Chasing Serenity

by Ashley, Kristen

  “And what would that assumption be?” she inquired.

  “How about you get on with your day, and I do the same thing?” he suggested.

  “No, I’d really like to know what that assumption would be,” she pushed.

  And Judge let her push him.

  He knew why he did.

  He also wished he didn’t.

  He looked her down and up, then down again, making sure to take in the boxes of riding boots, hiking boots, rain boots, and for shit’s sake, a pair of mountaineering boots, and finally, the delicate, expensive, spike heeled booties she’d walked in on, then back to her.

  “You’re very aware the cost of your shoes could feed dozens of children for a week, and you still used that money to buy them. I’ll leave it at that,” he shared.

  She blinked, rapidly, several times, because what he said was out of line.

  And he saw it happening.

  Before, she was miffed.

  Before, she was in a mood.

  Now…

  She was pissed.

  Precisely his intention.

  Because she was fantastic.

  And he was an idiot.

  “So do you verbally attack all the women that you make erroneous judgements about who come into this store?” she asked. “Or,” she drifted one of her beautiful hands in a spiral through the air, “wherever you might be.”

  “Only ones that have fifteen pairs of boots they’ve made one of our associates go fetch for them when, let’s be honest, you don’t even know what mountaineering is.”

  She made an irritated noise clicking her tongue before she retorted, “I’m sure when I get back to Duncan’s and ask, he can explain it to me.”

  That was when Judge blinked.

  Not rapidly. The opposite.

  And only once.

  Duncan?

  She wouldn’t have mentioned “Duncan” unless she meant Duncan Holloway.

  His boss.

  In fact, everyone’s boss. He was founder and CEO of River Rain stores.

  Judge couldn’t believe this. Duncan was strong, fit, a good-looking guy, but he was also old enough to be her father and wasn’t that type of dude.

  “Duncan Holloway?” he asked.

  “One and the same,” she confirmed.

  “You’re seeing Duncan?”

  She shook her head. “He’s a friend of the family.”

  Well, that made more sense, even if Duncan was one of the most down-to-earth people Judge knew, and this woman appeared to be…not.

  “And you’re dropping his name because…?” he prompted.

  “I’m dropping his name because I don’t think he’d be very happy one of his employees is wandering around his store, throwing shade.”

  This was absolutely true. Duncan would not like that.

  That said…

  “I wasn’t wandering around throwing shade,” he asserted.

  No, when he’d thrown his shade, he’d pinpointed it at her.

  Another hitch of her perfect brow.

  “But I’ll remind you,” Judge continued, “not five minutes ago, I tried to avoid this discussion and not three minutes ago, I apologized, genuinely, for saying something I shouldn’t. I then tried to end this discussion. It was you who wouldn’t let it go.”

  “And are you in the habit of confronting and arguing with customers?”

  “I think at this juncture, doll, you might want to ask yourself why you’re so curious about what I’m in the habit of doing. So curious about it, you’re detaining me with this conversation and won’t let me get on with my workday.”

  Definitely, she’d been pissed.

  Now she was furious.

  “Are you inferring…?”

  She was too angry to finish that.

  He still answered it.

  “Not sure I need to infer anything. I had somewhere to go, and I was intent to get there. Now,” he swept a hand to indicate the floor between them, “I’m standing here having a ludicrous conversation with you.”

  “What’s your name?” she snapped.

  “Judge,” he informed her easily.

  She planted both hands on her hips, fingers wrapping around her more than likely three-hundred-dollar jeans.

  Long, slender fingers with perfectly rounded nails tipped in a rich wine color which was probably what her mouth tasted like.

  Shit.

  He was enjoying this.

  Which was why he really needed to walk away.

  He didn’t walk away.

  “Well, isn’t your name apropos?” she asked acidly.

  Judge did a one-shoulder shrug.

  Her eyes caught fire.

  And her voice was rising. “Are you serious?”

  “Calm down,” he said softly.

  “You’re telling me to calm down when you just accused me of being some frivolous female who’d rather walk on diamonds than fund school lunches?”

  Her voice definitely had risen now, as had her drama, the latter significantly.

  And okay…

  She was something.

  He needed to walk away.

  He still did not walk away.

  Instead, he smirked.

  He then watched, and enjoyed the show, as she took in his smirk, and behind those beautiful eyes, her head exploded.

  “That isn’t even close to what I said,” he pointed out.

  “Are you now correcting me?” she yelled.

  And that was when Judge got concerned.

  Because she was beautiful, even more when she was riled, but it was hitting him that, from the beginning, her reaction seemed extreme.

  Was she just some privileged chick having a hissy fit?

  Or was there something else going on?

  Like, why was a family friend staying with Duncan?

  Was his ex-wife up to her shit again?

  “Seriously,” he said quietly. “Calm down.”

  Bending at the waist, she leaned his way. “You must be old enough to know never to say that to an aggravated woman.” She leaned back. “Or a non-aggravated one for that matter.”

