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“I’m paying my way through school, and no one else in town is hiring right now, given it’s the slow season.”
“What’s the major?”
“Oh, it’s not that kind of school. I want to be a massage therapist. I have two more courses to finish and then I can practice full time.”
His tone deepens as he says, “You really want to be touching a bunch of naked people? Aren’t you worried that’s dangerous?”
“Dangerous how?”
“Dangerous, like you tell a man to strip down, and you rub him all over. Inevitably, some man will think that means more than it does, and then what?”
Given that my job is professional, I’m having a hard time following his logic. “It’s a job, just like your job is the ranch. You sell horses to loads of people. Do they all want to fuck you?”
He rolls his gaze to the side and straightens his back as though he’s frustrated.
What the actual hell?
“I don’t get the people naked and rub them down first.”
“Well, thanks for your concern, but I’ll be fine.” I blow out a heavy breath and continue with the questioning, hoping to figure what the hell put the thorn in the beast’s side. “Have you ever been married?”
“No. You?”
“I’m twenty-four. There hasn’t been time for a wedding.” My comment is sarcastic, but I’m still fuming about the massage therapy remarks. Everyone wants to put it in this sexual category, but I’m offering people relaxation and a relief from pain. That’s all.
“People get married young all the time,” he quips, sipping from his own mug. I smell the faintest hint of whiskey drifting in the air as he drinks.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I haven’t met anyone worth marrying.”
“In… how old are you?”
“Forty-four.”
“In forty-four years, you didn’t meet anyone worth marrying?” Two stars for sarcasm. I’m on a roll.
“No.”
“How? I mean, there are people everywhere.”
He groans. “If finding someone to marry was so easy, would it be special?” He doesn’t take his eyes off me as he says, “Are you dating?”
Okay, I shouldn’t have asked him if he’d been married because the dating question seems a little invasive. That said, I still want to know more, so I answer him.
“No.”
“Why not?”
I shrug. “Haven’t met a man worth dating, I guess.”
“Never?”
“Once,” I sip my virgin tea, “but he turned out to be a huge loser who did nothing but treat me like shit. So… now I stick to books.”
He leans back again. “You read?”
“I do. What do you read?”
