“I see,” she said in her soft voice, turning her head away and lifting her drink to take a sip.
“Melon?” he guessed at her drink.
“And vodka,” she murmured against the rim of the glass.
He was hoping it was just pussy-booze, like Midori, something that was lame that she liked that he would find unappealing about her.
But no.
She had to have the added vodka.
“There’s a new Ross,” she noted.
“Hmm…” he muttered noncommittally, being the reason why they’d employed a new Ross at the club and not about to explain that.
He reached to his whisky.
She turned to him again. “I’m surprised. I’ve been a member for years now and they’ve had no turnover in staff.”
He shrugged. “Shit happens.”
She looked to the scene in a way he knew she didn’t see it, murmuring, “I don’t like it.”
“The woman could have found a higher paying job, or she got married, or a hundred other things, Olivia. Your business is not hers, her business is not yours. It’s the way of the club.”
She nodded at the scene but said nothing.
“You wanna tell me why dinner with your mother lasted nearly four hours?” he asked.
“I was ambushed,” she replied.
He felt his neck start to itch.
Ambushed?
“Say again?” he pushed.
She looked to him. “I was ambushed. It was not dinner with my mother. It was dinner with my mother, one of her friends and her friend’s son.”
That was when Nick felt his jaw tense and his repeat of, “Say again,” was gritty.
“It was a fixup,” she explained offhandedly.
But the blazing streak of jealousy Nick experienced at her words was alarming.
And unhealthy.
And last, so severe and unexpected, he had no tools at hand to battle it in order to ignore it.
Completely oblivious to all of this, Olivia kept speaking.
“We all had dinner and he was under instruction to take that further, which meant I had to have drinks with him after. Mom and her friend left. He bought me a drink that unfortunately led to two which unfortunately led to him sharing rather openly he was interested in fucking me but also interested in taking me to dinner. In order not to earn the wrath of my mother, which I would incur if I did not give him the attention she thinks he deserves, I had no choice but to drink the drinks he bought and make plans for dinner. However, since I already have plans for intercourse, I refused that part of his invitation.”
Nick felt his jaw get tighter to a point a muscle danced in his cheek all the way up to his temple.
“You made a date with this guy?”
She shrugged and looked back to the scene. “This is new, Mother matchmaking. As with any motherly attention she turns my way, she’ll lose interest in it soon enough.”