Charmed: A Masters and Mercenar - Lexi Blake Page 0,17
door was open and he could hear voices up ahead.
“I’m not leaving until I talk to him. That email yesterday was complete bullshit.”
JT winced. Jordy was here, and that likely meant Deanna had tracked him down. Jordy wouldn’t have been able to do it by himself. JT had ignored her texts the prior day. He’d been at the hospital and he hadn’t needed his overly ambitious admin’s bullshit. For the most part Deanna was perfect. She did everything he didn’t want to do and was an excellent gatekeeper. One day she would move into an executive position and she would be damn good at it.
But she had boundary issues. Like she didn’t think there should be boundaries closed to her when it came to him. He’d sent her a terse email telling her he had a family emergency and would call her last night.
Then he’d met Nina and he’d let everything go. Obviously that decision was going to come back to haunt him today.
“I agree.” Patrick’s cultured voice grated on JT’s nerves at times. “I’m a member of senior leadership. I expect more than David Malone will not be attending our retreat. I have every right to know what happened, Deanna. You said JT would be here. You didn’t tell me he was shacked up with a hooker.”
Oh, he was about to haul Patrick out and toss him to the street. How fucking dare he…
Nina was going to be upset, and she had every right to be. He hadn’t figured out how he was going to tell her they were working together. He meant to. He’d considered telling her about his meeting at McKay-Taggart and oops, what, she was going there, too?
He hadn’t meant for her to find out because his admin and a couple of members of his board showed up and started calling her a hooker.
And honestly, he didn’t like the term hooker. He’d worked in some crazy parts of the world, places where there were almost no women due to the nature of the work, and sex professionals made life way easier. They were nice women who did a good job.
Yeah, he probably shouldn’t have that argument in front of Nina. She would already be angry. Was this going to screw up the job? He could hear his brother now. He was going to fuck up the op and his relationship with Nina.
“I’m his girlfriend and you might think twice about insulting me.”
He took a deep breath because that had been said with pure confidence.
“You are not his girlfriend.” Deanna had some confidence of her own, but he could work with this. He’d been out of the office for months, allowing her to deal with all the paperwork and inner-office stuff while he was going from rig to rig testing out the new equipment.
She had no idea what he’d been doing with his personal life. No one did.
Nina was smart. She’d played the only card she could since he knew damn well how important it was that the agent he went in with had a good cover. They might have been able to go with bodyguard.
But girlfriend worked fine for him. In fact, he could take it one step further since those assholes would likely treat her like crap if they thought he wasn’t serious about her. He rounded the corner and caught sight of her standing in the doorway, holding it open like she still might be able to force them to leave.
He knew better.
“Don’t be so coy, baby.” He strode in, coffee and breakfast in hand. He winked her way before turning to their unwanted guests. It didn’t escape his notice that she had her clothes from the night before over her arm when they’d agreed she would be naked and waiting for him this morning. “Nina here is far more than my girlfriend. She’s my fiancée. I know we didn’t want to tell anyone until we could have a party, but after what happened with Dad last night, I don’t think we can wait.”
“You’re not engaged.” Deanna had a shocked look on her face that told him she was genuinely emotional.
Damn. His mother had called that one. His mom had told him to watch Deanna because she was far too invested in their personal relationship. He’d assured her they didn’t have one, but it looked like his admin didn’t agree.
Well, then Nina could help him out with that because he needed to keep those boundaries firmly in place.