Mama’s Boy by Avery Flynn
Chapter Ten
Fiona
Do not fall for it, Fiona. Be strong.
One, this was the kind of stuff she always fell for that made her think there was a heart of gold under all the layers of asshole. Two, he was a Rage fan. Three, there was a black town car idling at the curb right outside the entrance to the rink—labeled VIP—that she’d bet her next paycheck was waiting just for him, because he was a richy rich guy and she so very much did not share the same world as Dixon Beckett. Her Harbor City came with creeps who tried to cop a feel on the train. His Harbor City had drivers standing by for whenever he wanted to go somewhere.
They were tucked into the back seat while the driver—Dixon had introduced him as Murphy—weaved his way through the traffic heading away from the arena.
“Are you sure Breakwater is on your way?” Fiona asked for about the billionth time since they’d pulled away from the curb and she’d shared the closest intersection to her apartment.
Her neighborhood wasn’t even close to uptown neighborhoods where Harbor City’s glamorous lived. She loved her working-class neighborhood with its commitment to locally owned small businesses. Was it a little hipster for her dad and brothers? Yes, it definitely did not have the Waterbury firefighter/cop vibe. Instead, it was a place where the guy making your latte would hop up on the counter to recite sonnets, the local bodega cat was named Poe, and Mrs. Warren was always sitting in front of her window keeping track of everyone’s comings and goings. In the summer, there were block parties. In the winter, there was grumbling about how damn cold it was as folks hustled from the train station to their apartments above the bakery or the pizza joint. Like most of Harbor City, Breakwater was its own town tucked inside a bigger city, and she’d fallen in love with it the day she’d come to interview for a job at the Sudbury Academy.
“Murphy,” Dixon said. “Is Breakwater on our way?”
The driver nodded, his gaze flicking to the rearview mirror for a second to lock with Fiona’s. “Yes, ma’am.”
“See?” Dixon said as he pivoted in his seat.
The move brought his knee into contact with hers and sent a blast of awareness through her that made the long-sleeve shirt under the hockey jersey under the light fall coat three layers too many.
He continued, seemingly oblivious to her heat flash. “A neutral third party agrees.”
She mentally put “neutral” in air quotes. Murphy, a ginger who filled out a suit like a guy with a gun belt under his jacket, was about as close to being Switzerland as she was to being one of the ladies who lunch. Old Fiona would have just accepted this and told herself she’d been wrong. He must be an eccentric richy who loved to live among the common people. New Fiona—the one who was channeling badass sister Fallon—wasn’t falling for that line of shit.
“Where do you live?” she asked.
“Robely and Twelfth.”
Her laugh came out like a squawk of disbelief—which it was. That was square in the middle of Harbor City’s multimillionaire lane with brownstones that hadn’t been split into apartments. The butlers up there had butlers. The dogs had diamond-encrusted collars. The residents had bank statements that looked like the GDP of small nations.
“My neighborhood is not on your way.” It wasn’t even in his universe.
“Well, we’re already headed in that direction now, so that is that.” He sat back in his seat, a smug grin—that he somehow managed to make look more impish than take-that-sucker—on his face.
She dug deep, trying to find the annoyance that should be festering in her belly, and came up empty. Ugh. She shouldn’t be amused by him. He was a big jerk who had ditched three out of three appointments that she’d prepped for by researching Beckett Cosmetics, him, and the market for seniors who didn’t want to look younger but who just wanted to treat their skin well. Those were hours of her life that she’d never get back. And yet…here she was, smiling back at the pain in her butt who she was seeing on the condition of being the worst date ever.
“You’re rather satisfied with yourself, aren’t you?” she asked, managing just barely not to giggle when she said it.
He didn’t even look the least bit ashamed. “Winning does that to me. That’s why I’m the CEO of Beckett Cosmetics and my cousins aren’t.”
“Did you beat out your cousins for the job?”
He broke into a laugh. “Sorry. I’m trying to imagine Griff talking long enough to make it through a shareholders’ meeting or Nash keeping his mouth shut long enough for anyone else to get their opinion heard before a vote.”
“So you won by default?”
He shrugged, totally unbothered by the teasing dig. “It’s still a win.”
She had no idea what to say to that. What could she? Winning isn’t everything? That didn’t seem like something that would compute. It would fly over his head and splatter against the town car’s tinted windows—through which she spotted the Flying Sow Pub. Her intersection was just ahead.
“This is good,” she said, hitting the release button on her seat belt. “I can walk from here.”
“I’ll drop you at the door.”
“Look,” she said, already reaching for the door handle. “No offense, but I really don’t think that I want you to know where I live.”
“That’s not supposed to offend me?” His eyes were wide, a baffled confusion clearly visible in them. “What did I do?”
Men. They never thought what it was like to not be one of them. As Murphy double-parked the town car, she looked Dixon dead in the eyes. It was time for the third grade teacher to take the billionaire to school.
“Have you been followed home after leaving an evening event?” she asked. “The person never really gets close but they’re always there, about a yard behind you? At first you think maybe they live in the neighborhood, but when they get on the crosstown bus, they have to ask the driver where it’s going and then seem put out, as if it was the wrong way? Yet here they are, off at your station, away from any other public transportation opportunities, stopping when you do and moving as soon as you start again?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“I have.” Shit. Pretty much all her female friends had—just like they’d walked down the block with their keys slid between their fingers like metal claws and never got in an elevator alone with a guy who gave them the sinking-gut feeling. “Knowing where I live is a privilege, not a right.”
He pondered it for half a second, then shot her a sheepish grin. “Yes, ma’am.”
A blast of cool fall air hit her as soon as she opened the door and stepped out onto the street. Okay, maybe catching a ride with Dixon had been better than waiting on the unheated train platform.
“So we’re still on for the weekend at Gable House?” he asked, the slightest edge of uncertainty in his tone.
“I probably should say no, since you’re still wearing Rage gear.” She took pity on him. “However, we made a deal, so I’ll see it through. Night, Dixon. Thanks for the ride, Murphy.”
Then she was walking down the sidewalk and almost to the corner before she snuck a look back. The town car was still there, double-parked on Rockaway. She gave Dixon a quick wave and waited until Murphy moved on before turning right, hustling to the bright-green door tucked between a coffee shop and a bodega.
Once inside, she checked the mailboxes in the tiny lobby and then headed up the three flights of stairs to her apartment, not realizing until she was inside and had the deadbolt turned that she was still smiling.
God help her, she’d had fun with a Rage fan. That couldn’t happen again.
