Reckless Entanglement: The Hunter Brothers Book # 1
I’m sober.“I don’t remember asking if you wanted to talk about it,” Chloe says. She pauses, making an exaggerated pout and scratching her head. “Nope. I definitely didn’t ask.”
I open my mouth to tell her to back off, but she interrupts me.
“You clearly need to get this out, but if you don’t want to, fine. We’re still going for coffee though. And we can talk about something different.”
We head down to the cafeteria. It’s quiet as most of the students have finished their last lectures for the day and are heading home. Lucky them. Maybe they didn’t get cornered, or maybe they know how to say no and mean it. Apparently, I haven’t mastered that one yet.
We get our coffees and Chloe leads me to a table tucked away in the corner. “So what do you want to talk about?” she asks. “I know. I’ll tell you about my day. Dr Herbert was away today and his lab assistant took over my lecture. Boy, is he hot. I have no idea what he was talking about, but he was so pretty to watch. And…”
Chloe’s right. I do need to get this out. And I know her tactics. She’ll go on like this about any old shit until she breaks me. That’s how she works. And it’s why it’s actually harder to resist spilling my guts to her when I’m sober. Drunk me can follow her babbling and laugh along with her. Sober me will do just about anything to cut it off. “I think he might be married,” I blurt out.
“Dr Herbert’s lab assistant?” She frowns.
“No. Matt.”
“Matt as in, hot Friday night party guy?”
I nod and look down into my coffee cup.
“What makes you think that?” she asks.
I find myself telling her everything. How Matt just kind of appeared in my life. How he was flirty and definitely giving me the come on, but then how he changed and became more of a friend. Finally, I tell her about how at the party, we almost kissed and then he got that phone call. The one that made him run away from me.
Chloe raises an eyebrow when I’m done. “And that’s it? You’ve decided he’s married because of one phone call?”
“It’s not so much the call. It’s the fact he took it when we were so close to kissing. And then the way he ran from me straight after it. It was like he’d let himself forget he had a wife, and then she called him, and he realized what he had been about to do,” I tell her.
She considers this, blowing on the surface of her coffee and then taking a sip. “It could be that I guess. But it could also be one of a thousand other things. Maybe he got a call to say someone in his family had taken ill.”
That would explain why he hadn’t showed up for work for the last two days. But it wouldn’t explain why he hadn’t so much as texted me. “So why didn’t he just tell me that?”
“I don’t know.” Chloe shrugs. “I might be way off base, but I’m just saying you should at least give him the benefit of the doubt until you know for sure one way or the other. Have you tried actually asking him?”
I shake my head. “No. He hasn’t texted or called me and I’m not going to be that desperate girl who texts him first.” It sounds petty when I say it out loud, but it makes sense in my head. Matt seems like the kind of guy who is used to girls chasing him, and I refuse to be just another desperado in the queue to bed him. I have a little bit more self-respect than that.
“Right. Sorry. I forgot we were living in the 1800s,” Chloe says. “Oh, wait! We’re not.”
I sigh and shake my head. “Look I know it sounds stupid, but I can’t just text him and accuse him of cheating on the wife I’m not certain he has can I?”
“Not if you’re afraid of the answer. Anyway, don’t you work with him? I mean you can ask around at work,” she says.
“That’s the thing. He doesn’t really talk about himself. No one at work knows a thing about him.”
“A man of mystery. I like it.” Her eyes shine as she leans in closer. “So maybe he’s not married. Maybe he’s a hit man and he got the call for his next job.”
“If you’re not going to be serious about this, then why are we even having this conversation?” I try to sound stern but I can feel my lips twitching and I can’t stop myself from laughing.
Chloe grins at me. “Ask him at work. Just put it out there, Callie. You deserve better than some cheating rat.”
I bristle at her description of Matt. It’s so far from the warm, funny guy I’ve gotten to know over the last week or so. Maybe I have gotten this all wrong. “That’s the other thing. He hasn’t shown up for work all weekend. He was scheduled for double shifts on Saturday and Sunday. He didn’t show up for either of them.”
“Ah, so that’s what this is really about.” Chloe smirks. “You’re pissed off because you had to pick up his slack.”
“I can’t say I’m overly happy about it. You know Marco, my boss, hasn’t even been trying to call him to find out where he is? He’ll come swanning back in when he’s ready and nothing will get said. If one of the other wait staff did that, we’d be out the door.”
“What makes you so sure he won’t be?”
“Well, when he is there, he does very little work. He tends to spend too long chatting with the customers, charming them. But he doesn’t do much in the way of actually waiting on them. Marco doesn’t say anything to him, but he lectures the rest of us about keeping up.”
“Maybe Marco has himself a little man crush.” Chloe laughs. “At least that