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It had been a very short time for two people to make such a positive connection. There were worse things than his daughter liking someone Mark employed.
He was throwing the contest, but in all of the time he had spent with Sophie, this was the most fun they had ever had. Deliberately, he went over and tapped the kid on the shoulder. The boy turned around, his Adam’s apple clearly visible. “What?”
“Oh, sorry,” Mark said. “I mistook you for someone else.”
“Whatever.”
Ah, yes, Mark’s favorite word. The kid turned around and Mark could see the father shoot him a look, but Mark simply folded his arms over his chest and waited.
The blonde made her way to him sporting a victorious smile.
“Oh, my God, I totally did not guess that was you,” Sophie said hopping up and down on her toes with excitement. “How did you hide the tattoos?”
“A trick I learned from Hollywood actresses.” JoJo tilted her neck and peeled off a thin layer of beige tape. “They use this stuff when they’re filming.”
Effective, at least from a distance. Up close, Mark could see the faint outline of the tape on the other side of her neck. That was probably why she hadn’t used the adhesive during her interview.
“Not bad. Hiding in plain sight. It worked.”
“Did it?” JoJo asked. Their eyes met. She clearly knew she’d been caught. She wasn’t counting on Mark throwing the contest.
Sophie looked at him. “Yes, totally. You won the job. Right, Mark? I mean, you’re not going to back off the bet now?”
“Nope.” He put his hands into his pockets. “You won fair and square. Since today is Tuesday, you can take a few days to get settled. Be at the office at eight o’clock sharp next Monday and we’ll work out salary and what your billing rate will be.”
JoJo held out her hand and Mark shook it. Odd for such a small hand to pack such a firm grip. She was a study in contrasts.
“Sophie, why don’t you check the computer for restaurants. Find some place you want to eat.”
“Okay. You should invite JoJo. It can be like a celebration dinner for beating you.”
Sophie left him in a ridiculously awkward situation. He didn’t particularly want to have dinner with JoJo. He would need the next few days to come to grips with the fact that he was now working with her. Maybe dinner would help with that. Maybe he would find himself less uncomfortable after breaking bread together.
“Would you like to join us? Not sure what Sophie will pick, her tastes are rather eclectic. It could be burgers, it could be sushi or it could be Thai food.”
“Why did you let me win?”
Mark feigned confusion.
“You caught my eye, let me know you knew it was me. Then you tapped the kid on the shoulder. Why?”
“I guess I decided I wanted to hire you after all. Besides, it was a good costume. It almost had me fooled.”
“You looked at my legs,” she said. Not judgmentally, but merely as a statement of fact.
“That was the intention, wasn’t it? For me to look at them and not at you.”
“Yes. I want to make sure you’re not going to have an issue working with me. Maybe the problem isn’t the tattoos. Maybe the problem is I’m a woman.”
Mark laughed. “Trust me. That’s not the problem. I’ve worked with plenty of women in my career. Operatives and soldiers. I have nothing but respect for people who do their job and do it well, regardless of their gender.”
“Okay.” JoJo nodded slowly. As if reaching some conclusion about him.
“And if you’re worried about me being attracted to you, I can promise you that won’t be an issue.”
“Okay...” she drawled.
He realized he’d basically said she was unattractive. At least unattractive to him. What phrase had Sophie used? Douche bag? It seemed appropriate here.
“Look, I didn’t mean it like that. You’re a very attractive woman. I just... For me...”
“I get it.”
“Your legs were really distracting—”
“Mark, put a sock in it. This is actually a good thing. You’re not into me and I would never find someone like you attractive, either. So we’re cool. Business colleagues and that’s it.”
“That’s it,” Mark agreed. Although why the idea that she would never find someone like him attractive suddenly bothered him, he couldn’t say.
* * *
SOPHIE HAD GONE with Mexican. The restaurant was a small place off Market Street. Not a lot of ambiance but the waiter brought out a big basket of hot chips and spicy salsa. Combined with a margarita and JoJo had all a girl needed to be happy in life.
