16. It Happened

16

IT HAPPENED

“ H ow was your weekend?” Miles asked her when she walked into the office on Monday morning. She wasn’t late but didn’t expect Miles to beat her here.

“It was good,” she said. “How was yours?”

“Fabulous,” Miles said. “I checked out this new club with a friend on Friday.”

He was wiggling his eyebrows at her. “And?”

“And I got a few numbers. I’ve got two guys on the hook chatting and was all weekend.”

“Two,” she said. She covered a yawn. “Make sure you don’t get them confused.”

“I won’t,” Miles said. “I’m a pro at this. One’s a wolf, the other a twink. Might as well get the flirt on good for a bit and then see if it’s worth going out one-on-one with them. And why are you yawning?”

She had to run the lingo in her mind. Wolf, meant a slim muscular man with manicured body hair and high sex drive. She didn’t want to know how Miles knew that part. Twink was someone in late teens early twenties and maybe just newly out.

The last thing she was going to admit to her employee was that she’d gone on two dates and spent most of Saturday afternoon in bed with a naked man. Not when he was throwing out the fact he had two men on the hook.

If most of it was sleeping, well, it happened. What was she going to say? Zander wore her out like she never thought a body could experience.

She didn’t even remember how she got under the covers. All she had a memory of was Zander rolling after she came a second time and a joke about him keeping up. Then she put her foot in her mouth and fell asleep.

She was assuming he got her under the covers and crawled in with her and they both napped.

Next thing she knew, it was dinnertime and the bed was moving.

She got up mortified over the two-hour nap. It didn’t help any he was dressing and laughing at her.

The least she felt she could do was cook him dinner and then they spent a few more hours talking.

Nothing so personal that it felt like she was opening up old wounds and memories. He didn’t either.

More fun things in their lives. Things they did in college.

Then he left around nine that night and on Sunday she cleaned, ran some errands and worked a few hours. He’d said he had things to deal with too and it was for the best in her eyes.

They hadn’t talked since and she wasn’t going to get worked up over that.

Regan wasn’t clingy and never would be.

She believed he wasn’t going to be someone to blow her off. It’d be hard to do that when they worked next to each other.

“Just a long weekend,” she said. “I even took a nap on Saturday and never do that.”

“Maybe you’re coming down with something,” Miles said.

“Could be,” she said, moving over to start a cup of coffee. “But I feel wonderful, so I doubt it.”

“Wonderful, you say?” Miles asked. She’d have to be careful because he was like a hawk.

“Maybe refreshed is a better word even if I’m yawning.”

“I suppose that could be the case,” Miles said. “You’ve got a big workload today too.”

“I looked my schedule over last night. Zachery is coming in first thing. It’s the first I’ll talk to him since Katelyn left him.”

“Hope he isn’t angry,” Miles said. “You know I’m not good about calming clients down.”

It’d happened from time to time, but she was good at defusing situations. She was never in her office alone where she couldn’t get help. Now she knew that Zander’s wall was right behind her desk chair. She supposed if she made enough noise and he was there, he’d come over to check on things.

“Don’t worry about it. I think he’s struggling with how to adapt to living in the house alone. We talked for a minute on the phone and I told him it’d be better to come in. He wanted Katelyn to come with him, but she declined.”

“He was trying to find out when her appointments were with you,” Miles said. “But I’m onto people.”

“Which might explain why Katelyn was doing her appointment during a video chat instead.”

She’d make a note of that in her file too.

“I’m not sure how you can keep it all straight,” Miles said. “Without going over your notes before they arrive.”

“It’s like girl drama in school with all your friends. I know you had a lot of girl friends. Didn’t you keep it straight?”

“I’m a pro at that too,” Miles said, waving his hand. “Everyone came to me for advice.”

“There you go,” she said. “After Zachery, I’ve got an appointment with Trent at ten.”

“To go over this issue with Sophia?” Miles asked. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

At the same time that Miles thought it was exciting, he was also nervous.

“There is nothing to be worried about. I’m going to get everything lined up with Trent and the paperwork. Then once Sophia signs it and gives me the information, I’ll meet with Zander to hand it over.”

Miles frowned. “You talked to him about it already? Or you have to make an appointment with him?”

“He knows what is going on,” she said, pouring creamer into her coffee and then looked up and took a sip.

Miles nodded and didn’t say another word on that. “The sunshine couple called and want to schedule another appointment. I told them you were booked pretty tight this week.”

She laughed. Maria and Colin were the “sunshine” couple, as Miles had dubbed them.

