[MAX]
Harper's sunny disposition tended to be contagious. Between that and her gift of reading and responding to people on the fly, she could talk to pretty much anyone at any given moment.
Which was how she ended up engaged in a chipper conversation with the waiter at the Marina Ventura. It was also how we'd gotten the seat that I had been after — Harper could woo just about anybody, including the stickler of a hostess who chose where we would be seated.
I was still not entirely convinced that Harper wasn't some sort of snake charmer — one of the very few traits she and Phoenix had in common — but that wasn't a conversation I was willing to get into at the moment. I also wasn't willing to get wrapped up in whatever the waiter had said which had caused her to do her light-hearted, aren't-you-cute giggle, and I knew my expression probably said as much.
So I kept my eyes on my phone and inattentively scrolled through my messages, and waited for him to leave of his own volition.
That took about sixty seconds longer than I would've liked, but soon enough he was gone, with both of our orders scribbled onto his notepad.
Harper turned toward me with a toned down version of her enthused smile. "He was nice," she said cheerfully. She ignored the annoyed look on my face. "He said my Spanish was impeccable."
"Charming," I said dryly. I slid both of my hands into my jacket pockets, phone in one hand, and leaned back in my chair.
"Speaking of," Harper said, "I don't understand why you're so selective about when you will and will not be charming. I know you can be. I've watched it happen, maybe more than you realize. But then you turn around and have no social interest whatsoever." Her green eyes were piercing as she stared at me. I'd seen that look before, many times. Usually it was tainted by frustration.
Because I was a puzzle she couldn't put together.
"You're bordering on evaluating me, Harp," I returned calmly. "And we both know how well that works out." That being not at all. In the past she had flat out asked me if she could evaluate me intensively. I turned her down, and so she shifted gears toward trying to do so subtly.
Just not subtly enough that I didn't know what was going on.
It was one of the few downsides to her accompanying me.
We'd had one too many arguments that circled around the topic since then, and though I was not usually one to turn down a good debate, this was a conversation I was adamant about avoiding. Harper was almost as adamant about having it, but most recently she seemed to realize that any efforts put her on thin ice. If there was one thing she had learned across the years, it was that I was not patient.
So when I fixed her with a hardened look that clashed with the casual way I had spoken, she knew. Knew that I extended her a courtesy that no one else would've gotten. Knew that one more step in the wrong direction would not go favorably.
She exhaled in a silent sigh, and her brilliant eyes shifted across the dining area to where Tinsley was seated. Breaker was across the table from her, his hulking form enough to keep unwanted guests away. The two of them were more secluded, surrounded by empty tables and seated away from the windows. They had what was likely as much privacy as the restaurant could offer without kicking all of the other customers out.
That seclusion changed when the doors to the restaurant opened and allowed a single new guest in.
He was a young and handsome man. He was of average height with an athletic build that was alluded to beneath the expensive, streamlined suit he wore. His face was above average so far as appearances went, with full lips, a slim nose, and a strong jawline. His hair was dark blond and wavy, thickest on the top of his head, and parted to one side. He granted the hostess a smile that combined charm and ego in a devastating way — it was a smile that women around the world drooled over, and even from as far away as I was, the look in his eyes said he knew as much.
