“I’ve been violated!”
“And why doesn’t he just stay away from the fucking cat?”
Wren turns to face me, a wide grin on his face. “That cat is surprisingly agile, and his ability to climb the curtains is uncanny. There are only thirteen here. You’re missing one.”
Wren taps the edge of the paperwork I just handed him on his desk to straighten it.
“One woman showed up with a friend.”
“So, there should be fifteen,” he says in a tone that tells me he’s making fun of my math skills.
“They left.” He frowns. “I told the friend she wasn’t registered, so she had to leave. The other woman left, too.”
I don’t go into detail that it’s probably a good thing because that friend had a glint in her eye that only spelled trouble. She was there for the very reason so many other women completed the form. I’m still in a position to blame that stupid trending hashtag for this entire mess. Which also reminds me to smack Flynn in the back of the head the next time I see him for ending up on the front cover of those stupid gossip magazines with his woman.
Wren shuffles through the paperwork once again. “Hayden Prescott?”
“I guess,” I tell him with a shrug, but it’s fake indifference.
I spent a little too long last night watching her stand from the table, gather her things, and walk out of the room. I knew why she was there, and it had everything to do with her size and nothing to do with knowing any detail about what’s going on in her life to have been flagged by Wren’s online bots leading to her selection for the class.
She’s fucking tiny, a little wisp of a woman who probably wouldn’t even come up to the bottom of my beard if she were standing on her tiptoes. Hell, she’s so slight an attacker would probably still laugh at her if she were pointing a gun in his face. If I saw her from behind, I’d mistake her for a child.
But I didn’t see her from behind. I got a full front view of the woman, and there’s nothing childlike about her. Not the curve of her breasts in that silky blouse she was wearing. Not the deep penetrating gaze she seemed reluctant to throw my way.
No. Hayden Prescott is all woman, just in a miniature package.
It’s another reason why I’m so floored that she garnered so much of my attention last night.
I like my women sturdy. I don’t want to end up hurting one of them on accident when I—
Shit, why am I even letting my head go there right now? I’ll never see her again.
“You have to call her and get her back in the class.”
“Uh, what?” If I had a little bubble above my head, this man would’ve just popped the damn thing.
“Hayden Prescott needs to be in that class. Were you not listening when I explained that every one of those women were handpicked for a reason?”
“Is she one of the ones with domestic abuse in her background?” I ask, breaking the rule I set for myself not to get too invested in any of their stories.
It’s not because I don’t care, but it’s hard to fight the urge to fix things when I find them broken, and nothing fixes a man who hurts women than his own trip to the emergency room.
“She had a home burglary.”
“People get robbed all the time. Does she live in a shitty neighborhood?”
“Her address is in a nicer part of town, but she lives alone. She doesn’t have many friends.”
“She had a friend last night,” I mumble, still able to picture the glint in her friend’s eyes as she tried to smile her way into the class.
“What’s her friend’s name?” Wren asks as he turns back to his computer.
“Parker something or other.”
“Parker Maxwell?”
“Sounds right.”
“She’s not flagged at all for needing the class.”
“And I could tell that about her last night.”
That’s not completely true. Many women are well-versed at being able to hide what’s going on in their personal lives, but that woman is a man-eater through and through. I’ve dealt with my share of them in the past, mostly for clients who have interacted with them and were left with the short end of the stick.
“Looks like you’re going to have fifteen in the class.”
“They left. Put them both in the next class.” I make a mental note to suddenly be busy if Deacon decides to host another one of these training classes.
“She needs help now. Just give her a call and tell her that she can come to the next class with her friend.”
I close my eyes and take a long, frustrated breath in through my nose. “Sure thing.”
“And Quinten?” Wren says before I can leave his office. “It would be best if I could get that paperwork to Pam by the weekend.”