Page 66 of You've Got Male

“Seriously?”

“Not those exactly, but with a twist. What if you expanded what you offered food-wise? Like a larger selection of muffins, scones, and breakfast sandwiches? You can do gratitude cards, where for every ten coffees a customer gets a free breakfast sandwich. It encourages them to come to Grinder and gets them to try one of your new items.”

“I can barely afford what I’m buying now. Why would I want to increase my costs and give things away?”

“I know this seems counterintuitive, but the only way to reach a new level is to level up. Find new customers by asking local businesses to hand out your Grinder gratitude cards, maybe even do a cross promotion with a few,” he said. “I doubled my portfolio by offering a gratitude present to clients who referred friends and family. I reached out to life insurance companies and offered a finder’s fee for every customer they sent my way.That’s how I ended up with so many retired clients who needed help investing their spouse’s life insurance policy. They were some of my favorite and most loyal clients.”

“I didn’t know that’s what you specialized in,” she said with a softness to her voice that got to him.

“After my dad died my mom received a life insurance payout. She didn’t know what to do with it, didn’t understand how she could make it work for her and live off the interest, and ended up burning through the money in a few years. She struggled a lot after that.”

He didn’t say the rest. After his dad died, he pretended to be the man of the house, a scared and confused ten-year-old who put on a show for the world that he could carry the burden of suicide. That he could be the strong one his mother could lean on. In doing so, he denied himself the opportunity to grieve—to unpack the anger and resentment and sorrow in a healthy way.

So when Amber unenrolled from the test study, he’d allowed himself to feel all the emotions so he could deal with them and not cling to them like the side of a cliff. But in letting go he’d somehow managed to fall so far that he began to wallow in it. Maybe it all ran together and became one entire shitstorm of grief that he’d drowned in.

Evie must have sensed some of the thoughts in his head. She turned her hand over and laced their fingers. “I am so sorry.”

Jonah shook his head. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, like I was saying. I might wear a suit now, but as a kid I was lucky to get a new pair of shoes every year. I started my own business fixing old computers out of my garage and selling them for a profit when I was sixteen. I sold it to a larger computer repair shop when I turned eighteen and used the money to put myself through college.”

“Sounds like you were really driven,” she said quietly.

“Don’t sound so shocked.”

“I’m impressed.”

“I know it doesn’t seem like it, considering I let my life get to category-five status and my yard being the storm wreckage that everyone can see.”

“Do you feel like the storm has passed?” she asked, but he knew they weren’t talking about his life. She was asking about his heart. Was asking him where he stood—where they stood.

He tugged her until she scooted onto his lap. Sitting sideways, her legs dangled between his. He wrapped one hand around her waist, the other cupping her cheek and turning it so that she was looking at him. “Honestly, I feel like I’m in the middle of another kind of storm.” One he could easily be swept up in. “But I think you already know that.”

The way she swallowed hard told him that she did. It also told him that maybe he wasn’t the only one getting swept away.

“This is just for show,” she said.

“What we did the other day wasn’t for show. It was about us.”

“It was runaway hormones taking over the decision-making cortex of the brain.”

“Maybe the first fifteen minutes, but the rest of it? You can’t tell me that was just hormones.”

Her face said that it wasn’t, and that gave him a flicker of hope. “Which is why it can’t happen again,” she said.

Her statement should have extinguished any remaining hope on contact, but the fact that she was staring at his lips did the opposite. She might not want to want him, but she wanted him all right.

“How about this?” he asked, kissing the side of her jaw. “Can this happen again?” He moved his lips to the other side, skimming her cheek as he went. “Or this? I know, how about this?”

He feathered a kiss right beneath her ear and he felt a shiver take over her body. He took her lobe between his teeth and bitdown.

“Jonah,” she whispered, “anyone could walk in.”

“You’re right.” He gave her a chaste peck on the lips.

“Can you turn a little to the left so I can get a better angle?” someone asked from the doorway.

With a squeak, Evie leaped off his lap like her pants were on fire. Fitting, since her face was the color of a fire hydrant. Julie, however, looked exceptionally pleased with herself.

Phone aimed at them, she was videoing the entire encounter. It made Jonah wonder just how much she’d heard. Evie must have had the same fear, because she said, “How long have you been standing there?”

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