Page 71 of Hard Hitter
“Who says I’m leaving?”
“You can stay,” Becca offered. “But everyone who stays is having his or her toenails painted.”
“Hmm,” he said. “That’s not really my scene.”
“Exactly,” Becca agreed.
“You’d better have four glasses out over there, though,”Patrick threatened. “I’m not leaving until someone gives me a margarita.”
“Fair enough,” Becca sighed, reaching into a cabinet for one more. “I guess you can have a drink, since we invaded your home and everything.”
“She guesses,” he muttered.
Ari put ice water into the glasses to chill them down, then she mixed the drinks. It took two shakers-full to serve everyone. She brought Patrick’s drink over to him and bent down to whisper in his ear. “You are very patient with us.”
“You are very amusing to me,” he whispered back. Then he kissed her neck.
When Ari straightened up again, she found a stunned expression on Georgia’s face. She felt her face begin to heat. “Okay, kids. Drink up. Because I need you all nice and loose to help me guess what my douchewhistle ex has done this time.”
Ari plopped down in the middle of Patrick’s thick wool rug. The texture was like that of a sheep skin. She folded her legs into Sukhasana position and then told them everything about her awful day—from the check with her supposed signature on it to the creepy story of Vince’s call, and ransacking her closets. “Then I just had to get out of there. Now I feelwatched.”
Patrick hadn’t said a word while she spooled through all the day’s events. But his expression had darkened with each new revelation. Now he drained his drink, a stony expression on his face. “Sweetheart. Don’t leave here before I get back, promise?” He stood up, fixing her with his icy blue stare.
“Where are you going?”
“Basketball down the hall. ‘Cause my nails are fine the way they are.” He carried his glass over to the shaker on the sideboard and poured himself the dregs. “Just don’t go home alone, please.”
“Okay,” she said quietly.
He gave the three of them a wink, then strode out of his apartment, margarita glass in hand.
The second the door clicked shut, Georgia got up off the couch and sat down on the rug in front of Ari. “Omigod. You need tospill.”
“I just did.”
Georgia rolled her eyes. “No, honey. Not about your ex. About Doulie. You told me—and this is a direct quote—it’s not like that.”
“Well, it’s sort of like that now. I assumed Becca told you.”
“I am avault,” Becca crowed. “You told me to keep my trap shut.”
“And I thank you,” Ari said quickly. “I don’t want the team to know.”
“I won’t tell a soul,” Georgia promised. “Not even Leo. But I don’t know why you’re so worried. The team is nice to me,” Georgia pointed out. “Hell, I think they like me better now.”
“But you don’t touch their naked bodies every day.” Ari didn’t even want to know where her clients’ minds would go if they knew she was sleeping with Patrick. “I don’t want anyone imagining sex with me on the massage table.”
Becca gave a little moan and flattened herself onto the sofa. “I hear where you’re coming from. But maybe you should give massage table sex a try with Doulie. That sounds extraordinary.”
“It was,” Ari whispered and the other two burst out laughing. “But we didn’t do it atwork. God.”
“God,” Georgia echoed. But then she turned red and put both hands over her face.
Becca sat up fast. “Wait. What didyouget up to at work?”
“I didn’t mean it to happen,” Georgia said from behind the wall of her hands. “But Leo came to find me in my office one day last week...”
“And?” Becca prompted.
