“It’s just a case study. How hard could it be?” Grant says.
“Remember how I was supposed to restore ‘dignity’ to the department after that hooker incident?” I ask.
My brothers give me a look full of sympathy. Their hookers invaded their homes, a less intrusive ordeal than what I had to suffer. “Yeah…” they drag the answer out in uncertain unison.
“How am I going to do that with college kids doing a case on a sex toy company?”
My brothers stare. Even Noah quits stuffing his face with bread.
Finally, Grant breaks the silence. “I thought you said it was a high-tech firm.”
“That’s what Charles told me.”
“Ooh…” Noah gives a slow I-see-how-he-fucked-you-over nod.
Hux bristles as though he’s the one being treated unfairly. It makes me feel marginally better. Then our food and drinks come and we dig in.
“How’s Emmett doing, by the way?” I glance at Grant. He sees Emmett in the office.
“The miasma of doom and damnation around him is becoming darker each day,” Grant says. “He’s trying hard to act normal, but I can tell he’s failing. I wouldn’t want to be the one giving him a deliverable, because he’s looking for reasons to nitpick, right down to the font type.”
“I thought you used a standard font,” Huxley says.
“Yeah, but he’s going to say the font is too generic or it’s too small, too big, too”—Grant makes a vague gesture, waving his fork around—“something. You can’t argue with him when he’s in this kind of mood.”
Noah pulls out his phone. “This is why I’d never work for him,” he says absently, scrolling through something, probably social media feeds. He checks every hour, a waste of time in my opinion. Nothing useful is on them, and spending more than a minute rots your brain.
“Huh,” Noah grunts. “When did you start dating a dildo heiress?”
We all look at each other. Grant says, “Who are you talking to?”
“Griff,” Noah responds, looking up from the screen.
“What?” Did Mina sprinkle psychedelic mushrooms into my brother’s food?
He angles his phone so I can see the video. Some asshole filmed the interaction between me, Sierra and Todd in the garden and posted it online.
Damn it.
“Damn,” Grant says with a whistle.
Sebastian nods sagely. “No wonder you didn’t want to do the case. Nothing good comes of mixing business with girlfriends.”
God save me from people leaping to conclusions.“No, it’s just a misunderstanding.”
“I don’t know.” Noah studies the phone screen. “She’s wrapped around your arm like a little blonde octopus. It’s cute.”
Cute?Is he kidding? I only put up with it because she needed to convince Todd.
Grant looks at the screen. “Must’ve been nice having a pretty girl on your arm like that.”
“It was not ‘nice.’” Not even a little. Nope.
Huxley snorts. “He must’ve pushed her away and the video just didn’t catch it,” he says with a broad wink.
“I didn’t push the lady away because that would have made me an asshole.” I’m not an asshole by nature. I’m only an asshole when I’m driven to be an asshole.
“What are the chances the people in your school won’t notice?” Noah says, his eyes glinting with amusement.
Just like that, my mood plunges. The steak in front of me turns as appetizing as a grilled eggplant, which is outright gross. Charles. Damn Charles and his salivating over any possible funding for the research lab he so desperately wants. He’s going to be on me like a tick until I get Sierra to commit to having the damned lab built.
Fuck. Me.