Page 7 of Power of the Mind
Returning to my desk, done with office repairs for the day, I glared at the new-employee screening I’d been working on for a private security company downtown. Their fifteen potential hires required extensive background evaluations, including driving histories, personal, financial, and criminal checks, all so the company could have peace of mind when deciding who to hire.
I’d worked for the company before doing the same thing. It was mindless busy work I didn’t enjoy. It left me deskbound and agitated, constantly looking for something else to keep me busy. Hence, office repairs—until that went south, and I ventured back to my desk.
I popped a piece of Trident and munched it obnoxiously. No more Nicorette if I could help it. The nicotine cravings had mostly leveled out. Unless I was stressed, but I’d been doing my best to manage those ups and downs with extra therapy and long gym sessions.
I chicken-pecked the keyboard, squinting at the bright screen in the dimly lit room. The lamp in the corner had been knocked over during my encounter with Faye a few months ago, shattering the bulb and bending the frame. I had yet to replace it. New furniture hadn’t made the list. Everything within the four walls of my office was junk. The place was falling apart. Not worth the rent I paid. The overhead light was down to its last forty-watter, and the cover was so thick with dust it was a wonder I could see anything beyond the computer screen.
Weak sunlight bled through the filmy window, highlighting neglect in every corner. Spiderwebs clung to the long-dead potted plant atop the rusty, good-for-nothing file cabinet. Scratches and scuffs littered the wooden wall paneling. Stains coated the worn industrial carpet, and random chips and holesmarked the drywall and ceiling, a gift left behind by Faye’s erratic shooting when she’d tried to kill me. I’d repaired the worst of them.
The office was a reflection of my life, dreary and uncared for. What did it matter? I had no one to impress. No one gave a shit about me or how I lived. The only person who had ever offered an ounce of love or sympathy was slowly losing her mind to dementia, and it hurt like a rusty nail digging into flesh and bone.
Rubbing a hand over my stubbled jaw, I scowled and skimmed the form I’d pulled up on the computer, looking for incriminating words and scanning for anything the company would consider disqualifying.
Ordinarily, I didn’t work on the weekend, but if I didn’t find something to do with myself that wasn’t punching a bag for eight solid hours at the gym or pushing weights until my muscles screamed, I would end up back outside Tallus’s apartment, and it was the last place I wanted to be.
Myhabitwas getting out of hand. Every day, I was one day closer to him calling the cops and having my ass locked up. Tallus was too smart to be oblivious.
Besides, I didn’t want to be there. Not today. His fuck buddy must have spent the night last night. When I’d left Tallus’s around one, the guy was still there, and I was sick and tired of envisioning Tallus having hot, sticky sex with someone else. The last thing I wanted was to see Mr. Fuck Buddy Memphis wandering into the street at dawn, looking disheveled and satiated with his clothing askew.
No fucking thank you.
He’s just a friend, my ass. Friend with benefits. Did I look stupid? Apparently.
Not that Tallus was mine.
Not that I had any claim on the unforgettable, sexy-as-sin records clerk with the come-fuck-me glasses that turned my blood to lava and tied my tongue in knots.
I didn’t. He could sleep with anyone he wanted. I’m sure I was nothing more than an insignificant blip on his radar. An annoyance.
Why he hadn’t told me to go to hell yet was anybody’s guess. I expected it every time I wound up at his door, drunk off my ass and looking for a fuck, every time I left his apartment as a failed excuse for a human being who couldn’t give him what he wanted.
I shook thoughts of a naked Tallus from my mind and refocused on the lines of text filling the computer screen, drumming fingers on the desk and every so often spinning the neon-green fidget spinner I’d bought to appease my doctor.
Fine, it worked, whatever. Who cared? Stupid kids’ toy.
The next person on the list to investigate was Lisa Phoenix from York. Lisa had accumulated several parking tickets—tsk, tsk—was PTA at her daughter’s school—Good for you, Lisa. How noble—and had credit card debt to the tune of eight thousand one hundred and seventy dollars, on which she struggled to make her minimum payments.
“Bad girl, Lisa. Those creditors are going to ride your ass soon.” I scratched a note on a piece of paper.
Lisa’s ex-husband, a corrections officer at a youth detention center, paid her pitiful child support, considering his income. “Asshole,” I mumbled. “You’re a real fucking winner.”
More scrolling. More reading. More writing shit down.
It was a wonder my eyes didn’t cross as I skimmed information, took notes, and performed new searches.
Forty minutes later, I’d made all the necessary checks on Lisa Phoenix and moved on to the last guy on the list, Blair Nottingham. A half-hour later, I was done with him too. I wroteup the required report for the security company, emailed it, and was about to create an invoice for my troubles when a rap sounded at the door to my office.
Scowling at the scuffed wooden surface, I considered ignoring whoever had come knocking. It was the weekend, for fuck’s sake. I didn’t technically work on the weekend. But jobs had been fewer and farther between lately, and I had bills to pay. Unlike little miss Lisa, I knew what kind of trouble debt collectors could cause, and the last thing I wanted was to tango with the likes of them.
“What?” I snapped and immediately bit my tongue. Cursing my instinctive reaction, I checked my tone, cleared my throat, and tried again. “Come in. It’s open.”
I prayed to the gods it was someone looking for me to do tracking or surveillance. I’d give anything to chase down a bail jumper. Fuck it, I’d even take a cheating spouse at this point. Anything to get me out of the office and away from the fucking computer. Investigating fraud and performing security checks had been the name of the game lately, and I was tired of it.
The door pushed inward, and a second later, my wet dream, the star of all my pornographic fantasies, and the reason for my eternally sleepless nights walked in wearing a knee-weakening smirk that oozed sultry mischief and made my breath catch.
Tallus fucking Domingo.
In the flesh.