Knitting in the City 01 Neanderthal Seeks Human (13 page)

Unthinkingly I put my hand over his to still his movements, “No, don’t do that. You’re right, I’m being silly. I really don’t want to mess up and everyone seems so nice- like too good to be true nice- and the office is too good to be true and how I got the job is too good to be true and, when you add all that together, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop so-” I sighed, “No, the first shoe hasn’t dropped so that’s not the right idiom to use, even though it originated in cities like Chicago.” I slid my hand away from his and to my book, nervously picking at the cover.

Quinn shook his head, his usually detached hawk-like gaze seemed softer, unguarded, “Janie, what are we talking about?”

“About the idiom:
waiting for the other shoe to drop
. Did you know it originated in cities like Chicago and New York?”

“No. I did not” He tilted his head, his mouth hooking upward to one side as though he were trying not to laugh. “Tell me about it.”

He was teasing me again. “Well, it did. So…”

He lifted his eyebrows, “That’s all? You’re not going to tell me the specific origin of the idiom ‘
waiting for the other shoe to drop
’?”

I shook my head, “I don’t know it.”

He mimicked me and shook his head in response, “You’re lying. You do know.”

“Nope. I don’t.”

“This is just like the mammals.” He sighed and placed his phone on the table. Before he took a bite from his sandwich he said, “You’re stingy with information.”

My frowned deepened, “No, I’m not-”

His words were somewhat garbled as he spoke between chewing, “You’re an information tease.”

“What?!”

“Or maybe you don’t really know the origin and you’re just making things up to impress me-” he took another bite.

“I am not! It originates from the late industrial revolution, in the late 19
th
and early 20
th
century. Apartments were all built with the same floor plan, in similar design so one tenant’s bedroom was under another’s. Therefore it was normal to hear an upstairs neighbor removing his or her shoes and hearing one shoe hit the floor, then the other, when they undressed at night.”

“I wonder what else they heard.” His gaze held mine, seemed to burn with a new intensity.

“I suppose anything that was loud enough.”

He gave me a full grin followed by a deep, rolling belly laugh. I liked the sound of his laugh and reluctantly smiled in response, fighting warring feelings: pleased that I’d made him laugh but concerned that I was being laughed at. The latter feeling eclipsed the former and I frowned, glancing at my lap and picking self-consciously at the cover of my book again. I could feel the heat of a blush spreading up my neck.

The intensity of my reaction to him continued to confound me.

It wasn’t just his good looks, which verged on angles-singing-up-on-high-miraculous. Not anymore. If he’d been a jerk or a moron my reaction would have cooled and normalized.  Inopportunely, he was not a jerk and he was most definitely not a moron. He was thoughtful and clever and confident and the most adroitly sexy guy I’d ever met and I didn’t like to think he was laughing at me.

I heard his laugh falter abruptly before he said, “Hey, Janie- look at me.” I lifted my chin but couldn’t quite manage to meet his eyes. A hint of a grin was still on his face as he said, “I was just teasing you.”

I forced a small laugh and shrugged, “I know. I uh-” I looked at my watch purposefully, “I have to get back to the office, my lunch is over.”

His grin faded. After a moment he cleared his throat, “You still haven’t told me how the job is going.”

“It’s great but I don’t want to be late getting back.”

He swallowed and pushed his sandwich to the side, “Don’t worry about being late. I’ll give Carlos a call.”

“Don’t do that-”

“I don’t mind.”

“But I do.”

He watched me for several moments and, despite the thunderous beating of my heart, I silently endured his perusal. I felt too hot, too self-aware, too everything. When I finally met his gaze I noted that his face had settled into an impassive mask but, as ever, his blue eyes seemed to burn with intensity. At last, he stood. I released a breath I didn’t know I was holding. As I moved to stand he reached out his hand and grabbed mine to help me from the booth.

“Listen,” He cleared his throat again, holding my hand and, thereby, holding me in place, “over the next week you’ll be going out with me on a couple of stops. It’s part of your training.”

I opened my mouth in surprise. A little pang of pleasure-pain twisted in my chest as I thought of spending more time with him. Finally, pulling together enough of my wits to form words, I stuttered, “Wh- what kind of stops?”

“I’ll be taking you to meet some of the corporate clients.”

“Steven didn’t mention anything about it in his training schedule.”

“He must have forgotten.”

“That doesn’t seem likely.”

Quinn lifted his eyebrows in challenge, “Is there some reason you don’t want to go?”

“We won’t be taking your motorcycle, will we?”

“No, we’ll be taking a company car.”

“Oh. Ok.” I looked down at our hands, still linked together from him helping me out of the booth. His hand was very large; mine was small in comparison. It was a strange sensation to feel that any part of my body was small. Jon’s hands were the same size as mine.

Quinn must’ve noticed my gaze because he abruptly let my hand drop and reached over to the bench where his coat lay across my purse. He moved his jacket to the side and picked up my bag. He seemed to study it for a few brief moments before he handed it to me.

“Thanks.” I took the offered purse but made no move to leave; instead I gave him a small, closed lipped smile and shifted under the weight of his steady gaze.

“You’re welcome. And thanks for letting me interrupt your lunch.”

I shrugged, “Oh, no problem. Feel free to interrupt anytime.”

“Really? Anytime?” The corner of his mouth hooked to the side and he dipped his chin as though to force me to meet his gaze more fully. “That’s a dangerous thing to say if you don’t mean it. I might interpret that to include lunch, dinner, and breakfast.”

His question then statement and the manner with which both were posed made my bun feel too tight and my neck hot. I glanced at him through my lashes, not sure where this was going. Even after our various albeit limited encounters, everything about Quinn made me hypersensitive and self-conscious.

