“My dad…” That’s as far as Bristol gets before she breaks off and looks out the window of my office. New York City is alive outside. Shining skyscrapers. Miles of concrete. Cars for days. The sun reflects off the windows in the building across the street. Her vivid, green gaze comes back to mine. “He means well, but he just won’t settle down and work. He’s always looking for an angle.”
I feel a tug of understanding. Bristol’s tone is a familiar one. It’s the tone a person uses when their father is a piece of shit, but they don’t want to say it in so many words.
“An angle.” I straighten up and cross my arms over my chest. “Like a con?”
Bristol nods.
My father is a different variety of bastard. He preferred violence and isolation. My brothers and I might have been better off if he’d been a con man. Agoodone.
“What happened?” I prompt. “Your dad being a con artist isn’t the whole story. Why did you have to leave early?”
Bristol hesitates. “Someone came to collect on a debt he owed. It got rough at home.”
That’s it.
That’s the line. This is as far as I’ll allow myself to go, because now I have about a million questions. For instance, what the fuck doesroughmean? Should she have been going back there by herself? Was the asshole still there when she arrived?
Demanding answers is way past the line.
Now I know. I got what I wanted, and now I can go back to work and stop thinking about the temp.
About Bristol.
And yet I find myself frozen in place, looking into her eyes. Her brow furrows, and she worries at the inside of her cheek with her teeth. Does she regret telling me? Is it me who’s scaring her, or whoever it was that made thingsrough at home?
Either way, I can’t let it go on. She’s not at her best. Early with everything so far today, yes. But she’s jittery. It’s a recipe for fucking up and losing the company’s money.
My money.
“Listen.” I have to shut the hell up and get this out of my head. I have to say the magic words to her so she can go back to being a nameless temp and not the woman who’s haunting my dreams. “You got a bad break with a dad like that.”
Her eyebrows come up. Surprise looks beautiful on her.
“But you can get past it.” It feels wrong as hell to be giving advice like this. Wrong, because it reveals too much. Not about her, but about me. About how I had a shitty father, too. One who hit us when he was around. And hitting us was the best-case scenario. I’m fucked up enough to need the lights punched out of me a couple times a month, but Bristol? She’s beautiful, smart, competent. She could take over the world if she doesn’t let that bastard drag her down. “You do whatever it takes. Understand? You’re strong enough.”
Strong enough for me.
The thought is barely a whisper. Probably a byproduct of being near someone as fuckable as Bristol.
Her small, tentative smile widens into a real one. “Thank you, Mr. Leblanc. That’s nice of you to say.” Bristol shakes her head like she’s shaking off bad memories. “And you’re right. I can handle it.”
Bristol leaves with her shoulders relaxed.
I go back to my desk.
What I’mnotgoing to do is start caring about Bristol Anderson. My focus will remain on the company, where it’s supposed to be.
But Iamgoing to keep an eye on her.
I don’t like the way she said that things got rough at home. I don’t like that it took her out of the office, where I can see her, and back to fuck knows where, with fuck knows who.
If her dad is a shitty con artist who can’t pay his own debts, things are bound to get worse. Situations like that only escalate until the prick dies or ends up in jail, like my father.
I type out an email to a guy I know. He’s not on the in-house security staff. He’s one of my own contacts. Three minutes after I send the email, my desk phone rings.
“Will Leblanc.”
“It’s Mike. What can I do for you?”