Page 14 of A Smooth Operator

Miss Poopy Pants was full of surprises. "You like scotch?"

She grimaced. "With the risk of having you accuse me again of sleepin' with your daddy; it was Dallas who introduced me to scotch."

Fucking hell! I had said that to her. "I'm sorry about that, Echo. It was a shitty thing to say—insulting to you and my dad."

"Apology accepted."

She sounded sincere, which surprised me.

"Just like that?"

She shrugged. "I hate holding onto anger over things people say. It hurts me more than the person who said it—so why hang onto that feeling?"

That was pretty insightful and unexpected. "Is that just something you say, or do you really abide by it?"

I couldn't imagine someone so sanguine about being able to let go of the awful things said to them.

"Have to," she replied wanly, "if not, my life would be miserable. All my life, people have been sayin' terrible stuff about me to me. I had to learn to deflect early on, ya know?"

I'd never actually allowed myself to see Echo as a living, breathing person with emotions. God! I was an asshole. She'd had a crappy life that she'd single-handedly turned around by working hard. She was probably the only person in her family with a college degree. Hell, she had an advanced degree. And her so-called friends looked down upon her. Right then and there, I made a promise to myself that I would not be one of them again.

"You're pretty awesome, you know that, Echo?"

I could've knocked her down with a feather; that's the look she gave me. Of course she didn't believe me. Why should she?

"I mean it. I'm grateful you're here with me. I can't believe she was fucking Alex; that he was doin' her." I finished my scotch.

She put a hand on my mine. "Betrayal sucks."

"Yeah. It does," I scoffed as I remembered my conversation with Dad and added, "She was hoping that I'd pop the question by this Thanksgiving."

"What question?"

I raised my eyebrows. "The question, Echo."

She frowned and then nodded as realization sank in. "Right. The question. The one you reply with an I do?"

"Yeah, that one." I walked to my desk and poured another finger of whiskey into my paper cup. I held the bottle up and jiggled it. Echo shook her head, tilting her paper cup to show me it was still three-quarters full of whiskey. Well, she hadn't just been betrayed by her friend and girlfriend.

I sat next to her with my drink. I liked it. She was comfortable, warm, and easy. She smelled like…freesia—fresh, citrusy, and lightly spicy, but with a delicate sweetness. I'd never noticed it before.

"I don’t know what to say when I go back out there." I pointed my chin to the closed door of my office.

"What do you want to say?"

"You're fired?"

"Well, that's got an unsavory reference," she smiled.

Her eyes were a honey brown, and beneath her thin metal-rimmed glasses, they were bright with laughter.

"Yeah. Well, I want to ask Alex to go fuck himself; find another job."

"Because he was screwing your girlfriend?"

"Because he was screwing a customer on premises."

"Like you haven't done that," she teased.

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