Omiri's stare was blazing the side of my face and I could feel his irritation weighted as hell in the room.
"I'm not having dinner with you, Taven. My only commitment to you is fixing your image, not stroking your ego. Now will you please focus so I can explain what's next?" I kept my voice professional but wanted to laugh at Omiri glaring at me.
"You sound mean as hell but I like that. I don't mind working for your attention." Taven's sexy young ass leaned in closer to the camera with a cocky grin. "What I gotta do to get you to say yes? I'm persistent as hell when it comes to getting what I want."
"What you're going to get is dropped as a client if you don't?—"
My laptop slammed shut with more force than necessary and I jerked my head to find Omiri standing over me with his jaw locked tight and his eyes narrowed on me.
"What the hell? You just ended a client meeting." I was annoyed but also amused because clearly he was jealous.
"Nah, you were in the middle of that disrespectful muthafucker trying to get you in his bed. Fuck that call."
He locked his arms over his chest, making the muscles in them flex while he mean mugged me.
"You can't just…" He glared at me and I almost laughed. He was definitely jealous. It was all over his face and in that hateful ass attitude. "You are really pressed about this."
"I'm pressed about him trying to fuck like I'm not sitting here."
"He doesn't know you were here."
"Oh, so you're cool with him pushing up on you like that?"
"No, and you shouldn't care. You do realize I'm not yours to be worried about, right?" I arched my brow and tried incredibly hard to fight the smile that was surfacing.
"You're my daughter's mother."
I rolled my eyes and lifted my phone from the sofa to send Taven a text.
Me: Sorry, technical difficulty. I'll draft your responses for next week and set them up to post. I'll also send a list of community activities to your publicist that will show your commitment to being a Shark and will check in next week.
Before I could lock my phone, Omiri took it from my hands and started scanning the messages. His frown got deeper the more he scrolled. "You aren’t checking shit with him next week. Not if he thinks it's cool to shoot his shot instead of handling business, and why the hell does he keep calling you beautiful every other text?"
He was scrolling through my phone, mumbling to himself. "We just drafted this little disrespectful ass muthafucker."
"He's a kid and unprofessional, but I'm working on that…"
Omiri grilled the hell out of me. "That's not your job, Kari."
"His online presence is my job and part of that is making sure he understands the importance of being professional, even with me."
"Nah, that's not your responsibility. He has an agent and team for that. He says something dumb, you fix that shit. He says something dumb to or about you, I fix that shit."
I stood and reached for my phone but he held it out of the way and stepped back.
"Will you please give me my phone?"
"When I'm done, yeah. I need to read the rest of y'all's conversations."
He dropped his eyes back to the screen and continued scanning and swiping with his jaw clenching tighter. There wasn't anything there besides Taven's endless flirting and compliments and me shutting him down or redirecting him back to business.
"You're acting crazy right now."
"I'm being protective of my daughter's mother." He glared at me and handed my phone back, looking like he wanted to snatch me up. "And I'm knocking that young muthafucker on his ass at camp tomorrow."
"No you are not." I shoved a finger into his chest trying hard to stay serious but really wanting to laugh.
"Yes the fuck I am."
