Minute by Minute (Games & Diversions #3) Read online

He nods in response to my, frankly, rude interruption, and I uncross my legs for the seventh time underneath our table—taking a moment to steady their shaking before crossing them again, squeezing tightly.

  Lukas and I sit at one end of the massive round tabletop, and a noticeably nervous Chris sits at the other, his hands folded across his menu, his eyes on anything but us.

  And Griff—the passionate man I’ve come to know—is anything but.

  His back rod-straight, he sits politely in his seat without saying a word, his errant hand on my thigh the only motion that he makes as the quiet deepens ominously among the three of us.

  He answers questions from the waiter with only “yes’s” and “no’s,” and when it is time to order, he reads off his choice as if by teleprompter—his voice emotionless, his face impassive.

  Clearly, Chris has had enough.

  He pipes up.

  “Look… Griff…” he says, motioning across the table.

  “I know you’re probably mad that I’ve left you to stag it at the office—no, scratch that. I can see on your face that you’re probably mad that I haven’t been there.”

  Chris hesitates.

  “I hate that things have gotten this awkward, but maybe we’re gonna need to work around this.

  “I know things haven’t been the same lately… but I’ll do anything to rectify this.”

  His eyes are pleading, his face intense.

  Chris is obviously emotional at this point, and even after knowing his secret, I do have to say…

  A part of me feels really bad for the guy.

  I am afraid that Griff may destroy whatever friendship he and Chris have had.

  Even worse… I’m afraid that he’ll just destroy Chris.

  But I stay silent… and I am shocked when Griff actually responds.

  I am not shocked, however, at the low growl that emits from his clenched teeth.

  “What exactly are you trying to rectify?”

  Chris’s brow furrows, and he waves a hand between Griff and himself.

  “This,” he spouts. “Us. I know I put us in an awkward position. I should have been there. I should have…”

  Griff cuts him off.

  “You should have been there. Period. You shouldn’t have missed all that time from Tripping Out!, and you shouldn’t have let everything fall on my fucking shoulders.”

  Griff glowers, his gaze hot with anger.

  “I know what the hell you’ve been up to.”

  Chris finally stands up for himself.

  “What I’ve been ‘up to’? The only thing I’ve been ‘up to’ is taking care of this Voyager account. I’ve been busting my ass to get our business on track!”

  Lukas takes a sip of his water.

  “Business?” he asks, lowering his glass. “Don’t you mean ‘personal’?”

  Chris literally flinches.

  “What?”

  His voice is disbelieving, and Lukas leans in over the table—his green eyes narrowing in Chris’s uncomfortable direction.

  “The flower purchases. The new goddamned suits. Did you think I wouldn’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Know that you were seeing her?”

  Chris’s normally blushed face pales.

  “How…?” he asks, trailing off.

  “Never mind how,” Griff responds, his silky voice gruffer than it’s ever been.

  “That’s why you were keeping me from pointing fingers at her, huh? Protecting your little girlfriend?

  “You son of a bitch,” he continues.

  “It was easy to point fingers at Gregory Sears. He hated our company. Hated us. And we all hated him.

  “But now this?

  “Now to know that you purposely kept the spotlight off of Trina? Her, of all people?”

  Griff snorts harshly, pointing a steady finger at Chris’s wide-eyed face.

  “It makes her look even more guilty… It makes you look even more guilty,” Lukas finishes.

  I look at Chris… and wonder if he’s just peed in his expensive pants.

  “Trina? G-guilty?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Griff, look… I don’t know what you’re trying to insinuate, but you’ve got it all wrong. I didn’t come here tonight to argue. I came here tonight to make sure our Voyager account stayed solid. This is a business dinner, or did you forget? In fact, I invited Sabrina Wellington here tonight to take care of that very business…”

  Suddenly, Chris’s gaze averts over Lukas’s head.

  “Aaaaand she’s here right now,” he mutters quickly.