  Why would he say that to a non-aggravated one?

  He didn’t ask that question.

  He got closer to her, realizing something else. They were gathering an audience.

  He kept speaking quietly when he said, “You’re not aggravated, honey. You’re ticked. You okay?”

  “Don’t ask me if I’m okay after you behaved like an absolute ass to me.”

  “Yes, I did, and I apologized, and you’re drawing this out for some reason and I just want to know if you’re all right.”

  “I was fine until you messed up my day.”

  “Well, you’re not fine now.”

  “And you made me that way.”

  “By saying ‘nice booties’?”

  “It wasn’t the words, it was the tone, and you know it.”

  “I do, and I apologized for it.”

  “It shouldn’t have been said in the first place.”

  “I know that, hence the apology.”

  “I hope those two words were worth it, since it might mean your job,” she snapped.

  He stood still and stared down at her.

  She was tall, even in stocking feet, which was what she was in right now.

  Though, if she was wearing her fancy booties, he’d still be taller than her.

  But he wasn’t thinking of something he’d normally be thinking of as he noted her height standing that close to a woman like her.

  How the drop would be the perfect distance for kissing her.

  He was thinking she was going to tell Duncan about their ridiculous conversation and get him in shit.

  He loved his job, lived for it.

  So that couldn’t happen.

  “I said two words,” he growled.

  This time, she got closer to him.

  A lot closer.

  “You were being an asshole intent on making some point about how I live my life, an
d it is not okay.”

  An asshole?

  Saying two words?

  “Listen, sweetheart, if you’ve got some issue with how you live your life, don’t work that out with me.”

  “I have utterly no qualms with the way I live my life,” she returned.

  “If that was the case, the two words I said wouldn’t have triggered you into an overblown reaction,” he retorted.

  Her chin shot back into her neck. “Overblown?”

  “We’re standing here still discussing your reaction to two words.”

  “Just because you have one doesn’t mean you get to wander around being one to hapless females,” she shot back.

  He one hundred percent caught her drift.

  “Now you’ve called me an asshole and a dick over two words,” he rumbled.

  “I didn’t call you a dick.”

  He used what she’d said earlier against her. “You inferred it.”

  With that, she tossed her hair.

  The woman tossed her hair.

  And her doing that only made him want to sink his fingers into that thick, glossy mane.

  For fuck’s sake.

  “I call them as I see them,” she sniped.

  “Nice,” he bit off.

  She got even closer, so close, he could smell her perfume.

  Bright and flowery, but also spicy.

  Like jasmine and pepper and orange.

  Gorgeous.

  Expensive.

  Shit.

  “You wouldn’t know nice if it walked up and rubbed itself all over you,” she declared.

  “From that, I’m beginning to get why you intend to draw this conversation out until we reach a new millennium.”

  Her eyelashes fluttered irately. “If you’re suggesting I want your attention, you are sadly mistaken.”

  “Who’s in whose space, doll?”

  “I’m not a doll,” she clipped.

  But didn’t get out of his space.

  “Just to point out the obvious, I’m not interested,” he lied.

  And did not get out of her space.

  “Like I would even,” she scoffed.

  He’d put money down that she would.

  She really would.

  And she’d love every minute of it.

  He’d see to that.

  Which meant he had to end this.

  “You tell Duncan what went down, don’t put your drama queen spin on it.”

  She was now openly insulted.

  “Drama queen?”

  “I said nothing about diamonds or school lunches,” he pointed out.

  “I can read between the lines.”

  “I’m sure. You can also blur them or bold them if it suits your purposes to overexaggerate them.”

  “How much more do you think you know about me just because of my fabulous booties?”

  He dipped his face so close to hers, he could swear he could feel the tip of her nose.

  And then he whispered the god’s honest truth.

  “Everything.”

  Her eyelashes fluttered again.

  Not irate.

  Not flirting.

  She seemed rattled.

  Smelling her.

  Having her gorgeous eyes that close.

  Her mouth that close.

  Her that close.

  He finally got smart, turned and got the fuck away from her.

  And fast.

  If Duncan heard about that incident, he’d be pissed as shit, Judge knew it.

  Duncan also knew Judge, and whatever spin she put on, he wouldn’t believe it (not if she embellished it), even if what instigated that incident had been all on him.

  As he walked away, Judge ignored their audience and went to Rix’s office. He then ignored Rix rolling his wheelchair into his own office and grinning up at Judge, visibly struggling to keep his mouth shut because, no doubt, he’d been part of that audience.

  Judge ignored Rix too, and his grin, finished with his copies and skirted the shoe section when he returned to his desk on the top floor.

  Even though what he was doing meant he was going to need the copier a lot that day, and his Volunteer Coordinator Alex was down in Phoenix leading a training session, so he couldn’t ask her to do it, he also made certain he didn’t leave his desk until she had to be long gone.

