“Yeah, nineteen. Never actually thought I’d live that long. It’s feeling pretty damn good though.”
Elle’s head swiveled toward me, and her elbow caught me in the side. “Lord, can we talk for a second?”
I let her drag me down the hall to the office and slam the door shut. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me it was his birthday!” She paced from the door to the end of the couch and turned on me. “So not cool!”
“I totally forgot—we’ve been juggling a lot of shit lately. Don’t worry, I’ll make it up to him.”
“But now we’re not prepared! And I love birthdays. I would’ve made a cake. Brought balloons. Presents. Something super cool. And now I have to scramble, and I’m not good at presents when I’m scrambling.”
Even though it might get me in trouble, I laughed. “Balloons, really? The kid is nineteen, not nine.”
“Everybody likes balloons.” Elle propped both hands on her hips.
I looked at my shoes, feeling even more like shit that I hadn’t remembered Mathieu’s birthday. The kid deserved better from me. Last year, I hadn’t even realized it was his birthday until just before closing and he’d said, “Hey, I’m legal now to get into the titty bar. Wanna go?” He’d gone back to what he was doing before I could form a response. I’d grabbed his personnel file and checked his ID. Damned if it hadn’t been his eighteenth birthday. We’d done it up right, but that wasn’t a story I’d be telling Elle. I could picture her response if I told her: “Well actually, the kid doesn’t like balloons so much as tits the size of them, and he’d prefer a lap dance to cake.” Now that we’d gotten our shit straight, I didn’t want to fuck it up with something like that. Besides, that probably wasn’t the best example to set for the kid anyway. Maybe dinner was better than mostly naked chicks. Mathieu was not going to agree. But at least Elle would be happy … and that was what I cared about most. Mathieu would eat his fancy dinner wherever we took him, and he would like it.
“Stop pacing, woman,” I said, but of course, she didn’t. She kept stalking her cute little ass back and forth, fretting about cake mix and frosting and some other random shit. “Elle, get your ass over here.”
Her head snapped up. “Seriously?”
“I don’t like seeing you upset over something fixable. We’ll make it right. Mathieu will get his birthday and some damn balloons if you want them, but I want you over here now where I can put my hands on you.”
Arms crossed over her chest, hesitation was written all over her beautiful face. Come on, bend a little. And then hesitation morphed into something else—heat.
“Thought I’d satisfied you in the shower?”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t want more.”
“At work?”
I cut my eyes to the door. “Door’s closed.”
“While the birthday boy is out there holding down the fort?”
“Living dangerously today.”
“I think you probably live dangerously every day.”
Not lately, but I had.
“And after this I have the afternoon off to go get all the good birthday stuff and to make a reservation for dinner?”
“We’ll talk about that after.”
She stopped right in front of me. “After?”
“After,” I repeated. “When I’ll probably agree to anything, like I’d agree to anything right about now.”
“That’s a dangerous thing to tell a girl.”
“You’re the dangerous one here, sweet thing.”
A few more feet, and she was next to me.
Fuck, there was nothing I loved more than burying one hand in her hair and cupping her ass with the other. I lowered my lips to hers, and … Mathieu pounded on the door.
“Got a customer. Got some expensive shit he wants to sell that I don’t know much about.”
I pulled away from Elle, reluctance screaming from every muscle in my body.
“Rain check,” she said.
“You better believe it.” I turned and headed for the door, grabbing Elle by the hand and pulling her along behind me. “Let’s do this.”
The man standing in the shop was nothing special. Just an average guy with a receding hairline and bit of a gut hanging over his slacks. His hand rested on an ornate wooden box on the top of the glass case.
I followed Lord behind the counter.
“Can we help you?” he asked.
“I hear this is the place for selling higher end stuff.”
“You heard right,” Lord replied. “What do you have?”
“About a dozen watches. Nice ones.”
Everything in me stilled as I focused on the box. Lord’s hand brushed over the small of my back, and I knew we were thinking the same exact thing.
“All right. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
The man flipped the lid and my eyes devoured the gold and silver faces.
My attention landed and held on the one at the end of the bolster. It’d been years since I’d seen it in person, because my mom had kept it locked away in a safe deposit box and never brought it out, but it could be … Excitement pumped through me, and my fingers itched to grab it from the box and flip it over to check for the engraving on the back.
Lord asked, “You want to pawn them or sell them?”
“Sell them.”
I was waiting for my chance. Lord might have a ballpark idea of a value, but he’d ask me to take a look at them. I just needed the nod so I didn’t look like a crazy, grabby girl when I snatched a watch out of the box and studied it like it was a piece of gold from King Tut’s tomb.