“Obviously.”
“And Sophie?”
There was no secret about my interest or my intent with either of them at this point.
“So what can I tell her about our plans for the weekend?”
I snorted, a laugh building in the back of my throat. It was unfair of him to let me off the hook so readily. But Daniel had always made things easy, even when I didn’t deserve it. At the same time, my phone vibrated in my pocket and I guessed without looking it was the restaurant letting me know our table had finally become available.
“You can tell her she’s the boss.” I jerked my chin toward him. “Whatever she says goes. I’m free from Friday night at ten to Monday morning at eight. Now finish your drink, our table is ready.”
CHAPTER 19
SOPHIE
Itapped my finger against my earbud, listening for the tenth time to the voice text Finn had sent me on his lunch break. Listening to him jerk off in the bathroom while whispering about the way he wanted to bury himself inside of me was absolutely not an appropriate workplace activity, but my four p.m. meeting was running late, and I had a little bit of time to kill.
And that was precisely how Marshall Covington found me.
At five after four, the sound of his brother’s orgasm ringing in my ear and a blush as horrendous as the color Finn’s office had been until the day I met him at the paint store.
“Mr. Covington,” I greeted, slapping the earbud out of my ear. I scraped it and my cell phone into the top drawer of my desk and held out my hand. “Sophie Berry, so nice to meet you.”
“Marshall, please.” He shook my hand, and I gestured for him to take a seat.
“That’ll be all, Sarah, thank you,” I told the receptionist, dismissing her back to her desk and making a mental note to have her call me to check availability when clients showed up for meetings. But that was all deflection; it had been careless of me. Marshall had a reputation in the industry, and I knewhe wouldn’tnotshow up. But it also wasn’t my fault I had an embarrassingly juvenile crush on his younger brother.
“Thank you for meeting with me,” Marshall said, folding one long leg over the other and threading his fingers together, resting them on top of his knee.
“The pleasure is mine. I was honestly shocked when you reached out.”
The meeting with Marshall had been a very last-minute thing, arranged by his assistant and my receptionist two days before. Ironically, while I was at lunch with Finn.
“I know our lines of business don’t often cross, but I’ve found an interesting proposal on my desk for a mixed-use space and my fiancé suggested engaging an interior designer on the front end of the proposal process could only work in my favor.”
Finn had told me Marshall and Silas Ayres were dating each other, but he hadn’t said anything about an engagement. I bit my lips between my teeth to stop from commenting on the thing I very much wanted to comment about, then took a breath and said the right thing instead.” “You’re absolutely correct about that.”
I spent the next hour with Marshall, reviewing his ideas for the space and spitballing my own thoughts around space utilization and color theory. By five-fifteen, we both had a good starting place, and I promised to have some mood boards over his way before the middle of next week. He excused himself, apologizing about having a standing obligation, which I knew to be a weekly Friday night dinner with his brothers. We shook hands again, and I waited until I heard the ding of the elevator doors before collapsing into my chair and holding my face in my hands.
Life was a curious beast sometimes.
I pulled out my phone and texted Daniel.
You were right about LA being good for my job
He responded almost immediately.
Daniel
Meeting w Marshall went well?
Better than.
I should have told Finn about it before it happened
You can tell him tonight.
I hummed, nodding even though Daniel wasn’t there to see my agreement.