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We stare at each other for another long moment, then finally I cave, relaxing my shoulders with a sigh. “Come on, then. Someone’s got to stop you bleeding all over the carpet.”
CHAPTER7
JOEL
Anna is surprisingly gentle with her hands considering she nearly killed me ten minutes ago. Her nails are untidy, but I can overlook it because the way her fingers ghost over my cheek makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. Usually, the women who get this close to me are seventy percent plastic with calorie-restricted waistlines and legs so long they should be anatomically impossible.
It’s safe to say I don’t struggle for female attention. Money and looks get you far in this world.
So why am I flustered when this nobody girl glares at me and caresses my face?
Anna’s a plain kind of beauty, lacking any of the trimmings that come with the kind of girls I usually associate with. Still, she’s not unpleasant to look at. She has a round face with soft, olive skin and shining green eyes that shoot daggers at me with every misstep. The more I look at her, the more I can see Ben — they have the same thick brown hair and expression when they raise an eyebrow.
But Ben always looks so smart and stern. Anna is wearing a sweater that’s three times too big for her, pale blue and worn almost threadbare at the elbows. It looks comfortable but I don’t know why she wouldn’t just get a new one, especially when the cuffs are starting to unravel like that. Her hair is messy too, not quite long enough for it all to get caught in her ponytail so strands keep falling loose into her face and she keeps having to push them back behind her ear.
Not the kind of woman I usually look twice at. Maybe I’ve finally drunk enough to lose it for real.
“Ouch!” I flinch, the antiseptic cream stinging in my wounds. “Be careful, woman.”
“Grow up,” she snaps, scowling darkly at me. I wish I hadn’t said that. She presses a Band-Aid firmly against my face in revenge. I wince again but say nothing.
“How bad is it, nurse?” I try to lighten the mood again but it’s clearly the wrong thing to say because she sighs at me like I’m a five-year-old and snatches my hand up in hers. A thrill dances down my arm and I can’t help but crack a smile. Anna ignores it. I’m going to have to turn up the charm if I want her to like me.
She examines my sore, purple knuckles and scratched skin. “You’ll live,” she says, casting my hand away. As I cross my arms, a slight pang of disappointment aches inside my chest.
“Great,” I say.
She snaps the first aid box shut and jumps to her feet. I rise more slowly and trail her through the house, seeing myself as a wolf, confidently stalking my prey. She seems to see me more as an annoying mosquito, though.
“What do you want?” she says sharply as we wander into the kitchen.
“Is a guy not allowed a conversation with a girl?” I lean against the refrigerator, watching as she stands up on her tiptoes to shove the box back into one of the tall cupboards. I’d offer to help because I’m six foot one and she can’t be more than five three, but somehow I don’t think that’s going to go down well.
She grunts as she pushes the box into place and slams the cupboard shut. “Guys can do whatever they want,” she says as she lowers herself back down and turns to me. “But I don’t want a conversation with you.”
“Come on, baby Romero—”
“Don’tcall me that,” she blazes. She’s cute when she’s angry. Her face flushes and her fists clench and I’d comment on it if I didn’t think she’d punch me. This is a girl who can look after herself and is clearly immune to my charms.
“Okay, okay, sorry,” I say, throwing up my hands in a lazy surrender. “Anna. You never said what you were doing here.”
“Neither did you,” she throws back.
Rule one of client relations: you can’t let them get hostile. You’ve got to make them feel like you’re giving them something before they’ll give themselves to you. This is a rule that works in pretty much any situation, and I’ve been getting away with the dumbest shit since I was a preteen. I’ve been primed to be a charmer since birth. “You saw the photos, right?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She folds her arms to mirror me and bites her lip ever so slightly, like she’s trying to ground herself.
I’m also great at poker, and to be great at the cards you’ve got to know when people are bluffing you. She’s seen the photos. Of course she has — you’d have to literally be a hermit not to have, even if she hasn’t gone out of her way to read any articles. “I had a kind of… misdemeanor at the casino last night. Women. Booze. Gambling. That kind of thing, you know?”
She purses her lips. “No. I can’t say I do.”
Time to change tactic. “Well, I do, and this time I went kind of too far. And the press jumped all over me. It was a media bloodbath, you know?”
She raises her eyebrow to tell me that no, she doesn’t have that kind of experience either. Why are normal people so hard to get through to? Don’t they ever do anything exciting?
“Trust me,” I say, “it was nasty. It was my fault for taking my pants off in public, but it still wasn’t fun.”
There, a ghost of a smile. She’s trying not to, but she’s feeling sorry for me. I carry on. “So the cops took me home and fined me almost as much as I lost on the table, and let’s just say, my father isn’t a fan of losing money like that.”
