Dalton
“Do you need another ride?” I ask as Penny crosses the lobby to catch up to me. I don’t bother looking like her request would bother me. She’ll see right through me, as she seems to be able to do, and I’ll admit it—I’m beginning to look forward to the time we spend together. I live on a razor’s edge of adrenaline in order to push myself toward success, but when I’m with Penny after work, as we have been the last three nights, I feel calmer. Whatever we’re doing together feels important—that’s the only way I can describe it.
“I’ve got to go back to my dad’s.” Penny sighs, and I can tell something is on her mind. Of course she’s still smiling, but I read into the little crinkle she gets between her brows.
“Is he sick?” I ask, gesturing to the waiting car ready to take me to the office. She doesn’t specifically ask me for a lift and I don’t directly offer one, yet she hops in and my heart races. She has her reservations about me, but when push comes to shove—she chooses me, just as I choose her.
“He’s losing his business,” she says, gulping back emotion. “He’s been losing it for the last twenty years, but this time I think it’s really beyond his grasp. He can’t fix it now.”
“What business is he in?”
“He owns an employment agency,” Penny says as we settle into the back of the sleek black car. “I have a hard time calling it a business. He basically runs a charity, which is wonderful, but acts of kindness don’t pay the bills.”
“Has he tried—?”
“Don’t bother.” She sighs. “I’m convinced he doesn’t want to fix the business. I’m not saying he wants to lose it, but he is dead set against being a sellout.”
“He doesn’t want to make money? I’m not sure I’ve heard that before.”
“My father is what you would call a free spirit. And do you know who doesn’t appreciate a free spirit? The IRS. Or the bank.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“I’m a lot like him. We’re simple creatures who try to live our passions and be happy. But he’s never been able to keep the business running on his own. My sister normally swoops in and fixes everything when it gets bad, but she told him the last time would be it. That was two years ago, and she’s sticking to her guns. They aren’t even speaking.”
“Isn’t your sister loaded?”
“She is,” Penny replies in a faraway voice, and I brush her fallen hair off her cheeks. It’s intimate, and it makes me yearn for more. I have to touch her.
“My father was never willing to take her money though. She’d come in and help negotiate his debts. Talk to the banks. Raise the prices on his services. But none of that is sustainable. He cuts everyone a deal, people who are down on their luck. He’d bumble it up and then find himself right back where he always is. He has the biggest heart, but I guess sometimes that’s not enough. Now he’s just living in a hot mess.”
“Hey, that was my father’s second residence too. Maybe they’re neighbors.” I laugh, trying to make her smile. I’m not good at this—trying to make someone feel better. I don’t let my father’s failures impact my emotions, but I can relate to having one who screws up a lot.
“I try to help him, but I’m hopeless at that stuff. I’m just like him. Maybe too much.”
“I thought you loved your Bohemian lifestyle. Carrying your own groceries, cooking your own meals. Roughing it.”
“For the record,” she says, looking over at me with a silly grin, “those are not novel ideas that make me some kind of hippie. Most people handle their own stuff. But watching my dad lately, I’ve had to take a good look at my own life. There’s a chance I’ve taken some things to the extreme. I’ve had some really promising job opportunities over the years, and I’ve turned them down. I’ve had success at my fingertips and intentionally let it slip away.”
“Intentionally?”
She’s quiet for a moment then shrugs. “When my parents split up, my sister aligned herself with my mother very early on. They looked at my dad and his silly failing business as if he were a fool. He barely had enough money to get by. My mother was a corporate executive when very few women were. She was a fighter. Exhausted. Driven. Laser focused. To them, my father was an embarrassment. They didn’t count his happiness as a currency. So I picked his team. And I was all in. I love a lot about my life and my principles, but sometimes I wonder if I’ve let my allegiance to my father drive too many of my choices. I wonder if I refused to work any places where I thought it would make my mother or sister proud. If I was on their side, wouldn’t that mean I wasn’t on my father’s? It’s pretty twisted.”
“Not really,” I say, shifting on the seat so I can face her. “Half the shit I’ve done in my life was to spite my father. Who cares what the motivation is, as long as you end up where you want? Are you where you want to be?”
“I’m not sure,” she admits, nibbling on her lip. “I’m still trying to figure that out. I want to be free, but I also want to be stable. If I’d have been a little more like my sister I could be helping him out right now. Not knowing what to do for him scares me—and makes me sad.”
