Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
“What do you think?”
I didn’t set down my sandwich long enough to answer, just nodded.
“Good, right?”
I gave her a thumbs up and kept eating. Who knew toasted bread, cheese, scrambled eggs, and ham could be so delicious? This was definitely hitting the spot.
My dinner companion brightened the table considerably. Just sitting across from me in our corner booth, Ryan sparkled. More than once, I noticed a guy checking her out, usually after she laughed that sexy, throaty laugh of hers.
It wasn’t an exaggeration to say I thought about maiming each and every one of those men.
I didn’t blame them. How could I? With her flowing jet black hair and armful of jingling bracelets and that smile that could kill a man dead, she drew the eye every bit as much as that bewitching crystal hanging between her breasts.
Now that I knew what she looked like beneath her dress—at least above the waist—I found it even harder to keep my eyes where they should be.
“And you made fun of me for ordering this.” She popped a gooey piece of cheese in her mouth, chewing slowly. Then she tore off another piece and slipped it into the carrier at her side.
Smoky snatched it through the bars.
She’d told the server with all sincerity that the cat was her emotional support pet. I half expected her to go get that pussy papa contraption and put it on while she ate.
But no, that ensemble was evidently reserved for me.
“You’re setting him up to be miserable.” I finished my sandwich and wiped my greasy hands on my napkin.
Good thing I enjoyed the punishment of a ten mile run.
“Hmm, yeah, I probably shouldn’t be feeding him table scraps. You’re right. He’ll never leave you alone at the table.” She made a face and went back to her sandwich. “Sorry. Wasn’t thinking. See why I don’t have pets?”
“I didn’t mean that. I mean, he’s going to miss you when he’s stuck at home with me.” He wasn’t the only one who would miss her.
Who already dreaded taking her home.
My self-protective jokes about sex hexes aside, I just…liked her. It didn’t make sense. We didn’t line up on any level. She was pure sunshine with that witchy hint of pleasures I couldn’t even begin to dream about. Free in a way I wouldn’t ever be.
I didn’t like admitting it, but I was probably repressed.
Okay, I definitely was. By necessity. If I didn’t keep my urges on lockdown, who knew what would happen?
This would happen.
It was happening, and I couldn’t make myself stop it. Not anymore. Not that I’d put up much of a fight since the first obnoxious email she’d sent my way.
“We can FaceTime.” She was utterly serious, her big beautiful eyes trained on me as I poked at my hash browns.
“You and the cat?” My lips curved. “Are you sure he knows technology?”
“He can learn. Anyone can, if they want to bad enough. You have to want it, Preston.”
I glanced up, my throat going surprisingly tight. Her expression was so earnest that I knew she wasn’t talking in the abstract or making jokes.
Somehow she meant me. She got something about my situation I’d only begun to articulate and was opening a door.
I’d never even tried to look for a window. I’d just settled for the closed-in dark.
“I do want it.” My jaw locked. “But I don’t let myself just do—”
“Anything. Even getting a cat was a big decision for you.”
“Shouldn’t it be?”
“Sure, if you’re not in the place for one. But you are. You have a stable life. Too stable.”
“How can you be too stable?”
“When all the joy is gone.”
I poked at my potatoes. I didn’t want them. They had no flavor.
“You can’t live like that forever.” Her hand slid over mine around my fork and the warmth of her skin made me grip the cool metal that much tighter. “You keep pushing everything that makes you happy down, soon enough nothing will.”
“Dinner and therapy?” I asked lightly, but it took everything in me not to toss aside our plates and drag her up on the table.
That would spark some damn joy, in me if not in the other patrons.
“Dinner and friendship. Contrary to popular belief, being attracted to someone doesn’t mean you can’t be friends too.” She scraped her nail lightly over the back of my hand, tumbling me right back to our heated moments in the front seat of my car.
“Are we friends?” I frowned. “Do you actually like me?”
“No. I hate you. Why I climbed in your lap in the first place.” She rolled her eyes and would’ve pulled back if I hadn’t seized hold of her wrist.
“There’s never been anyone else like you for me.” Her lips trembled as our gazes connected. “You’ll never believe me but—”
“I believe you.”
“I’m not my father.” I let her go although I wanted to do anything but.
She rubbed her wrist and I regretted possibly hurting her—I didn’t want that either—but she lowered her arm into her lap before I could ask. “Do you think I’d be here if I thought you were?”
Silence fell over the table, the only sound the chirping meows of the cat who’d just realized our conversation was keeping him from getting more cheese.
“Do you have siblings?”
