The Beast (Black Dagger Brotherhood #14) - J. R. Ward Page 0,108

for her to ignore. The plan had been for them to meet up at lunch and head over to the school campus again.

She hit him back. What are you talking about?

Returning her phone to the drawer, she tried to look busy as real estate agents walked back and forth in front of her desk without acknowledging her. Which was a good thing. If they stopped to talk to her, it was usually because they were upset about microwave etiquette in the breakroom, had an IT issue she couldn’t help them with, or were acting out their frustration with the current less-than-robust seller’s market.

Meanwhile, Bryant had been out all morning, but he had been busy with his phone. He’d sent her fifteen texts, only half of which had been office related. The others had had a strange tone to them: He’d wanted to know why she’d left at seven last night. When she’d replied that he’d told her she was free to head out, he’d asked where she’d gone. When she’d told him that she’d headed straight home …

He’d replied, Are you sure about that?

Which had been bizarre—

A rattling sounded inside her desk and she ripped open the drawer. Accepting the call that had made the phone vibrate, she repeated, “What are you talking about?”

Bill laughed with an edge. “You didn’t tell me who your parents were. Receptionist, my ass.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You’re Phillie and Chance Early’s kid. Their only daughter—I’m sorry—heir.”

She closed her eyes and sucked in a curse. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Look, if you’re trying to get your little Blair Witch Project wannabe a traditional media boost, you’re going to have to find someone else to be your bullshit artist, okay? I don’t have time for this.”

Jo switched her phone to her other ear, as if that would change the gist of the conversation. “I don’t understand—”

“I asked you last night if your buddy, Dougie, had the kind of resources to stage something like all that trampled landscape. You said no—and conveniently left out the fact that you do. With your kind of money, you could CGI the crap out of that footage on YouTube, pay people to rough up the center of campus, and then, wow, hey, you hit up a CCJ reporter, hoping he’s stupid enough to buy into it all and get you some local coverage. Next thing you know, the piece gets picked up by the HuffPost and BuzzFeed—and then it’s Deadline announcing a movie deal about the “vampires” of Caldwell. How perfectly organic.”

“That isn’t at all what—”

“Don’t call me again—”

“I’m adopted, okay? And I haven’t seen those two people you call my ‘parents’ in at least a year. I don’t identify as theirs any more than they support me, and if you want me to show you proof of how small my bank account is, fine—I’m happy to show you my pathetic monthly statement. I asked you what you thought about that stuff on the Net because I’m trying to figure it out myself. Allow me to assure you, however, that none of the Brownswick footage is the result of me writing any checks to anybody. So how about you do more than a cursory job at investigating me before you leap to conclusions and jump down my throat. Thanks. Bye.”

She nearly threw her phone back in the drawer, but thought better of it—because, hey, people who were worried about covering their rent really shouldn’t put themselves in the position of needing to replace their cell—

As the office phone obligingly rang, she grabbed for it and was glad for the distraction.

And while she closed the loop with a buyer about the status of some fire-alarm replacements in a duplex across town, she parallel-processed the whole thing in her head. It was crazy for her to be wasting any more time or effort trying to get to the bottom of those videoes, for one thing. And secondly, she had a very strong suspicion that the reason her brain had gravitated toward this stretch of stupidity was because she was otherwise very bored in her life.

Which that was a problem to be solved not by distraction, but by pulling her socks up and figuring out what the hell she wanted to do with herself.

Yes, she had already decided the socialite existence of the people who had adopted her was a big ol’ no. So wha-hey, she’d already narrowed her future down by one option—

When the inside of her desk began to rattle again, she