Tongue Tied

Chapter 21

I told Alec about my meeting with Sean and that he had decided to make the switch from Harper Media to Corbin and Hilliard. Alec didn't seem a bit surprised or upset about it, which told me he'd been planning on it since the night of the fundraiser.

"Why did you do that?"

Alec sighed and I thought I heard the sound of a door close which meant he'd gone inside somewhere. I heard keys rattling and figured he was entering his apartment.

"I knew how much it meant to you," he said nonchalantly. It was obvious he cared more than he was letting on. "I felt like shit for high-jacking your deal, and you know I wasn't trying to in the first place. I guess I wanted to make it right. After you left, I told Margaret to give the disc to Sean."

I was overcome with emotions. I'd just earned the business of the biggest client Corbin and Hilliard had ever had, Alec had screwed his own company over to help me, and Mr. Hilliard wasn't going to fire me once I gave him the good news. I almost couldn't form words. I was shocked and thrilled at the same time.

"Thank you... so much. Seriously," I said sincerely.

It really did mean a lot to me that Alec went to the trouble to make sure Sean got that disc. I realized Sean probably wouldn't have agreed to the meeting, much less shown up in person, if he hadn't seen it.

Alec breathed a laugh. "It's fine. Don't worry about it. Just don't mention it to Troy. He'll skin my ass."

That was for sure. Troy Devereaux had desperately wanted Rutherford Laurence's business. Now that he no longer had it, he was undoubtedly - and understandably - livid. I would be too if I were him. I wasn't about to mention it to him though, not wanting to get Alec in hotter water than he was probably already in for losing Sean.

"Listen," Alec said, pausing momentarily. "I was thinking. Why don't we go have dinner tonight and just talk? It's been awhile since we did anything like that."

Awhile? I couldn't remember a time we'd gone out for dinner together. Usually if Alec and I had dinner together, it consisted of pizza or Chinese takeout on a hotel room couch, watching whatever movie happened to be on TV at the time.

"Dinner?" I raised an eyebrow at the word. It almost sounded foreign to me. Dinner was not something I thought of when I thought about going out with Alec Shaffers.

He chuckled, probably amused by my confusion. Was it confusion or surprise? "Yeah. Dinner."

"What happened to not letting people see us together?"

"Who cares?" Alec dismissed my question. "I kind of miss your company, you know?"

"Well, you've been kind of an asshole lately." I pointed the finger back at him.

He laughed. "Look, I know I fucked up with jacking your deal with Sean, but I tried to make it right and it sounds like it worked out just fine. And I apologized like nine thousand times. Can we play nice now, Bree?"

I said yes before my brain could process a reason to say no, though there were plenty. I was still pissed about Blondie. The fact that Alec had just gone out to eat with her the day before and now he wanted to go have dinner with me was not settling well with my conscience. I had a hunch he was trying to see both of us at the same time without us knowing about each other. That wasn't okay with me. Though we'd never really agreed to keep ourselves strictly to each other during our sex-capades, I'd always assumed we weren't going to fuck with other people until we called off our benefits, out of courtesy to each other, as well as the other people we might want to see. Maybe Alec had a different point of view.