31. Chapter 31
Chapter 31
Michael
I woke at my regular time, the words be of value ringing in my ears. I dragged myself from Sabrina’s bed. Simon had been right. My goal: I would be so fucking valuable Sabrina would think I was priceless.
The first thing I tackled was the messes we’d created at her place. The trail of clothes, the takeout containers, and the wet towels in the bathroom. As I squeegeed water spots off the shower door, I reminisced about the night before. I’d never look at 1950s octagonal bathroom tile and not hear Sabrina’s cries of ecstasy in my head. Last night had been more fantastic than Cuba, and it’s well known that hotel sex is the gold standard.
I tidied up as quietly as possible, letting her sleep in; she obviously needed her rest. I left a note telling her I was heading to Viande next to the French press. If the thing didn’t scare the hell out of me, I’d have set it up with fresh grounds for her coffee.
I took a bottle of water and a protein bar from the kitchen for my breakfast. On the way out, I carefully reset the alarm system and texted the security monitor at the Smith Agency letting them know Sabrina was still at home… alone.
I paused with my hand on her front doorknob and reconsidered leaving her unguarded. Smith and Gunter had signed off on it in triplicate and the security system was state-of-the art. Her car was in the attached garage, and her drive to Viande was short and took her through the heart of the city where ambush or attack was highly unlikely.
As much as I liked watching her sleep, I would add more value working at the restaurant. With only a minimum of misgivings, I hopped on my bike and rolled out. After a quick stop home for clean clothes, I was on my way to the Design District well before morning rush hour kicked into high gear.
At Viande, I picked up where we left off yesterday, digging bullets out of walls and ceilings and tossing the stuff too damaged to repair. I only stopped long enough to grab food and coffee from a café down the street. I’d made good progress; the second collapsible dumpster was half full.
“Hello! Sabrina?” a man called as he walked inside the door I’d left propped open.
I turned to see a guy about my age with a cell phone on one side of his belt and a measuring tape on the other. No need to go for my gun. I checked my phone for the time and to make sure I’d not missed a call from Sabrina. Shit, it was ten. Where was she? Because her general contractor George was right on time.
“Hi. You must be George.” I approached, my hand extended.
“And you are?”
“Michael Steel, the Smith Agency. I’m helping Sabrina with everything.” I waved a hand at the interior of the building.
“Great. Nice that she has a professional to help, because this is a disaster.” George, hands on hips, turned slowly, taking in the repairs his crew would need to make. He pulled a pad and pen from the back pocket of his well-worn jeans, ready to start making notes.
“I’m thinking it’s a bit like triage. The worst injuries first?”
“Yeah, that’s one way of looking at it.” George, head tipped back, looked up at the bullets still embedded in the ceiling.
“Automatic weapons fire.”
“Fuck. She doesn’t deserve this shit. Any place you want us to start?”
“The front windows and doors. New glass.” Sabrina would be so happy I was here to help. Soon I’d need a nametag that said ‘Mr. Priceless.’
“Good call.” George started writing. “I’ve got the old purchase orders we can—”
“So, you two started without me?” Sabrina’s tone of voice was my first clue I might have miscalculated.
I winced. She didn’t look happy. There was useful and there was… overbearing. I had a sinking feeling I’d crossed the line.
“Hey, Sabrina. I don’t even know what to say about all this. It’s a mess. But props to your insurance agency for sending an adjustor over for our meeting. That kind of service is unheard of.” George shot me a thumbs up, unknowingly driving the final nail into my value-add coffin. “I have to get a card from you, Steel; I already forgot the name of your agency.”
“Oh, Michael isn’t from any insurance company. Are you?”
I rubbed the five o’clock shadow on my jaw that I’d not shaved this morning in a rush to keep being valuable.
“Ah, no I’m a…” I trailed off. Friend seemed too small. Boyfriend too big. And security consultant too asinine considering George’s perfectly reasonable insurance adjustor assumption.
“George, if you’ll excuse us for a moment.” She grabbed my upper arm like an angry nun in a catholic school and shoved me toward the back of the restaurant. If she’d been able to reach, I think she might have gone for my ear.
“I’m trying to help.” The words burst out as soon as we were in the kitchen.
