Dirty Desires - Crystal Kaswell Page 0,4

Eve likes. She often alludes to a love of thrashing guitars and emotional vocals. A taste for her father's favorite music. Green Day, Black Flag, the Ramones. Classic punk and a smattering of the pop that came after.

Fuck.

I'm too obsessed. I need to stop this. Now.

Before I'm storming through Manhattan in a rage.

Before I need another three thousand miles between me and my past.

I'm not moving to Los Angeles. New York needs to stay mine. Not tainted by a woman ripping my heart to shreds.

I put my computer in sleep mode and join my business partner in the kitchen.

Shepard looks up from the espresso machine. That I am barely able to muster interest glance of his.

What is it people say? Resting bitch face.

Whatever the male version is, he's got it. Shep always looks irritated by other people's inability to keep up.

Usually, he is. With a few exceptions.

His wife. His brother.

Me.

Somehow, I'm the prickly mogul's best friend. Somehow, I was the best man at his wedding.

I guess no one told him it's bad luck asking a divorced man to stand at the altar.

"Early today." I hold up my mug to toast. Cold English Breakfast. No longer worth drinking.

Shepard shakes his head. "You need some new material."

"Wait until I ask what your wife is doing with you."

"Besides coming on my face?"

My laugh is a welcome relief—that's blunt for Shep—but it's not enough. Tension returns to my shoulders. Words bounce around my brain. How can I say no? "Sneaking away to your mistress?" I nod to the espresso machine.

"I need help if my mistress makes coffee this shitty."

"Sounds like something to discuss with your therapist."

He laughs.

It used to be a rare sound for him. Since he reconnected with his ex-girlfriend—

It was a strange turn of events. Marriage by blackmail. A new one, even for me. Not Shepard, blackmailing his bride. A third party, blackmailing Shepard. Win her heart or else.

The bastard called it a game. I guess it is a game. There are rules, victory conditions, stakes.

But where the hell is the fun?

"Interested in other people's problems," he says. "You should discuss that."

"You have so many. I can't help myself."

His laugh is soft. It covers the drip-drip of the machine. "Here for tea or torture?"

"I have to choose?"

"Which is it today? Something about how Americans don't understand tea?"

"Well, you certainly understand torture."

He chuckles.

"Full of yourself too. As if the US is the only country in the Americas."

"Are you going to call me a Yank?" he asks.

"That's the nicest thing I'd call you."

He half-smiles. "And you can't talk about ego."

"Ego? What ego?"

He picks up the electric kettle. Fills it with water.

I raise a brow. "You're fixing tea?"

"I've learned from the best." He smiles at the allusion to his wife. Stares at the kettle like it's his beloved. Dreamy eyed and full of affection. Then he shakes it off. Sets the kettle to boil. "Why are you here so early?"

I shrug as if I don't understand the question. I'm always early.

Only I know what he's asking.

He's asking why I'm wearing my frustration all over my face.

"Weren't you out last night? I could swear Jasmine said something about your Instagram." He shudders how awful, following you on social media. "Where do you get the energy?"

"If you need a lesson in stamina—"

"Evasive."

I shrug like I don't care. Motion to the kettle.

Shep nods sure, grabs a mug, loose leaf tea, a plastic strainer.

"I have a business partner who treats me right and the best tea money can buy. How can I stay away from the office?"

He makes that mm-hmm noise that means we both know you're full of shit. "So it has nothing to do with your… what do you call her?"

"Temptation."

"I still don't understand the story there."

"Who said I wanted you to?"

He chuckles you're not fooling anyone. "Apparently, you and my wife were discussing it. She's smitten."

"I'm sorry, Shep. But you had to know she'd find a better man one day."

"With your love story." He scoops leaves into the strainer. "You must have told her something I don't know. I can't imagine she'd care much about you fucking some na?ve co-ed."

This time, I laugh. "She's not na?ve."

"No, she's a wise teenager?" He rolls his eyes. "Is she even legal?"

"She's eighteen." I thought she was older when I found her site. A grad student. Or an artist in her thirties.

She doesn't usually discuss high school troubles. And she writes like a woman who's lived an entire life.

I guess she has. In a mere eighteen years.

The first time she