The best of the best still wasn’t very good. The women were beautiful, but that was part of the problem. None of them looked like someone I would actually be with. Something Carl and the other guys from the unit would sniff out immediately, knowing me as well as anyone.
Just then, a video call came up.
“Speak of the devil,” I said as I clicked accept, and Carl appeared on the screen. “What’s that, sir?” Carl asked, looking confused.
“Never mind, and how many times have I told you to call me Liam?”
“I’m not sure, sir, sorry, force of habit.”
I grinned at him. “It’s fine, what’s up?”
“I just wanted to make sure you are coming to the wedding. You haven’t RSVPed, and I want to make sure there is a place for you at the table. I really want you there. I mean, let’s be honest, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be getting married right now or doing anything else for that matter.”
“Anyone could have spotted that sniper,” I said with a shrug.
“But anyone didn’t. You did and took him out before he gave my brains some air.” “You’d do the same for me,” I said, “besides, you got me behind the vehicle after the IED. I mean, I wasn’t exactly useful at the time.”
“Okay then, you owe me,” Carl said with a smirk, clearly joking.
“For giving you a job?” I asked, kidding right back. We both had a bit of a weird sense of humor.
“Among other things,” Carl said.
“I’ll see what I can do, okay?”
“Okay.”
We killed the call, and I got back to looking for an escort, more convinced than ever before that I would be at Carl’s wedding. We may not have been brothers, made clear by the fact that Carl was black, but it felt like we were. We also had a life bond, which in some ways was even stronger.
When I set my mind to something, it happened. Or, at least I had yet to fail.
Sadly, there was a first time for everything, and I simply couldn’t find a woman among the pages upon pages of profiles that seemed like she would be appropriate for the occasion.
Seeing the parade of beauty and fashion made me think again about Hayley. Partly because she was just so opposite. Not that she wasn’t pretty. She defiantly was but in a more natural, unpretentious way. I doubted she even wore makeup. I didn’t see any, and I was really good when it came to attention to detail. Her clothes, while not expensive, were still nice and close enough to the current fashion as not to stand out. Besides which, I could buy her something to wear to the wedding if it really came down to it. Heaven knew I could afford it.
Maybe I had been a bit too quick in dismissing her. It wasn’t like she knew what I had planned. The only fair thing would be to see her again and explain the situation, so at least she had all the facts. Then we would see.
Chapter Six
Hayley
Meeting Mr. Adams, Liam, had left me shaken. I wasn’t sure if it was his looks — he was so easy to fantasize about — or because of what he said to me before he left the café. He thought I was too quiet. True, I had been frozen in fear, intimidated by his fortune and presence, but I should have found a way to push through it. It ached inside me that I had come off as rude.
All night, I kept replaying the trip to the café over and over in my head, constantly finding one tidbit after another to be embarrassed over. So, in the morning, I could barely function again. I tried to keep my head down once I got to work. I did exactly what I was told when I was told and hoped like hell that no one would ask me what was wrong or yell at me for bumbling.
When the clock hit 4:55pm, I started to breathe a sigh of relief. That, of course, was when Ms. Howell called me into her office. I hoped she intended to give me another task. Staying late at work was fine. Getting fired for being unintentionally rude or not doing my job right was not.
As I walked towards her door, my typical nerves started to act up again. My hands shook just as badly as the day before. Clasping them before me didn’t help much.
I knocked lightly on her open door.
“Hayley! Please, sit down.” Ann smiled at me and waved her hand to the chair in front of her desk.
“Okay,” I said, feeling slightly lightheaded with worry.
Ms. Howell acting so nice actually made me more nervous. Was she just being polite before she told me what an awful worker I was?