Free Restraining the Receptionist: ... the Receptionist, Book 2 by Juniper Bell

looked hot. His tie had wrapped itself around the wrist of the shady lady next to him. She was tugging him in for a kiss. To give him credit, he turned away before she could initiate mouth-to-mouth contact.
    “Excuse me,” I said, worming between them. “I’m this man’s…uh…” How could I explain our relationship? Then again, why did I have to? “…receptionist-slash-vengeful sex doll. Do you mind?”
    With a closer look at her, I realized she was about sixty, and not only that, had very likely not been born female. Her outrageous red curls, rough bone structure and hefty build made her look like a football player dressing up as Lucy for Halloween. No wonder they kept the lights so low and the liquor flowing.
    She looked like she wanted to put up a fight, but I gave her my own personal version of Blue Fury and turned my back to her.
    “Simon, let’s get out of here.” I tugged at his shirt sleeve. No suit jacket in sight.
    He mumbled something but didn’t fight me as I pulled him to his feet. He swayed and clutched at me. I pulled his arm over my shoulder and scanned the room, looking for a red exit sign. Aimless cocktail music floated around us, along with cigarette smoke mixed with perfume. Not nice perfume, but the kind meant to drown out the smell of degenerate late nights. Outside, no doubt the sun still shone, seeing as it wasn’t even seven yet, but inside, the atmosphere already felt like an all-night binge.
    Simon stumbled. I wouldn’t be able to get very far carrying an unconscious body.
    “Have you eaten?” I hadn’t eaten anything since that picnic, several hours and two orgasms ago.
    He shrugged. Surely they had food in this hellhole. I hauled him to a corner booth covered in torn pistachio-green vinyl and let him slump against me while I analyzed the menu. Many nights spent coaxing my father out of a drunk gave me an edge. Simon needed greasy fries and a burger. And some tomato juice. Call it Dana’s cure all.
    After a long swallow of tomato juice, he perked up a bit. As soon as he started downing the French fries, he became considerably more lucid. “What are you doing here, Dana? Ethan send you?”
    “No, Ethan didn’t send me.” I bristled, even though it was a perfectly logical conclusion for someone who didn’t know what I’d gone through in the past few hours. “I’m very angry with Ethan right now and I wanted to see you.”
    He frowned and eyed the burger.
    “No burger yet,” I ordered him. “Let the fries coat your stomach first. My theory is they neutralize the acid or something.”
    “What?”
    “Just trust me.”
    Apparently he did, as he stuffed another fry in his mouth. “Told you not to mess with Ethan,” he mumbled.
    “I didn’t. He messed with me. But I don’t want to talk about it yet. Why are you drunk?”
    “Why not? Feels good.”
    “It must feel better than it looks. You look like crap. Still hot, of course.” I had to be honest about that.
    “Dana, my fiery Dana. There’s no one like you.” He mooned at me. “If you’d been there, we could have pulled off the pitch, I bet.”
    “The Woodfield pitch?”
    “Bunch of dickheads. Nothing but questions questions questions. Knew most of it. Not all. So much for that.” He slugged his tomato juice, cursing it for its lack of alcoholic content. “If you’d been there, you could have fed me some answers. But no, Ethan had to keep you for himself. At least we had our deal.”
    I cleared my throat. “Yeah, well…”
    “You broke the deal.” Simon suddenly didn’t look drunk any more.
    I shrank back into the disgusting vinyl, trying not to think about how many desperate characters had inhabited this booth. “It wasn’t like that.”
    “He always gets what he wants. Always.”
    “Not this time. I’ll quit if I have to. I feel terrible. I only want to be with you. I’ll quit, actually I may already have, and we can be together outside of Cowell and Dirk. We don’t need Ethan.”
    He didn’t