Chapter Nine—Sky
His eyes were all the reward I needed for the work of getting out of my work clothes, taking off my makeup, putting new makeup on—not much, but enough to make a difference—and throwing on the second-nicest dress I owned. It wasn’t as slinky or skimpy as the first one, but I could see that Linc liked it very much, and my face was heating up again. It really was impossible not to let him get to me. I finally had to look away, asking if he was ready.
“So are we going to go, or are you just going to stand there staring at me?”
He looked away, but it wasn’t long before I could feel his eyes on me again. I didn’t have a chance to even look at what he was wearing, not that I really cared. I don’t think there was anything that could have made him look better than he always did to me.
“Sure,” Linc said, something like a laugh rippling through his voice. “But why are you in such a rush?”
Because if we didn’t get around people soon, I didn’t trust what was going to happen next. I’d waited so long that I was starting to wonder if the wait was worth it. Worse was the idea that I’d waited all this time for him in particular. No. You are not going to squander your first time with your landlord, all because you’re irritable from getting hit on and because he’s hotter than a five-alarm fire.
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m just hungry, I guess. I haven’t been out much since I got here, so it will be nice to go out to a good place. This city can be a little intimidating.”
He nodded his head, but we both knew that there was more to the way I was acting than I let on. It was hard to be so close to him and to think at the same time. It wasn’t good for keeping my mind in the right place, and it was already getting fuzzy. My body trembled as I walked, and I wanted to hate it but at the same time it was such a rush to know that Linc couldn’t keep his eyes off of me that I couldn’t make myself hate it.
I followed him down to the parking lot, and I realized that I had no idea what kind of car my landlord drove—or even if he drove a car at all. It just hadn’t occurred to me to even wonder. He stopped in front of an old beat-up truck and I waited for him to unlock it, suddenly sure that that was what we were going to go in. It wasn’t what I would have picked, but I wasn’t the one who had to drive it. Of course a man’s man like Linc would drive a beat-up old pickup. What were you expecting, a Rolls-Royce?
“No, we aren’t taking this one, Sky. I’m trying to impress you a little bit. I don’t think you want to move stuff off the seat to sit down.”
I looked into the window and I could see a mess of tools and other things on the passenger seat. “I don’t mind if you want to take this,” I said, worried—though I couldn’t say why—that he thought I was some kind of snob. “Really, I don’t.”
He looked at me like I must be joking, but I wasn’t. It wasn’t a real date anyway, so what did it matter what we went to the restaurant in? I took a deep breath and tried to stop my brain from thinking in such tight circles.
“So if not this one, then which one?” There were several cars in the parking lot, but none of them really felt like him. I didn’t know or care which one was his, but then I saw a hot pink seat cover and it made me think of his daughter. “Is that one yours?”
“How did you guess?” He seemed amused at my accuracy.
“Well, I saw the pink,” I admitted, pointing out the seat cover. “There aren’t many grownups who would rock a color like that. You must be pretty secure in your manhood to drive around with all that pink.”
He kind of chuckled at the comment. “You just have to go with it. It’s hard to be cool when you’re father to a little girl who has you wrapped around her finger. I gave up trying a long time ago.”
It was obvious that he was a good father, and I wanted to know more about Jazmin. Besides which, I couldn’t really think of anything that we might have to talk about otherwise. Speaking about her was the only time he really seemed to light up. I wanted to see the smile on his face again, even if it was just for a moment.
“So how old is she again?”
“Eight.”
I didn’t know anyone that age besides my niece. She was a mess, and though I loved her, I didn’t have much in common with her. Shasta was into the girly side of things, much like Linc’s daughter appeared to be. I was not good at that sort of thing. I’d been the kind of eight-year-old who either read books, or climbed trees, or went digging in the mud for bugs to scare other eight-year-old girls with; I hadn’t gotten into girly things until high school.
“That’s a good age,” I said, for lack of anything better to say about it. “I have a niece about that age.”
“Yeah, but I think she’s growing up way too fast. I wish I could keep her my little girl for just a little bit longer, but I know that she’ll be all grown up before I know it.” I’d heard a dozen parents say that exact thing, and I couldn’t really relate; the only kids in my life—the ones I’d babysat, and then my niece—never seemed to get old enough to have any kind of interesting conversation with. “Do you like kids?”
I heard a little bit of intensity in his voice that I couldn’t understand; why would it matter if I liked kids? But obviously the question was important to him for whatever reason.
“I don’t know much about kids except that I used to be one,” I admitted. “I babysat when I was younger, but never all that often.” It wasn’t the answer that he wanted, but that was all I had. I had little experience with children, and anyway, I had heard dozens of times that it would be totally different when the kids were my own.