“Sure. But no. This is more. Cleaning up at the house and here were nice gestures. Texting the security monitoring service at the Smith Agency to keep an eye on me was disconcerting. Stepping into my place in a business meeting with my GC was a hard, fast, huge no. I was five minutes late. Five. You didn’t text or call, you took over.” She had her hands on her hips and her chin jutted aggressively at me.
“I want to be useful.” I held my hands up and out in a position of supplication.
“Quinn warned me that was your thing: rescuing women. I’m not that kind of girl. I can do things for myself. Always have. If you need your knight in shining armor kink serviced, you need to look elsewhere.” She turned away.
This might be the end. Poof. Our last conversation. I stepped in front of her before she left the room. A surge of panic filled my chest. It couldn’t end like this.
“But in Cuba—” I started to explain how good we’d been, how it all worked and would keep working. How wrong Quinn had been; it wasn’t rescuing, it was being useful . Fuck, Simon didn’t explain it well, or I’d made a wrong turn somewhere. I wanted to matter for the long haul.
“In Cuba, an international crime lord was hunting me. I needed my own personal superhero to step in and save me. I was so far in over my head it could have been deadly. Now, I got this. All of it. I can load my dishwasher. Set my alarm. Talk to my GC. Sometimes I may want a hug, but the rest I can manage.”
“I hate seeing you stressed.” I was reaching the end of my viable arguments. And the rope I was hanging on was fraying fast, but I clung tight.
She laughed. It kind of sounded like a hyena in a cable TV nature show—sharp and abrupt. “Stress is how entrepreneurs survive. We stress and strive and fight. Then we tally up the wins and losses and do it all again.”
“But what can I do?”
She put a hand on my shoulder. “If you want to be part of my life, I need more Clark Kent and less Superman.”
I shook my head, not understanding what she was asking for. Her hand fell from my shoulder and her expression changed. The sadness and disappointment in her eyes sucked the air from my lungs.
“That night in Cuba when you told me about your sister. That is the only personal thing you have ever told me. One story. You’re a two-dimensional character in my life. Just like superman. I need more. If you want to be more than a roll in the hay, then show me more than your muscles and your dick.”
Ouch.
“I’m trying to be useful.” My chest deflated and my broad shoulders rounded.
“If that was what I wanted, I’d hire a personal assistant or a housekeeper. For this,” she waved between the two of us, “to continue, show me a third dimension. The real you. What makes you unique and makes us worth the time and effort?”
I was dumbstruck. What makes me unique? I cringed inwardly. Not much. Big muscles and big dick were absolutely on the list. But I wasn’t sure what else about me made us worthy of her time. There had to be a reason I was a forty-three-year-old single serial dater that never married.
“And if you keep overstepping, you will piss me off.” She pointed at me like I was a bad dog that just peed on the new rug, and I cowered accordingly.
“You’re right, the George thing was—”
Thankfully, the trill of her cell phone cut off anything more I was going to say. She pulled it out of her back pocket and looked at the screen. “I have to take this.”
She walked out of the kitchen. And I watched her go.
“Shit.” My curse bounced off the walls and back at me.
Fresh air, sunshine, and miles of pavement called to my jumbled thoughts. So, I slipped out the back of Viande without saying goodbye. In less than five minutes, I was on my Harley heading west. The long flat roads that crisscrossed the Everglades always helped exorcise my demons.
When I was running low on fuel, I stopped at one of the shitty old gas stations on the edge of the Seminole Indian reservation to refuel. The hot dog I bought had been rolling on the heaters for so long it looked and tasted like leather.
I leaned next to the live bait well inside the grimy filling station and checked my cell, half hoping for a text from Sabrina but knowing it wouldn’t be there. She didn’t need my help. That was abundantly clear. Instead, I found a message from Quinn that told me to come by the office either today or early tomorrow. I had a new assignment and needed to pick up a company vehicle.
A surge of purpose had me chucking the last bites of hot dog into the trash so I could hightail it back to the office.
The ride back into the city was a nightmare. Pre-rush hour was in full swing. It was a miracle that I survived the journey to the Smith Agency unscathed.
