“Yup.” Blake stood, her boobs bouncing. I watched like a cat who’d just been given his first ball of yarn.
Want. To. Touch.
“I’ll see ya around!” Bounce, bounce, bounce. Mother of—
I looked away. I had to. Otherwise, I’d have had to explain to everyone in the room why the plague caused erections. And that just . . . didn’t seem like the best conversation to be having with a client.
A client. A client. A client.
Maybe if I kept repeating her status in my life, I wouldn’t be so damn ready to turn her over the table and—
“Ian?” Blake was suddenly in front of me. Shit, had I said any of that out loud? I glanced to Gabi for help.
She was staring at the pillow, completely ignoring me.
Meaning she was pissed. She knew I wasn’t treating Blake like a normal client. I’d have to be more careful in the future.
I jolted to my feet and started firing off the usual. “Next time he invites you over, you say you’re busy. You’re always busy until I say you’re free, got it? Rule number three in the playbook clearly states this in painful detail.”
Blake took a step backward and nodded seriously.
“And you don’t let him call you or coerce you into hanging out, not when you’re technically with another dude. It makes you look easy and doesn’t make our relationship look real.”
Gabi’s eyes narrowed as she looked at us. “Is anything going on that I should—?”
“You’re sick, Gabs.” I shoved the pillow over her face. “You know what they say, ‘Sleep, sleep, sleep!’”
“She can’t breathe.” Blake pointed at the pillow.
“She breathes through her hair.” I nodded. “She’s fine.”
Gabi shoved both me and the pillow away and gasped.
“See? Totally fine.” I cleared my throat. “I, uh, I’ll see you guys later.”
I ran out of the house, sweating.
And not because I was sick, but because I had a feeling I was about to be. Things were moving way too fast with her and David. I had a sudden desire to look more deeply into their program.
I just hoped Lex was home to help.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Lex!” I shouted for him the minute I stepped over the threshold. “Emergency meeting. Now!”
Lex appeared a few seconds later, black-rimmed glasses sitting low on his nose, pen in his mouth. I was only slightly irritated that glasses made him look smarter than he already was.
“What up?”
And then he went and used phrases like “what up,” and I felt so much better about my place in the world.
“David. What’s his deal? She’s working through the steps really fast, and he seems to be falling for it, but something just feels off with him.” Actually, it was me, all me, but I’d die before admitting that. “Can you pull up his file?”
Lex’s eyes narrowed. “David’s file? You want to look at his file?”
“Why are you repeating what I just asked you?”
Lex leaned against the doorframe. “Oh, I don’t know. Because normally you just look at the summary I toss in the packet. What gives?”
“Curiosity,” I lied.
“Uh-huh.” Lex smirked, then moved into the living room where his laptop was sitting. “And would this curiosity have anything to do with your inability to keep yourself from wanting to bang the client?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t bang clients.”
“Yet.”
“The minute I have sex with a client is the minute this turns into a very lucrative prostitution ring, okay?”
Lex held up his hands, then leaned back in the chair as the Wingmen Inc. graph popped up on the screen.
David Hughes and Blake Olson match = 87% success past first 30 days.
“Eighty-seven?” I repeated. “Isn’t that kind of high?”
Lex clicked down to the rest of the stats, mainly numbers that we’d plugged in after Blake’s questionnaire, where Lex correlated with David’s interests, background, grades, study habits, eating habits, relationships, and, yes, even his medical history.
Lex hacked.
Sure it was semi-illegal. Or maybe fully illegal. But we were helping people. I had my speech for the FBI all ready to go, if it ever came to that.
“Who the hell’s allergic to raisins?” I blurted, reading through the medical history.
Lex slammed the computer shut and turned. “If I see a headline in tomorrow’s newspaper about how the starting point guard for the Huskies nearly dies from anaphylactic shock, should I be worried? Or just give the police our address?”
I laughed. “Please, like I would stoop that low.”
“Gabi called.”
“Gabi never calls.”
“She was worried.”
“So she called you?” I fidgeted with my hands, then leaned back on the chair. “She hates you.”
“Which she said at least ten times before finally getting to the reason behind her call.”
“She yell?”
“When does she not yell?” Lex made a disgusted noise. “She thinks you’re hooking up with Blake.”
“No hooking up has taken place.”
“Will it?”
I gulped. “No.”
“Holy shit.” Lex jumped out of his seat and felt my forehead. “Are you sick? Since when have you ever not hooked up?”