“I remember, but you asked what I’ve been doing this weekend, and that’s what I was doing.”
“That’s too bad,” he said. “You still can’t talk about it, and to make sure that you don’t, you have to put a dollar on the table every time you bring up work. We’ll leave it as a tip for our waiter.”
“Fine,” I agreed just as our drinks were delivered.
Glancing up at the waiter, I wondered what he was going to do with all the money he was about to make. I wouldtrynot to talk about work, obviously, since I really wanted to prove to Parker that I was not, in fact, a robot, but I knew myself. Every now and then, I was going to slip up and add another dollar to his tip.
“You couldn’t have been working all weekend,” Parker said once the waiter was gone. He lifted his beer to his lips and took a sip and studied me as he swallowed it. “You didn’t work all weekend, right? What about last weekend?”
“Last weekend, I took a trip to Long Island.”For work, I admitted mentally. “One of my clients has a house out there and he wants to host a prize-giving event in his garden. He has a beautiful place.”
He pointed at the table and cocked a brow. “That’s a dollar. You said client.”
Damn it.I was so careful not to add work in there that my stupid mouth ran away with me, and now that was all I could think about. Sighing, I dug into my purse and dropped a dollar on the table. “You’re lucky I got change earlier today. What if I didn’t have cash on me?”
“We would’ve put it on your tab,” he joked, or at least, I thought he was joking.
“Fine, what do you want to talk about then? You and I don’t really know each other. Work is the only thing we’ve got in common.”
“We don’t know that because, like you’ve just pointed out, we don’t really know one another. That’s the point of this. You can talk to me about anything you want, as long as it’s not work.”
I stared at him, wracking my brain for something else to say. Anything. As my gaze raked over him, though, the only thing other than work that occurred to me was how good he looked in navy blue.
He was in a button-down shirt instead of a T-shirt today, and the color did all sorts of good things for him. It made his eyes seem even warmer. The deep brown pools were so incredibly pretty when enhanced by the shirt.
Conscious of the fact that he was looking back at me, waiting for me to say something while I was admiring his eyes, I picked up my wine glass, added a few cubes of ice, and took a sip to give myself something else to focus on.
“I have a cat named Tuna,” I blurted out soon after I’d swallowed. It was a random fact, but it was true, and it wasn’t about work, so it counted in my favor. “He’s surprisingly cuddly for a cat, unless I buy him a different brand of food. I’ve had to do it when the store has been out of his, and you wouldn’t believe how long he stays angry with me.”
A grin broke out across Parker’s face. “Hunter and I had a cat when we were growing up. It was a total asshole and it didn’t even really belong to us, but it visited us at least once a day. We loved it despite its dick-ish tendencies.”
“It?”
He shrugged. “Like I said, it wasn’t ours. I still don’t know if it was a boy or a girl cat. We called it Winifred, after our aunt, because they had the same squashed faces, but we never found out if it was a Winston instead.”
“I did some work for a designer named Winifred once. We rebranded her entire line because she had some promotional material printed and the folds on one of them made it look like the name was ‘nifed.’ She was convinced people would think she supported violence and couldn’t spell.”
He laughed. “That’s funny, but it’s about work. Pay up, Iz.”
I shook my head and dug out the money, making it clear that I wasn’t happy about it. “This isn’t fair. I told you about something that linked with your story. It wasn’t about work.”
“So far, I know you have a cat named Tuna, but that’s it. I know more about your clients than I do about you. One has a house in Long Island with a beautiful garden. Another is a hypersensitive designer named Winifred.”
Now that he’d laid it out that way, I hated to admit that he was right. Somehow, my brain kept connecting everything to my work.God, am I really that boring?
Taking a big swig of my wine, I buckled down on my determination not to have to pay up every time I opened my mouth. “What about you? Let’s see you try not to mention anything about work.”
“This isn’t about me, but okay, I’ll play,” he said easily. “I grew up in Brooklyn. My parents are still alive, but we don’t really talk to our dad as much as we do our mother. Hunter and I both went to college here in the city. I got a scholarship and lived in the dorms, where I met the friends who are all getting married soon, but you already know about that. I can go on about myself all day. Is that really what you want, though?”
Keeping quiet as I considered his question, I inhaled until my lungs couldn’t take another drop of air and then held my breath for a beat before releasing it slowly. “No. I don’t want that. I’m not all about work, but I do work hard. That’s why I talk about it so much.”
I dug into my purse again without him having to say anything about it and I dropped the dollar on top of the others. “I’ve always been that way. It was the only way I could lift myself out of my circumstances as a minor, which I’m not talking to you about, by the way. But I vowed to myself that I would do whatever it took and that’s what I’m doing. If it means I have to work all night and every weekend, I’ll do it and I’ll do it happily.”
“I’m still going to make you pay up when you talk about work,” he said, but at least he seemed a little more understanding now. “It seems to be working. That’s the realest thing you’ve told me about yourself since I met you.”
I sighed, but again, he wasn’t wrong. In an attempt to lighten the mood, I steered the conversation in a different direction after that but it wasn’t long before there was a stack of dollars on the table. I still ended up talking about work no matter where we started. Eventually, I was out of money and Parker rubbed his palms together.
“That’s it. Maybe you’ll loosen up if you have to take a shot after every work mention. We’re switching from dollars to tequila.”
Tequila? Crap.I couldn’t even remember the last time I had the stuff, but I wasn’t about to back down from the challenge.
“Tequila it shall be,” I agreed, but it was a terrible mistake. One that would come back to bite me in the ass the next morning.