Damn. Vulnerability. My goal was to get her to admit she isn’t all sunshine and lollipops, and look what it gets me. I don’t do sad and I stopped letting fear win a long time ago. I deal in facts and problems with clear cut decisions. Emotions cloud what should be simple. Any solution I offer her won’t be something she wants to hear. I could find him an investor. I could loan him some money. How much could it really cost to keep something that small going?
“Sorry,” she says, sitting more upright suddenly. “I forgot you are you. This is like doing advanced calculus with a kindergartener. I’m good; forget I brought it up.”
“You’re really going to let me off the hook like that?” I ask, eyeing her doubtfully.
“You don’t know what to say in these moments. I totally get it.”
“I know what to say.” The damn part of my ego that hates to be one-upped or wrong rears its head. “You want to hear that everything is going to be all right. You want me to stroke your hair and let you know no matter what happens with your dad he’ll be fine because he has your love.”
She looks at me with wide-eyed astonishment. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
“I’m smart enough to know what women want to hear, but wise enough to know it’s counterproductive to be the one to say it to them. There are plenty of guys out there willing to do that junk even when it means getting walked all over. It’s bad advice anyway. Your dad needs a plan. Let me look at his business this morning. I’m sure I can get him on the right track pretty fast.”
“You don’t need to do that.” Her cheeks turn pink. “I know you’ve been working very hard trying not to be nice. I don’t want to ruin that for you.”
Damn, even her insults make me smile. “I’m no one’s hero, and I’m no one’s sucker. That doesn’t mean I have to be an asshole all the time.”
“You’re not as bad as you think you are,” she says, that wash of unwanted sympathy coming my way again. “I wish you could see that.”
“Don’t waste your time.” I shrug, not wavering a bit. “I’m exactly the right amount of nice that people deserve. It doesn’t matter, though. Nice. Cruel. People stick around for precisely as long as it is beneficial for them to do so.”
“So it’s not really that you want to be alone,” Penny says, pointing an accusing finger at me as though she’s yanked free one of my many layers. “You’re worried about them leaving, so you make sure you’re the first one to go. Not everyone leaves though, Dalton. Some of us stick around.”
“Easy, Tiger.” She may be quick to suspend reality, but I’m not. “This is a temporary living situation until your sister comes back to town. You’ll soon be gone.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth I regret them, not because they’re not true, but because I realize I don’t want them to be.
“We don’t have to be neighbors for me to care about you. You don’t have to push me away.”
“No?” I ask, feeling an unfamiliar prickly sensation roll up my spine. I feel I’m being outplayed in a game of chess. Any minute she’s going to call checkmate on me.
“All I’m saying is that no one can prove your theory wrong if you don’t give them a chance to.”
I slide a hand beneath her long hair and rest it on the warm skin of her neck. Her optimism pulls at my jaded side. I could make my case about how humanity at its core has always been self-serving. I could reference how quickly kindness and civility falls away during times of supply shortages—due to natural disasters or the economy. I don’t want to. I like that she doesn’t see the world as I do. I hope no one ever takes the sparkle from her eyes. “Everything with your dad is going to be all right,” I say with forced positivity. Yeah, I’m falling fast. “It’ll all be fine.”
“You’re a terrible actor,” she groans but leans into my touch. “I can tell you’re faking.”
Changing gears, I shoot her my sexiest smile. “I can promise, of the two of us, you’ll never have to fake anything.” I lean closer to her.
She flushes but checks her watch as though she’s clocking a race. “Nine minutes. You went nine minutes without referencing sex. That’s a big deal.”
“I’ll show you a big deal,” I say, waggling my eyebrows as I point at my rock-hard cock.
Her gaze drops to my groin. If she was wondering where my thoughts were wandering to while we’ve been talking, the evidence is right there for her to see.
Her eyes whip back to mine, and I realize I’m holding my breath. There’s a seriousness to her that makes me wish I could take my crude joke back. She’s better than that.
She opens her mouth, and I can see the yes forming on her lips. My brain starts to scramble. If she gives me the green light, fuck work.
“Would you really come with me to see my father?” she asks, and I do a mental double take.
It’s a boner killer, but I’m oddly not disappointed.
My answer is the same. I take out my phone and clear my morning meetings.