“Asher,” I said. “Asher Landseer. He owns Landseer Enterprises.”
“Oo~oh,” my mother said. “An older man. Close, though. I just saw an article on him. He’s one of the richest men under thirty. Twenty-eight to be exact. That’s good. Dating an older man is usually best since I find the maturity levels mix better.”
“I’m twenty-four. He’s not that much older. Also, we aren’t dating.”
“No, no, of course not. But when you start dating and having your affair, I’ll approve.”
“I’m hanging up now. I’m done with this conversation.”
My mom laughed. “I’m glad you’re doing well, Jessika. So you’re going to stay at Asher’s place? That’s nice. Is there a phone there? I want to be able to call you. Also, I need to talk to him, you tell him that. I don’t care that he’s rich, but if my daughter is staying at someone’s house and doing this egg thing for him and his wife, I want to know who they are.”
“You could always, oh, I don’t know, Google him. I’m sure there’s plenty of information.”
“Google can’t tell me if someone is nice, Jessika. He might be faking it. When I talk to him I’ll know for sure. Trust me on this, I’m your mother.”
“Right. Bye mom. Love you.”
“I love you, too. Be safe.”
I hung up the phone and let it fall into its receiver. That hadn’t gone at all like I expected, but I was glad it went alright. I thought she’d be more… upset? Maybe not upset, but concerned. Not that she had any reason to be, or not that I thought she had a reason, but still.
“Your mom sounds like a hoot.”
Startled, I jumped up and stared at my bedroom door. Jeremy stood there eating a cookie, powdered sugar covering his lips.
“You have something—” I gestured to my lips. “There.”
“Yeah,” he shrugged. “Saving it for later. You can never be too careful. Who knows when my next meal will be?”
“That was the corniest line I’ve ever heard,” I said.
He grinned. “Let’s pack your stuff, Miss Stripper Adulteress.”
…
I packed some of my shoes and clothes in an overnight duffel bag. I didn’t really need them, since Asher had asked Jeremy to buy me clothes and he’d filled an entire walk-in closet with them, but I liked some of what I owned. It was comfortable and familiar.
“Maybe she has the plans written down,” I said, cramming another t-shirt into my bag. “Maybe that’s why she doesn’t like Asher sleeping in the same room with her. At night, when he thinks she’s sleeping, she’s actually writing down her evil plan in a notebook that she hides in her bedside table.”
“Are we coming up with plots for a YA fantasy novel or are we talking about how to figure out what, if anything, Beatrice is up to?” he asked.
I frowned. “Sorry, I read a lot.”
“It’s fine, but I doubt she did that. If anything, it’d be on her computer. No one writes stuff down these days.”
“True, true. So… we could check that?”#p#分页标题#e#
“Maybe. I imagine it’s password protected, though.”
“She might use a simple one. Did you know that a lot of people use ‘password’ as their password? It could be that.”
“I… I doubt it. I mean, it’s possible, but I don’t think Beatrice is one of those people. She graduated from Dartmouth.” Jeremy rummaged through my drawers and grabbed a cute blouse. “Let’s bring this.”
“I really like that one. Put it in the bag.” He did, then I stared at him. “Can you stop going through my drawers, too? There’s…”
“Do you really wear this? Wow.” He held up one of my cutest and sexiest pairs of underwear; a frilly pink chiffon piece that always clung tight to my body, with a black silk bow in the front at the top. “This is… wow. I mean, there’s sexy, right? But then there’s cute, and then… wow. This is really good. How do you not have a boyfriend?”
I snatched the underwear away from him. “Give me that! Stop looking through my underwear drawer!” I shut the drawer on him, nearly slamming his fingers in it as I did. “Also, my last boyfriend didn’t even like these. That was awhile ago, but still. He said they made me look like I was twelve and he felt like a criminal whenever I wore them before we had sex.”
Jeremy burst into laughter. “Ah, well. Weird. I don’t know how anyone could ever mistake you for a twelve year old, underwear or not. Really, I think the appeal to a pair like that is the innocence, though. Like, hey, they’re cute, right? But also sexy. It’s the best of both worlds, really. You get the hotness, but the demure nature, too, so you’re going to have some really good sex, but you won’t feel like you’re with a slut. That’s how I think about it.”