Undoubtedly, if I were expected to retort with something coquettish and droll then I was going to fail. I didn’t know how to engage in flirtatious banter.
My mind wandered to conversations with Elizabeth, where she’d continued to insist that Quinn was interested in me and I continued to find the assertion ridiculous; and, therefore, faced with such a man speaking to me in such a way I was wholly unprepared. All previous attempts, mostly regulated to college, had been disastrous and painfully uncomfortable as they were either ill-timed or the topics I chose were ill-conceived.

As an example: the pheromone excretions of termites.

Now, standing awkwardly, avoiding eye contact, trying to postpone my response, I didn’t even know if flirtatious banter was what Quinn wanted expected or wanted. Men in general unsettled me; this one in particular turned me into a brouhaha of chaos simply by glancing in my direction.

Finally, ignoring looming feelings of trepidation I decided to answer with candid earnestness. There was nothing wrong with honesty and, I decided, he could read as much or as little into the statement as he liked.

Not quite able to meet his eyes I responded, “Yes, I mean it. Feel free to join me anytime.” I was surprised by how soft my voice sounded.

A slow, hesitant grin spread over his features and I had difficulty drawing breath. It was a sexy grin. A very sexy grin. His eyes dropped to my mouth and he licked his lips. I felt a little woozy.

“Good. I’ll do that.” Still smiling his small smile, Quinn reached over and grabbed his jacket from the booth, “I’ll walk you back.”

~*~

Quinn carried Betty’s lunch as we walked the short distance back to the Fairbanks Building. I was in the middle of explaining to Quinn about a potential improvement to the billing structure of Guard Security as we approached the security desk. Dan, the security guard with neck tattoos who’d escorted me on my non-interview first day, nodded at Quinn.

Then Dan winked at me.

I smiled and waved warmly in return and finished explaining the impetus for the cost analysis I was working on to Quinn, “…the best thing about the proposal is that the software is free.” I glanced over at Quinn to gauge his reaction to this great news but, to my disappointment, he was frowning at me. We stopped in front of the elevator and I turned to face him, “You don’t think it’s a good idea?”

Quinn’s expression was rigid and he looked past me to the lobby; he motioned toward the security desk with his chin, “How do you know Dan?”

“Who?” I glanced over my shoulder to follow Quinn’s gaze and found Dan still looking at us, at me, and I gave him a closed mouth smile then turned back to Quinn, “Oh, Dan the security man. Just from the building.”

“You two talk much?” Quinn still wasn’t looking at me and, for that, I was glad. He looked like a hawk about to devour a mouse and, standing this close, his eyes were a fiery cerulean.

I shook my head, “Not really. Just every once in a while when I arrive in the morning or go get lunch. On my second day he helped me bring up my box of paraphernalia. Why? Should I-” I hesitated, frowning, “Is there something I should know? Is he a bad guy?”

Quinn moved his attention back to me sending warmth from my nose to my toes, his expression softened and he seemed to debate what to say next. Finally he sighed, “You read too many comics.”

“What?” I thought about denying the accusation but instead said, “How can you tell?” 

The elevator opened and he held the door; he continued as he followed me in, “
‘Bad guy.’ ‘Good guy.’
Most guys fall somewhere in between.”

I lifted an eyebrow at his assertion. “I don’t think that’s really true. I think you can say someone is good or bad- based on their actions.”

This was a subject I spent a lot of time considering. Both my sisters were criminals. My mother was a serial cheater and had abandoned her family. I liked labels; I liked putting people and things into categories. It helped me calibrate my expectations of people and relationships. Without labeling my sisters as ‘bad people’ I became an enabler of their behavior, like my father. I didn’t plan on spending my life as a doormat or living in the waiting room of perpetual disappointment hoping that they would change.

“So, does one bad action make a person ‘bad’?”
Quinn placed his palm against the five-point fingerprint screen; he then punched in the code to call the elevator.

“No, a person is the sum of their choices and, therefore, their actions.”

“No one makes all good choices, everyone makes mistakes.”

“Ah ha! Yes, that’s why I also consider intentions as the defining denominator in my good-people, bad-people confidence interval.”

Quinn’s mouth pulled to the side, “Good-people, bad-people confidence interval?” He leaned his shoulder against the side of the elevator car.

“Yes. Obviously, everyone makes mistakes but if you only see it as a
‘mistake’
because you’ve been caught then that’s bad. However, if you realize that you’ve made a mistake because you recognize the error of your ways and make an effort to change then there is a big difference.”

“So, really, you think a person is the sum total of their intentions and not their actions.”

The elevator opened and I stepped out as I continued my philosophizing, “No. Without action even good intentions are quite meaningless.”

I was abruptly struck by the comfortable progression of our conversation. Strangely, the ever present pins and needles I usually felt around Quinn seemed to be dissipating the further we ventured into this topic. I felt almost relaxed.
We walked past Keira, who nodded at me but then suddenly stopped typing when she saw Quinn.

Before I could do a double take and ask Keira if she were ok, h
e countered, “What would a person be if they had good intentions and no actions?” His free hand pressed against my lower back and we continued down the hall to my office.

“Lazy.”

Just inside my door he pulled me to a stop with gentle pressure on my elbow, “And what about someone with bad intentions and good actions or good intentions but bad actions?”

“Stupid.”

He considered me for a long moment; his brow was furrowed but there was a small smile on his lips, “Let me get this straight, according to you there are four kinds of people: good, bad, lazy, and stupid. Is that right?”

My eyes drifted over Quinn’s face as I contemplated his summary of my philosophy, “More or less, that’s about right. Think of it like a four quadrant scatter plot graph.”