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I took a deep breath, looking at my reflection in the mirror.
I had tried to avoid it, but somehow found myself too curious to keep my eyes averted.
My eye looked worse than it actually felt. It was easy enough amid the shock and then the scratching, awful feeling of my throat not to feel the ache there at all, though it existed, dull but insistent. The semicircle of blue was smattered with purple, and I wondered if it would look better – or worse – by the end of the day. My throat, well, it looked like I had been strangled. There was no way around that assumption. There was a band clear across the front of my throat that tapered off into little circles at the edge where his fingers had dug in. Like my eye, it was dark blue with some purple accents. And I wondered how the hell I was going to be able to cover it up, what kind of makeup those poor abused women used to cover up the evidence of their husband’s beatings.
I guess it was something I could Google when I got home.
I took another breath, trying to steady myself, made a wide berth around all the evidence on the floor, and knocked on the door.
There was hardly a pause before it opened to reveal a woman who couldn’t be much older than legal drinking age. Petite, but tall, she was almost scarily good-looking, the kind of pretty that almost made you want to look away with her porcelain skin with the tiniest smattering of freckles if you looked close enough over the bridge of her nose and the tops of her cheeks. Her smooth red hair was left down to drape the shoulders of her simple charcoal gray dress that skirted that professional and sexy line perfectly. Her feet were clad in heels that made my own feet ache just in sympathy. And her impossibly light blue eyes were focused on me, looking me over, making sure I followed the rules.
Only then did she give me a warm smile. “Your dog is eating Gunner’s football,” she told me, smiling like this was the best news she had heard all week. “I can’t wait to see him get pissed about it. Don’t worry, I will take the heat,” she told me, making me wonder what kind of relationship the two had if she liked ticking him off. It sounded like a brother and sisterly bond to me. Which was kind of sweet. I envied being close with coworkers. I used to have that at my old salon. At my new one, I was off in the back room like some leper, waiting for all the vaginas to come my way.
“Do you like coffee?”
“Coffee. Espresso. Raw beans to gnaw on. Anything to get my fix,” I agreed as she led me outside, then walked me around the building toward the front.
“Great. We will stop and get you some. I know you’ve been up all night. I’m so sorry someone couldn’t have stepped in before it was too late.”
She did sound genuinely sorry about it too. And I remembered what Quinton said about the girl at the office sending him over. That girl had to be Jules.
“Thank you for pushing your boss to come help,” I told her as she led me up the front steps. “You have no idea how much I appreciate it.”
She gave me a smile as she reached for the front door, but didn’t pull it open.
“Sometimes, these guys get so wrapped up in the job, they forget about the people. And I have no problem telling some jackass politician or corrupt cop that he can go suck an egg, but I will never feel comfortable turning away a woman who sounds desperate. I don’t play my cards often in this place, but when I do, it’s for women like you. And because I don’t ask Quin for favors, he listens when I occasionally press an issue. He might not have gotten there in time, but he got there. And because he got there, and got to see the human element, he took you on. Sometimes, these men just need a little push, you know? They can be dense at times,” she added as we moved inside to the reception area.
“Who can be dense sometimes?” a male voice – not Quinton’s – asked as he walked out of a hall from the left. He was younger, maybe only a few years older than Jules herself. And while I wasn’t great with telling features apart, I was pretty sure he was Korean with slightly shaggy inky hair, dark eyes, great skin, and a tall, somewhat lanky build. He had on fitted, but not tight, gray jeans with an untucked blue button-up that had wrinkles like he was accustomed to lounging about in it like it was a t-shirt.
