“If the glove fits...” she shrugs with her voice. “You have to admit, you kinda fit the bill. You’re single, loaded, and you like to throw your weight around. You’ve even got one up over the old cartoon gazillionaire in the looks depar—”
She cuts off abruptly, and damn it, now I am smirking so hard it hurts.
“What was that, Miss Poe? Something about my looks?” I wait. Crickets on the other end of the line. “I do put my time in maintaining this body for my health and appearance. It’s nice knowing you appreciate it.”
“I shouldn’t be the one appreciating anything,” she whispers. “Your mama has a point.”
“She does not. I manage my own dating life very well,” I growl, drumming my fingers on my knee.
“Do you?” she snickers.
Why did I call to apologize again?
“What?” I snap.
“They call you Mr. Undateable in the Seattle press,” she says. “I’m sure you’ve seen the Google footprint? Either you don’t handle your own dating, or you don’t handle it very well. I’m not sure I’d admit the second.”
“Stalker,” I grind out. “Also, there are things journalists will never know.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re Google stalking the boss. Barely a week after you called me psychotic,” I remind her. “Does hypocrisy run in the family and precede crazy? Should I worry I’ll wake up buried alive next?”
She snorts pure derision. “You think you’re so funny, don’t you?”
“That makes one of us.”
“See how antsy you get when someone asks personal questions? And there isn’t even a room full of people here.” She clucks her tongue like the annoying damned bird she is.
“I apologized and even picked up your coffee duty—you’re welcome.”
“Which was never in my job description,” she throws back.
I’m about to rip out my hair.
“Why did I call you?” I growl slowly.
“If I had to guess, to annoy the hell out of me. Or to soothe your guilty conscience. Guess it isn’t working, though.”
“You’re ridiculous,” I spit.
“Off the record, you’re a jackass. You’re rude, crass, kind of oblivious, and mean,” she hisses.
“Tell it to the next person whose cinnamon roll you try to snatch.”
“Oh my God. Could you drop that already?” She sucks in a harsh breath.
“Why?”
“Because you’re just...” She trails off, probably running out of ammo.
“Not a good reason, Miss Poe, and it sounds like your well has run dry. Tell you what, I won’t keep you struggling through new ways to insult me. I’ll see you Monday to discuss your latest efforts in person.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Poe?” I move the phone closer so I can check the screen.
She’s already hung up.
Glowering, I chuck my phone across the room.
I don’t realize I’m hard enough to hit a home run until I stand, my face twisting with disgust.
Why the fuck am I hard after that?
Maybe I should see a shrink.
How does this girl get me so worked up like nobody else?
I pace the room like a caged animal, only stopping to stare at the fireplace before I take a few steps the other way.
Enough of this fuckery. Enough of Nevermore, too.
There’s a calming predictability in weaving a path across my floor, at least until my eyes catch on the photos.
I get a glimpse of my once happy parents perched above my fireplace. My mother has the biggest, most beautiful smile of her life, and Dad has his arm around her.
She hasn’t smiled like that since the day he died.
She may still smile a lot, but I doubt I’ll ever see that high-on-life look of hers again.
The next picture houses another ghost from the past, a man I haven’t seen for too long.
I’m almost ten years younger, hunkered down with Wyatt in a landscape painted shades of tan.
We’re both dusty as hell, two clean-shaven boys sitting around a fire at a base camp about twenty miles outside Mosul.
One more smile that will never be the same again. Wyatt had all of his limbs then and was smitten with his wife.
Less than a year later, he was discharged with a purple heart and no leg from the knee down, abandoned by the woman he trusted most.
Bitterness floods my veins, remembering how quickly the descent came after she left him.
First his addiction to the painkillers—a beast he managed to get a handle on—but only after it cost him everything. He couldn’t hold down a job and he’d lost his wife and son.
Now, because he loved, he lives on the street.
Barely alive except for his obsession with fucking pastries.
Love is a tricky business, just like I told Dakota Poe.
It’s the most hellish, unforgiving, ass-biting business I know with razor-sharp teeth designed to kill.
Some people who get bit wind up torn to pieces, digested, and shat out with all the care of an owl swallowing a mouse.
I can’t forget that. No way in hell am I falling into that trap again.
I can’t end up in a tent like Wyatt or at the receiving end of a knife in my back.