping any lawsuit.”
“Do you think he will go for that?” I asked.
“Probably. When my team reminds him of how much money I have to outspend him and tie him up in the court system for much longer than he can withstand, he will probably accept the bargain. That won’t solve the problem of the models, though. Neither he nor Kerynne, nor any of them will return to finish out their contracts, and there’s nothing I can do to prevent that. I’ll have to pay them for the work done, and I can’t really hold them to completion of their agreements after they’ve just seen me physically attack a co-worker. If I tried to force them to return and finish out the remainder of their contracts, I would most likely be looking at having to pay off more than just Cai. It’s a better idea for me just to let them walk away.”
While Arlo’s staff finished salvaging the papers and sketches, and his secretary made an immediate call over to the legal team, Arlo made the executive decision to play hooky for the rest of the day.
“How’s your hand?” I asked as we drove back to his apartment.
His knuckles were swollen and starting to turn a deep shade of purple against the steering wheel.
“I’ll survive,” he said sarcastically.
“Well, you should still probably put some ice on it when we get home,” I said.
As soon as I said the word, I realized that I had said it without thinking, and I also realized how comfortable and right it felt to say “home” as if Arlo’s apartment were somehow ours and not his. He noticed it too because he glanced over at me as soon as he heard it. The look on his face was hard to read. I couldn’t tell if my careless slip was something he was happy about or freaked-out by. He kind of just looked a bit like he was contently shocked. That was a feeling I don’t think I’d ever seen on anyone before.
When we got back to his apartment, I dug a bag of frozen peas out of his freezer while he went to get changed. When he came out, looking much more comfortable in a pair of gray sweatpants and a T-shirt, I handed him the bag of peas and told him to go sit down and hold the frozen peas on his swollen knuckles.
“Not yet,” he said as he pushed the frozen bag back at me.
I rolled my eyes at him. “You need to ice it,” I said again.
“I will.” He smiled as he leaned his body against mine at the counter while reaching up over my head into one of the cabinets.
Every inch of him pressed into me from the waist down, and I immediately began to feel a warmth between my thighs. But after a second, his arm returned with two stemmed wine glasses balanced between the fingers of his good hand. He reached into the drawer to grab a corkscrew and then snagged a bottle of red wine from off the rack.
“Come,” he said. “Let’s have wine, and I promise I’ll ice my hand.”
We sat down on the floor of his apartment together in front of the large window that overlooked the city. Since it was still daytime, the streets were bustling with commuters and the backdrop of city noises. The day was calmly overcast, so a nice dim and hazy light filled the apartment.
“Let me help you,” I said as I pulled away the corkscrew he was struggling to hold along with the wine bottle.