Page 15
Wes finished the pancakes and typed Erick Cosgrove into a search engine. His smarmy photo filled the screen, dead eyes and a corporate smile. “Hello, asshole.”
Erick had far more internet hits than Wes had time to scroll through, but he gathered the basics. Based in Baltimore, Maryland, with properties in New York, Washington, DC, and Virginia, Erick had assumed the reins of Cosgrove Enterprises after nepotism bumped him from intern straight to the C-suite.
No one mentioned him sitting on a museum board or doing any philanthropic work. Wes wasn’t surprised. According to the internet, Erick spent his time only making money and building a name for himself in the Cosgrove dynasty. He clicked open another headline and sneered at the recent quarterly profits. The Cosgrove pharmaceutical company had flourished under Erick’s direction.
“Good for fuckin’ Erick,” Wes muttered. That guy could be sainted, and it wouldn’t change how Erick and Martin Edinbaugh had used their influence to help Peter Phillips escape the consequences for murder.
Wes closed the laptop and called the number Vivian provided for Bailey.
She answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
He liked her honeyed voice and, leaning back from his workspace, wondered how she usually started her day. “Do you always answer unknown numbers?”
“Oh, it’s you. Are you always so pleasant when you call people?”
Wes chuckled. “That’s me. What’d you call me yesterday? A peach?”
“You heard wrong.”
He hadn’t and grinned. “Will you be at your office this morning?”
“Already there. Not all of us get to roll into work whenever we feel like it.”
“You don’t know what I’ve been doing.”
“Sleeping in? Hitting the gym?”
He grumbled at her accuracy, then remembered the reason he’d gone to the gym. “I’ve been working hard. Thank you very much.”
“On your sleep or in the hotel gym?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Didn’t he want to tell her? Fuck no, he didn’t. He only wanted to see Bailey the way he’d always seen her. Pretty and unavailable. Someone who sparked no interest. Yet he was grinning. “I’ll see you in twenty minutes, sweetness.”
“Do you still take your coffee black?”
“Yeah. Why?”
She’d already hung up.
Wes tossed the phone next to his room service tray, caught his reflection in the mirror, and scowled until he was sure his stupid grin wouldn’t return. “Who cares if she remembers how you take your coffee?”
The traitorous face in the mirror said that he might.
He had twenty minutes to make sure he didn’t care.
Wes packed his laptop and wanted to get to the office in the worst way, which meant he wouldn’t spend those twenty minutes reprogramming his brain. He wanted to see her again. Which was stupid.
Even if he was having horned-up, dirty dreams about Bailey in various stages of undress, in various positions throughout his hotel room for some asinine reason, he didn’t even like Bailey Cosgrove.
The woman was pretty. Very pretty. Hot, even. Fuckin’ gorgeous. But, again, who cared? She’d always been attractive. That shouldn’t have been news. But damn, yesterday, he hadn’t expected to stutter when she first opened her office door. Today, that wouldn’t happen.
Twenty minutes later, his brain unable to be reprogrammed, he knocked on her office door, humming with anticipation.
“It’s unlocked,” she called from inside.
Her lack of security hit him like a bucket of cold water. Wes squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, needing to pull himself together for a completely different reason, then walked in. “Are you no longer worried about the break-in, or are you just winging it for fun?”
Her eyebrows arched. “Are you ever nice when you start a conversation with me? Or have our years apart turned you into a grouchy grump?”