  He shifts in his seat.

  “Miss Wellington!” he calls out louder in greeting.

  I follow Chris’s glare to glance behind Lukas’s calm but infuriated face—only to find the redhead from a few nights ago, circling the table in a blush-colored dress, her pretty face obliviously cheerful as she moves towards a seat.

  A seat away from me… that puts her right next to Griff.

  “Mister Johnson,” she practically sings, leaning into Chris’s awkward kiss at her cheek.

  She peers behind her seat towards Griff with expectant eyes.

  “Mister Griffin.”

  She slides his name off of her tongue as if it were a dirty word. The expression on her face is smug and satisfied… and I could wipe that look right off of her.

  Griff stands briefly to shake her hand.

  “Miss Wellington… I’m a little surprised to see you here.”

  Lukas recovers quite quickly, and he politely pulls out the sultry redhead’s chair—a move that sparks blatant annoyance in my own chair.

  The redhead laughs softly as she takes a seat.

  “Mister Johnson—Chris here—actually notified us only a short while ago. Said that the Voyager team could attend this Tripping Out! business dinner to wrap up a few final things, and I agreed.”

  Of course, I think.

  And Sabrina Wellington smiles wider.

  “I’m just sorry that our senior editor, Karen Follop, couldn’t make it. Guess Tripping Out! will just have to settle for just the managing editor of Voyager tonight,” she jokes lightly.

  “Our p-pleasure,” Chris stammers, and I catch the scowl that Griff sneakily throws his way.

  “We just ordered not too long ago. We’ll motion for the waiter shortly,” Chris continues.

  “Wonderful,” Sabrina exclaims, clapping her hands together. She picks up a menu, musing aloud.

  “Now… let’s see about…”

  “What the hell is going on here?”

  A male voice booms directly behind my head, and I jump an inch in my seat. The voice is familiar, but scarily heated.

  I have to pull a complete 180-degree turn in my seat, and when I do, I have to wonder if I will pee myself this time.

  Jesus Christ.

  Foxx is here… and angry in a well-tailored light grey suit. He moves around the table, regarding every person sitting there, and he finds a seat, sliding out a chair to sit beside Chris.

  Chris is breathless by the time he can even speak.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks Foxx.

  “What am I doing here? What are you doing here?”

  “Me?” Chris squeaks. “I’m the one…”

  “Gentlemen,” Lukas butts in—his tone clipped but courteous. “We have company here.”

  Foxx looks over at our unusual guest—his eyes widening.

  “Bri… Sabrina… I mean…” He clears his throat loudly. “Miss Wellington, how are you?”

  Sabrina leans forward in her beautiful but dangerously low-cut dress, and she smirks at Foxx, the expression small but sinister.

  “I’m quite well. You seem to be doing well.”

  Foxx unfurls his white napkin with a sharp snap into the air.

  “I’m fantastic,” he replies… and the small exchange is dropped.

  Chris expels a long breath, glancing tensely from person to person around the cloth-covered tablet
op.

  “Well, if no one has anything to start with at the moment,” he gestures across the table, “let me just say that…”

  He pauses, his hand freezing in mid-air.

  “Kat!”

  My stomach drops at the sound of Kat’s name, and I whip my head around, twisting fast to find myself staring directly into a set of eyes that are identical to mine.

  My sister’s eyes.

  Kat’s eyes.

  In her heavy black blouse and grey pants, she seems every bit as severe as she is dressed, her face confused but austere as she glowers at me and then the rest of the table.

  She shifts the purse in her hand to the other.

  “What is this?” she questions harshly. “Some sort of party?”

  “I thought you were too sick to come out tonight?” Foxx asks, his voice low and gravelly.

  Kat walks towards him, scooting a chair as she prepares to sit down.

  “I lied,” she states plainly.

  “So, why didn’t you tell me that you were coming to Armani’s?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I told you that I was going to a business dinner.”

  Kat’s eyes circle the table.

