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Damn.
“How many pancakes do you want this time, baby?” she asks, cutting off the apology bubbling in my throat. Mostly because her question is loud enough for everyone to hear.
I study her closely.
Then open my mouth to apologize anyway.
But she shakes her head slightly.
Goddammit.
Sighing, I drop my arm, mutter, “The usual.”
She nods, rises on tiptoe to press a kiss to my jaw, and even as I’m reeling from that touch of her lips on my skin, from how fucking right it feels, how it arrows sensation directly to my dick, she’s pushing away from me, shifting toward the stove and pouring batter into the pan.
I shake myself, snag a mug from the cabinet, and pour myself some coffee, and I do all that ignoring the pit in my stomach.
And I keep ignoring it as I eat my fucking pancakes.
SEVENTEEN
Violet
My phone rings just as I sit down to eat my pancakes, and one look at the screen and seeing the name on the caller ID has me on my feet.
I mean, do I need to be on my feet?
No. Not really.
I can deal with Tyler Franklin later.
He’s a pain in the ass, but he’s a client, and I’ve committed to helping him find a woman who’ll date and marry him then help him fill his giant mansion with a family of tiny hockey hooligans.
The trouble is that he’s impatient and anxious.
And if I ignore him then I’ll have to deal with a doubly impatient, doubly anxious, bordering on asshole Tyler Franklin in a couple of hours.
“Excuse me,” I tell the table. “This is a client, and I have to take it.”
I throw a smile at the Ambroses then slip from the room, swiping my finger over the screen of my phone. “This is Violet,” I say as I move up the stairs and into Ace’s bedroom, closing the door behind me.
“I have a problem,” Tyler snaps. “Which means that you have a problem.”
Immediately, my hackles rise and I have to grit my teeth together to bite back the retort I want to snap out. Then I take a breath and hold it for a count of three before slowly letting it out.
“First,” I say quietly, because quiet seems to be the only thing that gets through to most of these hockey-playing assholes, “I’m warning you to not use that tone with me.”
“I—”
“Second,” I say over him, “I want your assurances that you will never, fucking never use that tone with one of my women, or you will promptly go from a current client to a fired client.”
“You can’t—”
“I can do exactly that,” I remind him, “and the contract you signed means that you will not be entitled to a refund.”
“I—”
“And further that,” I snap, “the NDA you signed means that if you violate the terms of my confidentiality”—because one of the first things Tanya taught me was that the contracts we have our clients sign need to be ironclad—“you’ll be paying me far more than my match fee.” I pause, letting that sink in. “Far, far more. Now,” I add considering that his sputtering has stopped and he’s no longer trying to talk over me, “do you want to fill me in on the problem? Or is this conversation over until you’ve calmed down?”
