Upon paying her bill, Matilda turned around and left when the girl was midsentence, acting for all the world as if she had no care in the world.
The girl went to reach for Matilda’s hair, pissed at getting dismissed, but I was moving before she could so much as get her finger on a single strand of hair.
I caught the girl’s wrist and said, “If you do that, I won’t be responsible for what happens next.”
“Are you threatening my girl?” the man who’d allowed all the yelling to happen asked.
I turned my gaze toward the man just as I dropped his girl’s wrist.
“I’m just telling you what’ll happen if you follow through on that threat I see in your eyes,” I said to the woman. “She wasn’t meaning anything malicious by what she did. Because she really didn’t mean anything by it. Y’all are the ones that got close to her.”
The woman hissed something under her breath.
Her eyes narrowed as she said, “She saw us standing there.”
I rolled my eyes and turned away, heading out to the parking lot in time to see the taillights of Matilda’s van disappearing into the distance.
I arrived back at the table in time to hear Cassius say, “He’s got it bad.”
I hated to admit it, but I believed he was right.
The fact that I couldn’t stop thinking of her should’ve been my first indication.
• • •
My second indication should’ve been my excitement to see her the next morning.
Not even Ellen’s reluctance to go to the clinic’s jobsite could dim it.
I arrived on my bike instead of in my work truck.
All I had planned today was a quick run-through of all my sites before I drove home to Louisiana to visit Conrad. The drive was supposed to take me four hours. So, if I left within the next four hours, it would give me enough time to spend the afternoon with him, then get back home by midnight tonight.
That had been my plan, anyway.
However, I hadn’t counted on my lack of sleep keeping me from being on time. I damn near was late to work due to all the excessive dreaming I’d done about a certain curly-headed woman. Every single time I was able to get to sleep, there she was.
But, the bad thing was, every time I had my eyes open, there she was.
There was no reprieve from Matilda.
Not that I really wanted it.
If that was the only way I could get her…
“And you have to deal with Matilda today first thing due to an issue with the carpenter.” Ellen chattered at my side as we both exited our vehicles and she gave me a play-by-play of my upcoming day. “Sorry about that. She was insistent, though.”
I rolled my eyes.
What the hell was Ellen’s problem when it came to Matilda?
“Why do you not like her?” I found myself asking.
“Because she’s excessive,” she answered. “I just don’t.”
That was a nonanswer if I’d ever heard one before.
“That’s very odd,” I said. “Everyone I know likes her.”
She muttered something under her breath, and then said, “She kept me from getting into the vet program.”
I highly fuckin’ doubted it.
Matilda was so “non–in your business” that it wasn’t even funny.
What would it take for her to show an ounce of caring?
She was so indifferent that I hardly ever knew where I stood with her.
Hell, half the time, I baited her just to get a reaction out of her that seemed genuine.
I didn’t say anything to her comment, but if I had, it would be along the lines of “there’s nothing that woman could do to make you fail out of a program. It’s likely your own incompetence that did that for you.”
Instead, I dug the hole deeper by saying, “And you had to work with her, and didn’t work it out?”
“There was no working it out,” she said. “I know that she had something to do with my failing grade. I went to talk to the teacher, and she let it slip that it was Matilda that told them I was cheating or something.”
Now I really didn’t believe her.
Going to talk to someone was outside of Matilda’s comfort zone.
Diana? Yes, I could see her saying something.
But Matilda? Sometimes it was hard enough to get her to talk to the contractors if she’d never met them before. And confrontation? She didn’t do that.
Likely, the person responsible for the issue today at their build was Diana. And, sadly for Matilda, she’d been the one that could meet us at this moment in time.
I was so lost in my thoughts of a certain someone, that at first I didn’t see the van parked at the back of the clinic until we rounded the building and I heard Ellen’s explicative.
“What the absolute fuck?”
I looked up to find Ellen looking across the parking lot at where Matilda was packing up her van. She was late getting started, which had to be why we’d seen her in the first place. No way would she give Ellen any fuel to roast her on the fire.