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“I’ll survive,” he assured me. “It might not be pretty. But it won’t kill me.”
“I know the feeling.”
“I’m sorry you’re having a tough time. I really thought this opportunity would be good for you.”
“It has been,” I insisted. “I’m still glad I took it. At the very least, I won’t have to spend the rest of my life wondering what it would’ve been like. Besides, sometimes you have to figure out what you don’t want before you can figure out what you do want.”
“I’m proud of you.”
“Don’t patronize me. I’m literally a glorified coffee wench who knows too much about hangers.”
He laughed. “Then you must be getting along great with Quinn.”
I leaned an ear towards the screen.
“He’s the only man I know who hangs his suits even when he’s blacked out.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Good,” he said. “I hope you never see that side of him. Guy’s an animal. Was an animal. He’s getting better or I never would’ve let you move in with him.”
Let me? For some reason, the words rubbed me the wrong way…and piqued my interest at the same time. “What do you mean by animal?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
Heat clawed up the back of my neck.
“I trust he’s been a gentleman?”
I thought of the way he stood behind me when he showed me how to shoot, the way his nostrils flared across the table when I told him I was wearing my lucky panties. I thought about the dumb look in his eyes after he slid down the wall last Saturday, my spit drying on his dick while he admired me like I was a mermaid with pearls for nipples and a school of fish for hair. “Of course.”
“Good.”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“No reason,” he said. “I’m only asking because I got the sense you never warmed to him before so I wanted to make sure you guys were cool. Especially if you’re having a character-building time at work. The last thing you need right now is a difficult home life.”
Home life. Those words struck me as odd, too, but the truth was I did feel at home. And Quinn was a big part of that. He’d gone to all that trouble to give me the bigger room, and he’d kept wordlessly restocking the fridge with Smirnoff Ice and Ben & Jerry’s whenever we were running low. But it wasn’t those gestures that made me feel comfortable here; it was him. He was the reason I was happy to return at the end of the day. “He’s not so bad,” I said, trying to say enough but not too much.
He scoffed.
“What?”
“I can think of quite a few women who’d disagree.”
Blood pooled in my temples. Was he trying to be funny or just trying to piss me off?
“But I’m glad you guys are getting along,” he said. “Not to mention relieved he’s kept his promise to behave.”
“Too bad I made no such promise.”
James’s light blue eyes homed in on me. “What?”
“Nothing, sorry. I’m just snarky after a long day. Probably should’ve had dinner when I got in.” I glanced at the clock on the screen again and wondered why Quinn wasn’t home yet, wishing I didn’t care so much what the hell he was doing when he wasn’t with me.
“Go get some food,” James said. “I have to hit the hay anyway. I’ve got a big presentation tomorrow for a bunch of guys who are going to assume I’m stupid as soon as they hear my accent.”
“Why?” I asked. “Surely a Chicago accent is the best kind to have.”
