“I guess you could try, Vincent, but I don't know if you're going to get very far.”
He sighed to himself. Vincent didn't want to argue with her. He just wanted to spend some time with her. She did not seem to get that. As much as he had convinced himself that they were meant to be together after all the years of thinking about her, there was another side of him that knew it could all be rubbish. What if she didn't agree with him? Then what was he supposed to do?
“Come on. Do we really have to do this?”
“We're not doing anything. That's the problem, I suspect. It's good to see you again after all this time, but you're a bit pushier than I remember. You couldn’t take no back then, either, though, if I remember correctly.”
He apologized and told her that he wasn't trying to be pushy. He was, but he didn't want her to see it that way. Why couldn't she just agree with him? It wasn't that hard to imagine, though. She had always been hard to deal with. Fortunately, it was most likely why she had had the guts to break up her intended marriage with Balthazar. In a way, he should be happy that she was so independent thinking, except that it was really putting a damper on his plans for the two of them.
He asked her one last time if she would go get a drink with him after she got off work and she insisted that she couldn't.
“You know that I'm just going to keep coming until you see me, right?”
“Yeah, I'm starting to get that idea.”
“So why don't you just say yes?”
“Because then you'd think you can bully me around and get your way.”
He shrugged. “I don't care how it happens, I just I want to spend some time talking to you alone. I guess we could do it here. I just wouldn't think you would want your human coworkers hearing some of our conversation. They might not understand some of the context.”
That got him a sharp look and he smiled at her innocently.
“You can't talk like that around here.”
“I don't even know why you're hiding with humans, anyway.”
“I'm sure you've heard.”
“What, about Balthazar?”
“Yeah, I'm sure you heard about him, too.”
“I heard you made probably one of the best decisions that you could ever make in your life. That's why I wanted to find you. You know how long I've been looking for you?”
There was a hint of a smile, but then it was covered back up again. He wanted to see more of the same, but at the moment, she wasn't really listening. It was clear that he wasn't the only one that had changed.
“Come on, Mallory. Just go out with me tonight. Have a few drinks and if you don't want to see me again, then I won't bother you again.”
“Do I get a promise with that, that you won’t bother me anymore after this?”
“Of course. If you come out with me and spend some time with me and decide that you don't want to be around me anymore, I will leave you be. I promise.”
He didn't like to make such a promise to her, but if it meant he would get a chance, then that was exactly what he was going to do.
“Leave me be, never come in here again?”
“Nope, I won't darken your door.”
“Then where are you going to get these apple fritters that you keep buying?”
He waved her off and said that they weren't even for him.
“Then who are they for?”
“One of the guys that is my second in the clan. He works at the Academy as well. Nathan, you might remember him. He just all of a sudden started to get a hankering for them, and I've been getting them here for about a week before I saw you. If it wasn't for Nathan, we probably wouldn't have seen each other again.”
There was another strange look that came over her face and he had no idea what it was about. Vincent had to wonder if he would ever truly know what was going on in her mind. Why did he feel like there was so much missing from the equation that he just didn’t understand?