For a second she considered passing on the drink. Not exactly a good image, to be drinking in front of the boss shortly after being hired, but she had concluded she was done playing games for this guy. She was hired. She wasn’t working a case. She would have a drink and not put on any more pretenses.
She’d gone to her room to ditch the wig and the tape, but she kept her outfit on because that was part of her, too. The vibrant red coat hung on a hook at the corner of the booth.
Neither Mark nor Sophie could refrain from checking out her tattoos every once in a while.
JoJo couldn’t pretend it bothered her. After all, she’d gotten the tattoos for a very specific purpose—just like she did most things in her life. So to complain when people stared seemed hypocritical.
She also knew that with her tattoos she was writing off nice guys like Mark Sharpe, who would never be attracted to her. Solid businessman, clean-cut. Probably a conservative who wore boxers. Yes, he was definitely not her type.
Still, as she looked at him with his neatly trimmed dark hair, his barely there scruff along his chin and his dark sweater that highlighted broad shoulders, she got the impression he wasn’t quite the conformist he portrayed.
Then there were his eyes. To say they were brown didn’t describe them at all. They reminded her of a bird’s eyes. Sharp and calculating. Assessing her like she was nothing more than a squirrel he would hunt for sport rather than food.
There was no escaping those eyes now that they were focused on her. They were like her tattoos. Badass. When he’d looked at her in the lobby and she knew she’d been made, she’d felt like prey being given a reprieve. She wouldn’t be so lucky next time.
JoJo made a mental note that there wouldn’t be a next time. As a rule, she wasn’t intimidated by men. The experience she had with her father after her sister had died made intimidation impossible. She never feared men because she knew she could survive anything.
Mark was different, somehow. He threatened her in a way she couldn’t define.
Unfortunately that threat didn’t mean he wasn’t someone she might be attracted to. If anything, it contributed to the possibility. Telling him he wasn’t her type had been a flat-out lie. Done out of pride because he was so completely not into her. Also because she wanted to affirm there was no way she would ever be attracted to someone she worked for.
Which was a crock. A woman couldn’t control who she was attracted to. She only controlled what she did with that attraction.
She had been lucky that it was never a concern in her prior job. Even if there had been someone, she never would have crossed the line. It was hard to earn respect from your peers if they thought they could take you to bed. A perfectly logical reason to avoid interoffice dating.
Of course she’d also never had a relationship with any of the men from her last firm because she was completely and totally messed up emotionally. Every once in a while she forgot that.
“So,” JoJo said, dipping a chip into the salsa. “What’s your deal?” She looked at both Sophie and Mark. It was a nosy question, but she was a detective. She lived to be nosy.
Mark didn’t say anything, but Sophie looked at him, clearly waiting for him to say something first. Mark just shifted in the booth and reached for a chip.
“No deal.”
“Okay.” JoJo was prepared to let it go, but she could hear Sophie huff.
“Uh, please. She wants to know why I call you Mark. And why we’re together.”
“You call me Mark to annoy me.”
“My mom is dead.”
JoJo heard the flat note in the girl’s voice. It was as if she practiced saying it over and over again in the mirror so that when she had to say it out loud, to real people, she wouldn’t crack.
JoJo was sure her own voice had the same tone when she told people her sister was dead.
“I’m sorry.”
“Whatever. It was an accident that happened months ago. Actually...it’s over a year now. I forgot.” Sophie frowned but quickly shook away whatever bad stuff was floating through her head. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Mark left me when I was a baby to save the world in Afghanistan and when my mom died he had to come back. I wanted to stay with my grandparents, but they’re too old to keep up with me so I’m stuck with Mark.”
Mark clenched his jaw and JoJo watched the muscle in his cheek spasm. “That’s about eighty percent accurate.”
