“No. My parents live in Florida. My older brother is a naval officer, stationed in Hawaii.”
“Are you guys close?
“Not really.”
“You make me feel like I’m interrogating you,” she said, “with your short answers.”
I gave her no rebuttal, which seemed to only make her more displeased. It was interrupted when our food arrived. My gaze fell away from hers and I stared down at the plate of pasta before me. My brother Conner and I had been close growing up, but when all the attention turned to me, he’d enlisted, and now the distance added to our divide.
Noemi twirled the noodles on her fork and took a bite. “Wow, it’s good.” The conversation fell in a lull, and she scanned the dining room. “You didn’t answer my questi
on,” she said softly, “about whether you have limits.”
“Everyone has limits. A person who says they don’t is naïve, or insane.”
“So, what are they?”
I took another sip of my wine, finishing it. “We can also find those together.” Again, no you can’t, the voice in my head reminded.
I watched her eat, fighting the urge to test her as I would if I was really her Dom. The long, white tablecloth hung over her lap. The command for her to touch herself beneath the table stuck in my throat.
She set her fork down and it clattered on the plate. “Are you mad at me?”
“No, of course not. Why are you asking?”
“You look upset.”
I was pissed with the situation, and doing a terrible job of hiding it. I leaned toward her. “I’ve got a lot on my mind, I’m sorry for the shitty conversation.” I struggled to ease the tension she’d picked up on. “How’d your case study go last night?”
She blinked at my question like it was the most bizarre thing she’d heard. “Fine. Uh, good, actually. We’ve still got a lot of work to do, but we should be ready to present soon.”
“What’s it about?”
“Contact lenses,” she said, her lips pulling back into a slow smile, “for chickens.”
I froze. “Come again?”
She laughed, and I didn’t want to like the sound of it. Her soft, warm laugh was infectious.
“It’s not a real case, but a farmer has the option of getting contact lenses for chickens that distort their eyesight. Apparently, chickens are picky about their feed, so they’ll eat all the good pieces and leave the rest. The lenses make it so when they peck at a good piece, they come up with the one on the side of it.”
“It cuts down on food costs.”
“Exactly. We’re supposed to figure out if the cost of the lenses and labor of administering them balances with the saved cost in feed.”
“So, does the farmer invest in the lenses?”
Her eyes sparkled. “It’s actually looking right now like he should, but we’ve got other factors to consider, such as some of the chickens figure it out, and you have to redo the lenses.”
“Do you like your classes?”
She nodded. “I do. It’s not really a surprise that I like finance and accounting.”
“Because of who your father is,” I said. Hopefully she didn’t notice me gritting my teeth.
She spun her fork in her pasta, but didn’t lift it to take a bite, almost as if stalling. “Making my choice to stay with my dad, it kind of forced this career path on me, but luckily I happen to like being in the boardroom.”
“You’ve sat in on board meetings?”