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“Former degenerate,” she corrected.
He chuckled a bit at that. “Former or no, I’m corrupting you. In her eyes.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was sending semi-nudes to boys when I was in high school. You’ve corrupted nothing. You’re simply wonderful.”
“I’m--”
“And don’t say you’re not, I won’t listen,” she said. “Everything you’ve been putting yourself through? Everything you were willing to do to protect me?”
“Your dad’s doing some of that as well. More than me.”
“You’re both too lovely for your own good.”
He wasn’t sure why, but that made him smile. Being compared in a favorable manner to Owen Madden.
Chapter Forty
“Well, I can’t speak for him, but I know I couldn’t let you be humiliated just to save myself.”
She smiled, but then the food came and they began to eat. It was silent for a bit, and when they picked up the conversation again, she’d changed the subject to brighter things. Summer things. Since it was her final semester at university, Teagan had many ideas for how she’d like to spend the summer.
Most of them with him, helping him to finish up that house because he needed to get it sold already. Her words, not his.
“You don’t have to help me, Teagan,” he said, laughing a bit as he took a bite from her sandwich after he’d finished his own. “I’ve been doing fine without your help.”
“You’d still be drowning in that basement if it weren’t for me,” she reminded him.
“Instead, I’m drowning in your ego.”
“Come on… let me help you. I’m still part-time at Barclay’s. I can help you in my downtime.”
“I’ll have to pay you,” he said.
“Nope,” she shook her head. “Call it an internship.”
“Don’t really call it that in my line of work,” he chuckled.
“Fine. An apprenticeship, then.”
He cocked an eyebrow and shrugged. “We’ll see. You’ll have to put in a formal interview. Can’t just go hiring you because I like the way you fill out jumpers.”
“Flooded basement,” she said.
“Not here, love, we’re in public,” he teased, and she swatted his shoulder.
By the time they’d finished up, paid the bill and were walking hand in hand back to her car, it was nearly two-thirty. And Owen still hadn’t called them to clue them in on his meeting with Roy. But now they had to go off to meet Eric.
He’d told them to meet him at the usual place. Jaxon knew exactly where that was.
There was a burger place on the main strip of the road. It was where Eric did most of his ‘business transactions.”
So with his lunch sitting heavy in his belly, but with Teagan’s hand clasped tightly in his across the front seat of her car, they made their way to the burger place, pulling into the car park and idling in a spot for mere seconds before Jaxon’s phone buzzed.
“Come on in, I’m in the best booth. Back corner. Want me to order you anything?”
Jaxon didn’t respond to the text, simply pushed down the feeling of panic and desire to just take Teagan and run. “He’s inside,” he said softly. “Are you ready?”
“No, but I suppose we can get it over with, and then we’ll be done with him?” she replied.
