“I know a bit about money problems myself. My parents left me the café, but I’ve been in the red for a while now. I don’t seem to have the business sense they had.”
We shared a quiet moment of mutual understanding. Her eyebrows pinched together, making her look older than she was. She looked like someone under serious stress.
“I’m Riley,” I said, offering my hand and breaking her out of her mental torture.
“Breeze,” she replied, shaking it.
As Breeze served the line of Balls Club members that snaked all the way to the door, I grabbed a pen out of my leather satchel and began to scribble ideas on a serviette. Call me old school, but I liked my notes somewhere out in the real world where I could see them, not stuffed into a phone.
The bell on the door jingled again, and someone joined the end of the curving line.
“Thanks for that introduction, Megan, and welcome everyone to this week’s training. Let’s dive right in,” came a booming voice from the back.
“After reading this week’s notes, which I’ll assume you’ve all done, can anyone tell me why the first meeting with a new client is so important?”
The man’s voice was audible above anything else in the room,includingthe grinder.
“You’ve made an excellent point there, Troy,” he said after a pause. “Getting an understanding of the dispute is certainly one of the key things you’d be taking away from that first meeting. But can anyone think of something even more important that should come before that?”
I turned to see a man in a gold dress shirt, sleeves rolled high enough to reveal a tattoo of a compass. He had one arm raised, phone to his face, wireless earbuds in. All while he stood in the line. Was he seriously facilitating a virtual training sessionin the middle of the café? I felt lava bubbling in my chest at his arrogance. Two Balls Club members who were already seated at their long table shared a glance with each other, but no one else seemed to care. Not one eye roll in sight!
I wondered if he got special dispensation on account of the way the muscles of his arms filled out the shirt he was wearing. Or that the gravel in his tone would make a killing on a phone sex worker line, if those were still a thing. Or maybe it was that his full lips were enough to make anyone forget their full name.
Or how to do the words putting into sentence doing…
Not that any of that was having an effect on me.
“Yes! Great one, Megan,” he said, getting closer to the counter.
“Your usual?” Breeze whispered as he reached her. He placed a perfect pile of coins into her palm before heading to a corner table.
He’s kidding, right? He wasn’t planning on sitting there running his loud-ass meetingwhilehe drank his coffee?
That’s exactly what he did.
Forty-five minutes later I had exactly zero house ideas on my serviette, but I had thought of twenty-three ways to murder this man.
“Can I grab a cheese scone to go?” he called out to Breeze, who was pottering away somewhere in the kitchen now that the rush had passed.
“Give me a minute, Dax,” she replied in her polite tone. He leaned his elbows on the counter, his palms on his five o’clock shadow. His brown hair was cut short, and his matching dark eyes looked serious.
“You don’t want to have that here and take another call we can all enjoy?” I asked, swirling the last of my coffee.
“Excuse me?” Dax turned, the flush at the base of his ears stark against his gold shirt.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love a free show as much as the next idiot, just not with my morning coffee.”
“You give your opinion freely for someone who’s not even from here,” he said, his broad shoulders angling towards me. He stood at his full height.
Damn, he was tall. And he was right. I gave my opinion everywhere, and I wasn’t about to stop for this egomaniac.
He crossed one ankle of his coal-coloured slacks over the other and leaned his hip on the counter. His cheekbones were sharp under the stubble that framed his full lips. His angular jaw clenched as his eyes bore deep into mine, and if I hadn’t already decided he was an inconsiderate douchebag, he would have been beautiful. Okay, maybe he was still beautiful. A beautiful, arrogant douchebag.
His mouth curved in the silence between us.
“Maybe. Or maybe no one who lives here has the guts to tell you how conceited and infuriating they find you to your face.”
I refused to break eye contact even as he towered above me. He crossed his arms, and the red around his ears flared up again. The dimple on my left cheek gave away my satisfaction. I was getting just as much out of pissing him off as he was me.
