“Well, thanks,” I said. “It’s been working out pretty well so far—”
“I saw the way you’ve been looking at me ever since I started,” Lynn said, closing the distance between us and pressing up against me. “I normally wouldn’t do this sort of thing, but you are probably the finest man that I ever laid eyes on.” She gave me a coy look. “And Jonathan told me that you’re not seeing anyone, and that in the past you haven’t been against a little office hanky panky.”
I cringed, feeling like a trapped animal. Her tits literally had me pinned against the wall. At another time, something like this might’ve been the stuff of fantasies, but I felt nothing, other than a growing sense of claustrophobia.
“Lynn,” I said, holding my hands up like she was a cop telling me to keep my hands in the air where she could see them. “Look. I think you got the wrong idea.”
“I’m seldom wrong about these things,” she said. “I can tell when a guy looks at me and he wants to fuck. I’ve got this sixth sense about it. I know I’m probably not as pretty as some of the other women that you’ve had work for you, but trust me, I will blow your fucking mind.”
She leaned in, like she was going to kiss me. I jerked my head back, hitting it against the wall, craning my neck, a drowning man getting his last breath before he sunk below the surface of the water.
“Really,” I said. “I’m not . . . I’m just not ready for this sort of thing, actually.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Not ready?” Her hand went to my crotch, and I had the very odd, first-time feeling of being violated. But there was nothing there for her to grab; nothing hard that she could hold onto, anyway.
“Oh,” she said. She looked back up at me. “I see.” She stepped back, those enormous tits of hers finally releasing me. “I’m sorry.” Her cheeks flushed. “Shit, I’m really sorry. That must seem incredibly unprofessional.”
I straightened my shirt back out. “No, it’s fine,” I said. “Just don’t let it happen again. We don’t actually ever have to mention it, okay?”
“That’s fine by me. I should probably get going, anyway. I’m really sorry I was so forward.”
She hurried out, leaving me standing there, wondering if I had just imagined that whole thing to begin with.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Daisy
There was another birthday down at Failte, and this time, it turned out to be Billy McAllister’s. I hadn’t realized that when I walked through the door because he wasn’t having a big celebration that would eventually overtake the whole bar; rather, it was just him and an older man and a woman who, after giving me a big hug, he introduced to me as his parents.
“It’s my birthday,” Billy said. “And my parents wanted to take me out, and I thought what better place to come to than my favorite bar in the world, especially if there was the chance of running into you. Sit, join us.”
“That would be lovely,” his mother said, smiling. “Billy’s told us a lot about you.”
“He has?”
“Well, just that I happened to meet one of the nicest, funniest girls I think I’ve ever met before,” Billy said. He paused. “And that I hoped she wouldn’t turn me down when I asked her if she’d like to go out with me.” He grinned.
There were a couple of ways I could play this. I could agree to go out with him, because he was nice and we did get along, and I knew that would make him happy, but I knew I would never like him the same way he liked me. Or, I could tell him no, that I wasn’t interested in dating anyone right now, yet that would leave the door open to some time in the future. “I’m actually seeing someone,” I said. I knew that pretending that Ian and I were still together was not going to help me get over him any faster, but I also didn’t want Billy to start thinking that I was available. Part of me thought that it was presumptive to even be thinking that, but then I kept thinking to what Caroline had said about him wanting to take me to his parents’ summer house. If I could avoid that whole conversation altogether, it would be a good thing. What sucked was that I actually did enjoy hanging out with Billy, and getting to go with him to his parents’ summer house would probably be a lot of fun—if it was understood that it was a friends-only sort of thing.
“You are?” Billy said, his gaze going from me to his father. “You’re seeing someone?”
“Yes,” I said. I saw Billy look at his dad again, and then his dad and his mother exchanged looks. I was getting a weird feeling, all of a sudden, like there was something going on that everyone but me was privy to. I looked at Billy. “I’m sorry if that wasn’t what you were expecting to hear.”
“Oh,” his mother said after a moment had passed and Billy didn’t say anything. “We were under the impression that you were single.”
“I’m not quite sure what gave you that impression,” I said. “I don’t remember us talking about this before or anything.”
“Well . . .” Billy glanced at his father, who was looking at me closely, as though he were trying to detect whether or not I was lying about seeing someone. I didn’t care, though, if he had the world’s greatest bullshit detector and he knew that I wasn’t telling the truth. “I see. I didn’t realize that—”
“It’s not Ian Roubideaux, is it?” his father asked.
Inwardly, I flinched at the sound of his name, but I tried to keep my composure. “Yes,” I said. “It is.”
His father gave me a gentle smile. “Last I heard of it, Ian wasn’t involved with anyone. Or maybe it was that he was involved with several someones. He’s that kind of guy, you know. Man about town.”
“I didn’t realize you knew him,” I said stiffly.
“Of course I know him; he technically works for me.”