in North Carolina. But it’s evened out a bit over the years.”
“It’s cute,” she admits, taking another sip of her drink. “I’m from Pittsburgh, born and raised. My dad’s a third-generation steelworker.”
I frown, confused. “I thought the steel industry collapsed.”
It’s what Pittsburgh was known for until steel prices took a nosedive in the eighties due to market saturation. Now Pittsburgh is known for banking, excellent medical facilities, and championship football, hockey, and baseball.
Jaime shakes her head. “It’s true the industry here isn’t a fraction of what it used to be, but U.S. Steel still has a couple of factories in the area. My dad works at the Edgar Thompson plant in Braddock.”
“What exactly does he do?” I ask, interested to know more.
“He does maintenance on the blast furnace. It’s where they turn raw material into liquid iron, then it’s refined into steel slabs that are sent out to other plants to be made into different products.”
“Fascinating.”
She shrugs, chuckling. “It’s a family legacy. Except there was no way in hell I was going to work there.”
“So you went off to college, and now you help women in need,” I conclude. “Any other family members follow in your dad’s footsteps?”
Jaime shakes her head, her red hair rippling. “My sister is in college, and my brother is a bum who lives in my parents’ basement.”
Tipping my head back, I laugh at the image. There’s a tiny bit of disgust over her brother’s apparent lack of ambition mixed with a hefty dose of fondness for the doofus in her tone.
“Why are you out tonight?” I ask, nodding over to her group of friends. They are all avidly watching us as they talk.
“I had a messy breakup, and they felt I needed a night out…” She gives a careless shrug.
“Are you heartbroken?” I inquire. Her answer could determine the course of our fates tonight.
She scoffs, waving dismissively. “Hardly. We’d only been dating a few months when I caught him cheating. I threw a book at him and broke his nose, so I’m actually feeling pretty good about things. Feel vindicated, so to speak. I have nothing to prove, but they thought I needed a night out to sort of… get back in the saddle so to speak.”
There’s no stopping the bark of laughter I let loose, nor can I stand upright. Doubled over, I chuckle, holding my stomach at the hilarity of it.
“You need rebound sex,” I say as I straighten up, making the decision to go for it.
“Not really,” she counters. “I don’t feel the need to rebound.”
“Just regular sex then?” I suggest.
“Regular sex sounds boring.”
Christ, she’s funny. Laughing, I note her drink is low. “How about I buy you another drink while we debate the merits of this?”
“That sounds like a great plan,” she replies brightly.
♦
We’re both pretty toasted by the time we make it to her apartment. Going to my place was out of the question since I live at Jameson Headquarters. She thinks I’m a car salesman, so that wouldn’t have worked.
We almost closed the bar down. I’d joined her girlfriends at their table, and they’d taken turns grilling me. Mostly though, I’d flirted heavily with Jaime. The more we drank, the bolder I’d become. She ended up on my lap at one point, and I inched my hand up her inner thigh as the night progressed until she whispered in my ear, “We should get out of here soon, don’t you think?”
Oh, yes… I did think it was a fucking fantastic idea.
Of course, I wasn’t allowed to leave with Jaime until her friends took a picture of my driver’s license for safety measures. I didn’t bother telling them it could have been fake, and it wasn’t a good way for a woman to consider herself safe.
No, the only way to ensure safety was to not take a strange guy home, but Jaime and I have a connection. She’s going by a gut feeling I’m a legitimately nice guy who isn’t going to kill her. Still, at some point before we part ways, I feel the need to tell her it’s dangerous to take guys home and she needs to be more careful.
Our first kiss is in the back of the Uber we take to her apartment, which is slow and sweet but turns into a hot make-out session that causes our driver to cough loudly to get our attention when he pulls up to her building.
The elevator’s too slow, so we bound up two flights of stairs while holding hands,