Page 30 of Hotline
It's him.
"Hey there," I coo in my most seductive voice possible. "What's your name?"
"Julian. Yours?"
"I can be whoever you want me to be," I say. I bite my thumbnail. "What are you in the mood for? A librarian named Sue? A waitress named Tiffany?"
"How about an angel named Opal?"
Oh my god. My heart is soaring.
"That sounds okay to me," I say.
"Tell me," he rasps, "how was your first day at your new job?"
"It was okay." I sink down deeper into the pool float.
"Just okay?"
"Yeah," I say. "I feel like I didn't reach my full potential."
"What do you mean?"
"Hm," I hum, tracing my fingertips along the water, "I only got to talk to my client once. It was a little bit of a letdown, if I'm being honest."
"Tell me more," he says.
"Well, I didn't really…satisfymy client."
"Did he satisfy you?" he says, voice smokey.
"Yes." I bite my lip and drag my fingers along the surface of the decadently warm water. "But that wasn't supposed to be part of the arrangement."
He begins to speak, but of course, at the most inopportune moment, my phone slides out of my hand and bounces onto the pool float, then plops into the water.
“Damn it,” I mutter.
I scoot to the edge of the pool and dive in to get my phone. It's going to be water-damaged. Horribly, horribly water-damaged. As I kick my way up to the surface, I see Mr. Lennox standing there through the rippling blue water.
"Got it," I say, putting the phone on the edge of the pool. I shake my head to get the water out of my ears, wringing out my long, soaked hair. "There you go."
He extends a hand to me. I take it, my own hand disappearing in his powerful grasp. I ready myself to do most of the heavy lifting to hoist myself up, but he completely takes over, plucking me from the water with the greatest of ease.
My feet find solid ground just a few inches away from him, but they falter and I bump into him, my chest flattening against his hard body.
He reaches down to grab my hands and plucks me out of the water. I land on solid ground, his arms wrapping around me as my fingertips land on his chest.
"Sorry about that," I say with a little smile.
"It's okay," he says. "We don't need it. You don't work for me anymore."
"I don't?"
"Fuck no." A huge grin stretches across his face. "And you will never work for me again. I have much bigger plans for you."
I wonder what he means by that. My lips curl into a giddy, half-cocked smile. I think I have an idea.
The air between us is electric. It'sfire. The steam from the pool is rising up above us, whispering through the air, the heat from my body wicking it away and making it evaporate into the ether.
