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“I don’t know yet. I don’t know the first thing about guns or why you would bring me here. Is this where you normally take women to get to know them?”
“Only women who are getting bullied at work.” I popped my door open. “Come on.” I hoped she’d have fun when we got inside. I paid them to stay open late for us, but we were already running behind because of the cocktail dress delay.
“I’m not getting bullied at work,” she said, jumping out of the car.
I locked the car with my key fob and headed for the entrance. “Sure you’re not.”
“I’m not,” she insisted, catching up to me quickly in her turquoise tennis shoes. “Why would you think that?”
“Honestly?”
Her face jutted forward as she followed me towards the door.
“You had Ben & Jerry’s for dinner three nights this week, and I saw the mascara stains on your pillow case in the laundry basket.”
She swallowed.
“I also heard you crying in the shower last night.”
Her pretty features drooped, and she stopped walking, the sound of crunching gravel under her feet replaced by silence. “It’s not that bad. I’ve just been tired, and I’m under a lot of pressure.”
“Hey—” I stepped up to her. “You don’t have to explain.”
“I don’t want you to be disturbed,” she said, looking down at the ground. “That’s not cool.”
“I’m not disturbed.” I tilted her chin up with my fingers. “If anything, I’m proud of you.”
Her eyes searched mine. “What?”
I dropped my attention to her bottom lip, which looked plump and inviting under the pink-streaked sky. Then I lifted my gaze back to hers. “If it was easy to chase your dreams, everyone would do it.”
She pressed her lips together.
“But it’s not. You have to eat shit. You have to take shit. And even worse, you have to believe that you’re not shit even when everything conspires to make you feel like you are.” I clenched my jaw and dropped my hand. “And the fact that you haven’t complained once says a lot about you as a person. So yeah, I’m proud of you.”
Her eyes twinkled with gratitude, as if it were the first nice thing anyone had said to her all week.
“And I thought the best way to demonstrate that would be to take you somewhere to blow up a bunch of clay pigeons.”
A slow smile spread across her face, and when it reached her eyes, I felt a sharp ache in my chest that told me I meant every word I’d said, including the words I didn’t say, the words I didn’t think I had in me. “Thank you.”
“Come on.” I took her hand and tugged her towards the entrance. “It’s going to be fun. Hell, if you’re half as good at clay pigeon shooting as you are at poker, you might have to quit the fashion business entirely.”
“I don’t know about that,” she said, her small hand at ease in mine. “Pretty sure that uniform would do nothing for my figure.”
“Strange,” I said, holding the glass door open for her. “I must be picturing a different one.”
She shot a playful scowl in my direction as she walked past me. “You’re a real sex pest, Draper.”
I laughed and followed her inside, wishing I could show her how right she was.
