Angie’s color was high, but she studied her menu and pretended all was normal.
“Do you want wine?” he asked.
She hesitated before responding. “That would be lovely.”
“What are you planning to eat?”
“Um, steak, I think. It’s been a long day and I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
Colt nodded. “Do you have a wine in mind or do you want me to choose?”
“Red. I don’t care what. Nothing too expensive though. The nuances would be wasted on me.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Chérie, you have to care.”
It was her turn to raise her brows. “That sounded French. Do you speak French?”
“Mais oui,” he told her.
It wasn’t a secret that he spoke French at Black Defense International. It wasn’t a secret at all, but he didn’t often tell people outside the company about his language skills. Or that French was his first language, not his second. Hell, he didn’t think anyone but Ian Black knew that detail.
Ian knew all the details about everyone, whether you told him or not.
“How didn’t I know that?”
He shrugged. “It probably never came up before. And you have to care about the wine because the wrong red won’t taste right with your steak.”
“All right. You pick then. I assume because you care, you do know.”
“I do.”
He’d been raised to know and appreciate wine. He’d been tasting it since he was a child, drinking small glasses with dinner when he was old enough. It was a part of life where he came from. Part of his heritage, though he’d never be a part of the family business now.
The waiter arrived to give them bread and tell them the specials. They already knew what they wanted so he took their order and disappeared. Angie took a slice of bread from the basket and tore off a corner.
“I haven’t been here in a long time,” she said. “Thank you for suggesting it.”
“Where do you usually go?”
“These days I grab something fast on the way home, if I don’t have a microwaved dinner. Sometimes I go down to the waterfront with coworkers, but that hasn’t happened in a while. There’ve been some shake ups at work and people are on edge.”
“What kind of shake ups?”
“It’s just been a general change of direction. Management has a new focus, and there were some changes at the top that have been trickling down. Barton, Barnes and Blake used to be a small company, but they’ve grown and opened offices in other cities, so that’s required new ways of looking at things. It’s made it less, I don’t know, homey. We’re still in our original office building, which is a turn of the century brownstone they’ve had for thirty years at least, though I think it was in one of the partner’s family’s before that. I expect we’ll move to a bigger, more modern space one of these days.”
“Do you ever think of going somewhere else?”
“Somewhere else as in a new city or a new job?”
He hated to think of her going to a new city. “Either, I guess.”
She sighed and ripped off another small piece of bread. “I’m not sure. The salary is good and I have bills to pay, like most people. Mortgage, car, student loans. Plus I help my parents out these days. They’re in Florida, and their retirement doesn’t go as far as they’d like.” She paused as she chewed. “I’ve already switched careers once—I’m afraid to keep jumping around, you know? I’m almost thirty. It’s time to be settled and working hard for the future if I ever hope to pay everything off and save for retirement.”
He frowned. She talked like she planned to be single forever. Not that he was asking her about it.
“You can change jobs, Angie. Hell, you can change careers again if you want to. There’s no rule that says you have to be settled at any age. Might be more comfortable to have a retirement plan when you’re fifty, but it doesn’t matter how you get there.”
“I don’t know what I want to do. How’s that for an answer?” She gave a little laugh. “I used to be a math teacher—maybe Maddy told you that—but I didn’t enjoy the headache of teaching. Not the kids. They were great. The focus on test scores, and one learning style for everyone, and all the administrative bull that kept coming down got to me after a while. I didn’t feel like I could make a difference, so I got the accounting degree—more student loans—and went to work as an accountant. I enjoy the numbers. I love spreadsheets and complex calculations. But I hate dealing with some of the clients. I mean some are great, but others…” She shrugged.
He knew she meant Tom Walls. He hoped she didn’t have more clients like that one. “Do you still handle the Walls account?”
“No. He asked for a man and got one. I told my boss what happened, and he believed me. They still kept his business. And I don’t mind that really because I’d rather we took his money than let him take it somewhere else. But I’m glad I don’t have to deal with him anymore.”
Colt was glad too. If he had to confront that asshole again, he might not be so nice a second time.
Hell, he hadn’t wanted to be nice the first time, but removing appendages was frowned upon by the authorities. And Ian wouldn’t have been too pleased either.
The waiter returned with the wine then. He removed the cork and gave it to Colt. There was a whiff of mold about it, but Colt let him pour a taste anyway. He swirled and sipped.
“This wine is corked,” he said.
The waiter looked surprised. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ll get another bottle.”
He disappeared with the bottle and glass.
“What’s corked mean?” Angie looked puzzled.
“Basically, it’s when the wine tastes like damp cardboard. It comes from natural fungi in the cork that
