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“What’s going on?” he asked into my silence, too lost in my own head to realize the time was slipping by. I went to shake my head and deny that anything was, but was cut off by him. “It won’t help to pretend shit didn’t go down when you are able to let it out. That’s how you end up snapping. The last thing you – or me and my team – needs is for you to crack.”
Right.
This was business.
I could point fingers at them if I ever lost my mind and admitted what I had done. And what was done to cover it up.
They needed to make sure their client didn’t go off the deep end. To cover their own asses.
That reality made this meeting a lot less sweet suddenly.
“Right,” I agreed, bringing my coffee up, taking a sip even though it was too hot, somehow reveling in how it burned all the way down. “No worries.”
Quin’s dark brows drew together as he watched me, head dipped to the side slightly. “What’d I say?”
“You and your team don’t need me going all straitjacket-crazy.”
“More or less, that was what I said, yes. But then what’s with the attitude?”
“No attitude.”
“Remind me to invite you to poker night,” he said, lips tipped up slightly. “You can’t lie for shit. I’d wipe the floor with you.”
Ugh.
That was true, unfortunately.
My voice went too robotic to be natural.
“I wouldn’t be so cocky. I have a knack for cards. My father taught me before he died.”
“Mine too,” Quin agreed, and somehow, having that little real life detail for him managed to take him from being this unknowable, enigmatic force, this fixer, to a human being. And in doing so, I felt a lot more on even footing with him.
“Do you always win?”
“Ah,” he said, leaning back in the chair, his chest widening, making his shirt stretch over it, a sexy detail I had no business noticing. Now. Or ever. And I definitely should not have been flashing back to the shower room, and the inhumanly perfect image of him with next to no clothes on. “Depends on the week. And by that, I mean it depends if Jules is playing or not. She could do it professionally. Never met someone with such a perfect poker face before.”
“Must be interesting to be the only girl in a boys club. Especially so young.”
“She’s got attitude beyond her years. She holds her own around the office. We all know we’d be lost without her. What’s your place like?”
“Well, if I am out in the front instead of in the back room, it’s nice. Fun. Kennedy, the owner, and her best friend Benny are hilarious together. It’s a nice, light place.”
“If you’re not stuck in the back room waxing pussy all day, that is.”
I was starting to wonder if he used the word because it made me flinch. I wasn’t a prude by anyone’s standards, but there was something about hearing that kind of word unexpectedly out of a really hot man’s mouth that disarmed a woman. You couldn’t help but let your thoughts go there. Where my thoughts most definitely needed not to go.
“I wax backs and chests too.” On occasion. Fine, rarely. But he didn’t need to know that part.
He let that slide, though the look in his eye suggested he had my card. “Was this something you were always into?” I felt my cheeks heat, making a low, rumbling chuckle escape him, a sound that seemed to slide through my system way too deliciously. “Spa crap, not pussy,” he clarified, a ghost of a smile on his lips.
“I was into something that would get me away from two dozen kids that would come in every day of the year carrying some sort of viral plague that was bound to make its way through to all the staff. And, besides that, forty-thousand a year was a lot more tempting than nineteen.”
“You like kids?”
“I haven’t really spent any time with any since I left that job. But, yeah. I mean, you can’t do that job if you don’t like kids at least a little bit.”
To be perfectly honest, it was rather nice to talk. Not just about pleasantries with clients, or salon stuff with coworkers. Just talking. About me. About life. It had been so long since I had this that I had almost forgotten how good it felt when someone just wanted to get to know you a little.
“You?” I asked when he didn’t immediately move the conversation along.
“My sister has a couple monsters I am fond of. They live off in New York state so I generally only see them on their summer break.”
Oddly, it was almost hard to imagine Quin with a family. I don’t know why. I mean, almost everyone had a family. I guess, in my head, he existed as this tall, dark, savior, surrounded by all his equally tall and interesting group of coworkers.
