"Well, as you can see, Mila is dressed to impress, but I'm kind of lacking," I hinted. "I'm a sad excuse for a Directioner."
He raised a sharp brow. "Who told you?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about," I lied. "I just felt like maybe you had some gear I could borrow."
Dean definitely had the goods. A few years back, One Direction had had a tour stop in the city, and there was a pop-up store for fans inside Madison Square Garden. Georgia might have told me homeboy had cleaned out on anything and everything Brit boy-band themed.
"Don't ask questions and follow me," he said, striding out of his office. Mila looked up at me excitedly and pretended to zip her lips.
A few turns through back hallways I'd never been privy to venturing later, he ushered us inside a storeroom on the other side of the floor. Once he switched on the light, the entire room looked like a teenage girl had vomited up her fandom. The walls were lined with posters. There was not one, not two, but three racks cluttered with clothing. And cardboard cutouts of the band stood in the corner.
"Omigod! This is so cool!" Mila jumped up and down.
"I know," Dean agreed. "This is my favorite place in the building."
"I'm shocked Kline lets you use this for your undying One Direction love." I glanced around the room, while Mila helped herself to the racks of clothes.
"We have an understanding."
I raised an eyebrow, and it pulled one corner of my mouth up with it involuntarily. "You have an understanding?"
He flashed a secret smile. "Yeah, he understands that whatever he doesn't know won't hurt him."
I smiled full out. "Kline Brooks would lose his shit if he saw this."
A hand went to his hip. "Well, good thing he'll never know, right?"
"Cool it, diva," I teased. "I won't spill the deets on your shrine to One D."
He feigned offense. "Oh, no, honey. You did not just call me a diva."
"Oh, but I did," I said, walking over by Mila.
"You're lucky I refuse to corrupt the young and innocent. Otherwise, you'd be dealing with a full-on catfight, Cassandra."
"Knock, knock," I announced as Mila and I opened the door to Thatch's office.
He glanced up from his computer, and a giant smile consumed his face.
My chest grew tight at the sight of his radiating affection, and I inhaled a cleansing breath to ease the discomfort.
Man, I probably needed to see a doctor. No one under thirty should be experiencing chest pain. Well, unless they dabbled in cocaine and attended drug-fueled raves on the weekends. Which, obviously, I didn't.
Although, I could probably make good use of glow sticks with a naked Thatch. I'd rave all over his Supercock, minus the drugs of course. That man didn't need any performance enhancers. Any increase to his stamina and my pussy would need a cane to hobble herself onto his dick.
Mila let go of my hand, ran around his desk, and hopped up into his lap. "Hi, Uncle Thatch!" she greeted and placed her hands on each side of his face before kissing his nose. "Ready to go?"
He nodded and kissed her forehead. "What's on the agenda today, sweetheart?"
She jumped off his lap and handed him a T-shirt and hat out of her backpack. "You have to change your clothes first so everybody matches."
He tilted his head to the side and glanced up at me. His eyes made the circuit down my body and then back up again-paying particular attention to my T-shirt that read, Liam is my spirit animal. They were fully amused by the time they met my gaze again.
"I'm supposed to wear these?" he asked Mila.
She nodded. "Yep. You're gonna look so awesome!"
Five minutes later, Thatch was walking out of the en suite bathroom in his office and lifting Mila up to carry her piggyback style. He looked outrageous with a Niall is my boyfriend T-shirt stretched tight across his huge chest and a One Direction baseball cap worn backward on his head.
"How do I look, Mila?" he asked.
"So cool!" Mila said, resting her chin on his shoulder.
His eyes met mine and he grinned. "Next time, Aunt Cassie and I are going to switch. I like Liam more than Niall."
"No way," I disagreed, running a hand across the words on the front of my shirt. "You'll have to fight me for this dreamboat."
"I have no issues with wrestling you, Crazy." He winked.
"Can we go?" Mila asked impatiently. "I'm hungry."
Thatch grabbed his new wallet, keys, and phone and slid them into his pockets and managed it all with Mila still hanging from his back. "Let's hit it," he said and grabbed my hand, leading us out of his office and toward the elevator.
As we rode the cart down to ground level, I couldn't stop myself from smiling as I looked at Thatch, decked out in One Direction fan gear, with Mila on his back. No man in his right mind would subject himself to this willingly.
But Thatch wasn't a normal kind of guy.
He was different.
And I really liked his kind of different.
"Call on line one from Mr. Sanchez," Madeline buzzed in as I closed the first-quarter financial statement for Hughes International. They were a relatively new client, so I'd been scouring the details of their money management and hiring expenses and comparing it to their investment portfolio in an attempt to map out a new system of checks and balances. They'd had a plan in place, but they obviously hadn't been making optimal financial decisions for a while. In fact, the best one they'd made was paying me to get them back on track.
"Thanks, Mad," I responded after saving my spreadsheet. I kept backups for backups, but I wasn't particularly keen on having even a chance of losing weeks' worth of work.
"Hey, Carl," I greeted one of my longtime clients as I clicked on to the line. "What can I do for you?"
"In a hurry to get me off the phone, Thatch?" he greeted, his voice amused.
"No way. Just a man with many tasks and know you're the same. I also have a feeling you're calling to invite me on an all-expenses-paid vacation, and the sooner I get off the phone with you, the sooner I can get a tan in the Southern California sun."
He laughed and I smiled and rubbed at the edge of my desk. He started talking about a new plant in Encino and all of the questions they had about what that kind of long-term investment would do to their long-term financial goals, so I picked up a pen and doodled on the edge of my calendar as he ran through the particulars.
Squiggles turned into a sun, and before I knew it, a stick woman with a fantastic rack appeared with a bouquet of roses next to her. I scribbled it out and dropped the pen before I ended up dropping Carl's financially motivated ball.
"I know it's short notice, but I've got the projections team creating a mock plan, and this is the only date our contractor can walk the property for the next six months."
"When did you say you needed me there again?" I asked, knowing I hadn't been paying enough attention to hear it the first time.
"Tomorrow. I went ahead and put a hold on a ticket for you out of JFK at noon, but I can have Ashley change it if that doesn't work for you. We walk the plant on Thursday morning."
I glanced back at my scratched out doodle and the clock on the wall. Just about twenty-four hours away. The trip actually sounded like a nice reprieve from my uncharacteristically empty apartment.
I'd lived there alone for nearly seven years, and now, two days without Cassie while she was on a shoot in Las Vegas, and the place seemed hollow. We'd transitioned into a different place in our relationship sometime during the last week, coexisting in the same apartment so naturally, it was almost scary.
Our mornings always started with a cup of coffee together, after an initial superficial battle over having woken her up, and our nights ended with Cass cuddled inside my arms whether we were watching TV or catching our breath after orgasms-or both. We filled the time in between with frequent texts and phone calls and making plans for dinner or something to do for the evening.
Cass had even taken it upon herself to pick up my dry cleaning on Monday afternoons, and I'd found myself in the checkout line at the grocery store with a cart full of random, girly bullshit that she'd added to our list more than once.
Sure, we still pushed at each other with pranks and surprises, but I was really fucking enjoying it. It made things interesting, and I couldn't seem to get enough.
We'd even started a little joint prank of our own, texting Kline from her number with the same kind of bullshit subscription messages she'd sent me what seemed like a lifetime ago. She was seriously gifted at coming up with different shit to say, and when I found out over dinner one night that Kline didn't know her new number yet, the opportunity to mess with him was too good to pass up.
"I'll be there. I'll expect donuts and coffee on Thursday morning, though. No industrial tour is acceptable without them."