Crossing the Line. Megan Hart
should just take it easy.” Jamison settled on the edge of the bed to pat her hand, then had a second thought and twined her fingers in his. He and Elise had been friends since high school and had spent more than a few nights tangled up in the same blankets. Never lovers, always friends, they’d shared probably every dark secret each had ever had. He knew better than anyone how unbreakable she was. And still, looking at her now, so pale and somehow shrunken despite the disconcertingly enormous mound of her belly under the blankets, all he could think about was how close he might be to losing her.
“She’ll be taking it easy.” Steph peeked around the doorway. “If I have to tie her to the bed, she’ll be taking it easy.”
“Kinky,” Elise murmured with a loving smile toward her wife that lit her eyes but didn’t do much to put color back in her cheeks.
“Too much information.” Jamison squeezed Elise’s fingers and stood. “I’m going to head back to the office. I’m glad you’re feeling better, and you take care of yourself. Stay in bed, do what the doctor tells you, you hear me?”
“Jamison, hang on. Stay a minute. Steph, baby, can you bring me some hot tea?” When the other woman had gone, Elise turned to him. “You and Caite have the new clients covered, yes?”
He hesitated, thinking about the conversation he’d had yesterday evening with the wily Ms. Fox. “She says she’s good to take them over.”
“You’re going to have to let her. We hired her for a reason, you know.”
“You’re the one who told me the triplets of destruction were going to be our name makers. And you want me to leave them in the hands of our junior office assistant?”
Elise laughed. Hard. “She’s a junior account manager, and she’s been taking on client work since a few months after she started. Caite has a good strong PR background, first of all. And social media savvy. Which is supposed to be our thing, you know. Remember?”
“I remember.” He’d always been much better at the background aspects of the business. Getting clients and keeping them. Negotiating. Not the day-to-day handling of them, or even of the office itself. That was Elise’s expertise, and now, he guessed, Caite’s.
Elise looked at him. “You can’t handle everything alone, Jamison. You’re going to have to let her do her job.”
“And if she totally screws up? What then?”
“She won’t.” Elise held up a hand to keep him from saying more. “But if she does, look...those crazy kids have their own mess already. It’s not like we could make anything worse for them. If anything, we should pray they screw up, big-time, and soon, so we can actually work to redeem them.”
“You’re good at that.” He laughed, thinking of a lot of the things with clients that had happened over the years. Press releases in the beginning, carefully crafted statements of apology. More recently, well-timed tweets or Connex updates.
“You need to relax.” She eyed him. “You don’t want to be the next one to end up in the hospital bed.”
For a moment, he thought about laughing off her concern, but then he shook his head. Elise had been there with him when his dad died, too young, of a stroke and heart attack brought on by a lifetime of unhealthy habits. “I take care of myself.”
“Sure. You run, you watch what you eat to the point where I wonder if you even like food. But you don’t take care of yourself, honey.” She paused. “I worry about you.”
“You shouldn’t.” Her words sent a flash of heat through him. Embarrassment more than comfort. They’d been friends for a long time, and she could look right inside him, down to his core, but that didn’t mean it ever felt easier to be seen that way. Jamison liked his walls high, strong and topped with iron spikes.
“Well, you can’t stop me. Now get out of here before Steph chases you out with a broom. Dinner next week?”
“Yeah. Here, I presume.” He grinned, ducking away from the pillow she tossed at him. “I’ll bring something good.”
“You’d better.” She sighed as the door creaked open and Steph appeared with a tray laden with tea and goodies. “Even though it looks like I’m going to be thoroughly spoiled as it is. Thank you, baby.”
He turned away as they kissed, another tickle of heat creeping up the back of his neck at the display of affection. It wasn’t that he was...jealous, he thought as he ducked out of the room and headed for his car. Relationships were more work than they were worth. He’d had a few girlfriends over the years, and every one of them had turned out to be jealous, greedy and, eventually, demanding. Even the ones who’d claimed they were only interested in something casual. Which said too much about his taste in women, he admitted as he drove back toward the office. Women were a lot of work, and he wasn’t the sort to be lonely, so why, then, did the memory of the sparkle in Elise’s eyes when she looked at her wife leave him with such an ashen taste in his mouth?
Bobby, pushing his glasses up on his nose, looked up as Jamison got off the elevator. “Mr. Wolfe. You have several messages, and—”
As if on cue, Jamison’s phone trilled from his pocket. He noted the name of the caller and sent it to voice mail. He waved at Bobby dismissively and kept going. He had stuff to take care of first. Messages could wait.
“And Ms. Fox is in the conference room with the clients from Treasure House,” Bobby called after him.
Jamison stopped in his tracks, spinning on one heel. “Huh? They’re here?”
“In the conference room,” Bobby repeated, standing to point down the hall.
As if Jamison didn’t know where the conference room was.
Before Jamison could sneak into his office, the conference room door opened, and Caite poked her head out. Her face lit when she saw him; the grin that spread from ear to ear was bright and delighted. She gestured.
“Jamison! Hi. I’m glad you’re here. C’mon in and meet the Treasure House clients.”
It was the last thing he wanted to do, even though meeting all their new clients was something he always did. With an inward sigh and an outwardly neutral expression, he stalked down the hall. Caite squeezed his elbow as he pushed past her.
“Deep breath,” she murmured without losing a bit of her smile. “Their management is paying us triple the highest rate we’re currently charging, and we’ve already been mentioned on three of the top five gossip sites. The phone’s been ringing off the hook all day.”
He glanced at her. “Since when was it triple?”
“Since I had a little talk with their manager,” Caite said as her smile widened and she made a sweeping gesture to encompass the three people seated at the other end of the conference room table. “Jamison Wolfe, I’d like to introduce you to our newest members of the Wolfe and Baron family.”
Here we go, Jamison thought. The shit show has begun.
* * *
Nellie Bower and Paxton France had been vociferously denying any sort of romantic relationship, but watching them canoodle on the opposite side of the conference table, Caite knew the pair were shagging like 1970s rec room carpet. Tommy Sanders didn’t seem at all fazed by the way Nellie reached to pluck bits of imaginary lint off of Paxton’s broad shoulders, which meant he also knew the two were involved. Not that it would’ve been easy to ignore, since the three of them had been teamed up for the past two years, contractually obligated to be together both in and out of the house in which a multimillion-dollar prize was hidden. This was the show’s second season, and the stakes had risen from $3 to 5 million. If the three of them could last until the end of the season and sign on for another, the prize would rise to $7 million.
But