“If you can rearrange things for them, please do it. Sometimes people are willing to move an hour ahead or behind to accommodate. Otherwise, they will have to wait until their appointment next week.”

“I’m sure it’s not an emergency,” Miles said.

“Most likely not, but it’s refreshing to talk with them too. A couple that wants to work on things before a problem starts. Imagine that. Anything else we need to go over? Otherwise I’m going to review my notes before Zachery gets here.”

“I’m good,” Miles said and went to his desk. “Oh, one more thing.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Lunch. It’s important. I had to drop my car off to get serviced this morning and they gave me a lift. I thought I’d be late and forgot to package up a lunch. I’m craving Chinese. You want in?”

She pursed her lips. “I had it recently. No subs either. I forgot a lunch too. Must be Monday morning.” Or the fact she had Zander on her mind. “I’ll take a salad. You pick the place and you know what I like.”

“You’ve got it,” Miles said.

She went into her office, left the door open, and pulled up her file on Zachery to read things over.

“What’s the emergency?” Betsy asked Miles when they met in the hall. The minute he realized things might be calm with Zachery, he’d texted Betsy his SOS text, which meant a session outside to them.

“I got Regan to admit she had Chinese food recently.”

“Really?” Betsy asked. “Okay, now things are getting interesting.”

“Why?” he asked. “What did you find out?”

“That on Friday night, Zander had a dinner out. A business expense so he had to give me the receipt to bill.”

“Okay,” Miles said. “What is so interesting about that?”

“It was a dinner for two. With dessert and coffee.”

“So a long dinner,” Miles said. “Is that odd for him?”

“No,” Betsy said. “Sometimes it’s long because he stays longer than the person he’s surveilling. And I’m not trying to get ahead of anything because he’s gone to dinner with his sister, mother, or father. Even other guy friends. But he’s also gone on dates while he’s working too.”

“I’m not sure what I think of that,” Miles said, frowning. “Kind of rude, don’t you think?”

“Depends,” Betsy said. “Could be fun too. I like all the stuff he does and love it when I get to play detective.”

Miles’s shoulders wiggled a bit. “I suppose you’ve got a point. Regan would enjoy something like that.”

“That is why I said it’s interesting. Do you think it could have been them on a date?” Betsy asked.

“I’ll see if I can dig up anything else. She came in tired this morning. She never is. Said she had a good weekend and even took a nap and felt refreshed.”

As much as he liked trying to set Regan and Zander up, he wasn’t going to say he suspected his boss might have gotten a piece of ass.

There was just a little pep in her step that had been missing for a while, but that could be anything.

“No reason to jump to conclusions,” Betsy said. “One thing I learned from this job.”

“We’ve got something for now. Not sure it’s much...wait a minute.”

“What?” Betsy asked.

He was playing things in his mind and debating what he should say. Betsy worked for Zander so she’d know about the case with Sophia, but he didn’t know if she knew yet.

“Just that Regan needs to talk to Zander about something for a client. She’d mentioned that he was aware it was coming. We just found out on Friday.”

“I haven’t seen Zander yet today,” Betsy said. “When I came in, he’d left the receipts with a note and was gone. It’s possible he knows and will say something. So if Regan said Zander knows, they at least talked on Friday at some point?”

“Yes,” he said. “Just don’t know the timing of it.”

“Unless she has his cell phone number, it wasn’t while I was here on Friday to answer the phone.”

“This is getting good,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Now I know why you love it. Okay, we’ve got some things to work on. Keep me posted.”

“You do the same. Do you think we should let the Fierces know anything?”

“We don’t know anything for sure, so why would we tell them?” he asked.

“Good point. It just slipped my mind. I’m going to start dropping hints if he brings up Regan’s name in the next week or so.”

“I’ll do the same.”

He rushed back to his desk before Regan finished with Zachery and started to research how to look for signs of someone having a secret relationship.

When Regan came out of her office twenty minutes later, he wasn’t fast enough to push the screen down.

“What are you looking at?” she asked. “Are you worried one of these two guys might be cheating or trying to figure out how to keep them both on the hook without getting caught?”

He kept a straight face. “Maybe both.”

Regan rolled her eyes. “Don’t get caught. I don’t want to have to deal with a broken-hearted Miles again.”

“Never,” he said. “I’ve got you to lean on if I’m feeling it though.”

“You know you always do,” she said and walked back into her office.

There was a tiny bit of guilt in his brain right now, but it was for her own good. If the Fierces had her in their sights, then it’d work out. At least from what Betsy said.