Page 83 of The Player Next Door

Nope and I saw you’re on tinder so wyd?

Logan

Just leaving the office

Amber Green Dress

This is late for you to be working

Logan

Turning over a new leaf, I guess

Amber Green Dress

I hope not too many new leaves

I was sorta planning on getting laid tonight

Logan

Buy a guy a drink first, damn

Amber Green Dress

But for real my place or yours?

Logan paused as he pushed back from his desk. Most of the lights in the office were off already, and he and a handful of the higher-ups were all that were left. He had just finished making some notes in a client’s file and had been planning on going home, nursing a glass of wine, and spending the evening trying not to peer into Clare’s windows like a creep. Amber’s offer, transparent as it was, would keep him from doing that. It was a return to his old form, which maybe was for the best. He wasn’t really cut out for serious, and Amber wouldn’t expect that of him. He could finally start the process of shaking off everything Clare had brought out in him. He grabbed his bag and headed for the elevators, typing his response as he stepped on.

Logan

Mine

See you there

“Plans for this evening?” Peggy asked as she stepped in just before the doors closed. She wasn’t really someone he wanted to see right now, but beggars and choosers and whatever.

“Meeting a friend for, uh, drinks,” he said.

“A lady friend?” Peggy asked mildly.

Logan was just petty enough to want Clare to know he was moving on, and he suspected Peggy was on a fishing expedition. “Yes,” he confirmed.

She gave the barest of glances over her shoulder. “Must be a day for new beginnings,” she said drily. “Clare’s on a date as well.”

Logan ignored the dagger that drove into his chest. “Oh.”

Silence fell and the numbers above the door ticked down, far too slowly in Logan’s opinion. “I probably shouldn’t comment on this, but I never saw her as happy as she was with you,” Peggy said, still not quite looking at him.

That sucked to hear. He liked it when Clare was happy, and he still hated making her sad. He was his best self around Clare, not because she made him someone different but because she let him be comfortable in his own skin. The panel above the doors glowed red with descending numbers. “Sometimes, it’s just not enough,” he said, and two months ago he would have been embarrassed by the rawness in his voice. Now he just didn’t fucking care.

“That’s a shame,” Peggy said kindly, and stepped out of the elevator into the lobby. She looked up at Logan with that familiar shrewd look on her face. “In my experience, there are some situations where trusting your gut is necessary.”

Logan had a vague idea of what she was insinuating, but he wasn’t sure what she wanted him to do about it. Asking the severe Peggy Roth for relationship advice was not something he had ever seen himself doing, but there was a first time for everything. “And what do you do when trusting your gut means risking your heart?”

That was the softest he had ever seen her look. “Then you take the risk, Mr. Walsh,” she said. “You take the risk because matters of the heart are always worth the risk.” She smiled gently and turned to go, leaving Logan slightly stunned behind her.

Peggy was only five feet away when she paused again. “She’s taking him to the rooftop of your building, by the way,” she called, and he could have sworn she winked, but Peggy Roth was not a woman who winked, so that wasn’t possible. “Just in case you needed to know.”