Page 18 of Fate's Unseen Shadow

Ella lifted her eyebrows. “It might be fun to try.”

“To break me?” His slow smile made her question teasing him. “I’m game any time you want to try.”

Her face heated, and she broke eye contact first. She didn’t know how to flirt. Had never tried to with Matteo. It still hurt that Matteo had never released a statement as a character witness, rebuking the assumption she’d killed Teddy. Had never tried to call her phone. Nothing. Ella had walked away and it was as though she had never existed for him. Why?

Maybe someday she’d know the answer. For now, she’d keep moving forward in life. “Maybe I’ll stick with clothes shopping for now.” Ella opened the phone and pulled up a list of nearby stores. There was a store with heavily discounted dresses. One dress reminded her of one that her mom had worn in the ’80s for Easter. It had a floral pattern that should be on a sofa; a wide, white collar; and a hem to the ground.

“This might work for your bar,” she said.

He continued to look at his phone. “Order it. I’m sure it’ll be great.”

“I do, too. Can you tell me which color I should get?”

“Color for what?” He looked up as she turned her phone around. He leaned to the side to see her around the phone. “Ella…”

“What?”

“No.”

“You don’t like that color?”

He grimaced. “I don’t like the whole thing.”

“Why not?”

“You need to blend in, not stand out. I don’t know how you used to dress, and you’d look hot in anything you put on”—he refocused on his phone—“but that would make you stand out. No one dresses like that in Cager.”

Hot?

No one had ever referred to her as hot before. “I’m not hot,” she blurted out.

“Not sure who told you that, but yes, you are. You’ve seen Cager.” He turned his phone around, showing a website with Cager written across the top. A woman with jet-black hair, a nose ring, piercings up each ear, a neck tattoo, and a tattoo of a butterfly across her cleavage stood behind the bar, looking directly at the camera. She wore a badass leather vest and a gold bracelet on her upper arm, contrasting against the tattoos. “This is Lacy, who you’ll be bartending with. Not sure a floral pattern dress that looks like my grandmother’s sofa works.”

“I see. Do we need to hit the tattoo shop first?”

He snorted. “No. That’s not necessary.”

“I’ve always thought of getting a tattoo. But whenever I brought it up to my dad, I got a lecture about professionalism. That no one would trust me with their money if I were covered in tattoos.” She switched to a different clothing store website, something edgier, ordering three pairs of black pants and three pairs of ripped jeans. Two different pairs of sneakers that, based on a quick search, should be fashionable. And five different tops. She added a few new bras and some packs of underwear at the last second because her old ones were too big.

She looked at the total and grimaced. “It’s $600 for everything. I promise I will pay you back.”

“Stop saying that.” His hard tone made her hold her next statement of thanking him again. It seemed that she’d officially hit the end of his patience on the matter.

It was strange having someone tell her what to do. No one had ever done that, not since her dad had died. She shoved away the immediate need to do the opposite to make a point. That was childish. She’d pay him back, whether she said it a million times or not.

Moving on, she glanced at the time on the phone. “You said you had to get to work. What do you do aside from being a bounty hunter and owning Cager?”

“I work in real estate.”

“That’s right. You own this apartment complex.”

“I own several. I also developed three different neighborhoods around town. I have four different stores that I lease in the city market.” His phone rang. “It’s Xavier.” He put him on speaker and set it on the table. “You have me and Ella here.”

“Breakfast meeting? I wonder why I wasn’t invited.” He laughed lightly, and Damon glowered at the phone for some reason.

“Get to the point.”

Another louder laugh, then Xavier asked, “Have you even gone to sleep?”

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