She blinked, her heavy fringe of dark lashes hiding her expression for an instant. “No. You just have the one?”
“One is plenty.” I tried the potatoes again before setting down my fork.
“You’re not eating them right. Watch and learn.” She grabbed the bottle of ketchup and saturated her potatoes. I could barely tell there were any under the puddle of red. Then she leaned over to do the same to mine.
“I don’t eat that much ketchup.” It was more ketchup with a side of potatoes than the other way around.
“Try it,” she insisted.
I stared at it dubiously before forking up some. It wasn’t the best thing I’d ever tasted but it was an improvement over the bland potatoes.
“Well?”
“Better.” I kept eating them.
“Why don’t you like your brother?”
I immediately started to correct her then went with the truth. “It’s not that I don’t like him. I don’t like that he doesn’t understand his obligations.”
“Why should he? You understand enough for both of you.”
“Do you make a habit of being unnaturally perceptive or do I bring out something unusual in you?”
She forked up her potatoes with gusto and smiled after she chewed and swallowed. “Little of both.”
“Did you go to college?”
“Did you see one on my resumé?”
“No. But maybe you didn’t graduate. Or didn’t have a good experience.”
“I didn’t go. I barely got out of high school.” She rested her chin on her palm. “I’m not qualified to work for you.”
“Says who?”
“You before you wanted in my panties.” She sounded teasing, but she looked down at her plate quickly.
Too quickly.
“That’s not true.”
“You don’t want in my panties?”
“I wish you never wore panties, ever.”
“Hmm, sounds like a lawyerly deflection.”
“Ryan.” I reached for her hand and circled my thumb over the center of her palm. She watched me touch her, saying nothing. “You were so good with Mrs. Franklin. You helped her in a way I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have had any clue how.”
“I just reacted. It’s not like—”
“And the records room. Already it’s so much better than it was before. Because of you. You have talents you don’t give yourself credit for.”
She sniffed. “Hardly. I know exactly what I’m worth.”
“You don’t know what you’re worth to me.” I pressed my thumb harder into her soft flesh, and she gasped before her fingers wrapped tight around my finger.
Neither of us spoke for a moment before I shifted my hold and laced our fingers together on the table. We were in Syracuse, not near Kensington Square, but I wouldn’t have cared if we were. I wanted to hold on to her.
Had to. And I wanted her to hold on to me.
“You mentioned art,” I said suddenly.
“I did?”
“In passing, I think. Tell me about it.”
“Why?” She seemed genuinely perplexed, but she didn’t try to draw away. She even started eating with her other hand in deference to our position.
“I want to get to know you. It’s not just about your panties.”
Her lips twitched as she shot me a glance. “The ones you wish I wasn’t wearing?”
“Tell me. Please.”
She jerked a shoulder. “I’ve just always drawn. It’s a hobby and an escape. A way to process my chaotic life.”
“What was chaotic about it?”
“You can’t possibly care.”
“I care, Ryan.” I went back to eating to give her the space to speak.
She frowned, an expression that almost seemed foreign on her face. Her relaxed features were meant to reflect happiness and pleasure and clever humor. “I was the odd kid. The weird goth chick. Kind of the opposite of my mom. Her name’s Rainbow.”
“Rainbow?” I cleared my throat. “Rainbow Moon.”
The corner of her mouth ticked up. “Yeah. She loved me, but she had a million and one things to keep her busy. Especially her rich men.”
It took effort for me not to tighten my grip. An emotion that felt disturbingly like shame made me take a deep breath. Right then, the last thing I wanted was to be wealthy.
“Where was your dad?”
“Absent. Classic story. We moved around a lot in our van, and things weren’t real stable financially. You know, lonely only kid growing up by her wits, doing what she could to get by.”
I rubbed my thumb against the side of her hand. “Were you safe?”
“No one hurt me.” She let out an unsteady laugh. “Nothing that lasted anyway. I did stupid stuff, but I didn’t land in jail. I didn’t get in serious trouble.”
I needed to do something to lighten the heaviness I’d invited into our meal. That was the last thing I wanted. I just craved to know more about her than the information in her resumé.
“So, you never got taken to the station for public lewdness?”
Her laughter rolled through me, loosening the muscles in my shoulders that had gone stiff. “Definitely not.” She smirked. “Though if I keep hanging around with my new crowd, it could happen.”
“Crowd of one?”
She inclined her chin toward the carrier. “Two.”
“How did you get into tarot?”
“Oh, boy, you’re really fishing, huh? Scared I was serious when I told your daddy I was a witch?”