  “Well, that’s what I was supposed to be attending as well,” she comments wryly. “But this doesn’t look much like business.”

  “It was supposed to be,” Foxx replies. “It was Griff’s idea.”

  Griff balks.

  “My idea?” Griff calls out suddenly. “But…”

  “Don’t even start,” Foxx barks towards Lukas. “I’m talking to my fiancée.”

  “Funny,” Kat remarks—her tone dry and snide. “You haven’t really talked to your fiancée in days.”

  “That’s because you’ve been shutting me out!”

  Foxx’s voice rises, startling all of us.

  I watch silently, willing myself not to say anything, but Kat and Foxx continue to go at it in the presence of every shocked face at the table—and a few shocked faces that aren’t—and within minutes, I decide that I just can’t take it anymore.

  I have to say something.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Kat,” I bellow over at her. “Why don’t you tell Foxx the truth so that we can all stop hearing the bitching?”

  Kat’s jaw nearly drops to the tabletop.

  “My bitching?”

  “Yes,” I reply, hissing loudly across the other guests. “Your bitching. It isn’t enough for you to ruin your own life; you have to butt in and ruin mine, too.”

  “What?” Kat screeches.

  But now, I’m on a roll.

  And I can’t keep my wheels from spinning out of control.

  I lean closer to the table, nearly spitting the words.

  “Mrs. Kittredge? Surely you haven’t forgotten the little conversation you had with her.

  “Hell, I know that you and I haven’t been on the best of terms, but sabotaging my business relationships. That’s beyond fucked up.”

  “Who?”

  Kat acts unbelieving.

  “Who the hell is Mrs. Kittredge?” she asks.

  That’s it.

  I grip my fork at my place setting tightly, resisting the urge to plant its tines into the wood at my table.

  “Don’t insult my intelligence, and don’t play dumb with me, Kat!

  “You can’t just pull the wool over my eyes like you have with Foxx. And if you had any fucking integrity, you’d tell your fiancé the truth.”

  In fact, the truth of Kat’s secret is rattling at the edge of my teeth. I grind them silently in an effort to keep the secret in, but it’s like a tiger rattling in a cage.

  It feels like I’ve been holding onto it for so long.

  And I can’t hold it in any longer.

  “You’d tell him,” I yell menacingly across the white tablecloth, “that you’re pregnant!”

  Kat gasps.

  The audience at our table gapes.

  A stunned hush follows in the wake of my unexpected revelation, and none of the suddenly mute members of our dinner party can do anything but stare—their gazes flicking between Kat and I and then slowly over to Foxx, who is stunned into total, catatonic silence.

  An entire minute passes before he moves again, and he turns in his seat to glare at a seething Kat, whose eyes are filling with angry tears.

  Abruptly, Griff squeezes my thigh under the table.

  “Elena,” he snaps quietly.

  But whatever he is about to say is interrupted by an increasingly vocal Foxx, whose voice begins to climb from the ashes of a whisper into a strong and steady roar.

  “That’s just fucking perfect,” he booms.

  He turns on the entire table.

  “Just how many fucking secrets is my ‘so-called’ family keeping behind my back?

  “Anyone? Hm?”

  He presses his lips into an angry line.

  “First,” he calls out, motioning towards Griff. “My best friend creeps right under my nose and sleeps with the same sister-in-law that I specifically asked him not to get involved with.

  “And then my… amazingly truthful fiancée neglects to tell me about a child—our child.”

  Foxx twists suddenly to the side, gesturing at a flustered and understandably flushed Chris who sits idly by.

  “Anything you’d like to add, Chris?” Foxx asks him.

  “Any secrets you’d like to throw into the pot?”

  Chris opens his mouth slowly before being abruptly cut off.

  “No,” Griff snarls, catching everyone’s attention.

  He glares openly at his red-faced friend.

  “Chris is all ‘secret-ed’ out.”

