Page 70 of Hiding From Laughter

Was he supposed to be James Bond?

Micha squeezed my hand in a clearbehaveor elsekind of gesture, so I kept my mouth closed and let him do thetalking. “I’m sure we’ll have answers, but I have to admit, I don’t know whathe did.”

Me and tux guy rolled our eyes.

“Throw me under the bus why don’t you.”Micha wasn’t impressed by my response, but tux guy almost smiled.

“The instructions said for us to answer thequestions independently.” Micha’s blood pressure was starting to go up becausethe one vein in his neck that was his telltale response started to throb.

Not good.

“I’m sorry.” Now I was, at least. “Don’tget mad. If they’d been pissed at me, we wouldn’t have gotten this far. There’sa reason I need supervision.”

Lots of supervision.

Now tux guy was snickering too.

Hoping that meant he wasn’t as frustratedas Micha was worried he’d be, I aimed an innocent look at tux guy that was morebelievable than the first. “I’m sorry. I should’ve answered the questions in amore…”

Fuck it.

“Grown-up headspace.”

I could do it.

Micha needed this and I could do it.

“In my defense, he was withholding my zooanimals until I stopped dawdling.” I shrugged when tux man nodded and seemed totake that problem seriously instead of making me feel stupid. “It wasn’t theright way to handle it…from either of us.”

Micha was going to take some of the creditfor our current situation whether he wanted to or not.

His sigh said he wasn’t on the same page asme about that, but tux guy nodded again. “I agree. Toys shouldn’t be heldhostage, but I think we can clear this up.”

Ignoring the tiny part of me that kind ofhoped we’d put off the club visit another couple of weeks, I smiled and nodded.“Great.”

Tux guy pressed his lips together butdidn’t call me out. “Let’s go in my office for a moment. We’ll have moreprivacy that way.”

Our audience just shrugged, not feeling badin the slightest.

I liked him.

“I’m Conner, one of the owners of Bound andControlled.” Holding the door open, he gestured for us to head into what turnedout to be a very generic-looking office that no one did any work in. “I was theone who looked over your initial applications.”

Micha was feeling much more normal as henodded and moved us over to chairs across from the desk. “I think we spoke onthe phone last year when I first had some questions about the club.”

Since it seemed to be going in a lessstressful direction, I thought I’d sit in the chair next to him and do my bestto look work professional. Micha had other plans and picked me up, sitting me downon his lap.

I’d been lapped.

With an audience.

Shit.

Was it a test?

Did he think I couldn’t behave?

No. He knew I couldn’t behave, so it had tobe a test.

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