Chapter 11 #3
Serena was glad to hear it. As much as Kujo had poked and prodded at Walker and Quentin, he seemed to be a decent enough guy under all that. And she knew this venture meant a lot to Walker. Maybe even more than The Menagerie meant to her.
“Do you need to run back to the ranch for anything?” she asked. It wasn’t that she wanted the quiet time, per se, she didn’t want to keep him from doing the things he needed to do.
He shook his head. “No. Jesse and Quentin have it. Jesse was running everything all by herself long before I came along, as much as I like to think I’m indispensable,” he grinned. “We don’t have any guests in for the next couple of days, so it’ll be fine.”
She wondered what in the heck they were going to do at night until he returned to the ranch. The obvious solution flashed through her body and brain and made her cheeks go pink in response. She wished it was harder to imagine tangling up the sheets with him every night, but it was remarkably easy.
“I’m starving,” she said to fill the silence. “And I’m tired of dishing out food myself.”
“How about Jilberto’s?” he asked. “They’ve got a kickass happy hour. Back when we were working on the ranch renovations, we made a point of grabbing an early bite there.”
The hometown Mexican restaurant did indeed have a great happy hour, and the idea of a margarita and chips and salsa sounded amazing right now.
“That sounds fantastic,” she said as she took off her apron, then ran a brush through her hair and freshened her lipstick. Just because she’d been busy didn’t mean she shouldn’t look presentable, especially with the attention The Menagerie had received lately.
Jilberto’s was quiet that afternoon, even for a Friday.
They ordered frosty margaritas, chips and salsa, and the taco assortment platter, and with the first sip of her drink, Serena felt everything inside let go.
She loved the fact that she’d been busy today, but it was nice to be away from there, nice to disconnect.
It had been exhausting fielding the questions of whether she was all right, watching everyone glance around as if they expected the person who’d assaulted her to come whipping around the corner with a bat in hand. She snickered at the image in her mind and earned a raised eyebrow from Walker.
“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “I was thinking how everyone there today was looking around corners for a masked attacker.”
Walker smiled, but the amusement didn’t reach his eyes.
She could have tried for levity, could have pushed it, but why? He was worried about her, and as much as she’d become her own woman over the years, it felt good to have someone care about her.
Her ex, Marcus, had been a go-getter, like her.
It would have never occurred to him to protect her.
He would have dismissed her concerns at first, and then if she insisted, he would have shrugged and told her to hire someone like Walker.
At the end of the day, they’d been more like business acquaintances than partners in life.
It’d taken her too long to figure out that they were wildly mismatched, and their breakup had been as anticlimactic as the relationship.
“Tell me about your life in Dallas,” Walker said, and it was as if he’d read her mind.
She shrugged. “Not to make this sound like a Hallmark movie, but I got tired of the rat race. I was really good at my job and made a lot of money while I was at it. But at the end of the day, I was selling slick products to people who didn’t really need them, only wanted them to impress someone else.
I had become the person who wanted success more than anything.
It was a hamster wheel, and it exhausted me. ”
Walker nodded as if in commiseration, but she doubted he could truly understand what she was talking about.
Not after seeing what he’d gone through.
She’d also witnessed a steely-eyed resolve in Quentin that she wouldn’t have guessed at based on their interactions at the ranch.
So yeah, she didn’t think Walker could comprehend the superficial world she’d lived in.
And damn it, it really did sound like a Hallmark movie.
“Yeah, I get you,” he said. “When I left the military, I went to work for a global security company down in Phoenix. After I’d done my time doing scut work, they moved me into personal protection, and I discovered I was guarding people I didn’t like.
They were the exact opposite of the people I’d served with, the people I’d grown up with here.
” He took a sip of his margarita. “But I still needed a purpose, even with the money from the movie. I gutted it out until everything went sideways with Tate. Watching him and his team build St. Michael’s Solutions gave me an idea, and I ran with it.
And honestly, I’ve never felt better about a decision in my life. ”
Well, hell, she thought, he did understand. Her world of public relations and crisis management had overlapped with the same clientele he’d had to deal with. Apparently left the same distaste. They had more in common than she’d thought.