Page 99 of Start With A Slap

I win.“I really couldn’t tell you.”

“Maybe it was the owner,” Tiffany speculated while Ivy zoned out on sensory recall. “Maybe he upset him with pie charts. It couldn’t have been me. Right?”

Narrowly avoiding a crash with another pedestrian, Ivy said, “Let it go andmove on. Take it from me, you’ll be saving yourself a world of pain and agony.”

“Take it from you? Wait... did you ever... with?—?”

“Ew! No! Oh. No. Gross, Tiffany.” She really needed to watch what she said. Especially around women. Women paid attention. “Take it from me, as told by Jason.”

“God, you scared me for a second! Of course you didn’t. I mean, incestuous ick factor aside, I can’t really see you being his type. He’s clearly attracted to big, dynamic, force of nature personalities. Like mine.”

It never failed: when a guy came between them, Tiffany went right back to high school. And so did she. “Riight, huge personalities.That’swhat drives all the boys wild.”

“Super-rich, confident men,” Tiffany talked down to her, “want women who can be their equal, make them laugh, charm diplomats and kings or whatever and not be all surly and disrespectful like you. Also, they marry brunettes. It’s statistically proven.”

“Wow,” Ivy said. “I better change my hair and stop being so surly if I want to marry someone super-rich and confident.”

“I’m not talking about Jason. He didn’t work for his fortune. Plus, I’m willing to bet he hardly knows his Dad. I bet Sever’s a totally good person who just made some honest parenting mistakes, and Jason’s gone and vilified him for some blocked out childhood trauma. He should go to therapy and work that out.”

Ivy blinked. Tiffany and her psychic powers. She and Sever could start their own hotline. “You realize you’re making excuses for someone who brushed you off.”

“I think he was just distracted.”

“Listen to me. This is frommyobservation, not Jason’s: Sever Mark is a snake. A big, shifty, poisonous snake that squeezes people until they can’t breathe and makes them...” She started over, flustered by where that made her brain go. “He’s just bad.”

“Yeah, yeah, down with capitalism, go poverty! Easy for you to say. Will you just give him my number?”

“No, Tiffany. I’m not gonna be a part of this.”

“Fine.I’llgo to Mark International myself. I should at least get to interview for the job.”

“Tiff, thereisno job! Don’t you get it? What part of poisonous snake do you not?—?”

“Miss Tyler?”

Great. Speak of the snake. Or, the snake’s bodyguard/driver who’d just called her name from the curb, a stone’s throw from her apartment building — on the night she was supposed to be having a cozy birthday dinner with her husband. Sever was getting way too bold.

“Sorry, Tiff, I have to go.” She ended the call and begrudgingly faced the car. “Terrell.”

“Mr. Mark would?—”

“—like a moment of my time?”

“That is correct.”

At least Sever hadn’t rented a stretch limo; he was back in the less conspicuous Rolls he’d taken to the art benefit. “Well, he can’t have it. Just... He can’t.”

“He says he promises not to touch you in the car. He only wants to talk.”

“And how do I know he’s not crossing his fingers and toes?”

Terrell’s stony expression didn’t change at all.

O...kay, humor didn’t work, so Ivy tried another tack: “Doesn’t it bother you that your boss hasyousweet-talk his booty calls for him?”

He looked her in the eyes and replied levelly, “Only when it takes a while.”

Well, that shut her up. The last thing she wanted was to make anyone’s crappy job crappier. And, admittedly, a bone-shattering bodygasm wouldn’t be the worst start to her evening.

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