"Would you like some more orange juice?" she asked.
Yes, Finch was drinking orange juice while eating his spaghetti and meatballs. Clearly, he was some sort of sociopath.
"That would be great. And I think the lady would like a stack of pancakes."
"I will be right out with that for you," she told him, not even sparing me a look. "Tell me I was right, doll," he said to me as she left.
"Don't sound so proud of yourself," I demanded, wanting to sound reproachful, but I wasn't sure I managed to get that into my tone. "It was the only option."
"Oh, I disagree. There were waffles, French Toast, crepes, and about five different kinds of pancakes to choose from. But I get the feeling you're a classic kind of girl."
I was.
When it came to food, in nearly every way.
I liked vanilla ice cream and oatmeal cookies and cheese pizza. Nothing fancy. Nothing new and foreign to my taste buds.
I'd been told it was part of my coping mechanism, to over-prepare for things, and stay squarely in my comfort zone.
There was likely a lot of truth in that.
"Now that I am going to eat, will you talk business with me?" I asked, sitting up a little straighter as that penetrating gaze of his bored into me, looking for something. And I found myself more than a little scared that he might find it.
"There are so many other things to talk about though, aren't there?" he asked, shrugging. "Like the weather. Your favorite kind of animal. How you take your coffee. The song you're most embarrassed about liking. What your name is."
"You know my name."
"Your full name, angel," he countered. "No woman is named Chris."
"Christienne."
"Beautiful," he told me, eyes looking almost a little soft. If soft eyes were a thing. "And the rest?" he prompted.
I didn't know him well. In fact, I didn't know much about him personally, just basic facts about his criminal career. Somehow, I knew that he was every bit as stubborn as I was.
It would lead us nowhere if all we did was butt heads, though, so I went ahead and gave in. Just this once.
"It has been rainy," I said.
"Yes, but do you hate the rain, or are you the type to sit in the windowsill and watch it with dreamy eyes?"
There were no windows at Hailstorm, but I understood the sentiment. "I like the rain," I admitted. "I don't have a favorite animal per se. I like a lot of them. This girl at Hailstorm has chickens. And they're actually a lot more interesting than I could have known."
"You like peckers, huh?" he asked, making a snort burst out of me.
"That was cheesy. Even for you," I told him, adding an eye roll for good measure. "I take my coffee with cream."
"Even when you're alone?" he asked. "You don't slip some sugar in there when no one is looking?"
Damn him.
He was good.
And it was unnerving.
I really, really hated being unnerved. I didn't like being the one under the microscope. I couldn't tolerate not being in charge of the conversation. It made me anxious. And anxiety always manifested in hyper-realistic nightmares. It was a vicious cycle I tried very hard to avoid.
It was why I was so anal, why I had regimented schedules, why I did things by my rules, in my time.
And here this guy was, a virtual stranger, taking it all away from me.
The strangest part?
I was letting him.
"Sometimes, I like sugar," I told him.
"And what song do you listen to in private that you would get all pink in the cheeks if someone walked in and found you singing to it?"
"The soundtrack to Aladdin," I admitted.
"Disney, princess? There's nothing embarrassing about Disney," he told me just as the waitress came back with the pancakes, dropping them down in front of me, but keeping her focus on Finch. "Can you do me a huge favor, sweetheart?" he asked, reaching for the cold glass container of syrup.
"Sure thing, dear," she agreed. I couldn't see her face, but I bet she was giving him a shameless smile.
The power this man had over women...
"Could you warm up this syrup for me? It's not the same when it's cold, is it?" he asked, handing it to her.
"You didn't have to do that," I told him as she walked away to do that for him. Because of course, she did. I highly doubted it had anything to do with her tip, either.
"Of course I did. You're too good for cold syrup, love," he told me, gaze lowering to my plate, watching as I scraped off the butter. "No butter. Interesting."
"It makes the syrup taste weird," I told him, not knowing why I was engaging in small talk with him. As a rule, I wasn't a small talk type of person. "Don't look at me like that," I demanded, hearing a strange almost... husky edge to my voice as I looked up from wrapping the butter up in a napkin to find his deep eyes on me once again.
"Like what, doll?"
Like he liked what he was looking at.
"Like you're trying to figure me out," I told him instead. It was partially the truth, anyway. I was in the camp of half-truths being better than full lies.
"Oh, but I can't stop looking at you like that."
"Why not?"
"Because I can't stop myself from wanting to know more."
"You don't even know me," I objected. "Thank you," I told the waitress, tone just a little pointed when she dropped the syrup off at Finch's elbow instead of my side of the table.
"She can't help it if she likes me better," he said, lips twitching.
Our hands went for the syrup at the same moment, his hand landing on top of mine on the handle.
The impact was immediate, familiar in a way I didn't like. The gut-punch of panic, the need to yank my arm back. This time, so fast that the container wobbled and fell off the side of the table, making Finch lean down to grab it with impressive cat-like reflexes.
His gaze stayed on the container as he carefully wiped it with a napkin before carefully pushing it across the table toward me, gaze on mine.
"No," he agreed. "I don't know you. But I would like to," he added.
There was an immediate reaction to that as well. Something far less sickening. But no less panic-inducing.
Because I shouldn't have been feeling something akin to, I don't know, hope? Anticipation? A combination of the two, maybe. Not about any man. Let alone this one I barely knew.
That wasn't how I worked.
I didn't tick that way.
Maybe, once upon a time, I did. I had been normal once, Average. Capable of warm and tinglies. Someone who could be interested in the opposite sex. Someone who would be pleased when an attractive man was interested in her.
But that was not the woman I was now.
There were many things I was simply not capable of--as much as it killed me to admit that--and wanting a man to want me was at the very top of the list of things I couldn't do.
"There's no reason for that," I told him, hearing the frigid, obnoxiously professional tone slip into my voice. "I am your boss," I added. Even though, right that moment, I didn't feel like it.
"I think we're more like partners, angel," he countered.