you’re supposed to. If your assistant deposited money into wrong bank accounts, you would have fired her the day after you hired her. Don’t play the dumb game with me. Come on, I know I don’t look that stupid.”
There was another beat of silence before a rough, short bark of laughter filled the line. “Jesus Christ, Lenny. If you ever want to come work for me, I’ll have a position open for you.”
That got a snicker out of me.
The promoter laughed some more. “Listen, the money will be in there by five, all right?”
“Uh-huh. I hope so.”
“It will,” he tried to assure me like I hadn’t known him for the last ten years. “Tell Gus to give me a call, would you?”
That had me smiling at least. “Ooh, now I know you’re for sure going to make the deposit if you want me to bring you up in front of Grandpa.”
He laughed again.
“I hope I don’t talk to you later, Damon. Bye.”
“Bye, Lenny,” the promoter on the other end muttered before hanging up.
I dropped the phone into the cradle with a snicker.
“I didn’t know you managed athletes.”
Damn it!
The back of the chair I was leaning in went back even further when my whole body jerked at the sound of the voice that had come out of fucking nowhere. I threw my arms out at my sides to grab onto the desk, or something, anything so that I wouldn’t tip the seat back and fall out of it.
Out of the corner of my eye, while I flailed around since I’d basically just scared the shit out of myself, or Jonah had, I saw the dark-haired man start to sprint forward like he was going to catch me. Before he could get to me though, the second that my instincts realized that I wasn’t about to go feet-over-ass and break my chair in half, I sat up straight, slapped my hand over my chest because my heart hadn’t beat so hard in forever, and slid him the nastiest look I could conjure up.
Stopping right in front of me, stopping right on the other side of the desk, Jonah looked at me and grinned.
That smile grew with every second that passed. One after another and then another until he was basically beaming at me. All handsome, straight, white teeth, and looking like a million-dollar asshole.
“I wish I could have filmed that,” he said way too brightly.
I didn’t even think about it.
I grabbed my stress ball and threw it at him, seeing his hands cover his balls like I would really try and hit him there, as he laughed. Laughed.
“I can’t stand you,” I hissed, rubbing a circle over my heart because it hadn’t gotten the memo that we weren’t about to die from an intruder alert. “How do you move so quietly when you’re so damn big?”
He was still laughing, but his hands were falling away from his crotch area when he replied, starting to bend over, “Practice. I move fast too.”
“If I had another stress ball, I’d throw that one at you too,” I told him as he tossed the ball back at me.
I caught it and dropped it on top of my desk.
“You all right?” he asked, smiling wide and slowly dropping into the seat that still looked too small for him.
“Besides that minor heart attack I just had, and the fact I probably pissed myself a little too, yeah, I’m fine,” I told him drily, earning me an even bigger smile that made it totally worth the fact that I wasn’t lying. I probably had peed a couple drops out. Mo’s fault.
“As long as it was just a bit of urine, eh?” the cheeky bastard asked.
“You know, I don’t remember you being this sarcastic two years ago.”
He didn’t break eye contact with me for a second. “You’re a bad influence, love.”
I smiled.
“As I was asking before I caused your palpitations,” he started. “I didn’t know you managed anyone.”
Oh. That. “Not officially or anything, and not really, but I’m a good third party. Especially when they want to get paid more for fights, the amateurs I mean, I have the connections. And I don’t mind haggling for them.”
“They pay you?”
“A little bit. I don’t know how much you heard, but this last time, one of the guys hadn’t gotten paid, and he asked me if I could call the promoter because he wasn’t getting through. So I did. I’ve known him for a long time, and he knows better than to