Page 57 of Pretty Poison
Asher blinked a few times before he found his voice. “Excuse me?”
“You were apologizing for not returning my key, right?”
Asher slid his hands over his head, taming the mess Rocky had made. “Yeah, that’s it.” Asher stepped forward but stopped just before he reached Rocky. “It had nothing to do with spending two nights in your bed. My motives were not at all influenced by the way you dry humped my thigh both nights or that I stared at the ceiling for hours while wishing I could roll you onto your back and bury my cock deep inside your sweet ass.”
Rocky’s face heated, but it wasn’t from shame or remorse. “I’m not sure separated husbands talk to one another in such a dirty manner.”
Asher narrowed his eyes. “Are you flirting with me, Ford?”
“I don’t know,” Rocky replied honestly. “I might be. I need to think about it.” He nearly snorted. Thinking was all he’d done for the past fifteen months. Maybe he should act first, think later.
Asher’s mouth twitched, and his eyes glittered with humor and heat. “Well, the guys and I are heading out of town to track down a fugitive. We might not be back for a few days. Why don’t you think about it while I’m gone?” Asher pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “Try not to overthink it, though.”
Rocky had gotten used to Asher’s abrupt departures and reappearances when they lived together in Vegas, but that seemed like a different lifetime. He should be grateful to have his solitude restored, but he was anything but. “Be safe, okay?”
“Always.” Asher brushed the back of his fingers over Rocky’s cheek. “Take care of yourself, Ford.”
Rocky nodded, his emotions making his words too heavy to speak.
“Try not to dry hump anyone else’s thigh.”
Rocky laughed and shoved off the door. “Get out of here.” He brushed against Asher as he headed to his office. All traces of his husband and the SUV full of feds were gone by the time Rocky retrieved his messenger bag and the spare key from the menu drawer. Junk drawer, damn it.
The second half of Rocky’s day was busy but uneventful in the way that he hadn’t locked himself out of his house, the office, or his car, and no one snuck pickles by him again. He thought he’d be able to breathe a little easier with Avery taking point on the cyber investigations and Trudy managing the fiscal tasks and other clerical things that kept the agency going. He was wrong.
He’d met with and signed three new clients, each of them requiring different services. A corporation suspected one of their employees was leaking confidential information to a competitor. A gentleman hired him to prove his husband was hiding assets in a run-up to their divorce. The third new client was another small-business owner who suspected flaws in their bookkeeping and inventory. The company hired Rocky to determine if this was a software glitch, as their employees claimed, or an act of theft, as the owner suspected.
It wasn’t often that Rocky got to put his finance and accounting degrees to investigative use, but he really liked it when his two worlds collided. He and Peter had talked about doing more forensic accounting investigations, but as of now, most of those jobs went to prominent accounting firms in Atlanta like the one his maternal grandfather owned.
Rocky chatted with Avery about checking out the company’s software for flaws and manipulations while he focused on the accounting side of things. Between the two of them, they’d be able to ferret out any discrepancies.
“Go home,” Trudy said from the doorway.
Rocky had been so deep in thought he hadn’t heard her approach. He jerked his head up to meet her shrewd gaze. “I will if you do.”
“I mean it, Rocky. You won’t do us any good if you run yourself ragged during the first week of Peter’s paternity leave.”
“And what about you?”
She scoffed. “I’m a mother. We never rest.”
Rocky shook his head but wisely logged off the system and pushed back from his desk. “Fine. You win this battle.”
“And I’ll win the next one and the one after that,” Trudy said.
“What do you think about locking the office during lunch tomorrow so we can go meet Skylar?”
Trudy smiled. “I think that’s the best idea you’ve come up with since hiring Avery.”
“What you’re saying is that I’m having a banner week.”
“The week isn’t over, so I wouldn’t get cocky if I were you,” Trudy cautioned.
When they reached the front of the office, Trudy logged off her computer, and they exited the building together.
“Have a good night. I’ll see you in the morning, Trudy.”
“Night,” she said.