When she smiles at me, her face looks flushed and happy, maybe a little nervous too.“Hi,” she says, and her eyes slide toward Liz’s.“Do you two know each other?” There’s a little something in that question. I wonder if maybe Kit feels a little—jealous? That’s probably too much to hope for. Probably she just feels thrown that she’s got me on her home turf and I’ve already found an advantage.
“We went to school together,” Liz says.“First through twelfth grade. Did you know Ben was voted ‘Biggest Underachiever’?”
Jesus.That’s not something I want her to know. But at least Liz has left out that it wasn’t reallyallthrough twelfth grade. Suddenly I think there’s a degree of liability in coming out to a local place with Kit, the off chance I’ll bump into someone who’ll run their mouth off. Jeff isn’t the kind of guy to ever bring up my past, but this bar isn’t such a controlled environment.
“No,” Kit says, cocking her head at me.“That’s not a very nice designation.”
“I was voted ‘Most Likely to Become a Pirate,’” Liz says, gesturing to her prosthetic eye.“Get it? It was not a very nice school.”
“I guess not,” Kit says, a little huffily, and I like that she seems wounded and defensive on our behalf.
Liz looks between us, a curious smile on her face, then tells us she’s got to get back to work.“You can put him on our tab,” Kit calls after her, and hooks her arm through mine. It’s so unexpected—and the feel of her bare skin against mine is so electric—that I can’t say anything for a second. I just stare down at our linked arms and try to seem nonchalant.“So. Underachiever, huh?” she says, leaning in so I can hear over the noise of the bar.
“Oh, that’s—that’s not really accurate. Or it is, but…” I don’t know why I’m suddenly so rattled, so desperate to explain myself to her.“I had a little trouble with the law when I was young. Just—teenage stuff.”
“A delinquent, I see,” she says, but she’s teasing me, and I enjoy it so much that I don’t even care that she’s teasing me about something that’s pretty awful from my past.“You ready to meet my friends?” She’s got a little mischief in her eyes. Maybe she’s had a couple of drinks, or maybe her friends have some kind of interrogation planned, and I’m walking right into it. At the moment I don’t care so much, because Kit is pulling me behind her, where I can get a good look at the curves of her body, and all I want is a cold beer and to sit right next to her for as long as she lets me hang around.
She turns to look at me right before we reach a corner booth, and I have to snap my eyes up from where they were staring at her ass. I think maybe she notices, but I smile and she smiles back, and—shit, I wish I didn’t have to meet her friends right now.
“This is him?” A tall, willowy blonde stands from the booth, her hand outstretched to shake mine.“I’m Zoe Ferris. I’m Kit’s attorney.”
Kit rolls her eyes.“You’re not here in an official capacity, Z,” Kit says, and elbows her.
Zoe has a firm handshake, a level, brown-eyed stare, and I’ll bet she eats people alive in a courtroom.“I’m Ben Tucker, Kit’s recruiter and sometimes-handyman.”
This makes Kit laugh, and once Zoe’s done sizing me up, she turns back to slide into the booth beside a petite brunette, hair so short she’s basically all eyes, a pretty, dark blue color framed with thick lashes.“This is Greer,” Zoe says, pointing a thumb at her. “‘And though she be but little, she is fierce.’”
“I ordered you a beer,” says Kit, sliding in across from Greer and patting the seat beside her. She’s different here, more relaxed, as if it’s normal for her to invite me to sit right down, as if we’ve done this a million times before. Her smile is wider, her lips looser, spreading over her teeth easier. I think I might be staring at her mouth, which is not a good thing to do in front of these women.Fuck.
“Thanks,” I say, leaning back and grabbing the pint.“All right. Let’s have it.”
To my surprise, Greer starts first, and with an unexpected question.“Did your dad really find a skeleton wearing a Speedo in the salvage yard?”
I almost spit my beer across the table, but I get it down before letting out a laugh.“You grew up around here, huh?”
Greer nods, her eyes even bigger now, and Kit leans an elbow on the table, turning to me.“What’s this, now?”
I wave a hand dismissively.“That’s all urban legend stuff. You’ve seen the yard, you know it can be a spooky place. Lots of kids, growing up, they came up with different stories about what goes on there. Famous one here,” I say, tipping my glass a little toward Greer,“is about Henry moving some old doors up on the second floor and finding a skeleton upright between two of them.”
“With a Speedo?” Zoe says, her face a tableau of disgust.
“I think that part of the story came up later,” I answer.“At first it was just a skeleton. By the time I was in high school, kids said my dad put the skeleton in a chair in his office, named it Carl, and talked to it about football.”
“Gross,” whispers Greer.
“It’s not true,” says Kit, defensive again, and I realize something about her in this, the way she inclines toward protectiveness. Kit is loyal to her core, and every good recruiter knows loyalty is the toughest nut to crack with a potential hire.
But I don’t want to think about that now.
“It’s not. But my dad, he eats that stuff up. When I’d have friends come over to the yard after school, sometimes he’d shout stuff to the back of the building. ‘Carl!’”I shout, and Kit’s already laughing at my spot-on Henry voice. “‘This kid out here is wearing a Redskins jersey! You hate them, right?’”
That used to mortify me, but now I’m so glad my dad’s as embarrassing as he is, because these women are all laughing, and it’s the perfect icebreaker. Greer and I swap stories about the area, about where she grew up, which pool she went to in the summers, whether she preferred ice cream from Dixie’s Soft Serve or the soda counter at Rickman’s Pharmacy. Kit knows all these places too, and I’m seeing now the hard work she’s put into getting to know the city—she’s got almost native knowledge even though she’s only lived here for a few years. I’ve lived in Texas since I was twenty-one, and I still don’t know the kind of stuff I know about here—which mechanic will pass your car for inspection when you really need new tires but don’t have the money, or which high school kids are going to key your car after their team loses a ballgame at your home field.
For the next hour, it’s easy conversation and laughter. I learn more about Greer and Zoe. Greer’s gone back to college this year, and Zoe’s taking a break from her work as a lawyer, though she’s cagey about that. The beer is cold and hoppy, and Liz’s—Betty’s, I guess I better get used to calling her—food is delicious. I convince Kit to eat a jalapeño popper even though she says she doesn’t usually eat hot things, and the noise she makes in her throat when she bites into it, her eyes closing in pleasure, forces me to shift in my seat, so turned on am I by the way she looks. I’m trying to be trustworthy, not-corporate Ben, and it’s working, but not if I become distracted, horny Ben. Not if I stare at her like I want to kiss her, like I want to taste all that spicy flavor on her mouth.
My thoughts are interrupted by Zoe, who leans both elbows on the table and clasps her hands, as if she’s opening a negotiation.“So,” she says, looking back and forth between me and Kit before settling her eyes on me.“How’d you get into recruiting?”
It’s not as off-the-wall as what Greer opened with, but it still surprises me—I came ready to answer Kit’s friends’ questions about why I was recruiting her, why she’d have a good life in Texas, why Beaumont would be a good fit. That’s kitchen table talk, but this is something different. To Zoe and Greer, at least, I’m Beaumont—me and the company, we’re the same.