“Well, I mean, I guess I’m not around them that much,” I said, trying to salvage what I could of the conversation. “College kept me busy. There were a few girls on campus who had babies, but not that many. It must have been near impossible to do it like that.” I paused again. It didn’t seem to be enough. “I’m sure your daughter’s great, though,” I finally said, weakly.
He kind of grinned. “She has her moments—both ends of the spectrum. There’s no child that’s a saint, and Jazmin certainly isn’t one. I know that I’m supposed to think she’s perfect, but she has a little too much of me in her.”
“Well, how could that be a bad thing?” Linc laughed.
“Considering how I acted the first night we met, I think you know well and good how that could be a bad thing,” he said.
“I assume that at eight she’s not going around treating grown women like they’re idiots for not being able to manage a bizarre key-wiggling ritual.”
“No, that she doesn’t do,” Linc admitted. “But she does have a bit of a temper on her. I have to find a way to teach her to control that without getting rid of her spirit at the same time.” The second part of the sentence seemed almost to himself, and I had a moment, watching him drive in silence, where it struck me how strange it was that this massive, muscled ex-Navy guy—who could probably break a few lesser mortals in half without breaking a sweat—was a big ball of marshmallow and concern about his little girl.
We got to the restaurant that Linc had picked out, a place called Tacos Tequila Whiskey. It turned out that we were just in time to catch the end of happy hour.
“Oh no,” I said, shaking my head as soon as I saw the dining area full of half-drunk twenty-somethings.
“You don’t have to get drunk,” Linc pointed out.
“On the other hand, who comes to happy hour just to have a soda?” I countered.
“So have one drink, and I’ll have a beer, and we’ll leave it at that,” he suggested. It was a sensible plan; I had to give him that. He ordered me a Paloma—which I’d never had before—and himself the draft special, and with it we got nachos with barbacoa, along with a couple of kinds of tacos that I’d never even heard of before.
The alcohol began to settle my nerves, and I started to actually—at least a little bit—feel at ease with Linc, for the first time since I’d met him a few days before. “So—you had that big dust-up with Lisa,” I said. I knew in the back of my mind it was probably a stupid idea to bring it up, but the curiosity was burning in me almost as much as the tequila.
“Yeah, my ex,” Linc said, sounding a bit rough with surprise.
“What’s the situation—why is she able to pull the stuff like she did the other day when she wanted to deny you seeing Jazmin, and then drop her on you when you thought you wouldn’t see her?” I knew I wasn’t quite making sense, and I decided that one Paloma was definitely enough for me, but Linc seemed to understand me all the same.
“We have a court date coming up,” Linc explained. “It’s—it’s kind of important. Lisa wants to take my daughter with her to California, where her new husband has some kind of business interests.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding. I’d heard—in passing—about weird custody battles before, from friends of mine whose parents had divorced. “So she’s using that against you somehow?”
“She’s using everything against me,” Linc said, sounding more than a little bitter; not that I could blame him. “She said that she wasn’t going to bring Jazmin to see me for the weekend because we have this court date pending, or some bullshit like that. She pulls that kind of power play all the time.”
“I hate that,” I told him, shaking my head. “How can they let her get away with that kind of—bullshit?” Definitely need to ask the waiter for a glass of water the next time you see him, Sky, I thought. But at least Linc seemed to appreciate my sudden willingness to cuss.
“She’s married again, now—so she’s the more stable parent,” he told me. “So she thinks she can do what she wants, because she’s pretty sure the judge is going to decide in her favor.” He looked like he was about to say something more, but then he shook his head.
“What?”
“I’m out to dinner with a gorgeous woman,” Linc said. “I don’t need to be thinking about my bitter snake of an ex-wife. How’s your day looking now? You were pretty on edge when you came in.” I laughed and shook my head.
“It’s a stupid work thing,” I said. “My boss.” Linc raised an eyebrow at that, and for the first time that night—or at least since the alcohol had started affecting me—clarity came through my mind and I knew I needed to shut up. “It’s a misunderstanding. Hopefully I can take care of it tomorrow.”
“Well, if he gives you any trouble...” I laughed at Linc’s veiled threat, indirect as it was, to my boss.
“If he gives me any trouble I’ll contact HR like I’m supposed to,” I told him. “And now we should talk about something else, because otherwise neither of us is going to have a very good evening, are we?” He seemed only too willing to change the subject, and I could only think that it was probably for the best that I hadn’t mentioned how sleazy my new boss had turned out to be.