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“Thanks.”
She could feel him checking out the place as she prepared the drinks in the small kitchen tucked into one corner of the room. Her home, she reminded herself. Her affordable, calm, hard-won home. Nothing to be ashamed of.
“Cute place. You have an eye for décor.”
A flush of pride followed, but she beat it back with self-deprecation. “It’s a bit girlie, though, no?” Drinks in hand, she headed back to the sitting area.
“You are a girl.” He grinned and accepted the outstretched glass. “Last time I checked.”
…
Damn. Listen to him. It sounded like he was flirting. It was just too easy with her. Already blushing, she was way too teasable. Their fingers brushed as she handed him his drink, and he had a flash in his mind’s eye of her scrambling to put her pants on when he buzzed. But no, if this was going to work, they were done fooling around.
“It’s just Johnnie Walker, and Red Label at that. Sorry, no fifty-year-old Glenfarclas here.”
“A perfectly reliable brand.” He clinked his glass against hers. Time to start thinking with his brain. “So, math, huh?”
Again, she sat on the armchair, the farthest from him she could put herself in the little apartment. “Pardon me?”
“You’re majoring in math.”
“I thought you had a proposition.”
“I do, but I want to hear about the whole math thing first.”
She shrugged. “Well, yeah, math. I’ve only got a semester’s worth of credits left until I graduate, but at the rate I’m going, that will take me a year and a half.”
“You must do all right at Edward’s.” Not that it was any of his business, but hey, why let that stop him? He’d meant it when he said her apartment was cute, but it was tiny. It couldn’t cost that much.
She shifted and looked away. “Yeah, I have…other expenses.”
“Cocaine habit?” he teased.
She looked up sharply, her eyes wounded for a second before she recovered. Shit. Did she have a cocaine habit? Well, that was the point of this little interrogation, wasn’t it? Find out if she was the man for the job. In a manner of speaking.
“I support my mother. She’s very…expensive.”
“Where does she live?”
“She moves around a lot.” Her tone had grown clipped. Clearly mom was not a topic she wanted to discuss. Fair enough. He could relate.
“So, anyway, what I was really wondering is, why math? You’re a natural? It’s always been easy? Child prodigy? What?”
She tilted her head, considering. “I don’t know. No, it hasn’t always been easy. But at a certain point, after calculus, it kind of starts to get easier.”
He couldn’t contain the disbelieving guffaw.
“It does!” she insisted. “Anyway, I always liked it. A math problem is like a puzzle. It’s something you can solve. It’s finite, and there’s a certain kind of…” She trailed off, looking at the ceiling as she searched for the right word. “Satisfaction there. You solve the problem, and then it’s done.”
“So what will you do when you graduate? That will be it for Edward’s, I imagine? You said you weren’t a lifer.”
“Yeah. Though I’m lucky to have the job at Edward’s.”
“You’re good at it—they’re lucky to have you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Edward was my father’s best friend. He’s dead—my father, I mean.” She delivered the news with a detached matter-of-factness. “Edward feels responsible for me. I wouldn’t take his money, but I would take his job. I never would have gotten hired at a place like that otherwise.”
“Why not?”
“Let’s just say I don’t look the part.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Ha!” She did her Vanna White thing again, this time gesturing over her own body. “You’re nice. But high-end places like Edward’s hire beautiful girls. There’s a certain look. A type.”
He wanted to protest that she was beautiful, that she put all those paper dolls to shame. But that wasn’t the kind of thing he did, so instead he supplied, “Ballerinas.”
“Yes!” She looked delighted with this description. “And don’t worry, I don’t feel bad about it. Ballerinas are always hungry, I imagine, and I’d rather be happy than hungry.
“Anyway, the plan is to quit when I’m done with school.” She was talking faster now, warming to her tale. “I’m planning to take the actuarial exam.”
“An actuary!” He was surprised, though he shouldn’t have been. It was an obvious career move for a math major. “That seems kind of…boring.”
