Chapter 6
SIX
We walked into The Longshoreman seafood restaurant at nearly one-thirty, a full half hour past our reservation.
Silly me, I’d forgotten one of us could never be on time. I just didn’t realize that didn’t only apply to arriving in a timely fashion for gainful employment.
“You’re still glowering,” Ryan hissed somewhere near my shoulder.
She was the perfect height for me, a rarity among the women I’d dated. A fact that was neither here nor there.
“This is just my face. My apologies if you don’t like it.”
“Well, my apologies if you got pissy because I was late due to the heel on one of my favorite shoes snapping on your stupid uneven floor.”
“My floor is not uneven. Perhaps you shouldn’t wear such high heels if you aren’t able to walk in them.”
“I can walk in them just fine. Getting your stupid sweets this morning probably weakened them structurally. When I was almost flattened by the bike messenger, you unfeeling toad.”
Her ire was still as blatant as it had been on the fifteen-minute drive from my office building in Kensington Square to the opposite side of Crescent Cove.
The ride had been chock full of tense silence punctuated by frustrated sighs.
Mostly hers. Along with the occasional comment about my choice of vehicle.
Apparently, she didn’t like beige as a color option, so I was tempted to buy a beige suit just to annoy her. Even if it violated my personal preferences.
Irritating Miss Moon would be worth it.
“Perhaps you’ll be able to speak in coherent sentences once we get some food into you.” And into me, since my stomach was roaring loudly enough for the other patrons to hear.
“I’m not hungry.”
“Suit yourself. Watch me eat.” I put my hand on the small of her back and nudged her forward to speak to the ma?tre d' when it was finally our turn. “I’ve already done that once today myself.”
“You weren’t watching me eat. You were just watching me.”
The sleek redheaded ma?tre d' cocked a brow. “Mr. Shaw, how lovely to see you…and your companion.”
“My assistant, Tanya. I have a reservation. We’re regrettably late.”
“Egregiously.” Ryan tapped her nails on her huge green bag and flashed me a wholly insincere smile.
“Ah, yes. We reserved your table. In fact, I was about to phone you. You’re never late.” Tanya shot Ryan a look.
“He got the dregs from the temp pool.” Ryan smiled again. “But considering what he’s paying me, can’t really be too surprised.”
“You don’t even know what I’m paying you.” I gazed at the side of her stupidly beautiful face. “But I can still pay you less, so keep it up,” I added against her ear.
It required me not breathing in her sex scent, but I was devoted to the cause.
She stared straight ahead. “I don’t need your money, Fancy Pants.”
Tanya cleared her throat and grabbed a pair of menus. “Lee, can you see Mr. Shaw and his assistant to the free table near the fireplace?” Her lips curved. “Mr. Shaw always likes to sit near the fire.”
Lee stepped forward and aimed a devastating smile at me. “Mr. Shaw, this way, please.”
“Do I exist? Do I still have a corporeal form?” Ryan patted her sides and slapped at her arms as if she was fighting off a bug infestation.
I fought a grin as I nudged her forward on her unsteady heels. “Don’t worry, Miss Moon, I see you quite fine,” I said in an undertone.
The glare she sent my way made my grin widen.
Then I looked up, and the person I saw wasn’t Ryan. Wasn’t anyone I wanted to see, especially in that scenario.
My father was seated in a cozy booth on the other side of the fireplace. And he wasn’t alone. A gorgeous blond who looked young enough to be his daughter—young enough to be my sister—was feeding him shrimp. The smile he had for her was one he hadn’t given my mother in ages, if ever.
Wait.
Not just any blond.
She threw her head back with a throaty laugh. A very put on one that she never used in the office. My father’s administrative assistant, Courtney, was smoothing her fingers down the lapel of his suit in a far too familiar way.
Lee said something as she brought us to our table. I didn’t hear her. Didn’t hear Ryan though her lips moved as I unbuttoned my suit jacket and took the seat opposite her.
My head was full of white noise.
“Are you listening to me? Preston.” I glanced up as she leaned over to place her hand on my arm. “Are you all right?”
Same white-hot electric reaction as earlier, I noted dully.
I had to tell my mother.
She couldn’t live with a lie. I couldn’t be complicit in it.
“Preston,” Ryan said gently, curling her fingers around my rock-hard forearm. It felt as if all my muscles were locked for battle. “Look at me for a second.”
I looked. I didn’t know the source of the power she held over me, but the glow of it radiated from her jeweled eyes. Somehow she eased my stampeding heartbeat and cooled the sweat that had already pooled at the base of my spine.
