“Let’s just say, minus your whole hives thing, if you don’t take it down a notch, I might be the one who needs a crash cart.” She bit her lip and looked down at her lap. “Which is why I should probably get going.”
Funny, only days ago, I couldn’t make Remi leave me alone, and now I would have made deals with the devil himself for another hour.
“Or you could stay.”
Her head popped up, the same excitement swirling in my chest reflecting back at me in her blue eyes.
“I promised you a free consult. I haven’t had a chance to look through your dad’s stuff yet, but I don’t have anywhere to be tonight if you don’t.”
She looked at her watch and I wondered if maybe I’d gotten ahead of myself. After all, if she’d wanted to hang out and go over things, she wouldn’t have just dropped off the paperwork and darted away.
However, I’d already walked out to the ledge, and there I waited.
Throwing me a line, she answered, “Only if there’s pizza. I’ve already sacrificed a cookie for you. A girl’s gotta eat.”
It was dinner time in a busy area of Atlanta. Getting a pizza delivered was going to take forever, but I did not give a single shit if it meant she’d stay.
“Done.” I stood up and gave her leg a squeeze before I started toward the bag Emily had set on my filing cabinet earlier.
It took two hours for our pizza to arrive, and in that time, we barely even made a dent in her father’s records. How the man was still in business was a mystery that may never be solved. By the time we stopped to eat, we weren’t to the point where an actual CPA was even useful yet. It had been all organizing, deciphering, and scanning. And if she had been any other client, Emily would have been delegated this part of the process.
But it was Remi and she had yet to stop talking, chattering away and charming me all the while. Which basically meant I had yet to stop smiling. I was going to be sore as shit the next day. My strained facial muscles did not know how to handle the rare workout.
“So, you live with two guys?” I asked, dragging my second piece of pizza onto a paper towel.
She sat on top of the table in my conference room, her legs crisscrossed with piles of papers stacked around her. “Yep. Contrary to popular belief, men and women can be friends. I’ve known them since high school, and nobody’s ever fallen in love or into bed with each other. So it’s not nearly as scandalous as you’d probably assume.”
I smirked. “I’m not assuming anything.”
“Most people do.” She pinched a section of cheese off the top of her pizza and popped it into her mouth, chewing and swallowing before inquiring, “Tell me something about Bowen Michaels. You’ve got to be sick of listening to me prattle on about myself by now.”
I wasn’t. Not even close.
I propped my feet onto the chair beside me. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything.”
“That’s a tall order.”
“Yes, okay. Let’s start with that. How tall are you really?”
“Six-four.”
She nodded multiple times. “Okay, very nice. And do the other nerds know you work out?”
I wanted to laugh, but I wanted to hear hers more than my own. “I mentioned it in the group chat once. They have assured me my pocket protector is not in jeopardy.”
Just as I’d hoped, her laughter was musical. A whimsical symphony that would no doubt be on a loop in my head for the foreseeable future.
God, it felt good.
Being there with her. Happy and free. I hadn’t felt either of those emotions in what felt like an eternity.
Remi was fascinating. I was cataloging her details one hundred percent more than her father’s financials.
Her favorite color was purple.
She loved to travel almost as much as she loved spending a Friday night on the couch, rewatching old seasons of The Bachelor.
She liked white wine, not red.
And any given Sunday, she could be found pretending to do yoga in the park. As she was actually there to people watch.
“Favorite restaurant?” she asked.
“Mai Thai.” I pointedly raked my gaze around the room. “Though I hear you can eat free at The Wave.”
She laughed. “You better start working on your sob story now, Michaels. Unless you have—” Horror hit her eyes for a blink before she buried her gaze in her lap. “Never mind.”
And there it was. I didn’t need to ask for clarification. It had been two days since I’d told her about Sally. A part of me wondered how she hadn’t asked me more about her already.
“It’s okay,” I said, sitting up in my chair and discarding my half-eaten slice on the table. “I’m well aware I have a four-course-meal-worthy sob story. Don’t be embarrassed.”
