He rolls his eyes at me as if I’m being ridiculous. “First off, don’t call me that. Secondly, I already cleared it with her. She knows you’ll be stepping out. Like I said, we need to talk.”
My stomach tingles as I process his demand. Do I believe him? Not really. I have no reason to. But it’s almost my lunch break anyway, so I can always take it early and make sure I’m back within an hour. If I go over, I’ll stay late again. No big deal.
Except, itfeelslike a big deal.
“This is a work meeting, right?” I ask him as I stand to slide my jacket on and zip it. Grabbing my purse from my desk and draping the strap over my shoulder, I collect my notebook and a pen in case there’s anything I need to write down.
His only reply is, “What else would it be, Bronte?”
It sounds like a challenge.
One I do not take.
So all I ask is, “WhatshouldI call you then?”
Slowly, his lips curl into a grin that would make anybody nervous. “I have a few ideas, sweetheart.”
My spine straightens. “Do not call me that.”
His grin only spreads. “Touch a nerve?”
I don’t respond.
He chuckles. “Let’s go.”
He still doesn’t tell me what to call him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Moskins
She won’t sitstill. It’s fucking annoying watching her squirm in the private booth far from the public eye. I always request a section where people can’t snap photos or video me. The occurrence has become far too common these days, thanks to my face being a regular feature on people’s social media with ridiculous clickbait headlines. Suddenly, everyone wants to be a citizen journalist documenting my every goddamn move.
“Would you sit still,” I grumble, flexing my fingers around the water glass. “You act like you’re about to get tortured.”
She frowns. “Aren’t I?”
I snort, loosening my grip before I break my cup. “If I wanted to torture you, I’d take you back to my place to do it more privately.”
Her face, which I’ve spent way too much time studying every feature and angle, turns red. It takes me a minute to realize her mind must have gone to a dirty place, which makes me grin in approval.
“Mind out of the gutter, Bronte,” I bemuse, making the color in her cheeks darken. She’s got a pretty face with round, doe-like green eyes and a full, pouty mouth. I can picture doing vile things to those lips, but I refrain from telling her as much in fear she’d use her cutlery in retaliation. “I don’t have whips and chains there.”
Toys, on the other hand, I do have. I don’t plan on sharing that with her, because I’m not sure she could handle it.
Winter clears her throat. “Now that we’ve established that you’re not the next Christian Grey, can you enlighten me as to why I’m here?”
“I don’t know about that,” I challenge, my grin growing. “I’d hate to be discredited for my unique tastes. I’m sure if they wrote a book about me, it’d make twice as much asFifty Shades of Grey.”
One of her brows quirks. “I don’t know if I should be impressed or scared that you know what I’m referring to. You don’t even know who Charlotte Brontë is.”
I refrain from laughing or disagreeing with her. What she doesn’t know is that my house contains shelves full of leather-bound books with gold foiling on every piece of classic literature from the nineteenth century. Collecting them is a hobby of mine that not many people know about.
Charlotte Brontë sits alongside other greats of the period. Jane Austen. Charles Dickens. Walt Whitman.
I’d rather she assume I’m just another airhead jock, like most people write me off as. It’s easier to live under the presumption that my narrow-minded ways are nothing more than surface-level. Trivial. To everybody, I only like booze, women, and sports. They don’t know about my actual interests. Sure, women and sports are on that list, and I enjoy a good drink now and again, but that isn’t all I’m made up of. Books, documentaries, and a good cup of hot coffee are what make me happy.
Days where I can be alone with my thoughts, no matter how rocky those may be, make me happy. I don’t always like isolation, but I’ve come to appreciate it when the rest of my world is deafening from the noise.
