11. Ryker
11
RYKER
W hen the food arrives, Sienna is still nowhere to be seen. I consider having a waitress check the bathroom in case something happened, but I think it’s safe to say she bolted.
A low grumble involuntarily echoes from my throat as I look at the food on our plates.
It is unfortunate… about the food, I mean.
So, instead of leaving as well, I dig into the mac ’n’ cheese, which does not taste like something a restaurant of this reputation should serve, and much less charge an almost three-digit amount for. I swallow the bite and switch my plate with the one sitting abandoned on the opposite side.
The awful couple next to us —or rather me— is being served the same course once again. I’m almost glad Sienna is gone because if I had to watch him stare at my… soon to be new employee for much longer, I would have had to turn that guy into dessert.
The tacos she ordered are actually delicious, and I have finished almost all of them when Sienna, unexpectedly, drops down in her chair again. Her hair is in disarray and if I had to take a guess, I’d say she just had sex in the broom closet. Probably with the valet she was flirting with earlier.
Is that what she does? Random sex with random strangers?
“Hey,” she draws her full eyebrows into one angry line that makes something in my chest flutter and my throat seize up. “That’s not my food! You thief!”
“You’re one to talk,” I reply after swallowing the last bit of taco. “Thought you’d run out on me… again.”
“You still have your pants, don’t you?”
An ‘uhhuuhuu’ echoes from the table next to us, followed by what sounds like a rather vulgar proposition to take off his pants instead, which is when I’ve had enough. I’ve had it with this guy. I get up and am about to force feed him my fist when I hear Sienna quietly instructing me to sit back down. Somehow that only makes me even more aggravated. My eyes dart back to the woman across the table, who insistently nods for me to take a seat.
Who the fuck does she think she is?
“I don’t know which one I should teach some manners first, him or you,” I grunt through clenched teeth, trying to remain calm.
“Tough call, though I do think he’d quite like a spanking from you. Have you noticed how he’s been checking you out all evening?” Sienna takes the cutlery and I notice dark smudges on her hands. “Now, please, sit.”
Has she been… working in the broom closet?
What the hell has she been up to?
Reluctantly, I comply and choose not to make a scene. The couple next to us flag down their server once more, and make him pack up their second round of the main course to go, then they complain about the quality of the food and threaten never to return. Although, for everyone else in the establishment, it’s probably more of a promise than a threat.
After they’re gone, I finally have the chance to find out what Sienna was doing earlier. “What happened to your?—”
“Come on,” she cuts me off, gets up, empties her beer in one go and slowly follows the couple that is now paying the bill. Their server seems more than relieved when he clears their table.
“No tip,” Sienna mumbles. “Figures.” Then she turns to me and whispers in my ear, “Do you have a driver with you, or are you alone?” Her breath feels nice and warm against my skin.
As exhaled air usually does. Nothing special about it.
“Driver,” I reply with a lump in my throat, not sure what she is up to.
We wait behind the couple from hell for a minute, then receive our coats. I take care of the check, leaving a tip big enough for us and the demonic duo, who are now on their way out.
When we join them in front of the entrance, the valet pulls up their car and exits with an apologetic expression on his face.
“I don’t know how this could happen,” he begins to explain, “but I’m afraid you have a flat tire.”
The guy, whose hair looks like he probably swam here, checks his rear wheel and then, with an increasingly red head, wags his finger at the valet. “Are you shitting me, dude? You did this on purpose, didn’t you?” He grabs the poor guy by his uniform’s lapels and shakes him a little.
“Well, this is unacceptable,” his date chimes in. “We want to speak to your?—”
“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary,” Sienna interrupts, trying to calm the wife, while I grab the husband by his neck and pull him off the unlucky employee. For someone of his frail stature, that guy is a lot more aggressive than is safe for him.
“They can just take our car, can’t they…” Sienna looks at me with a forced smile and gears turning in her head, “babe?”
A shiver runs down my spine and then all the way up again, causing the corners of my mouth to lift involuntarily. It seems like she looked for the pet name that would annoy me the most. Unsuccessfully. It’s an odd sensation and I’m not entirely sure what’s happening here, but I do immediately get what she is planning. “Well, yes, absolutely,” I say and straighten the guy’s suit, then put my arm around him. “Here comes Miles, my driver,” I motion toward the black limousine that is pulling up next to the yellow accident that is this guy’s car. “He will take you anywhere you want.”
