bed and half on Gus, and rolled with him when he turned them onto their sides. Then he moved her until her head rested against the pillows beside his, his arms holding her and his legs tangling with hers.
Wrapped up in him.
That’s what she was.
It was exactly where she wanted to be.
“We’re going to kill ourselves doing this someday.” His voice was barely recognizable, breathless and rough around the edges. “But I’m good with that. At least we’ll die happy and naked.”
“What a way to go,” she murmured around a yawn. “What do you say we take a quick power nap before heading over for dinner? They’re doing a big dinner party to celebrate the harvest.”
“I say we order more room service, because I want to make a meal of you in private.” He brushed his mouth over the tip of her nose before grinning at her. “One thing—I’ll do the ordering this time around. You can’t be trusted.”
“I think I did a brilliant job in ordering our breakfast,” she laughed, then glanced at the bedside table when her phone went off. “Oops. Alice. I forgot to call her to let her know you haven’t kidnapped me.”
“Take it while I order us some food. Anything you don’t like?”
“I can’t eat walnuts, they make my mouth itchy. Beyond that, I love everything.” Giving him one last kiss, she rolled to her side of the bed and snatched up her phone while he went in search of a menu. “Hey, Al. Everything’s fine. I swear, I haven’t been kidnapped.”
“Al? Who’s Al?” came the familiar voice of her immediate boss, digital fashion editor, Heidi Meadows. “And why would Al think you’ve been kidnapped?”
“Heidi.” As if her spine worked on a spring, Joelle snapped to a sitting position and checked the number. Ugh. Clearly Gus had fried her brain. “Sorry about that. I just blindly answered the phone, thinking it was my foster sister because it’s Saturday night, and no one from work calls me over the weekend… Hey, wait. Why are you calling me? I don’t think you’ve ever called me on a Saturday, much less at night.”
“That’s because I’ve never been this desperate before. Do you have your assignment ready?”
She blinked. “Do you mean my assignment that’s due on Wednesday?”
“Please don’t bust my chops on this, Joelle. You’re usually way ahead of the game when it comes to getting your assignments done, so just answer the damn question. Is your assignment ready for submission or not?”
Yikes. “Almost. It’s been shot and edited, but it doesn’t have any music or voice-over work, and I certainly can’t complete that now, when I’m having a weekend away in California.”
“What? What the hell are you doing in California?”
That made her brows shoot up. “Enjoying my life. Something I’m very much entitled to do on a weekend, Heidi.”
“Right, I’m sorry. It’s just I’m in a bit of a bind here.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is that I’m surrounded by total flakes and idiots, and you’re the only one I can rely on, but you’re in fucking California.”
“Heidi, what—”
“I just got a text from Fjord—by the way, remind me to never again hire anyone who names themselves something as stupid as Fjord. Long story short, she said she won’t be able to get her assignment in, which is due by noon tomorrow so it can go out on Monday. Claims she’s been arrested while protesting outside the Chicago Tribune for some social justice warrior shit, and that she was texting me from the back of a police cruiser. How she was doing that while handcuffed, I don’t know, or care. All I care about is that her piece was supposed to go out on Monday, and now I have absolutely nothing to put in its place.”
“Don’t you have something on file waiting in the wings for just such a problem?”
“Are you telling me how to do my job?”
No, but that was how Joelle would have done it. “I’ll take that as a no, which also explains why you called me.” The Monday slot was one of the hottest at Buzzword, thanks to people fighting the inevitable workweek grind. Her Thursday slot was okay, but she’d get a lot more traffic if she could hit the Monday crowd as well. “Would I still have my Thursday slot in addition to this Monday?”
“Do you think you can produce quality content for your Wednesday deadline?”
“It would be a push, but I can do it. And you might want to think