“Uh . . . Europe who?”
“No, I’m not.”
I stare at her blankly in the waiting silence following her “joke.”
“Are you done?” I ask incredulously. “That was it?”
Laughter erupts from us at the same time.
“Yeah, that’s bad,” I agree.
“Well, I try.”
“But your horrendous joke-telling doesn’t quite outweigh how awesome you seem to be at most other things.”
“Ha!” She rolls her eyes and resumes doodling. “I wish my advisor agreed with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s old school. He doesn’t think women make great sports agents.”
“A lot of people don’t. There aren’t many of them, for sure. You know you’re entering a male-dominated field, but if anyone can handle it, you can.”
“Thanks, Jared. His views are pretty antediluvian.”
Shit. Those lips wrapping around the word “antediluvian” may as well be wrapped around my cock. Has my brain always been a sex organ, or did she do this to
me?
“Did you hear me?” she asks, frowning.
“Sorry.” I was busy adjusting myself under the table. “What’d you say?”
“He keeps spouting survival of the fittest. He thinks women lack the killer instinct required to be truly successful sports agents.”
“He’s not wrong.”
The look she shoots me could cut the rest of my hair off.
“Whoa.” I raise my hands to ward off all that ire. “Not about women’s inability to succeed in this field.”
Her expression eases a fraction.
“But he’s not wrong about survival of the fittest,” I clarify. “That’s real. Most sports agents are assholes. Mercenary. Cutthroat. Ruthless. I’m perfectly suited for it and plan to be the best asshole in the game.”
She smiles, uncertainty in the barely curved lips and searching eyes. “You don’t mean that.”
“I do.” We stare at each other for a few seconds, and I let her see the truth of what I’ve said.
My dad, with all his military training and knowledge of how to kill people in a hundred different ways, is a kind man. My stepmother and stepbrother, good people with good hearts.
And then there’s me.
I never felt as nice as the rest of my family. It wasn’t until I started here at Kerrington that I realized it’s not that I’m not as nice, I just see people more clearly. I spy their twisted motives and ill intentions. The entitled brats here only honed that sense, only deepened my conviction that, by and large, people look out for themselves. If they’re gonna suck, I’m gonna manipulate them to my own ends. Thus . . . my choice of profession.
“I’m made for this job,” I tell her.
“So am I,” she fires back, her voice defensive. “My advisor says survival of the fittest, but I don’t think about life in terms of Darwin.”