My mood lightened.
“D’ye think? I tried me best with it.”
“You look beautiful.” My friend beamed.
I hesitated. “I don’t look overdone?”
“No, you’re the one interviewin’ the bloke for a job. You look like the professional woman that you are.”
“A professional hard-on inducing woman.”
Bronagh thumped Alec for me.
“I’ve to go, but I’ll stop by on me way home.”
“You better,” Bronagh warned. “We have a lot to talk about.”
I nodded. “You got it, boss.”
We said our goodbyes, and before I knew it, I was in my car and driving into town. I kept repeating what I had practiced asking over and over in my head while glancing at the applicant’s name on the front page of my papers. Morgan Allen. Then I had to repeat the name over and over so I didn’t forget it when I first met him. An hour after I set off, I was sitting inside a relatively large café, sipping on a cup of tea.
I yawned for the sixth time as I waited for Morgan Allen to show up for our interview. It didn’t start for another fifteen minutes, but I was hoping he’d show up early just to get the meeting over and done with. I was nervous. I had never interviewed someone to work for me before, so I was acting purely on instinct when it came to the questions I had prepared. I scanned through the questions I came up with Damien for an unknown amount of time, then I took out my travel sized pad and began sketching when a shadow fell over my table.
“Miss Ryan?”
I looked up from my sketchpad and audibly sucked in a breath when my eyes landed on the fine specimen before me. The man or god—he really looked like a Greek god—looked down at me with violet eyes. Logically, I knew there was no such thing as violet eyes, but this man’s iris pigmentation was so light, I couldn’t call it any other colour. I stared at him and his eyes for a long time, so long that he cleared his throat and reached up and awkwardly scratched his neck.
I felt my cheeks stain with heat.
“Y-yes?” I stammered.
“Hey.” Violet Eyes smiled, revealing straight pearly white teeth. “I’m Morgan Allen, I’m ’ere for—”
“The interview,” I finished on a nervous chuckle. “Of course, I’m so sorry for bein’ weird and starin’ at you; it’s just ... you have really bright eyes.”
“They’re freaky lookin’, right?”
“Freaky lookin’?” I repeated. “Try bloody cool. Are they contacts?”
Morgan shook his head.
“Nope, they’re me natural eye colour, believe it or not. They’re like this because there is little to no colour in me irises, so it looks like a shade of violet. It’s a genetic defect. I’m pretty much a mutant.”
“I wish I had a genetic defect that would give me violet eyes,” I mumbled. “All I got stuck with was webbed toes.”
Morgan laughed. I didn’t know if he was laughing at me or not, but I didn’t want to know.
“I got them fixed when I was little,” I rushed. “They look just like regular toes now. No more webbiness.”
“Webbiness?” Morgan quizzed, looking at me like I was that weirdly deformed dog that nobody wanted at the shelter.
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling heat spread out over my entire face. “I’m makin’ an arse out of meself. Please, sit down.”
“Thanks,” Morgan said and sat down across from me. “And for the record, havin’ a little webbiness is cool. You’d outswim me if we were ever in a situation where a shark was chasin’ us and we needed to swim away. He’d get me first, and that’d be an advantage for you.”
I stared at Morgan for a couple of seconds, then burst into laughter.
“Oh, my God,” I tittered and covered my mouth with my hand. “You’re weirder than I am!”
“Hey!” He gasped, feigning offence. “I was tryin’ to make you feel better about starin’ at me and droolin’.”
“I didn’t drool!”
I wiped at my chin just to make sure, and Morgan grinned. “Gotcha.”
I tried not to smile as I glared at him. “You do realise I have the power not to give you this job, right?”
“Yeah, but then you’d have to settle for someone with regular coloured eyes, and where would be the fun in that?”
Oh, he was good.
“I suppose,” I mused. “Eye colour is everythin’ when workin’ in design.”
“You’d best snap me up quickly then ’cause I heard a bunch of other designers are hirin’ nowadays.”
I snorted.
“This is gettin’ worse and worse for you,” Morgan said with a shake of his head. “You stare, you drool, you once had webbed toes, and now you snort when you laugh? The list is never endin’ with you, huh?”
I picked up my napkin and threw it at him. He caught it before it could hit him in the face, and he had a killer grin in place as he did so. It wasn’t until that moment that I realised he was flirting with me, and I was flirting back. I didn’t mean to, but his easy-going aura relaxed me. I cleared my throat, straightened up, and tapped on my papers.