Chapter 413

It turned out, when I wasn’t running around all over the hotel trying to double check that things were getting done for the events I was going to be responsible for later, I could get a hell of a lot more done than usual.

By the time lunch came around I had the signed contract back from Jay and her business partner Shawn, Ash passed on that Jacob was in to act as the dealer for the party, my email inbox was currently on 0 unread emails, I had three more client meetings set for next week and everything for my events next week were locked in except for the wedding cake delivery time for the Paolostappo wedding next Saturday.

What that meant, though, was that I had time to second guess myself.

I dodged a conversation with Tan, who was starting to realise how much trouble he was in with Jonas’s extra bookings and the wedding prep that was supposed to be starting that afternoon, by saying I was heading out to a lunch meeting and couldn’t stick around to talk him through things we’d already covered earlier in the week. When I glanced back while passing through the glass doors out of our area of the officers he was standing there looking like a lost puppy.

It took effort not to go back there and fix his bullshit, but the guy needed to sink or swim at some point and I’d tried my fucking damndest. And he had Doug to go to still, he just didn’t want to go to his boss and admit he was underwater.

My gut said that I should go down to see Dayana, but I still hadn’t figured out what the fuck had happened between us earlier that morning. So instead of heading her way, I went out the back of the Casino all the way to the staff parking lot and climbed into my truck. Once I was in there I sighed heavily, the heat of the day having made the interior a bit of a dry sauna, and I turned over the engine to get the AC running before pulling out my phone.

It was weird to feel like I had options all of a sudden for who to call and talk things out. Before this week there had only been two people I would have really talked to about weird stuff like this - Cass or Dayana. A distant third, if somehow I needed it, would have been my sister. This was about Dayana, and my sister didn’t know anything about my current weird relationship stuff, so Cass should have been my go-to.

But for some reason I felt like I needed a different perspective. My fiancee’s word vomit when she’d been talking about Dayana in her App Notes had been ... complicated. And I’d tried not to dwell on them, but with what I’d been feeling like I was noticing, it was hard not to.

Becca would have given me practical advice, but she was taking care of Wanda and lacked some context that would take a while to explain. Ami, Zenya, and Leia had almost no context, and for all that I adored each of them I didn’t feel like they would be as good at problem solving this out. Well, depending on her mood, Zenya might problem solve for me with some mothering or with her horniness, and neither of those would be helpful for my current mindset.

I called Cattie. She was the only one of the girls who had actually met Dayana.

“Good afternoon, Robbie,” she answered after the second ring.

“Hey, gorgeous,” I sighed, the tension in my shoulders relaxing almost as soon as I heard her voice.

“Are we alone?” she asked.

“I’m in my truck, no one’s listening. You?”

“At home,” she said, then cleared her throat. “Good afternoon, Master.”

I grunted softly, closing my eyes and smiling as the AC continued to cool everything down. “Catherine,” I groaned. “Don’t do that to me.”

She chuckled warmly. “Sorry, Master,” she said, this time with it coming out a little more casual instead of filled with sexual heat. “What’s up?”

“Baby, I need some perspective here,” I said. “In more ways than one. Girlfriend perspective, female perspective, and maybe Knock some Sense into me perspective.”

“O-kay, I can try all those,” she said. “What’s this about?”

“Dayana,” I said, then let out a sigh. “We had a weird ... moment, I guess, earlier.”

“Did you two kiss or something?”

“No,” I said. “No, not a moment like that. Well, not- No.”

“You’re being super clear and making it totally easy to help you out here, Tiger,” Cattie said sarcastically.

“OK, so- some minor backstory to today; ever since I got back to work after the trip, I feel like I’m kind of second guessing things. Well, not things. People. At first I thought it was just my brain being all hopped up of sex hormones after the week we had there, and everything happening the way it did, but as the week’s gone on I keep noticing things. And I’ve been trying to be realistic because I know these people, and I’m not used to thinking of them like this.”

“Robbie,” Cattie said, cutting me off from my rambling. “Are you just now realising that women around you like to flirt with you?”

“I- Well, no? I don’t know if they’re-”

“They’re flirting with you, Tiger,” Cattie said. “Dayana is flirting with you.”

My jaw was hanging open and I had to lick my lips because they felt dry. “But...”