Her Dirty Builders (Men at Work #10) - Mika Lane Page 0,11
sigh of an entitled dickwad who fully expected people he’d fucked over to still jump to take his calls.
So clueless.
“Look, Esme. I’ve told you I’m sorry for what I did—"
“You told me in a text message.”
Silence.
He had nothing to say to that. Even he had to know what a fucked-up thing that was to do.
“I don’t want your apologies, Eddie. I’m happy you didn’t show up at our wedding. You did me a favor. What I want now is for you to stop calling. I want nothing to do with you. Go fuck yourself.”
Matt’s eyebrows rose, and he raised a finger to his lips to remind me to keep it down.
He was right. I needed to take it down a notch. Work was not the place to have a meltdown. Even though it would feel freaking awesome.
“Look, Esme, I just wanted to talk to you about the house.”
Adam wandered by, and I smiled at him. When he was gone, I returned to asshole.
“The money pit dump you stuck me with?”
“Hey, I’m stuck with it, too. In fact, since we both want to get rid of it, let’s list it. Right away.”
It was tempting. It really was. Just get rid of the damn thing. Eddie clearly didn’t seem to mind losing out on the money he’d put into the down payment. But I couldn’t stick my dad with a loss like that, no matter how tempting it was to dump it and walk away.
“You know we’ll lose money. I’m not doing that to my father.”
He tapped on his computer keyboard in the background. “Esme. Do I need to remind you that I work for a big, powerful law firm? You can fuck with me all you want, but in the end, I will win.”
He thought he could threaten me? If I could reach through the phone and strangle his scrawny neck, he’d be dead in minutes. “Look. The house will eventually be sold. I want to get some work done on it first, though, so it’s not a total loss. You should be thanking me for trying to make this work for us all.”
That should appeal to his vanity. If he thought I was doing anything that might remotely help him or make his life better, he was a bigger idiot than he seemed.
Regardless, I could see him shaking his condescending head on the other end of the line. How did I ever get wrapped up with him? We’re so different. He was all uptight and corporate, and I was a struggling journalist who shopped at thrift stores.
I’d been over it a hundred times. I knew very well how he’d reeled me in—with his promises of love and devotion, and all that other crap I fell for like a sucker.
“Okay, Esme. Let’s give it two months. We’ll see what can be done to improve the place, and then we sell. But I don’t know what you think you’ll be able to accomplish, because you have no freaking money.”
He was right about that. But he didn’t know I’d already engaged some very nice guys who wanted to help me out of this bind.
And he didn’t need to know.
He also didn’t need to know how freaking hot they were.
“You know, Eddie, you have a lot of nerve. You pressured me to buy the house in the first place when I didn’t want to, and then you pressured me to go to Dad for my share of the down payment. And now, you’ve left me stuck with it. So as far as I’m concerned, you can go fuck yourself.”
Matt shot me a look.
Yeah, that last bit had been loud. I hadn’t used my inside-the-office-voice. But who could blame me? My coworkers all knew the recent shit I’d been through, and I was sure none of them would deny me the pleasure of screaming at the fucker who’d messed up my life.
Not to mention they were gossipy as hell and loved something juicy to talk about.
“Eddie, I need to get back to work. Goodbye,” I said, swiping the call over.
Not that getting rid of Eddie was much better than the task that lay before me—planning the stupid office retreat. Everyone wanted something different, and they were all over me to accommodate them.
Reasoning with Eddie or trying to make everyone in the office happy—which was the more cruel, thankless job?
Especially when I had real work to do, like cover the women’s conference that was coming to town.
“Matt,” I whispered over the cube wall.
He spun around in