Protect Me Not ((Un)Professionally Yours 2)

Ty would know. After all, he had accompanied her on many a visit. Vicki and her mum used to come regularly for lunch and a wander. Occasionally Vicki came with a friend, but she usually preferred to stroll around the gardens on her own. She enjoyed roaming the familiar pathways and sitting down on a bench to people watch or sketch.

Ty hated it. She knew he did. He couldn’t control the environment and, while he remained far enough away from her to feel like she was alone, he was always close enough to keep a vigilant eye on her.

Vicki wasn’t entirely certain what to make of Ty’s observation about her coming here often. Was he criticizing Teddy’s choice?

“Teddy doesn’t know that,” she said.

His big shoulders lifted and fell. “It just seems like an obvious, lazy choice for a date with a florist.”

“I think it’s sweet and considerate of him to suggest a place he thinks I might enjoy.”

He grunted but said nothing further. Vicki chewed the inside of her bottom lip, contemplating the back of his head for a few moments.

“Out of curiosity, where would you take a florist on a date?” She hated that she’d felt compelled to ask but couldn’t find it in her to regret the question. He had brought it up, which had to mean he had an opinion on the matter.

His eyes flicked up to meet hers in the mirror. A very brief look, teeming with some unspoken, repressed emotion.

“A random florist? No idea. You?” He paused. “I’d take you on the Eye.”

“What?” She tried to laugh off his suggestion as ridiculous, while incredibly discomfited by how on the nose he was. “It’s a tourist trap. And ridiculously expensive. Why would that be your choice?”

“And yet, I know you want to give it a…whirl, so to speak.”

“Why do you say that?”

“That’s what you told your friend, uh, Steffanie? The chick with the nose ring and pink dreadlocks.”

Aah, of course.

Steffanie.

The other woman flitted in and out of her life like a butterfly. Vicki often went months, even years, without seeing her. When she did see Steffanie, it was as if no time at all had passed. Steffanie never changed, but Vicki suspected that Steffanie was finding Vicki too boring and—gasp—mainstream for her liking.

Vicki had matured since university. Outgrown the artsy, freewheeling, bohemian lifestyle that Steffanie still embraced. There was a remnant of the old Vicki left in the clothes she enjoyed wearing, but she was too serious about her business now to flit off to Thailand, or Bali, or India, on a whim.

Vicki enjoyed pushing Steffanie’s buttons, once even confessing to the very basic and boring wish to take a spin on the London Eye. Because she was dying to see the view from up there.

Steffanie had been aghast, and Vicki hadn’t heard from her, or seen her, since. The conversation must have taken place about a year ago and she was stunned that Ty even remembered it. No, she was stunned that he’d paid any attention to it in the first place.

“That’s cheating,” Vicki said. “You have inside information...which, I might add, you obtained by eavesdropping on a private conversation. And by the way, isn’t that against your bodyguard code? Anyway, I didn’t ask where you would take me. I was interested in where you would take some other florist. One you know nothing about.”

“I’m hardly likely to meet some other florist. So, coming up with a different first date scenario is a pointless exercise. I prefer dealing in possibilities, not make believe.”

And he thought taking her out on a date was a possibility? She shook her head, impatient with herself, certain she must have misread his words.

Her confusion irritated her, and she glared at him in the mirror, even though he wasn’t looking at her.

“Just stay far enough back not to eavesdrop on my conversation with Teddy, okay? How often do you listen in, anyway? You always look bored out of your mind, I figured you were zoned out and thinking about…guy stuff.”

His eyes pinned hers, an unmistakable swirl of smoke in them. “Guy stuff? What kind of guy stuff do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” she said with an awkward shrug, beating back her blush by sheer force of will. “Beers? Boobs? Babes?”

He snorted and chuckled, his eyes lighting up for a second, before he refocused on the road.

They arrived at the gardens shortly afterward and were lucky to find parking just a two-minute walk away. As was normal practice for them, Vicki waited until Ty had fed the meter before she exited the car. It was a beautiful day. Vicki was wearing a cute, spaghetti strapped green and white paisley-printed romper, combined with a pair of white tennis shoes, her bilum bag, a straw hat, and huge prescription sunglasses. Aside from the fact that he wore dark glasses too, Vicki and Ty couldn’t look more different.