Dirty Playboy - Alex Wolf Page 0,9

of companies.

“Are you even fucking listening to me? This shit’s important.”

My eyes widen, and I try to fully wake up. I haven’t felt present all morning. I was up all night long with a damn adrenaline rush from all the shit that went down. “Been a rough couple days. Just trying to focus.”

Decker glares for a long two seconds, then finally, his face softens a little. “You need to take the day off or something? Get your mind right? I need you at a hundred percent around here.”

I think anyone else he’d rip their damn head off, but usually I’m one step ahead of everything and it’s throwing him off as well.

I’m not sure he even knows how to respond to this situation.

I shake my head at him. “No, I’m fine, just email me whatever you want, and I’ll make sure it’s taken care of.”

That’s good. Maybe he’ll get the hell out of here so I can focus on my real problem… How to make Mary at least tolerate me enough to go on a date with me. It’s the only thing I can think about.

Decker turns on a dime and heads out. He’s always in a hurry to be somewhere. Without looking back, he says, “You’ll get an email soon. Figure your shit out.” At the last second, he adds, “Please,” before he turns the corner.

I have to laugh at that. He never says please to anyone. This whole Wells Covington thing is so weird. He has plenty of clients into far more nefarious shit, especially on the criminal side with Donavan. I wonder if it’s some weird jealousy thing because Dexter brought Covington to the firm. I don’t know. It’s not my job to decipher their brotherly politics.

I inhale, finally able to breathe again once he’s gone. My mind immediately goes back to Mary. Before everything happened last night, today was going to be the big day. The moment where I finally bust out the tickets and ride off with her into the sunset. I’ve been wearing her down, slowly, over goddamn half a year, inching my way into her life, slowly and methodically. I can’t believe that dumb fuck pulled a knife on her. Is this even real life?

Today’s supposed to be special. Well, I say that about every day I plan to ask her to the play. I’ve built up to this moment and then I just fucking snapped last night when I saw that guy. I’m surprised I was able to stop myself from bludgeoning that fucker into a bloody pulp. I think I kind of did, actually. Don’t give a shit. You don’t pull knives on people and try to rob them, especially not Mary. She’s mine, and I will fuck anyone up who even thinks about harming her.

Relax, concentrate. Focus on the goal.

As usual, the logical part of my brain is right.

The tickets.

I can still do this. I can still get Mary to go on a date with me. I’m Rick fucking Lawrence, the master of this shit. I want to say I’m going through with all this because I’ve come too far, put in too much work. But I can’t. There’s something about this woman, and I’ve known it since day one. She’s the one for me. The only one for me. The universe spoke the first time I saw her.

I think about her when I wake up. I think about her at work. I think about her when she’s around and when she’s not around. She’s kind and sweet and caring and good. She’s not corrupt and selfish, like every other asshole on this planet. She’s pure. She’s not, me. She’s a little package of good in this shitty world and it draws me to her.

I reach into my drawer. Fuck it. I’m doing it. There’s no going back now. I pull out the cupcakes I ordered from Sugar Bliss. Pried that information out of Quinn a long time ago without her even knowing what I was doing. That woman is a wealth of information about office gossip and who’s doing what. She told me Mary doesn’t talk about much, but she raved about the cupcakes the firm had from there for someone’s birthday.

In my experience observing the human race, you can get a lot of what you want with food. The shit that matters to a woman is less about what you’re giving them, and more about the amount of time you spent thinking about what you’re giving them. Hence,