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“Unsurprising. You’ve gotsaintwritten all over you in a mouthful of letters,” I quipped, pouring myself some coffee. “Such a complicated way to say something so simple, don’t you think?”
“I’m a complicated way to say something simple,” she said, looking down.
“I don’t doubt that for a second,” I admitted. The longer I talked to Grace, the more I could sense she was keeping things under the surface, hidden under layers of what she wanted the world to see.
I prided myself on being able to read people well. Hell, I could read—and have read—everything: books, plays, rooms, situations, people. But all I knew for sure about Saint Grace and how she worked was that everything she wanted to say had to pass through a complicated system of filters and sieves until it came out into the air.
I wanted to break that fine mesh latticework around her mind, reach in, and get some of that raw, unbridled energy I’d seen last night.
I wanted to liberate her. I wanted to corrupt her.
My curiosity crescendoed.
“I mean… I have a bad habit of making things complicated,” she explained.
“Well that’s not a very nice thing to say about yourself—”
She dropped her fork and it clattered on the plate. “I kissed my boss.”
I stopped chewing and quirked my eyebrow at her.
Grace looked at me guiltily, as if she was confessing she’d cheated on me or something.
“What was that like?” I asked, genuinely curious.
“Huh?”
I took a sip of my coffee, delighted we were talking about something real instead of flirting with it. “Did you enjoy it?”
She blinked a few times, as if my reaction was the last thing she was expecting.
Delightful.
“I… I guess? I don’t know—”
“It’s been lingering in your mind, there’s got to be some reason it’s sticking there.”
“Mostly worry.”
I chuckled into my bitter coffee. “Why worry?”
Her eyebrows came together in confusion. “Whywouldn’tI worry about something like that? I could lose my job, I could’ve destroyed my career—”
“Sounds like fun, that means you can make up another one,” I said with a wink.
She frowned and I knew I’d crossed a line.
I set my mug down and explained. “Look. Whatever happens, happens. If you lose your job, so what? It’s just a fun opportunity to do something new.”
She let out a frustrated breath through her nose. “I can’t just change careers—”
“Why not? You’re not your job,” I pointed out.
She ran her delicate fingers through her tangled hair and mumbled something that sounded like, “My job’s all I have left…”
“Left of what?” I asked, knowing I was pushing the envelope. But I didn’t care; I had to know.
She fixed me with a cold stare.“Who are you? Don’t you worry about anything?”