All at once, I was steady. And back to idiotic.
“Did you put a sex hex on me? I didn’t finish Googling.”
For a long moment, she just stared back. Then the corners of her lips twitched.
“No. I don’t know what exactly that is, although it sounds intriguing.”
“I may have made it up. I just want you to know I don’t act like…this.”
I wasn’t the same as my father, coming on to my employees. I didn’t take advantage of my position.
I wouldn’t.
More twitching. “This?”
“I don’t banter. I don’t eat pastry out of strange women’s hands.
And I normally wouldn’t try to pretend my father isn’t with a woman who is not my mother eating shrimp and probably figuring I can handle his divorce, because hey, that’s my specialty, right?
” I let out a bitter laugh and spread my napkin over my lap as our server returned.
I couldn’t seem to add the appalling bonus level slight of a clandestine workplace romance.
Much to my shock, Ryan took a cursory look at the menu and ordered for both of us. Worse? The orange chicken she chose for me was my favorite dish here. And she did not order whitefish, but a medium rare steak.
The last thing she asked for was a bottle of Riesling from a local winery, Apothecary Wines. I would’ve protested that business lunches didn’t include alcohol, if I didn’t currently have bigger issues in my life.
Like my happy childhood going up in flames.
I refused to look past Ryan’s shoulder in their general direction. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, the faithless bastard.
“Stop looking prune-faced. I didn’t steal your balls and offer them up as garnish. I just ordered for us because you needed a minute. Don’t fret.” She patted the back of my hand. “You’re still the alpha cock, darling.”
Stuck between a laugh and a grimace, I pointed at her. “You’re never to say that word in my presence.”
She caught her tongue between her teeth. “Which?”
“You know which. Bad enough you said it on that podcast.”
“Oh, yeah? You listened to all of my golden cock reading?”
I glanced around then decided I didn’t give a shit if some of these upper crust-types heard us discussing dicks with our lunch. Apparently, my give a damn had busted upon seeing my sneaky father. “I listened. It said you were going to get lucky. Has that happened yet?”
“Not the lucky part yet, but I’m beginning to wonder,” she muttered. “Gotta say it doesn’t look the way I figured it would.”
The server returned with our Riesling and a couple of glasses. Once she’d poured and left again, I took a long sip and decided the sweet apple and pear finish was just what this meal needed. And quite possibly, my sanity. “I normally have one glass of bourbon a week.”
“Oh, no.” She smacked her cheek. “A rule broken in the big book of them?”
“I had a glass and a half this morning. Wonder why?”
She pressed her lips together. “Your perfect little world blown apart by a hex kitten?”
I shouldn’t laugh at her. It was only encouraging bad behavior. Problem was, I was cruising hard to be very bad indeed.
“I never had these problems with April.”
“No?” Ryan picked up her glass and peered at me over the rim. “Why do you think that is?”
Because I don’t have a visceral response to her words on a computer screen. And her voice. And her…everything.
I rubbed my temples as my headache warned of a reappearance. “She’s an altogether different sort of woman.”
“She definitely is,” Ryan said cheerfully. “She said you were staid.”
I wasn’t going to rise to her bait.
I simply was not.
“Trust me, some of the thoughts I’ve had today were the furthest thing from that.”
Ryan took a long sip and then set down her glass. Rather than touch me, she just placed her hand close to mine. “Tell me exactly what happened between the foyer and when we sat down. Keep in mind I don’t know any of the players.”
My first instinct was to deny, deny, deny. My second was to not lie, since I didn’t want to be like my father in any way.
I could have misconstrued what I saw. Maybe they were having a work lunch just like we were. Perhaps he was checking the shrimp for doneness. Maybe they were doing a taste test. Or he’d sprained all his fingers, and she was helping him.
Right.
“Seated behind you on the opposite side of the fireplace is a distinguished older man with salt and pepper hair and a young blond female. She was feeding him shrimp.”
His assistant.
When I berated myself for workplace impropriety, I had no clue that it was most assuredly something I would have to look into for the entire firm.
Like father like son?
My gut twisted into foul knots.
“Okay.”
“The older man is my father. In case you didn’t realize my age, the young blond is definitely not my mother.”
Ryan pursed her lips before immediately knocking her silverware to the floor.
“Oops!” She bent over to retrieve it and spent a moment checking out the couple at the other table as she straightened.
“He’s definitely hitting it to her.” She shook her head.
“Watch them and tell me when she goes to the bathroom.”
“What? Why?”