The waiter dropped off our drinks, and she took a sip of hers, then seemed to check if I was still looking at her.
I was.
“Look, Mr. Calegari—”
“Nope,” I said. “Don’t know where you heard that, but that’s really not my name.”
She started to blush again. “It’s not?”
“It’s the name I was born with. But I don’t really use it unless I have to.”
“Okay…” She tried, awkwardly, to amend, “Mr. Player, I think we should clarify something…”
Yeah, that was fucking adorable. But I put an end to it, quick.
“Call me Ashley. You just gave me a ring.”
She sighed. “Ashley. I think we should keep the conversation professional. And I wanted to tell you—”
“It was professional. I tried to hire you. You told me to think about it. So I thought about it.”
“Oh… Okay?” She didn’t look all that happy about it, though.
More like she was bracing herself or something.
Did she really think I was here to tell her I wasn’t hiring her after all?
“I thought about what you said, about the functions of my home. And I do want it to be a place where a woman will feel comfortable staying a while.”
“Oh.”
When she didn’t immediately pick up on the fact that I was implyingher, and that I wanted her to stay a whilein mybed, I decided to spell it right out for her. Because I’d learned from past mistakes. From sitting back, waiting on someone to come around, to come to me.
What I’d learned? There was no point dragging things out or waiting around for anyone. The longer I did that, the more my emotions potentially got invested, and the more potential there was for someone to fuck with me.
Fuck that.
My emotions were not getting involved.
I was not falling in love anymore.
Yes, I’d made that declaration before—but here I was again, with another broken heart. So. There was no way I was getting my heart broken, again, at the end of some long, drawn out, messy bullshit that I could’ve just avoided in the first place by being upfront and bypassing that whole pathetic scene.
My new MO: just let it all hang the fuck out.
If it scared her away, ifIscared her away, so fucking be it.
“I want to hire you,” I told her. “And you’re right. We should clarify something. And that is, I also want you in my bed. As soon as fucking possible would be ideal.”
Chapter Twelve
Ash
Danica stared at me for a long-ass minute.
Then she said, “Um. I was just going to tell you I don’t think I can take the job.”
“What?”
