Page 25 of Games We Play
“Oh, I’m sure! Because we scream that we’re a couple whenever we have to sit in a boardroom together.” That had been a joke, but it made Sloan realize something. “You’re seeing the mailroom girl, aren’t you?”
“Please. I assure you she’s a woman.”
“Get out, Aaron. I want to change and relax. It’s been a long trip.”
He snorted. But he did leave, albeit with a tarry to his steps that infuriated his business partner. “Like you have anything I haven’t seen.”
“Get. Out.” She slapped her hand against the vanity. “Close the door behind you!”
To his credit, Aaron did close the door, but he always got the last word in, didn’t he? Because Sloan could guarantee that he wasn’t thinking about her as much as she was thinking about him, and that’s exactly what he wanted.
As soon as she was sure she was alone, Sloan went to her walk-in closet and began the maddening hunt for a single cedar chest she owned since she was a little girl. It should’ve been tucked somewhere between her vintage shoe collection and the gowns she once wore to charity dinners. The ones she kept to sell one day, not because they held any real nostalgic value.
I used to store toys in this thing.Real toys, the kind that children played with. Innocent little lambs who didn’t know what “lifestyle” meant, or what it was like to be an adult making stupid decisions that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Hard to believe that a little girl named Maggie Sloan once played with Barbie dolls, Cabbage Patch Kids, and the occasional Hot Wheels and Lego sets. If she really dug into her chest, she might find the stray plastic barrette or yellow Lego piece.
She kept a different set of toys in her chest now.
Don’t do it.There was a reason she only took a pair of handcuffs with her wherever she went. Handcuffs were safe and reliable. Everyone knew what they meant, and for many women, that was as kinky as they were willing to get. The stuff in Sloan’s chest? Likely to get her a slap to the cheek at best, a visit from the police at worse.
You’d love that, wouldn’t you, Aaron?
She fingered a leather implement that once made her happy to see. Now? There was a reason she locked everything up in a chest and shoved it far into the back of her closet.
Except she couldn’t stop thinking about… people. Those who had fucked her over. Those who had changed her life, for better or worse. Those she had met…
Those I have lost…
Those who came in like the wind only to blow out again. Like Leah. A woman she was never meant to meet, but somehow fate had conspired to bring to her. Twice.
She liked what Sloan offered. She could have taken much more last night than what Sloan had been prepared to give. That was a dangerous thought, because it meant Sloan dared to lose her stone-cold façade and what she clung to for her own sanity.
She phoned Sean as soon as it was convenient.
“You have her address, yes?” Sloan closed the lid on the chest and began a new search. Her personal – not the professional – stationery was somewhere. Probably around her desk, butprobablystuffed into some drawer she rarely poked through. “Good. I’ll have something ready to deliver to her by the end of tonight. I need you to make sure it gets to her withoutanyonefinding out. Do you understand me? Utmost discretion.”
“Yes, ma’am. Mr. Giles will not discover it.”
“I’m not only talking about that dumbass. I meannobodyexcept her.”
“Leave it to me, Ms. Sloan.”
Thatta boy. Sloan paid him more than any of her other employees because he was the most reliable man she knew. Too bad they were both gay.
***
The others at Rose City Bakery were not impressed that Leah had stood them up the night before. Gina pulled her friend aside and asked what happened, because it wasnotlike Leah to promise to be somewhere and then completely fall off the map without a phone call.
She gave everyone but Gina a stock excuse involving her sister. While they were on break, she gave Gina a little more detail.
“I hooked up with someone, okay?” Leah held a cigarette and pretended to find it necessary for her survival so she had an excuse to take a break with Gina, who smoked a pack a day. They stood behind the bakery, where warm vents combatted the frosty Oregon chill. Gina studiously smoked her cigarette while glaring at Leah. “It was a super last-minute thing. She was leaving town, and…”
“You fucked us over for a booty call?”
“Yeah?”
Gina crunched her cigarette beneath her feet. “Damn. Didn’t think you had it in you. I’m impressed.”
“You’re not mad?”