“Quinn, you look great.” I had my helmet tucked under my arm and set it down on her desk as I walked into the office. She was dressed to kill in a black dress and bright red lipstick.
“Thank you. I assume you’re here for the SUV?”
“Yep. What’s my new gig?”
“Did you see the last Dolphins game?”
“No, I was in Cuba.”
“True. So, the kicker missed the last-second field goal that would have gotten us into the playoffs. Now he’s getting death threats. Miami PD is taking one of them seriously. Apparently, the suspect has a criminal record and history of instability. PD has people at Malcom Wanders’s place tonight, but they recommended he hire private security starting bright and early tomorrow. I emailed you the case file.” She pointed at me with her cell phone.
“Cool. And your smoking hot outfit?”
“Ah, yes.” She tossed her shiny blonde hair over her shoulder. “First, I’m heading to Viande to help wrangle the media for Sabrina, then—”
“What media?”
“She has an interview with the local news station about what happened. She’s promoting the crowdfunding campaign she launched this morning and doubling down on her promise to get the restaurant open on schedule. I told her I’d help with the spin to keep everyone happy. One wrong statement and the FBI will be pissed. We do not want that.”
“I can drive you?” I was taking home a Smith Agency vehicle. Why not help Quinn? Parking in the Design District was a bitch at this time of day. If I found parking, I’d hang out. Watch the interview. See Sabrina. Then drive Quinn back here.
“Sorry, afterward I have a date up the block from Viande. And depending on how that goes, I want to have my car.” She popped open a compact mirror from her top drawer and checked her lipstick.
“You have a date? You never date.”
“An exception was made.” She winked and tossed me the keys to The Tank.
I caught them and realized the Dolphin’s kicker must be in some really deep shit if I was getting The Tank.
“What did you tell Sabrina about me and the women I date?” The question was out before I thought to stop it.
Quinn sighed. “It’s common knowledge that you date women who need rescuing. It is kind of the number one commonality between every woman you’ve been with since we met.”
“No, it’s not.” Other than a preference for petite redheads, I didn’t have a type. My dating history proved it.
Quinn huffed a laugh. “Yeah, it is. Your exes are like a laundry list of sad and pathetic.”
“They are not.”
“That last woman Isabell, the single mom with a criminal ex. Once he was back in jail, you two were over. Before that, there was the one on the edge of financial ruin you helped get a new job. Don’t forget the veritable Ellis Island of women new to town with questionable immigration paperwork. Tina, who’d been swindled by that investor guy in Palm Beach: Maycek. The one with the dying mother. The one with the dying cat. The one with the kid you scared back onto the right path. Did she thank you for keeping him outta jail?” She counted them off on her fingers, not missing a single one from the last few years.
I held up my hand to stop the torrent because I knew Quinn and she could keep going. Her brain was like a steel trap.
“I’m a big guy. Women feel like they can lean on me.”
Quinn shook her head. “Michael, no. You’re a good guy that women take advantage of because you need to be needed. And when the need disappears, you and they have nothing left. Poof, relationship over.” She made a hand gesture like a magician disappearing a coin.
I shook my head.
“Seriously. You’re going to make me be mean to you. Let me ask. Did any of the United Nations of foreign girlfriends last even a week after you solved whatever problem was making their new life in Miami difficult?”
I cocked my head, thinking about the women in question. Struggling to remember one that lasted longer than her problems.
She assumed my silence was me preparing to argue. It wasn’t.
“Come on, be honest. I know you’ve helped some get jobs, get green cards, get apartments. But after you solve their problem, I never hear about them again. When they stop being pathetic, you move on.”
“I didn’t move on. Like half those women broke up with me.”
“Steel, a woman knows when a man is done with her. Not all of them wait for him to pull the plug.”
I leaned on the front desk and thought about what Quinn was saying. In my head, I relived a decade of failed relationships looking for and finding a pattern. Inside, I squirmed. Shit.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I’d have traded my spleen for a beer or a wall to bang my head against.
“I have told you. All of us have told you. You weren’t ready to listen until you met Sabrina. Take that big brain of yours and think on that.” She grabbed her handbag, came around the desk, and kissed my cheek before leaving me to stew.