June nodded in sympathetic understanding as he dealt their next hand. When he put out the five cards and looked at his hand, he flipped up his pocket kings. “Yes! Finally!” June slowly tipped her cards to reveal pocket aces. His jaw dropped. “What the actual fuck? Can’t I catch a break here?”
“Sorry. Guess not.” She sat back and thought while he cleaned up the cards for her. “I guess I want to know what you do for a living. And your favorite hobby.”
“That’s two questions.”
“Yeah, well, that was a bad beat, so I’m going to get two this time.”
He couldn’t help but smile. God, she was cute. And she was talking to him. She was there. It was beyond anything he’d ever dared hope, so he’d answer her questions. “I guess I have a senior position in a company. It’s quite boring, just a lot of paper work and making sure ends are met and going to meetings and all that. I usually work from home though, so that’s nice.”
“What does your company do?”
“I guess we take start up idea and give people funding. We make loans to newer businesses and assess business models for potential funding and risk and all that. It’s boring, like I said.” He didn’t want to raise any red flags, in case she might have heard of him.
“Okay…” she drew the word out slowly, while her eyes glistened. They latched onto his face and he couldn’t look away. “Where do you live?”
“I guess I’ll answer that, even though it’s technically another question. In Philadelphia.”
“Philadelphia! I wouldn’t have guessed that.” She looked him up and down. “I don’t know what I thought. Miami maybe. Although you ride a horse well, so maybe somewhere where there are lots of ranches. Somewhere northern and cold.” She shook her head and took the deck when he set it on the bed. She shuffled a few more times for good measure. “Either way, that’s a long way from San Diego.”
“That’s where you live?”
She hesitated and the cards stilled. “Yeah,” she finally answered. “It is.”
“I’d be willing to relocate,” he said softly. “The thing is, I do most of my work remotely anyway. I could do a lot of my meetings over conference and- uh…” he realized June was frowning. “What?”
“You’d do that? Relocate?”
“Yeah, why not? San Diego is nice. It’s warm at least.” He winked at her. “Why? Did you think I was going to make this strictly long distance? Do most marriages end up working out that way? And do you think I’d settle for video and phone sex after I’d had the real thing?”
June turned a shade of scarlet red that made him chuckle. Lord, she was beautiful. Enticing. Mysterious. Watching her in her element, which was obviously cards, he learned another side of her. She wasn’t always embarrassed or flushing like she was with her friends. Which was likely because they kept teasing her about him. She was calm and confident and efficient, and damn, that was sexy. He had a million questions he wanted to ask her, but he’d just thrown a wrench into it, given the way she was looking at him like she’d rather throw the cards on the floor and play with him instead.
Hell, he could handle that.
He could more than handle it.
She shook her head and disappointed him by shuffling slowly again. She dealt in slow motion. “I get one more question,” she said. He waited silently. “I- do you really think this thing could work out?”
“Yes, I do.” He nodded. “Because I think that ultimately relationships, marriage, all of it, love even, if we ever wanted to go there, and I’m not saying we have to, I’m just saying if… it’s a choice. Honestly. I think people choose to either stay together or fall apart. Maybe not like one big choice where they wake up and find out they hate that person after like twenty years. I think it’s a slow progression of a whole bunch of small choices that all lead to one big decision. Grow together or grow apart.”
June’s lips pursed. “That’s very romantic and sensible for someone who has previously confessed to being so jaded they’d willingly trick someone into marrying them and try to make them stay married.”
He laughed at her assessment. She was sharp. He’d have to watch himself. “I thought the real question was about one of my hobbies.”
“Oops.” She rolled her eyes in the whole sorry, not sorry, gesture. “I guess I forgot. What are your hobbies? Let me guess. Bench pressing cars is one of them.”
He almost choked. He did snort ungracefully before he let out a bark of laugher. “God no. I do run. I enjoy swimming. I- watch movies. I like going to shows. I’m a workaholic, but I do that on purpose, so that I don’t have time for a personal life, a girlfriend or any of that.”