“What part is wrong?” Sophie asked, having clearly told her story as truthfully as possible.
“You say I left you like I dropped you on the side of the road. Your mother and I reached a decision. Also, I would like to add that I have been in touch with you throughout your life.”
Sophie turned to JoJo. “Sorry. He sent me cards and gifts for my birthday and Christmas. When he wasn’t hiding under a rock somewhere, we would talk over the internet. Really intense conversations, too, like, ‘What grade are you in now?’ Mostly I saw a grainy picture of a guy with a scarf over his face. Half the time I didn’t even recognize him. So emotional.”
“It’s sandy and windy in the Stans. Scarves are a necessary accessory for, you know, breathing.”
“What—”
“—ever,” Mark finished. “Yes. But you should also know I didn’t come back because your mother died. I was coming back regardless. Your mother’s death only sped up the process.”
Sophie said nothing, but shook her head to show she didn’t believe it. Then she lifted her hand to her mouth and nibbled on a fingernail.
“You’re not supposed to do that,” Mark said.
Instantly her hand dropped and she reached for the chips.
“That’s the other thing about Sophie,” Mark said. “She’s a child prodigy. A piano player who has toured the country and Europe performing with various orchestras. Right now she’s under contract with the Philadelphia Orchestra.”
“I’m almost fifteen now. We can lose the child-prodigy tag. Just say I play the piano.”
“I would like to hear you sometime,” JoJo said.
“I can get you tickets.”
“Cool.”
JoJo looked again at Mark. He sat back in the booth defensively, looking like he wanted to escape, but he didn’t move. JoJo knew what it was like to have a broken relationship with her father. The difference between Mark and her dad was that Mark cared about what Sophie thought of him. He cared that she felt abandoned. And his expression showed that he also felt guilty.
That was something JoJo’s father had never felt. Still didn’t.
Mark excused himself to go to the restroom. “If the waiter comes—”
“You want a beef burrito,” Sophie said. “Like that’s news.”
Mark paused and a small smile lit up his face. “You know how tempted I am to say I want fajitas?”
“Cutting off your nose to spite your face. You know you want the burrito.”
His smile only grew larger. “You’re right. I do.”
JoJo watched him walk away and tried not to notice how nicely his jeans fit over a firm ass. Nice shoulders, nice ass. Oh, my. When was the last time she’d taken in a man’s appearance like that? And of all men, it had to be her new boss?
When she looked at Sophie, the girl was biting her fingernails again. As soon as she noticed JoJo’s eyes on her, Sophie dropped her hands into her lap.
“Why aren’t you supposed to bite your nails?”
Sophie wiggled her fingers. “Don’t want anything messing with the tools. A hangnail or infection could be death for an artist like me.”
JoJo heard the sarcasm that was obviously a big part of who Sophie was. But it also let JoJo know the girl didn’t take herself too seriously. Which was probably a good thing in someone so talented.
“I really am sorry about your mom. I’m not just saying it.”
There was a shimmer in the girl’s eyes that she would hate to know was there. A small crack. Instantly JoJo felt contrite for making the girl crack in front of company. As a concession she offered her own pain. “I lost my sister. When I was young.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
“It blows.”
Sophie nodded. “It’s like...I get up every day and I do the stuff I am supposed to do. Like nothing happened. Only everything happened.”
“You feel guilty.”
“Yeah. Like I should be in my room crying every day. And some days that’s all I want to do, but I don’t. I go to practice, I go to rehearsal. I get ready to perform. It’s like this horrible thing didn’t happen. Only it did. I forgot it was more than a year ago.”
This was where JoJo was supposed to offer up some nice words. You’ll work through it. It will get better. It was the least she could do.
“It will get better.” JoJo choked out the words.
“Will it?”
“No,” JoJo admitted truthfully. The girl was too smart and would see through any fabrication. When you removed the bullshit there was only the truth. “No, it doesn’t get better. It just gets less worse.”