Wet Hair looks over at his date, apparently uncertain what to do.
“There’s champagne inside,” I say and watch her light up.
“Well, if you wanna see the show…” she croons and is already on her way in.
The guy makes a threatening head bop towards our valet and reluctantly walks towards my car as well. “Get it fixed,” he threatens. “I will send someone to pick it up tomorrow.”
“What show are you going to see?” I ask, pretending to be interested.
“None of your business now, is it?”
Charming guy .
I nod and open the door for him while grinding my teeth a little. “Of course,” I answer. “I hope you have a very pleasant night.” Hopefully, about as pleasant as you are, I think to myself, then tap on my driver’s window, lean down to Miles and, for everyone to hear, tell him, “Take them wherever they want to go.” Then I move in closer and whisper, “But make sure you take the longest route and hit every single traffic jam you can find on the way.”
Miles nods with a grin on his face and off they go. Sienna has a similar devious grin when she walks back to me. The valet is busy calling someone to repair the tire.
“We need to call your driver to let him know to?—”
“Take the longest route through every traffic jam he can find? Already took care of it.”
Sienna nods approvingly, apparently not expecting me to be capable of the same level of pettiness as her. “And you should give?—”
“My business card to… Joseph, is it?” I pull out my card, add a nice tip, and let him know to call me in case he runs into any trouble with this douche or his boss so I can straighten it out.
Sienna gives me a suspicious side-eye, reluctantly (and then a little too enthusiastically) bids farewell to Joseph, and we start walking through the chilly night air.
“Some people.” She shakes her head. “Can you believe it?”
My mind automatically adds a ‘babe’ at the end of that sentence.
Can you believe it, babe?
I have never been a fan of pet names. They are a waste of time, if you ask me, and ‘babe’ is the most generic one there is, but it feels different when she’s saying it. Sienna has a way of making even the most mundane things sound… special. But, truth be told, I would probably get aroused just by her reading my grocery list out loud. Another sign that something is profoundly wrong with me. I try to clear my mind of the intrusive thoughts that are about to take hold.
“So you vanished from dinner to stab their tire? That’s quite…” I am looking for the right words to describe someone who defies simple definitions. “That’s quite…”
“Necessary,” she says flatly. “Both of them were being impossible. They were rude to the valet, rude to the server, they were gaming the restaurant and most importantly?—”
“Neither of them should have been driving a car after all the cocktails and whiskey they had.”
Sienna glances over at me, stuffs her hands in her pockets and nods. “Also, I didn’t stab their tire. I took a tiny pebble, put it into the cap on the valve and screwed that back on to deflate it. Worked like a charm.”
“Resourceful,” I admit as we walk next to the gently flowing water of the river. “Remind me not to get on your bad side,” I joke, which elicits a little laugh from the woman next to me. It’s hard not to stare at her bobbing hair, her red nose, or that beautiful smile. “Where do you think they’re going now?”
Sienna climbs up a small boulder on one side, then jumps down the other side, using my shoulder as a rail to hold on to. “Well, I’m hoping hell, but realistically I’d say to some locale called The Pearl Necklace , probably.”
I laugh. “ The Pearl Necklace sounds a little too classy. They’re more of a Holes & Poles kind of crowd, if you ask me.”
Sienna laughs again, now louder, but quickly chokes it off. “Do you think Miles is going to be fine? They might not go to hell, but they’re sure going to give him a taste of it.”
“Have you already forgotten who he’s working for? He’s used to much worse. Besides, Miles is a trained bodyguard with combat experience. He will be able to take care of that little prick, no problem.”
Sienna seems to be content with that answer and so we continue walking through the dimly lit street. It’s nice out tonight. It’s nice walking by the river at night… even with Sienna. And there’s a slew of questions queued in my mind, waiting to be asked. I start with the most obvious one.
“So, what’s the deal with that?”
“Deal with what?”
“Your compulsive streak of questionable righteousness.”
To my surprise, Sienna doesn’t have a quick comeback the way she usually does. Her eyes flicker over to me and I’m not entirely certain what she might be thinking. She’s quiet and I wonder what to make of that. Does she feel insulted by something that seems rather obvious? Did something else happen? Did I do something to upset her even more than she usually seems to be around me?
“Someone has to do it,” she answers eventually, without further explanation, as we close in on a more populated area. “That reminds me: you’re back on top of my list,” she tries to change the subject and I let her.
