His brow un-creased and he looked away from me, but I was pretty sure it was so he wouldn’t start laughing.
“I’m sorry,” he finally breathed and I could tell it took all he had to sound serious. “I’ll stop.”
“Thank you,” I allowed.
“Alright, let’s get to work then, yeah?” he flashed another perfect smile and then turned to his computer.
“Yes, sounds good,” I smiled back; just to seem like a sane, rational thinking person. Also, it was kind of hard not to smile back when he looked at me like that. Because even though he had this ability to be absolutely and terrifyingly scary, he also had the ability to look anything but. His smile was really, seriously perfection.
“Ok, so what I’m going to have you do is some background work on an upcoming game. I have a few smaller games that run bi-weekly, you will also be helping me monitor those. But I need to look into some of the players for the big game in April. I don’t want what happened with you ever happening again.” Fin paused for a sEcond to suck in a breath and I couldn’t help but interrupt.
He tricked me. He tricked my guts.
“Wait,” I held up my hand to emphasize my command. “Wait, stop. I wanted to talk to you, remember.”
Fin dropped his head on a sigh, and I almost felt bad for irritating him, but when he looked up and I saw he was trying not to laugh again I easily stopped feeling bad.
“You’re sneaky, Fin Hunter, I’ll give you that,” I admitted with narrowed eyes. “But I’m not going to fall for your stupid compliment-distraction-tactic again. So don’t even bother trying it. Now I really do need to talk to you about-“
“Ellie,” he interrupted, his voice lowered to a rumbling timber. “You can just call me Fin.”
“What?” I asked out of pure confusion.
“You can just call me Fin,” he explained, his voice maintaining that sexy sound sending tingles to my very fingertips. “You just called me Fin Hunter. It’s the third time today you’ve used both my first and last name. Actually, you’ve never just said my first name alone. We’re business associates now; it’s Ok to call me just Fin.”
I cleared my throat feeling about as uncomfortable as I could. He was right; I hadn’t actually referred to him as just “Fin” yet. Even in my head I kept referring to him as Fin Hunter, as if he was this mystical creature I wouldn’t actually have to deal with in real life…. like Santa Clause. Or Dracula. Or Johnny Depp.
The thought of calling him only “Fin” sent goose bumps skittering down my spine though. And I didn’t know why, or why it bothered me so much to be on casual terms with this guy. Maybe because he was this urban legend at school or even in person he was so gorgeous, so out of my league I felt like I was speaking with a celebrity. But either way, none of that was true. Mostly, he was just an obnoxious bastard that wanted me to pay a debt I didn’t owe.
Ok, I could be confident about this, I could be strong.
“Alright, Fin,” I tried for casual, but I knew his name sounded forced and awkward on my tongue. Plus it didn’t help that I had to bite down on my bottom lip to keep from following up his first name with his last.
“See?” Fin smiled down at me. “That wasn’t so hard. It was actually kind of nice. You’ve got this soft, gentle voice; it’s actually kind of sexy.”
He leaned toward me and his eyes dropped to my mouth, which was, of course, hanging open. And that’s when I realized he was doing it again!
“Stop flustering me!” I demanded. At this rate I was never going to say what I needed to!
Fin broke out in a crooked, triumphant smile then, his gaze finding mine again. “But you’re so fun to fluster,” he admitted.
I let out a growl of frustration and watched as his smile grew.Brat.
“I can’t do this,” I rushed my words out afraid one more compliment from him and I’d be signing over my soul. “I can’t help you, or work for you or do whatever it is you want me to do. I don’t owe you the money. My roommate does. And I don’t know where she is, or where your money is, but I do know thatnoneof this is my responsibility. And even though I want to help you find her, I do not want any part of your illegal gambling…. thing. Nor can I be of any help because I knownothingabout gambling or poker or Texas shuffle them or anything!”
“Wait,” Fin commanded and I didn’t want to admit this, but if he told me to do anything in that voice I probably would, it was probably why I was here right now even when I wanted to be anywhere else. “Texas shuffle them?”
And before I could respond he burst into laughter, throwing his head back and all.
“Or whatever it’s called,” I finished on a sigh.
“It’snotcalled Texas shuffle them,” He sobered and then looked me over as if he were really seeing me for the first time. “It’s called Texas Hold ‘em and we don’t even play that here. We play Five Card Stud.” He paused, visibly gathered patience and then continued, “Ok, here’s the thing. This is going to work for us because I need to hire help and now that I’m out seven thousand dollars I can’t afford to pay someone. You owe seven thousand dollars and need a way to pay that off. You solve a problem for me and I solve a problem for you. On top of that, you can’t prove to me that this isn’t your debt. Not just by your word. I want to believe you, Ellie. I do. You don’t seem to have any clue about any of this. And you seem genuine enough. But whenever I decide to believe you, I start arguing with myself. It’s not like the gambling version of you knew what they were doing either. Sure you were up for a while, but honestly that could all have been blind luck because as soon as you started losing you really started losing. Like a ball of burning flames kind of losing. So I gave you time, I gave you twenty four hours to come up with something else, some way to prove to me that this isn’t your debt. Right? If this really isn’t yours you could have gone to the police, you could have tracked down your alleged roommate, or what I really expected you to do, you could have gone to your brothers. I know Beckett, and I know Grayson, and whether this debt was really yours or not, I know they would have stepped in for you and tried to settle this. So, when I remind myself of all that, I can’t talk myself into believing this debtisn’tyours. I am going to make this very simple for you. We won’t even need to go to the police or anything. First of all, I’m going to tell you what I want. I want you to work for me. Maybe, ten hours a week. Nothing too demanding, nothing that will take away from school. And in the meantime you are welcome to hunt down the person you really believe has my money, or come up with it on your own. I’m not going to pressure you for it other than I need it in six weeks. I need it by April twenty seventh. However, if you are telling the truth, hell, if you arenottelling the truth and just want to get out of this, all you have to do is ask Grayson to talk to me. I owe him. If Grayson talks to me, I’ll let this go.”
“Why do you owe Grayson?” I asked before I could stop myself. Not many people owed Grayson. Grayson was the kind of guy that collected on all of his debts.
“That’s between him and me. Besides, it’s not the kind of debt that you owe me. This is something less…. tangible. So is that what you would like to do? Are you going to talk to your brother? Or are you going to see this through with me.” His eyes were darker than they ever had been; black pools of intensity.
I swallowed against the nervous lump rising in my throat. I hated his options. Hated them. I couldn’t go to Grayson; that was absolutely out of the question. I was doing my best to avoid my family’s protection, I was definitely not going to go run and crawl under it the minute I faced any kind of trouble. Besides, for some reason going to Grayson felt like I was admitting to this being my fault. And even though staying with Fin and working for him felt exactly like admitting this was my fault, it was all of a sudden the better, nobler option.
