Page 68 of Whiskey Wednesdays

She gave Connor a big smile, and her plum-colored lipstick framed her perfect, white teeth.

“Hello, Mr. McCoy. I have the skates you requested.” She stood up and bent over to put them on the end of her desk, giving him a nice view down the front of her blouse.

Then she sat down and turned to me. “Can I help you?”

“You already did. The skates are for me.” I smiled and picked them up.

Connor flicked her a glance. “Thanks, Lisa. Have you seen Titus yet today?” He’d barely glanced at her, and he called her by the wrong name.

She pursed her lips. “Yes. I saw him walk by a few minutes ago.” Valerie turned to me. “You know how to ice skate?”

I shrugged. “Well enough.” Connor was holding the door open for me, obviously ready to leave, so I waved and walked out.

When the door shut behind us, I looked up at Connor. “Her name is Valerie, not Lisa.”

“I know.” He stopped walking for a minute to type out a text on his phone.

“Why’d you call her the wrong name then?”

He stuck his phone in his back pocket and looked down at me. “She was rude to you.”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

“It bothers me. And she eye fucks me every time I go in there.”

I squinted back at the office door. “Okay. You can be mean to her for that.”

He smiled and grabbed my free hand. When we got to the rink, we put our things on a bench and Connor started stretching a little.

“You ever skate before?”

Nodding, I did a few cursory stretches myself. “Yeah, but I’m not great. Paul Curtis gave my brother and me an annual pass to the Bellevue ice rink for a few years when we lived on his estate in Seattle. He always did stuff like that. He was a big believer in having experiences instead of things.”

Connor’s lips twisted cynically. “That’s easy for a man with a net worth in the hundreds of millions to say.”

His offhand comment bothered me because Paul had been a good man, maybe despite being so rich.

“I don’t think he meant basic necessities. My dad believes the same thing, and so do I. My mom’s medical expenses were exorbitant, so we never had a lot of things anyway.”

His brow furrowed. “Did you ever go hungry?”

“No.” I started lacing up the skates. “But my dad did. He’d skip lunch sometimes if there weren’t any leftovers or sandwich stuff. Liam and I grew up using the free school lunch program. My dadhatedit. But he wanted us fed more.”

I’d also worn mostly secondhand clothes. Lucky for me, it was considered good practice in Seattle to reuse and recycle, so buying my clothes at thrift stores had been socially acceptable. Connor would probably roll his eyes if he knew I still shopped there.

He sighed and sat down next to me. “I can be an ass sometimes. I’m sorry. My parents died in a car wreck when I was in my early twenties, but they left a large life insurance policy for Noah and me. So we never went without.”

Taking Connor’s hand, I squeezed it, then ran my thumb across his knuckles. “I’m sorry about your parents. And I’m sorry Noah is the way he is.”

He squeezed my hand back. “My parents lived and breathed hockey, so I guess you could say they also believed in experiences over material things. As long as it involved hockey.”

He started lacing up his own skates. “My dad drank a lot, and he was an angry drunk. Which was too fucking bad because he was a decent dad when he was sober. And my mom didn’t talk much. She was quiet and introverted.”

I’d come to realize there wasn’t a “one size fits all” to childhood scars and trauma.

Connor finished lacing his skates, then walked to the edge of the ice and took off. He deftly skated around the rink several times, then came back to me and stopped on a dime. My mouth hung open as I watched him.

I cleared my throat. “I want to watch you for a few minutes first.”

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