Nosing into a spot mere steps from the entrance of the building, I cut the engine and took the front steps two by two. There was a disabled access ramp laid over on the side of them, in accordance with the ADA regulations, which they could technically be exempt from due to the status as a heritage building.
“Just under the wire,” Julie said, as I pinned the name tag to my lumberjack shirt and ducked behind the counter.
“Story of my life,” I said.
“Wow.”
“What?”
“Was that humor?”
“Gadzooks! I do believe it was!”
Julie went over to the espresso machine to try and hide the fact that she was laughing. Rob, the site manager, wasn’t really a killjoy, but he was someone who appreciated professional conduct while on the clock. I couldn’t blame him, really.
Sadly, that was the most excitement I’d had in a while. Not only had I discovered I could be funny, but I had also inadvertently used it on an unsuspecting victim. If I was honest, there hadn’t been much in the way of pleasure in my life.
All my friends had already settled down into the wife and mother thing, as society doth dictate. Not just my older friends either. Sarah, my best friend back home, was only twenty-five and had already been married for two years and had a six-month-old.
I loved the idea of a domestic existence, but since that hadn’t happened. I was more focused on having some excitement in my life, moving from place to place, and believing that I would find the one. I didn’t have any particular plan on how to do this. Just that if I waited long enough and moved enough times that it would happen. It was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. The fates could be fickle and random.
They could also be real bitches. Especially in my case, it seemed that the more I tried to get some excitement and make a connection with the one, the more he eluded me, and the more boring and lonely my life got. It was like the more I pushed, the harder love resisted.
I had honestly thought that Noah might be the one. The one I would love and the one to break the record of monotony. It was mostly desperation for something exciting that drove me to surpass my natural qualms and screaming nerves and offer myself up for the job of Noah’s fiancée — at least for a while. It was so naughty and dangerous I couldn’t resist.
However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized he had been a bit right about the hooker thing. It was the sort of job usually left to escorts — though that wasn’t how I saw it. My own fantasy was that I was helping him out and might get him to give me some physical affection, you know, just to really sell our story, and then he would fall madly in love with me.
But our coffee together had ended my somewhat insane and immature fantasy. He had pretty much done that with what he had said, though not in the way I might have thought.
It was about that time that my inner ass-kicker, the one I’d only recently discovered I had, rose again and said that I didn’t need him to do that. The fantasy was fine, I just needed a bit more of a plan, and if it didn’t work out, it was up for me to realize and rethink my mindset, not some arrogant prick to pull the rug out from under me.
Fuck him, I decided.
Though that was just the problem. That was exactly what I wanted to do. Fuck him until one of us passed out. A sentiment which only strengthened when I turned from the espresso machine for maybe the twentieth time that morning, to see Noah himself sitting at one of the tables, looking like he was waiting for me.
Oh, fuck!
After barely getting to Java on time, I wasn’t about to risk dropping work to go and talk to him, but my lunch break was coming up fast and couldn’t arrive fast enough as far as I was concerned.
It was funny how fast resolve could weaken.
Chapter Five
Noah
The relaxation CD spun in the specially installed player. It had been one of the most difficult things about building my hot rod — a classic 1937 Lincoln Zephyr in ruby red — the electronics were not really compatible with modern stereo wiring. It took some patching to make it work, but in the end, it did.
I hummed softly along with the music. The sound of my singing voice was known to make most of the dogs on the block start howling in a sort of doggy domino effect.
Doing as the nice lady on the CD dictated, I took a deep breath in and let it out slowly, trying not to think about what had happened with Emma. I really had been a jerk. I was right about this being the sort of thing escorts tended to do. That was just a fact, but it should have been clear enough that Emma wasn’t like that and would have been making the offer for other reasons.