Page 40 of Dial F for Finance

Still, I’m tempted to text her right now, to tell her she just got called a predator by the most aggressive legal mind in Chicago, but I know better. I know there’s a whole façade she has to rebuild before she can face us all again. That for every moment she let herself be wild and open, she’ll double down on being cool and contained as soon as she sniffs oxygen. A lesser man would find it exhausting. Me? It just makes me want to fuck her on every horizontal (and vertical) surface in the Loop until the habit sticks.

We grind through two more hours of contingency planning before Bennett taps out and leaves Caleb and me to dissect every possible regulatory tripwire in the next phase of the joint venture. Logan sits in, but after an hour of listening to us barter over default triggers, deadlock provisions, and audit rights, he zones out entirely and starts writing code. The man is so comfortable in his own brain he can just leave a room whenever he wants and take the best parts with him.

It’s almost noon when we finally break.

Caleb’s phone lights up while he’s gathering his things. He reads it, and his face does the thing it does when the universe hands him ammunition.

“Serena wants to know if I’ve ‘seen Jenna today,’” he reads aloud, “because the girls have ‘dragged her out to brunch and she’s being weird.’” He looks up, delighted. “Do you think she showed up with ruined lipstick and a fucked-up hairdo as well?”

I feel my entire morning’s worth of Jenna-related effort depreciate in real time.

“They took her to brunch?”

“As we speak, apparently.” He pockets the phone, at peace with all creation. “Layla, Serena, and Audrey. Apparently Nora’s getting away from the school long enough to join them. Lockwood, one booth, mimosas, and a topic none of us are permitted to raise. Which, for the record, the women were never actually told about so you know they’re grilling her.”

The math isn’t in my favor. I’ve spent the entire morning managing this. Managing the room, managing Bennett, managing my own face, and failing at that last one badly enough to land us here. And none of it matters, because the one variable I can’t touch is the group of women who love Jenna, can smell a story from a great distance, and have her outnumbered over day drinking and pastries.

“This is a disaster,” I say, mostly to myself.

“I agree,” Logan says without looking up from his code. “It’s unwise to bet against the girls in an information-gathering context.”

“Thank you, Logan.”

“I’m supporting you emotionally and contradicting you factually. Both can be true.”

I take out my phone. Think about calling her. Maybe showing up at Lockwood and rescuing her from the situation before she retreats so far into herself I’ll never drag her back out. But neither of those seem like a good idea. Jenna likes control. She doesn’t want to be rescued. And she sure as hell isn’t about to answer a call from me in front of witnesses.

Shit.

Caleb claps me on the shoulder on his way past, the absolute traitor, grinning like it’s the best day he’s had in months.

“Relax, Dom,” he says. “What’s the worst that could happen over brunch?”

CHAPTER 9

Jenna

“I’ll just take the sparkling water and a club sandwich,” I say, handing the waiter back the wine list because alcohol and I don’t have a wonderful track record when it comes to Dominic Cruz—especially when I can still feel his fingers between my thighs.

“Nice dodge,” Serena says, propping her chin on one hand as she gives me her full attention. “But you can’t call the waiter over every time you don’t want to answer a question.”

“What question?” My napkin is folded on my lap so severely it’s become a starched defense mechanism. I can feel the heat already rising in my ears, the truth orbiting every atom but refusing atmospheric entry.

“Are you kidding me, Jenna?” Audrey gestures at me with her mimosa, and a droplet jumps and lands in a perfect, furious dot on her dress. She doesn’t blink. “You’ve been home from Japan for four whole days. Ignored the girl group chat asking how it was. Left the main one⁠—”

“Twice,” Layla adds.

“—and when Layla asked how your trip was just now, you said, quote, ‘Busy, thanks, next topic.’”

Serena nods, a slow and predatory tilt. “We’re your friends, not your enemies. You can just say you got railed by Dominic Cruz on every surface between here and the Pacific.”

“We’d likely applaud,” Nora adds, glancing at her watch because she needs to be back at the school in an hour. “If only to see you blush for once.”

My face heats further, which seems physically impossible but here we are. “Nobody ‘got railed,’” I say. “The only thing I was between here and the Pacific was sleep-deprived and chemically dependent on mini-bar wasabi peas.” I try for dismissive, professional, old-reliable Jenna, but even to my own ears it sounds threaded through with panic.

Layla puts her chin in her hand, peering at me over her glass. “Jenna.” There’s something in her voice—patient, unyielding, like she’s already forgiven me for the lies she knows I’m telling.

I stare at the silverware on the table. “It was business,” I say. “I spent ten days in Tokyo working.”