"—and push huge amounts of transactions through data-mining programs to identify trends and anomalies." I stared at her, waiting for another murmur. It didn't come but—twenty. "How is this even interesting to you, Zelda? That's what I don't understand. Even if your background and experience had the slightest bit of overlap with the role, I still don't understand how this job would interest you for more than ten minutes."
She scanned the document on my screen, touched her fingertips to her lips. She was quiet a moment. I had to believe she was searching for a way to agree with me while maintaining she was the ideal candidate. I'd let her have that. I could be right without being a jackass about it. I did it all the time.
But then she grinned. "I'll build you a spreadsheet right now. Tell me what you want it to do for you."
I gulped. Twenty-one.
"What? No. Don't—don't do that." I lifted a hand to wave away her reach for the zipper of her backpack but that sent a snap of pain through my shoulder. A snarl rasped in my throat as I eased back. "You don't have to do that. Okay? I believe you. You're an Excel ninja."
Bent at the waist with her hands frozen on her bag, she frowned at me. "I'm sorry. I didn't hear anything you just said because I think you growled. Like, a second ago. A growly-soundy thing. That came from you. Right? That happened?"
"Not intentionally," I replied.
Still in that awkward, folded-over position, she asked, "Does that happen a lot? That you unintentionally growl at people?"
Her t-shirt was riding up in the back. I didn't want to look but it felt as though every cell in my body was pulling my gaze toward this newly exposed swath of olive skin. I wouldn't let myself peek, not even for a second, but that left me boring a glare straight through her skull. Even as I glared at her, I was aware of the tattoo low on her back, something I couldn't decipher with peripheral vision alone and—god help me—I was working my ass off to keep the words tramp stamp out of my mind and mouth.
No need for pejorative comments like that with several hours of confinement ahead of us. Or…ever.
"I didn't growl at you," I replied.
She sat back and took her tattoo with her, thank fucking god, but she crossed her arms under her breasts and—and that was not an improvement on this situation. A glance downward would've been worse by orders of magnitude. I knew this. Yet I couldn't climb past the overwhelming urge to look at her.
Instead, I looked at my watch. It couldn't tell me the time or the steps I'd walked or how many new emails I had waiting for me though it saved me from something I didn't understand. And I didn't understand it, not at all. Rarely did I find myself with the desire to check someone out or gather more than the most basic information about them. As a point of fact, physical appearance did little for me. I wasn't much attracted to bodies. My dick even less.
Once, Millie and I'd planned to meet downtown for drinks after work. According to her, I walked past her twice before she called my name to get my attention. And now that I was thinking about it, I wasn't positive I'd ever intentionally looked at Millie with the purpose of drinking her in.
I definitely couldn't describe the small of her back.
"It sounded like a growl."
"I said I didn't growl at you," I snapped. "There's a difference."
She arched an eyebrow and drew in a breath, somehow aggravated and resigned at the same time. "And you don't want me to build a spreadsheet for you."
"It's not going to change anything, Zelda."
It wasn't. I could not hire this woman. Plenty of people knew how to churn data in Excel. That didn't mean she understood anything about my business. I needed someone with a background in financial accounting, not archaeology. The last thing I had was time to educate someone on the basics of this work. The ideal candidate was someone who could jump right in and knew what I was—
Oh, fuck.
I wanted someone who knew what I was thinking before I thought it.