The Mogul and the Muscle - Claire Kingsley Page 0,3
to hook up phase, and not really into let’s just be casual and fuck sometimes. I was hoping for an actual relationship with someone interesting.
But normal. Ordinary. Not a woman who carried twenty concealed weapons underneath a black minidress and could use her stilettos as backup if necessary.
“Hey,” Karen said, getting settled in her chair. “It’s so nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too.”
Seconds ticked by in silence. I rubbed my palms on my thighs beneath the table. I wasn’t good at this part. I could face down a corrupt senator and threaten to out him to the rival mafia factions he was scamming, but I couldn’t make small talk with a woman in a restaurant.
“So,” she said, picking up the menu. “The fish tacos are good here.”
“Oh, great. I like fish tacos.”
“Me too.”
I picked up my menu for something to do with my hands. And it made the ensuing silence less awkward. The server came to take our orders and I reluctantly handed over my menu. Kind of felt like I needed it for cover.
We managed a short stint of casual conversation—mostly about the weather—while we waited for our food. The server brought our meals and we both spread our napkins on our laps.
“So what do you do?” she asked.
“I guess you could say I’m a one-man security firm. I just finished up with a client before this, actually. Although I’m planning to retire.”
“That sounds nice. What will you do with your time once you retire?
I opened my mouth to reply, but I didn’t exactly have a solid answer to that question. What did I want to do with my time? More to the point, what did normal people do when they retired? “You know, play golf. Maybe start a small business.”
“Like what?” She took a bite of her food.
“I’m not sure. Lately I’ve been thinking about a food truck. Something I can manage with just a few people. What about you? What do you do?”
“I’m a new accounts manager at a bank.”
I nodded while I chewed a bite. She was right, the fish tacos were great. “Do you enjoy it?”
“Yeah, I do. I have really great coworkers.”
“You know, bank robberies are more common than people think. Modern security technology has helped quite a bit, but the criminals keep getting smarter. You make a better lock, bad guys learn how to pick it.”
She nodded slowly. “Oh. Yeah, I suppose so.”
“And police response times can be abysmal, especially with the traffic.”
“The traffic can be bad.”
“Did you know only twenty percent of bank robbers are caught?” I took another bite.
She paused with her water halfway to her mouth. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“The best thing to do when faced with multiple armed assailants is stay calm and don’t look them in the eyes. No matter how tightly organized they are, once a job gets going, tensions are high. They’re probably nervous, even paranoid. The last thing you want to do is call attention to yourself.”
“Oh.”
“The exception to that is if it looks like it’s turning into a hostage situation.” I gestured idly. “In that case, tell them you have a health condition and you’ll need your medication soon. The vast majority of the time, they won’t want that kind of complication and they’ll let you go. And you definitely want to get out as quickly as they’ll let you. Once hostages get involved, the chance of there being casualties increases dramatically. That goes for any kind of armed perpetrator situation, not just bank robberies.”
She stared at me, her face pale.
“I mean, that’s what I’ve heard,” I said, then cleared my throat.
Son of a bitch. I’d just scared the shit out of her with my rundown on how to handle an armed-robbery-turned-hostage situation.
It was no surprise that Karen picked at her meal for another few minutes, then thanked me and made an excuse about needing to feed her cat.
I finished my dinner alone, feeling like a dumbass. This was not the first time I’d made a date awkward. Like that time I’d explained how to dismantle a bomb on a second date. Or when my date had asked me about places I’d traveled, and I’d casually mentioned there were four or five countries where I was no longer welcome.
It was times like this that I thought maybe I was kidding myself about the whole live an ordinary life thing. I didn’t know if a guy like me could ever learn to be ordinary.