Page 8 of Silver
I nodded. My entire life, I’d been the butt of Charlie Brown jokes.
“Seriously? Your name is Charlie Brown?”
I sighed. “Yeah, I know. You can go ahead and crack the jokes now. I’ve had almost thirty years to get used to them at this point, and I doubt you can come up with something I’ve not already heard.”
Silver’s gaze darkened, and his brow furrowed. “Why would I make jokes about your name? Why would you expect that from me?”
I shrugged. “I’m used to it. Most of the time, I don’t really hear them anymore. It just happens, and I ignore it.”
“No. That’s not right. Who’s been picking on you about your name? I’ll go growl at them and set them straight right now.”
I ducked my head, my cheeks heating at the thought of him doing such a thing. We’d just met, and although I definitely felt a strong attraction to him, I hadn’t known if he felt anything. But if he was willing, or even saying he was, to growl at people who made comments about my name, that had to mean something, didn’t it? No, this was how I always ended up with the wrong men. My desire for sweet and romantic gestures was dumb, and I knew I wouldn’t find that with Silver despite the attraction I was feeling.
“Charlie?”
I looked up at Silver, who was staring intently at me. “Yeah?”
“Who? Anyone at work here?”
I shook my head. There had been one person, but they no longer worked at the zoo, so they were no longer an issue. “No. Everyone here is professional.” I shrugged. “Besides, most don’t know anyone by anything other than their first names.” I thought about that for a moment. “Well, besides the veterinarians. They’re all known as Dr. Whoever. But that’s a special case, I think. Everyone else is more of a family sort of thing.”
Silver looked thoughtful for a moment before he finally nodded. “So, did you always want to be a zookeeper?”
I shook my head and laughed. “No. I absolutely didn’t. I actually have a teaching degree. An advanced one, but after a year in the classroom, I was joking around with a friend that it would be easier to work with actual animals than it would the students. He told me that the zoo was hiring, and here I am.” I stared into space a little while, thinking back to that moment, and chuckled. When I looked back up at Silver, he was studying me again. “I wasn’t wrong. Working here is so much easier, and honestly, it’s been more rewarding.”
Silver nodded. “I get it. I have an Economics degree, but it wasn’t for me come to find out, and now I run Silverback Security with my brothers. We do all different kinds of security. Cyber, personal, events, things of that nature. When it comes to personal security assignments, there are some that we know going in are going to be a pain. Some people just don’t know how to act, it seems.”
I could certainly agree with that. “We have guests like that sometimes. They can be complete nightmares. Throwing things into the exhibits, teenagers running around and screaming, parents not watching their small children—you name it, we get it.” I sighed. I did love my job, and working with the animals and my coworkers was great. But yeah, at times, dealing with the public was dreadful.
Silver shook his head. He looked like he was about to say something but was interrupted by Duncan’s approach.
“Salads a no go?” Duncan asked as he came back, two plates in his hands. “Oh well. Yours won’t be the first to go back to the kitchen. Here’s your antipasto. As promised, it’s much more appealing. At least to me, it is.” Duncan said as he placed a plate in front of me and then grabbed my salad plate. He did the same for Silver and then disappeared with the salads without another word.
“This certainly does look better,” Silver said as he picked up a skewer. He slid his fork through the stick and then pulled it out, dropping all of the pieces onto the plate. I watched as he did that with all four of them before I did the same. Yeah, it probably wouldn’t be fitting to just eat the chunks off the skewer. Etiquette and all that.
“Do you like your job? And do you like working with your brothers?” I asked, hoping to fill a bit of the silence we’d seemed to settle into.
“Yes and yes,” Silver said after a moment. I’d of course asked just as he’d put another bite of food into his mouth. “My brothers can be headache inducing at times, but I love them all. Sometimes they have to be growled at to keep in line, but they’re good at what they do. We have others that work for us, but I spend most of my time working with my brothers. It’s rare that I’m actually out on assignments anymore. I spend most of my time in the office networking and talking to clients.”
I nodded. So, the boss man. I could see it. He definitely had a commanding presence about him.
“What about you? Siblings?”
I nodded. “Just a sister, Samantha. We all call her Sam though. She’s a little older, and we’re close. We lost our parents when I was sixteen and she was nineteen. They were killed in a plane crash. Their plane went down in the mountains. Theyfound the wreck the next spring, and no survivors were found. Not that we expected them to be. We’d been expecting that, and we’d already spent months grieving.”
Silver’s jaw clenched. “The tourist charter that they said was caught in a storm?”
I nodded. It had made news. They weren’t supposed to be where they were, but the pilot went off route anyway. It had cost everyone on board their lives that day and had changed the lives of those of us left behind.
“Yeah. I was finally old enough to where they felt they could go away for a week. Sam was in college and checked in with me daily, so they felt comfortable going. We had no way of knowing it would turn out how it did.”
“I’m so sorry, Charlie. It has to be incredibly difficult to lose your parents, especially at that age.”
I felt terrible bringing it up. But he had asked. “Thanks. It was a long time ago, and yeah, I still miss them. But they’ve been gone almost half of my life. I will always miss my parents, but I can’t let them being gone be a reason for me to not live my life.” We’d grieved, both together and in our own ways. I always had to wonder if losing them was why Sam pushed so hard for me to find someone. She was making her own life, and I knew she felt a bit guilty about her attention being pulled away from me.
“Good for you. I am still sorry though. The teenage years are difficult enough, and then to have that happen.”
I shrugged. It did suck, but there was nothing I could do about it. I wasn’t trying to be nonchalant, but there honestly was nothing I could do to bring my parents back. “Let’s talk about something more uplifting. Tell me about your parents. Or your brothers. Unless you want to hear about Sam and Justin. She’s pregnant and due in a couple of months but is driving me crazy with her needing everyone around her to be happily mated and having families.”
