She was suddenly looking at me like I was a whole lot less scary than when I’d waited for her in a dark alley or climbed in through her window wearing a mask.
“Do you want a ride to your next job?”
She eyed me, still licking her ice cream. “Are you going to tie me up and throw me in the back if I say no?”
I cocked my head to one side. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious. Is that a thing from your sexy book?”
She shook her head quickly, then reconsidered. “Actually, it probably is in some of them. But please don’t take that as me wanting you to do it.”
I closed my mouth, cutting off the offer of further role-play.
“My next job cancelled, so I actually have an hour free. I was going to go sit at the park for a while.”
I leaned forward through the server window, resting my folded arms on the sill. “Would it freak you out if I said I was going that way too?”
“Are you going that way because you’re following me, or because the park is generally filled with kids who will pester their parents to buy ice cream?”
“Definitely the latter,” I promised seriously.
“Definitely?”
“Definitely maybe?”
But there was a tiny smile flickering at her lips.
I climbed back into the driver’s seat, opening up the passenger-side door on my way. “Come on. Get in. I’ll even let you play the music.”
I held my breath while she thought it over.
“Fine. But if I get home and start hearing about the Sundae Slayer Serial Killer on the news, I’m going to be really pissed off at you.”
I snorted on a laugh as she rounded the van and lifted herself up into the passenger seat. She gave me a small smile, and crunched on her cone.
“Jack the Licker could be a good name for me,” I mused, steering the van out onto the road.
Her laughter flooded the van, and it was music to my ears. She coughed once, choking on her cone, and then clutching her chest.
“Oh my God, don’t make me laugh like that while I’m eating. I could have choked and died, and then you really would have had a body just lying there while you handed out soft serve.”
“What kind of monster do you take me for? I would have dug you a shallow grave somewhere first.”
She laughed again, then shook her head. “This is so disturbed.”
I shrugged. “But you’re laughing. I like that better than when you were screaming and throwing things at me.”
She stared out the window, but she seemed happy.
I parked the van at the park, and even without the music playing, a group of kids and their parents all stormed over, cute little grubby fingers pointing at the various sundae and cone concoctions painted on the side of the van. To my surprise, Violet climbed into the back with me, and I showed her how to get the soft serve to fill the cone in a way that made it stay where it was supposed to and not slide straight down the side. Together we dipped the frozen treats in melted chocolate sauce and added sprinkles and other candies. I took the payments, while she chatted pleasantly with a group of young moms and their toddlers.
When the line finally died down, she turned that smile on me. “That was fun. I can see why you like this job.”
I shrugged, feeling twitchy with pent-up energy without anything for my hands to do. “I lose interest in things pretty quickly. So I change jobs a lot. Last year I did wedding photography. Year before I was a professional gift-wrapper.”
She squinted at me. “Is that seriously a thing?”
I nodded. “I’m very serious about bows.”
She chuckled, her attention catching on something across the park. “Oh, there’s ducks over there! I love ducks.”