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“Mom?” One of them asks from the back seat. “Do we still get hotcakes?”
THIRTEEN
Mel
Trust my kids to make an awkward situation worse. I bury my face in my hands, avoiding looking at Jarradek. “No.”
“Yes!” Jarradek’s deep voice cuts over mine and I look around surprised. He gives me a shrug. “Unless you don’t want me to stop.”
“I don’t want to be—”
He snorts. “A hassle? You’re not. In fact. You three are my saviors today. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been in that park.”
“We are?” I can tell Elsa and Damian are bursting with curiosity. They’re practically bouncing on the fancy leather seats of Jarradek’s sports car. I’m lucky he clearly favors cars with lots of cabin space to fit his horns, since there’d probably be no backseat in a Lambourghini.
“Oh you most certainly are. Do you know how boring it is standing around in the cold trying to convince people they should vote for me? It’s horrible. But my public relations guy says I have to, so there I was.” He rolls his eyes dramatically and gives me a grin.
Despite my lack of sleep, my sore neck and the incredible embarrassment I’m feeling at being found like that by a client—bythisclient—I can’t help the way the corner of my mouth quirks up in a half smile. I like this playful side of him. I like seeing glimpses of his different moods. It feels like he’s letting me in. Which is ridiculous. I’m just his sex worker.
Only, he apparently wants to take me and my two kids back to his place.
I’m a little stunned.
No, make that totally stunned. He detours to pick up drive-though, jokes with my kids all the way back to his uptown apartment complex, keeping them so entertained they’re basically howling with laughter. I don’t even have it in me to do anything other than soak it in.
When we get to his apartment building, he clicks the remote for the garage door and turns back to the kids, slinging his arm across the back of my seat. The gesture somehow feels intimate. I catch myself wondering what it would be like to have a guy like this around for real.
“My parking spot has a turntable, just like batman, but it makes the back seat impossible to get out of, so you two will have to jump out first, OK? Who wants to push the button on the remote?”
They both squeal with excitement and Jarradek hands the little gray remote to Elsa. “You’re the big girl. So it’s up to you to make sure your brother gets a go, too.”
She blinks back at him in awe, nodding with all the seriousness of a seven year old handed a very important task. “I will.”
Jarradek parks in a spot so narrow it makes me wince at the way he casually swings the wheel. The kids scramble out and he winds down the window, sticking out his head. “Push the red one, but stay over there where I can see you.”
He quickly tucks his horns back inside the car and I expect a joke or flirtatious comment. Jarradek snaps straight into serious mode, though. He pitches his voice low and leans a little closer. “Are you OK? Are you safe?”
