Page 20 of Under Pressure
“What are you trying to do here? Is your plan to soften me up so you can swoop in and trick me into going out with you? Because I don’t know what you want from me, but I know it isn’t a relationship,” she attacks, deep red staining her plump cheeks.
“You seem to have a lot of opinions when it comes to me, Quinny.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Do you have something else you’d prefer, then?”
“Yes. Myname. Quinn. There’s no ‘nee’ attached to it.”
I cock my head. “Do you fight everyone as hard as you fight me, or am I just that special?”
She blinks at me, struggling to school her expression. I poke my tongue to my cheek to keep from laughing when she spins on her heels and storms ahead of me. There’s not a single moment of hesitation as I follow her, cutting the same path around the counter and through the swinging back door.
The room I enter is completely unknown to me. I halt just past the door and look around, taking in the sight of what I always suspected was a kitchen. The confirmation makes my chest puff a bit.
“The sink is right there,” Quinn snaps, drawing my attention again.
My eyes snap to hers like magnets. The way she’s clutching those flared hips and somehow staring down her nose at me despite being almost a foot shorter tightens my chest. I want to free my hands of all these dishes and hold her instead, even just once.
The lack of physical contact I’ve had these last four months has broken me.
“You better get started,” she adds, her tone barbed.
I absorb every word and reluctantly look away from her. The sink is filling quickly with rising bubbles, thick with a sharp lemon scent. I watch the steaming water run from the faucet and then notice the hot pink rubber gloves folded over the edge of the sink.
“I didn’t take you for a pink girl.”
“What makes you think you know anything about me?”
I can hardly contain the excitement that expands inside of me at the prospect of learning more.
“Tell me what I should know, then.”
“No.”
“I was being honest when I said I didn’t want your money. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want something. We can consider this an even exchange. I clean as many dishes as you can find me, and after I’m finished, you tell me something about yourself.”
“I didn’t ask you to do this for me. You chose to take on the task all by yourself,” she says, too fucking right.
“Do you want me to beg?”
“I doubt you even know how.”
Instead of throwing these dishes across the room, I slowly lower them into the scorching water, feeling the heat against my skin. “Want to bet?”
Swivelling to face her, I reach behind me to grip the edge of the steel sink and let her see the honesty in my gaze.
I have nothing to hide here, and we both know it. Coming tothis place, talking to her, and constantly pushing for an in—no matter how small—is completely optional. This self-imposed celibacy I’ve been keeping since coming into this place for the first time could have ended at any time. I didn’t decide to do it because I thought it would gain me points with a woman who has never wanted anything to do with me. It happened all on its own because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her, despite the frozen shoulder she continues to give me and the hell I get from my friends.
I’m a self-declared stalker. A professional athlete who used to spend every night in a different bed just because he could and now hasn’t so much as contemplated sleeping in one that isn’t mine.
Begging her to tell me one small fact about herself wouldn’t kill me. If anything, I think I’d even enjoy it.
I let her see how badly I want the information she’s been refusing to give because the worst thing she can do is tell me to leave. It wouldn’t be the first time, and I know without a doubt it won’t be the last.
“I have a younger sister. She’s studying to be a surgeon.”
While the information isn’t surprising, it’s the way her eyes have grown wide and those smooth cheeks have deepened in colour again that has me slow to respond. It’s almost like she’s . . . embarrassed to tell me that. Even if I already knew who Callie is to her.
