“Well, yeah.”I mean, I’vethoughtabout it.“We haven’t really gotten around to discussing it just yet.”
She leaned back in her chair, surveying me like an artist examining their work. “Let’s talk about that, shall we? What do you think is preventing you from sitting them down and discussing those things with them?”
I knew exactly what was preventing me from doing it, but I wasn’t about to tell her because she would never understand. There was no way she could. So instead, I answered all her questions with the necessary amount of reflexivity, and when the session ended, I was out of my chair before her pen had even stopped scribbling.
Back in the marble-floored lobby of her consulting rooms, I wrapped my scarf around my neck, braced myself for the extreme cold outside, and escaped her scrutiny by flinging myself into what felt like the afterlife’s punishment chamber.
Early January in Chicago wasless winter wonderlandand moreice bucket challenge, but only if the bucket was the entire sky. As soon as I set foot outside, the wind slapped me sideways and snow tried to blind me.
I slid at least three feet down the sidewalk even though I was trying to stand still, but the car I’d ordered twenty minutes ago like a responsible adult who planned ahead was nowhere to be seen. I checked my phone, my stomach plummeting at the notification waiting on my screen.
Your trip was canceled due to inclement weather conditions.
“You don’t say,” I muttered, shoving the phone back in my coat pocket. “This is only what hell frozen over probably looks like.”
A yellow cab approached like a lighthouse in a storm and I fought my way closer to the curb, waving with the desperation of a person who would be snowed under by the time the nextavailable cab appeared. As if he was a knight on a white horse riding to my rescue, the driver slowed and I practically dove for the door, slipping into the backseat with all the grace of a newborn giraffe.
But screw grace. I’d made it in one piece, only halfway frozen.
I’d just exhaled when the opposite door opened without any warning. A blast of cold air hit me first. Then a blur of dark wool, snowflakes, and masculine energy filled the other side of the seat. A sleek, black leather briefcase dropped between us and the man it all belonged to followed, his shoulders broad enough to make the cab’s interior feel like a shoebox.
He glanced at me, then back at the storm, and then shut the door firmly behind him, sealing us in together as if cab-hijacking was a normal part of his Friday routine. “I’ll pay if we share it.”
I blinked at him. Snow clung to his dark brown hair, and his long eyelashes were frosted. He stared at me through eyes that were a startling, deep mossy green, but they cut toward me for only a second before they flicked away.
Strangely, he looked familiar. That kind of overtly masculine face wasn’t something I was likely to forget. On the other hand, given the definitely expensive scent of his cologne and the quality of his clothing, it was possible I knew him from the insufferable social circles my family orbited. Or from some charity gala I’d escaped early. He certainly seemed the type to own several tuxedos and spend his nights judging other men’s bow ties.
“No,” I finally started, fully prepared to tell him to get out, but he leaned forward abruptly, forcing me to pin myself against the door to avoid any accidental brushes of knees, arms, or existence, and he gave the driver an address on Chicago’s Gold Coast, naturally, then sat back.
“That’s on the way to my place,” I muttered, annoyed that the universe had aligned even that much, but the man withthe extremely handsome, chiseled facial features didn’t even respond.
Obviously. He probably didn’t speak to people he perceived as mere mortals, considering that he seemed to have been handcrafted by the gods and blessed with the money of a prince.
Shaking off the errant thought, I pulled out my phone, pretending to be very busy and scrolling through emails I absolutely wasn’t in the right emotional state to deal with. It was Friday evening, the only time I allowed myself a few hours off from the office.
This was my time for laundry. Bills. Grocery shopping. Life maintenance. Whatever required my attention outside of work. Then I would head back to the office tomorrow because the quarterly forecast was behind and Uncle Andrew was an incompetent buffoon. I’d probably be there all of Sunday, too.
The cab lurched to a sudden, rough stop and I looked up to see a snaking line of red brake lights. We were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, but that wasn’t much of a surprise. Lots of accidents happened in weather like this.
I felt it then—now that I’d been yanked out of my thoughts—the weight of someone’s gaze on me.
His.
When I glanced up, he was staring, and not subtly or politely, but his expression was as stoic as if it’d been carved from stone, all masculine, sharp-edged, and utterly unreadable.
Outside of the faint spark in those green eyes, that was. I just couldn’t pinpoint if it was interest, amusement, or annoyance, but even caught with his hand directly in the cookie jar, he didn’t flinch or look away.
It took me all of two seconds to decide that two could play this game and I stared right back, matching intensity for intensity and refusing to be the first to look away. If this man thought he could hijack my cab, invade my only peaceful sliver oftime in the week, and then stare at me like I was an unexpected math problem, he’d underestimated me.
Our eyes locked in a silent, electric standoff, and for one impossible moment, I forgot about everything else, but thankfully, the moment didn’t stretch much longer than that. I crashed back to my senses and sighed.
“Can I help you?” I snapped. “Staring contests only entertain me for so long and I have precisely zero patience for men who think prolonged eye contact is a personality trait.”
The bastard smirked, a slow, knowing curve of his mouth that made something deep in my stomach tighten. That incredibly green gaze searched my face with a sharp sort of curiosity, as if he found me familiar too, but he didn’t bother to offer a name.
Instead, he just motioned vaguely toward the window. “The weather’s getting worse.”
Brilliant observation, Captain Obvious.“Yeah. Thanks for that.”
