“Me. That’s who.”
“You? I barely know you, James.”
I wasn’t sure that was entirely true, but I wasn’t going to argue with her. “That makes me impartial. Lay it on me. Tell me what’s upsetting you. I can either just listen or I can help you problem-solve, whatever you need.”
She looked reluctant, but she did finally say, “Well. It’s great that my mother is being released. But she has nowhere to go, except my apartment. It’s a small two-bedroom place, that I share with Chrissy and her son, Kadin, who’s two. I feel terrible that I can’t do any better than that for my own mother.”
Wow. That was a heavy burden for her. “You work really hard, Mia. You’re doing the best you can.” She worked eighty-seven jobs for fuck’s sake. “Your mother knows that.”
She nodded, tucking her hair behind her ear. “She does. But I still feel bad, you know?”
I squeezed her knee. “I get that. But you can only do what you can do.”
“I don’t even have any food in my apartment. I’ve been eating oatmeal for the last three days.” Tears threatened to choke her again. “If you hadn’t given me that tip yesterday, I wouldn’t have been able to pay my rent. God, do you know how humiliating and frustrating that is? I’ve always believed that if I work hard, everything will work out. But lately, it’s hard to hold on to that.”
Damn, I wanted to just sweep Mia away, off into the fucking sunset, and make her life easier. I wanted to solve all her problems and give her all the love and support she deserved.
What I also suspected was that no one took care of Mia. She did all the caring.
That was about to change. Right now.
“I didn’t realize how tight things are for you. I’m sorry for asking you to take time off work to walk Amelia with me. I wanted to spend time with you and I wasn’t thinking.”
She gave a watery laugh. “It’s fine. You gave me more than I make in a shift.”
I still felt like a dick. “Okay, good. But how are you paying for your mom’s stay at the rehab facility?” Mia amazed me. I could see why the staff was fond of her. She worked her ass off and never complained and still made time in a jam-packed schedule to visit her mother all the time.
“Some of it is covered, but the rest I’m just going to be on a payment plan for the rest of my life. I might be out from under it by the time I need a home myself.” She shrugged.
“That sucks,” I said, and I meant that sincerely. I also knew I was going to pay the bill. “How much is the balance?”
“Like fifteen grand.”
“Oh, that’s not bad,” I said, without thinking. I’d been envisioning like two hundred grand. I reversed the car and started driving.
She laughed, which perplexed me.
“What?” I asked. “Where do you live, by the way?”
She gave me her address and I punched it into my phone.
“That you think fifteen thousand dollars isn’t a big bill just makes me feel slightly hysterical.”
This was having the opposite effect of what I had intended. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was picturing something way worse, but I should have thought before I spoke.”
“Maybe we should cancel our dinner date, James.”
“What?” I stared at her, waiting to pull out of the parking lot. “Why?” That is not how I had wanted this conversation to go. I wanted her to feel like she could confide in me, not feel like we shouldn’t date.
“Go date a supermodel or a country singer. That’s who you belong with,” she said, sounding world-weary. She was actually leaning her head against the car window. “I’m a maid and a barista and a dog walker who is drowning in debt and will never get out. This is my life and I’m honestly okay with it. But I don’t belong with a man like you.”
“A man like me? What the hell does that mean?”
“A rich guy with flashy tastes. Your girlfriend should be flashy too.”
Even as I got pissed, nostrils flaring, I knew she wasn’t wrong. I was flashy. The guys all loved to give me shit about it. I had expensive taste and the money to indulge it. But that didn’t define who I was as a person. “If I wanted to date a supermodel, I would be dating a supermodel,” I said, voice tight. “I want to date you.”
“Why?” she asked.
“We just talked about this. Because we have fun together. We talked for hours that first night and it was easy, interesting. I knew who you were, you know. From the minute we met, I knew you worked in housekeeping and I never gave a shit. Why would that bother me? If anything, I respect the hell out of you for how hard you work. I don’t want a woman whose only hobbies are microblading and spending my money.”
“What the heck is microblading?”
“I don’t know. Something with eyebrows. Eyebrows are very important to a lot of women I’ve dated.”
Mia laughed again, and this time it sounded like genuine amusement. “So if I date you, I’ll be saving you from women who obsess about eyebrows?”
“Yes. Think of dating me as an act of charity.” I wasn’t taking no for an answer. I wanted to be with Mia. I was going to make it happen, no matter what her ridiculous objections might be. “One woman I dated had an Instagram account devoted to her eyebrows.”
“You’re making that up.”
“I am not. It was terrifying.” I glanced over at her. “Don’t tell me you named your eyebrows. I will be very upset if that’s the case.”
“I have not named my eyebrows. It’s never even occurred to me.”
“Good. Because you name everything, so I was worried for a second. But now there’s no reason we can’t date.”
“James…”
“Mia.”
“James.” Her voice was firmer this time.
“Mia.”
“Argh,” she said. “James.”
“Mia. I can keep doing this all day.”
“This isn’t a good idea.”
“Arguing with me or dating with me?”
“Both.”
“I don’t know. It feels right to me.”
“Arguing with me or dating?” Mia asked.
I laughed. “Both.”
She sighed, but I could tell she was caving. “I honestly don’t know what to do with you.”
That made my cock hard. I raised my eyebrows. “I can think of a thing or twelve.”
Mia didn’t respond. I glanced over at her. She was giving me a look that she didn’t even bother to mask. It was one of raw need. Desire. Her mouth was slightly open and her eyes were one hundred percent fuck-me eyes. I almost drove off the damn road.
I glanced at the GPS on my phone to see how long until we got to her place. If it was more than a few miles, I was going to have to pull over and make out with her at the very least. Five minutes away. I hit the gas pedal a little harder.
A thought occurred to me as I pulled into her apartment complex. She never seemed to have more than thirty-minute increments of free time. The woman worked without sleep. “How long before you have to be at one of your jobs?”
Mia glanced at her phone as I pulled into a guest parking spot. “Two hours.” There was the briefest of pauses. Then she said, “Do you want to come in?”