  Griff throws his napkin at the table, and Chris squirms, his eyes narrowing as rage finally reaches his face.

  “Nobody speaks for me,” he grits out at Griff. “You, least of all.”

  “Well, then, have at it,” Griff declares.

  “Go on; tell me how you really feel. Take your anger out on me like you always wanted to because you’re still not over your college crush, Trina, and you want to blame me for her not wanting you!

  “G’head,” Griff finishes.

  Chris practically growls in response over the table.

  “You don’t fucking get it, do you?” he yells. “I’ve been over Trina. And I’ve been over you and your constant and persistent dickheadedness.”

  “Dickheadedness?”

  “Yeah, that’s right… You think a few weeks can erase a decade of irresponsibility, whoring and poor judgment.

  “You hold down the Tripping Out! fort for one week, and all of a sudden, we’re supposed to forget all the times you haven’t showed up before?!

  “It doesn’t work like that, Griff.

  “And if it wasn’t for Ana’s text, I wouldn’t be here at all!”

  He stands, planting trembling hands on the table in front of me.

  “You hear me? Not at fucking all.”

  The ticking time-bomb that is Griff starts to count down, and before he can reach one, our reluctant waiter appears, dropping my order carefully in front of me before circling the table to do the same with Griff and Chris.

  Our poor waiter turns on his heel, happy to leave, and sadly, I watch him go, my relief from his brief reprieve fading into the distance as the server walks further and further away.

  And without warning… without any other preparation or additional clues… the table explodes, breaking out into an epic battle of screaming and yelling and finger-pointing.

  The voices drown out the live piano music, and a harried hostess has to approach the table, her tone pleasant but firm in an attempt to hush the feud that’s happening within our small but raucous dinner party.

  With the exception of the fretful bystander Sabrina—everyone is engaged in war.

  Teeth gnashed. Hearts pounding. Voices raised.

  Everyone… but me.

  I can’t find the will to argue anymore.

  Because somewhere�
� somehow… in the midst of Chris’s small diatribe that sparked this fiery explosion, something else is triggered.

  Something within me is triggered.

  I don’t know what it is… but it feels like… like…

  A puzzle piece that’s not supposed to be there… or a chip in the dice that keeps the two blocks from rolling right…

  I stay still—even amidst the chaos… trying to remember exactly what it was while the ambient roar in the restaurant disappears into the background of my mind like white noise.

  Come on, Elle.

  Think!

  You’ve got the pieces of the puzzle; just put them together.

  Put them together, Elle.

  Put them together.

  And while I chant this mantra in my mind, the scene around me changes. Lukas stands, tapping my shoulder.

  “I tried, Elle,” he whispers in my ear. “I really did.”

  He slams a hand on the table, prompting everyone’s sudden silence.

  “I’m heading to the men’s room,” he announces, “and when I come back to pay this check, I’m out of here. I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening…” he says, looking around the tabletop.

  “… ‘cause you’ll be doing so without me.”

  He places his hand on my back.

  “Excuse me for a minute, love.”

  I nod, and Lukas turns to walk away.

  He disappears toward the end of the hallway with my eyes glued to the back of his black suit jacket and the pieces of the puzzle I’d been trying to solve scattered back into the damning disarray that it once was.

  Unlucky Pair

  There is but one good throw upon the dice, which is, to throw them away.

  -Unknown

  DAY 7—7:52PM

  Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay – Armani’s

  LUKAS

  The second I hit the restroom door, I sigh in relief, letting go of a long and tension-ridden breath.

  My nerves are shot to shit.

  My hands are involuntarily shaking.

  And the tightness in my chest makes it hard to inhale with the weight of my guilt, anger and frustration all pressing down on me.

  I’m running away again.

  But to what am I running… I have no fucking clue.

  I use the bathroom quickly, avoiding the mirror on my way out.

  I’d rather not see the shame in my eyes, and when I exit, I find myself staring into someone else’s.