“What list?” I answer, intending to come back to this topic another time.
“My list of revenge, of course. Just imagine me with a round belly and a fluffy white beard. I have one book for good kids and one for the bad. Guess which one you made the top ten in.”
Her phone chimes. While she digs it out of her handbag, I observe closely the way her fingers gracefully swipe across the screen, the way her expression changes from amused to concerned? Distressed? The way her fingers wrap around the phone, squeezing it with annoyance? Anger? Seems like someone just received some bad news. We pass a subway station and keep walking aimlessly along the abandoned riverside.
“You’re a lawyer, aren’t you?” she asks, switching the topic again.
“Technically,” I answer. “I only ever worked as a lawyer for a few years. Haven’t practiced in a while.”
“Is that because you sucked?”
“Is that relevant information for your list-making or are you trying to get to know me… babe?”
Babe. Babe. Babe.
It’s burned into my mind.
She lets out a huff, rolls her eyes and ignores the pet name entirely. “I already know everything I need to know. I’m just trying to make you understand.” Sienna stuffs the phone back into her pocket. “Why did you become a lawyer? Didn’t you want to channel your own righteousness so it wouldn’t be as misguided? Didn’t you dream of helping people? Back when you were still an optimistic, slightly na?ve baby lawyer who hadn’t yet sold his soul?”
“It’s just what I had to do to take over the family business,” I lie. “My brother studied business. I studied the law. It was our father’s wish so that we could run the company together one day.”
This much is true, but I omit the fact that I did insist on being the one to study law and that I did specialize to be a public defender.
“And? How is that going?”
Right. She’s right. I shouldn’t be out here wasting time by having fun and getting to know her. There was a reason I lured her here in the first place. Well, two reasons:
1. Make her regret ever meeting me.
2. Use her as a prop to appease my board.
“Alright, Miss de la Vega,” I steer us towards a more trafficked street, “let’s talk business.”
“And here I was thinking you had already given up on the whole wine me, dine me… hire and sign me for your evil corporation thing.”
I hold in for a second. “Not how I thought that sentence would end, but, like I said, I always get what I want. This will be no different.”
Her head swivels around slowly, those eyes of hers piercing into my supposedly non-existent soul. “Why do you want me?”
The question hangs heavy in the air and I can’t help but think of when I first discovered her at the airport. She had watched me in that store and when I clocked her, she had hidden behind a shelf, except half her hair was still showing above it. Then she had followed me into that bathroom where… I don’t even know what had happened there. Something had just come over us. It was like we didn’t have a choice. We just had to do it . It was inevitable.
I’ve had meaningless one-night-stands before, but they certainly didn’t feel like this. Not at all. This had been something else entirely.
Our eyes meet, and a spark of recognition passes between us. Or so I think.
“What does it take for you to come and work for me? I will grant you almost anything.”
And then I’ll make you pay for it over and over and over again.
Sienna huffs as if she isn’t taking me seriously. “Almost anything?”
“Anything, except for me, of course. I’m off-limits.”
“Hah!” she yelps out loud. “The cockiness! You’re lucky you’re so?—”
“Handsome? Adorable? Funny?”
Sienna laughs so loud the pigeons next to us get scared and fly off. The way her laughter echoes and her face scrunches makes her look like the most bewitching thing I’ve ever seen. Despite the cold wind, I feel hot. Even my cheeks are blushing a little. I put both my hands in the pockets of my pants to hide what else she is doing to me. It’s like common sense automatically goes out the window and my libido takes over as soon as I am near her.
“Funny,” she finally manages to say. “You’re funny, indeed. You should be one of those Sunday morning talk show hosts. I bet the 65+ crowd would find you quite entertaining.” She laughs some more. When she calms back down, she continues, “But really, I meant rich. You’re lucky you’re rich. This way, at least you can buy people’s sympathies.” She takes another look at her phone, then shoves it back into her bag before grumbling with annoyance. Sienna stops dead in her tracks. “I won’t come and work for you,” she shudders as if overwhelmed with disgust, “but I will consider allowing you to be my client. It’ll cost you, though.”
Before I can answer, she turns around and briskly walks off.
“You can’t just leave,” I shout after her. “It’s not safe at night for someone as frail as you.”
Another huff escapes her button nose, the warm air steaming in the chilly night. “It’s fine. I’m probably safer with the local axe murderer than I am with you. You’ll hear from me… babe.”