Page 4 of Learn My Lesson
I jump. “Sorry, I thought I was alone.”
“No need to apologize. I was enjoying the show.”
I face the woman and go still. She’s easily the most captivating person I’ve ever seen. Not beautiful exactly, but the sharp lines and equally sharp smile root my feet in place. Her dark brown hair is pulled back from her face, as if she knows how stark her perfection is and plays it up for all it’s worth. I can’t look away from her blue eyes, and I have the most insane desire to go to my knees before her. To run my hands up her lean legs. To… Get ahold of yourself. “Ma’am, is there something I can help you with? You’re in the employee break room.”
“Ma’am?” She looks a little horrified. “I cannot believe you just ma’am-ed me.”
It’s the only appropriate response when greeting a woman. And this stranger is all woman in a way that has me fighting my body’s attempt to respond. “I’m sorry?”
“You should be. Very sorry.” Her tone drops, and she takes a step into the room.
She’s nearly my height in her heels but significantly smaller than I am. It doesn’t seem to matter because she takes up all the space in the room simply by breathing. Her smile widens. “Would you like to make it up to me?”
Surely I’m reading this wrong? No way did this woman come back here to find me. I glance around the room. The understated luxury on the main floor of the restaurant doesn’t extend to the employee break room. There’s a secondhand couch that’s probably older than me up against one wall and a folding table with a stained microwave perched precariously on top of it. A few months ago, I wouldn’t have fit into this place, but I don’t have a choice now. This woman? She definitely doesn’t fit in.
“It’s against the rules.” I mean for the sentence to come out strong, but I sound more like I’m requesting confirmation.
“Rules were made to be broken, don’t you think?” She lifts a dark eyebrow. “What do you say? One drink and you can send me on my way.”
I frown, trying to think past the spell she seems to weave with her proximity. Spending time with guests on restaurant property is a firing offense. I really, really can’t afford to lose this job. “I’m sorry.”
Something flares in her blue eyes, and she moves closer. “My date left me.”
“What?” I saw her on the restaurant floor, of course. She seemed to own the room the second she walked into it.
I noticed the older guy she was with too. He wore an extremely expensive suit in the careless way of someone rich beyond measure. But it was the way he studied the room that drew me, the kind smile and cold eyes. He was just as attractive as she is, the deep lines around his mouth and eyes speaking of plentiful smiles for those he deemed important enough to bestow them upon. There was power in the way he moved, in the way he drew every eye in the room even though it appeared he only had eyes for this woman.
Apparently appearances can be deceiving.
I’ve always had shit taste in who I’m attracted to. This couple seems like they’re no different. What kind of man leaves his woman behind after a dinner date? I should call her a car. That is the reasonable thing to do. Not offer to take her to my place around the corner.
She gives me a slow smile. “I’m going to call a cab, but would you mind waiting with me?”
“Of course.” I know even as I agree that I’ll regret this. I grab my backpack and follow her out of the room. But instead of heading for the door like I expect, she takes a right turn and moves up a set of stairs that are strictly off-limits. I stop short. “Employees aren’t allowed up there.”
“The owners and I are old friends.” She must see my hesitation because she motions to herself. “I’m not exactly dressed for the weather.”
She can say that again. She’s clothed in a sheath dress that stops a full three inches shorter than polite dinner wear, and the white fabric looks delicate enough to tear if I so much as touch it. Not sure what it says about me that I want to rip it in half, but I’m the one in control. Not my darker impulses.
“Okay,” I finally say and follow her up.
She leads me into a small loft apartment that the owners must use when they stay over in town. I step over the threshold, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve passed some point of no return. I try to shrug off the foreboding, but I can’t quite banish the weight of it.
The woman drops her purse on the couch and kicks off her heels. She shoots me a look. “I hope you don’t mind. I have a twenty-minute wait, and these heels are killer on my feet.”
It’s not like I have more than a shitty bed waiting for me at home. I gingerly sink onto the couch next to her. I’m a big guy, and there are times when it’s smarter to make myself smaller so I don’t freak people out. Women, especially. Women alone, extra especially. She asked me to wait with her, but I’d hate for her to regret it.?2
She doesn’t look anything but intense. She crosses one of those long, long legs over the other, causing her dress to slide higher up her toned thighs. I try to drag my gaze up to her eyes, to keep things polite, but I can’t quite manage it. There’s a tattoo there, something small and intricate. I think it’s a skeleton key. Part of me wants to push her dress higher to find out.
To discover if she’s wearing panties.
Damn it, I’m ogling her like some kind of creep.
“What’s your name?”
I manage to sit back, though now I’m battling the cockstand of the century. I look anywhere but at her, finally focusing on the truly hideous abstract painting across from the couch. “Hercules Kasios.” My last name slips out by sheer habit, and I tense, waiting for the inevitable widening of her pretty blue eyes…but it never comes. Because this is Carver City, not Olympus, and she has no reason to recognize what being a Kasios means.
“That’s quite the mouthful.” The words are innocent enough, but something in her tone suggests a different kind of mouthful.