  He did not spend the rest of the morning or the afternoon (and, fuck him, the evening) worrying about her talking to his boss.

  Nope.

  He did not.

  And because he did not, he knew he was screwed.

  Because whenever his mind went to that scene—and it did that a lot, too much—it focused on only one thing, and it wasn’t the thing he should be focusing on.

  It was on the fact that he wished he’d asked her name.

  Chapter 2

  The World

  Judge

  The next afternoon, Judge approached the line in Wild Iris Coffeehouse to get an afternoon jolt of joe.

  He also did this to get away from the office because the entire morning he’d been taking shit from everyone about his confrontation with the hot chick in the shoe section.

  And that everyone included his buddy, Rix.

  It also included River Rain’s CFO, Harvey Evans.

  In fact, Judge had started the day walking into his office and seeing a pair of woman’s mountaineering boots on his desk with a note propped on them that said, She forgot these. Next time you see her…

  And yeah, that note was in Harvey’s handwriting because Harvey was River Rain’s second in command.

  He was also a jokester.

  So he was often also a pain in the ass.

  In other words, Judge needed a break.

  What he did not need was that break to include the gorgeous brunette whose gorgeousness and attitude got his shit in a sling in the first place.

  In other words, he really didn’t need her to be standing two people ahead of him in line.

  Which she was.

  He further didn’t need for her to be wearing a tailored blazer and another pair of jeans. This pair of jeans had the hems cuffed once, and that cuff was thick, so they not only showed her pretty ankles but also the sky-high, spike-heeled nude pumps she wore.

  Not to mention, he didn’t need her hair piled on top of her head, long tendrils drifting down, that baby hair that grew under the back hairline acting like neon pointing at the vulnerable beauty of the nape of her neck.

  No, he did not need any of that.

  But there it was.

  Right in front of him.

  Fuck.

  Him.

  She hadn’t even turned around and he knew it was her.

  He’d know that hair anywhere.

  That neck.

  Those legs.

  That ass.

  Shit.

  Disaster struck before he could retreat, find somewhere to kill ten minutes and come back when the coast was clear.

  She seemed to sense him (or at least sense his eyes lingering on her neck) and peeked over her shoulder.

  When she did, he saw that she was still wearing her mirrored aviators, because, standing in a line inside a coffeehouse, why would she take them off when she killed it by wearing them?

  That was, she killed it until she took them off, something she did when she caught sight of him.

  Slowly, she lifted one of those amazing hands and removed them from her face only to shove them in her gleaming mound of hair.

  Christ, he was jealous of a pair of shades.

  Her made-up eyes—including false eyelashes, in the middle of the day, at a coffeehouse in Prescott, Arizona—traveled the length of him, and he was pretty sure when she started, she was going for disdain.

  If that was what she was going for, she failed spectacularly.

  Because every inch of him her eyes moved along, which was all of him, felt like it was getting a physical touch.

  Or a taste.

  One she savored.

  Judge
savored it too.

  Big time.

  She seemed to jolt herself out of it, and when she began to turn as if to dismiss him, Judge had to intervene.

  Obviously.

  “Yo,” he called.

  She stopped turning and glared at his face.

  “How’s it going, babe?” he asked like they were friends. “Today a better day for you?”

  Her mouth, which was artfully coated with a slick raspberry color, dropped open.

  “You get those boots you needed?” he pressed.

  “You’re a jackass,” she returned.

  The two people between them looked at her, at him, and then their bodies shifted a little out of the way.

  Though it was Wild Iris. They didn’t shift so much that it would shift them out of the line.

  He smiled at her.

  Her eyes narrowed on his smile.

  “And yes,” she stated haughtily, that cute nose of hers lifting a hint further up in the air. “I got exactly what I needed for myself and my mother. So that associate you were so worried about my overworking made his commission. Splendidly.”

  Splendidly.

  Did any warm-blooded American girl under the age of eighty say the word “splendidly?”

  He didn’t ask after that.

  “Staff don’t get paid commissions,” he shared. “They’re paid a living wage. Commissions breed competition and pushy salesmanship, which makes customers uncomfortable.”

  He knew she wanted to, but she didn’t hide the fact she was interested in that tidbit.

  “Though, thanks. Any little bit helps,” he went on.

  As he knew it would, this comment completely offended her.

  “I bought two pairs of Frye riding boots. It was hardly ‘any little bit,’” she huffed.

  “You wanna go back there and, like…talk to him?” the woman behind her suggested, and it made Judge chuckle, because she didn’t offer for Judge to come forward and be in line with the brunette.

  No one wanted to wait longer for their coffee, not ever, but especially not at Wild Iris.

  And he kept chuckling when this suggestion put the brunette on the spot because it was rude to talk through people. However, it would also appear rude to turn her back on Judge in the middle of a conversation.

  She struggled with this a beat, shuffling forward in line while she did. They all followed. Then she inclined her head to the patron and moved to Judge.

  Judge was not unaware that this decision made him really fucking happy.