The Pepper in the Gumbo (Men of Cane River #1)(28)
“You should give me a chance to change your mind. Maybe you just haven’t found your inner tech-loving geek. ”
His chest tightened when she let out a soft laugh. She was more than pretty when she laughed. She was beautiful.
“I’m fairly certain I don’t have one. Even if I didn’t believe your company is changing society for the worse, your store just doesn’t fit here, especially in the historic district.”
Paul said nothing aloud. Challenge accepted, Miss Alice Augustine. Her words seemed to echo every time a resident of Natchitoches had told him that he was unwelcome, every single spoken and unspoken slight. He hadn’t listened. He’d worked hard, devoted everything he had to proving them wrong.
“It’s like I died and went to heaven. You’re going to live upstairs? Right above the store? Are you going to have parties? Will they have cosplay?” Charlie put both hands to her face and let out a little shriek.
“Maybe.” He couldn’t help smiling at this girl’s enthusiasm. He was just a guy who owned a gaming company and this sort of excitement never got old. He turned to Alice who had moved back around the counter and was wrapping up the portfolio in tissue, and placing it in a larger box.
Charlie leaned in, chewing her lip. “Listen, I know everybody must ask you stuff like this, but I’ve been on the new Ultimate Voyager game you created for, like, two weeks. I got that expansion pass and I got some awesome gear and weapons, but I can’t get past the Planet of the Wolf Army. I’m just stuck in this forever cycle of injuries and recuperation, and I’m wasting all my time in that little canyon near the jump station. At this rate, I’m never gonna become Legend.”
Paul wanted to laugh at Alice’s expression. He was torn between outright laughter and wishing Charlie would leave this topic for another time. Alice’s aversion to technology wouldn’t lessen when people wandered around speaking the language of game culture. But he’d never been able to resist a gamer in trouble.
“There’s a cheat. Use a broadsword on the first Wolf soldier. Nobody follows him if you do.” He nodded at her protest. “It’s true. If you’d tried every weapon, you’d have been able to get out.” He held a finger to his lips. “And don’t tell anyone I told you that or I’ll deny everything.”
Charlie was grinning hugely, bouncing on the toes of her shoes. “Man, this is awesome. Do you wanna play sometime? My name’s UltimateStarCrossed. You can friend me and we can go on a raid sometime. I have a group I join every night for about three hours. They’d be so stoked if you dropped in.” Her cheeks went pink.
Paul cleared his throat. He always hated this, when someone wanted to know his username. If he gave it out to everyone, then he’d never actually get to play. It would be all messages and friend requests. But he kept an alternate character in almost every game and that’s the name he’d use if he ever played with Charlie. He’d always looked young and his love of T-shirts and jeans probably made him seem even younger. He was used to teen adulation at gaming expos and he was well aware that Charlie might not think he was too old for her, even though he was long out of college and sliding toward thirty.
“Sure, I’ll friend you when I get set up here. I always like to meet new groups of players.” He hoped his emphasis on “groups” would erase any assumptions on her part. He turned to Alice. “There are two apartments above this building, right? Is the other empty also? Maybe I could rent that side for my CTO who came with me. We’re good friends but maybe he’d like his own space.”
Alice looked up, her mouth open a bit. She seemed confused. “No, it’s―”
“Miss Alice lives on that side. You guys are gonna see each other all the time,” Charlie said gleefully.
“Oh,” Paul said and tried to keep his face neutral. He should have known. He’d already said that she lived close by when he was being his jerky self earlier. And now he knew for certain the apartment was going to be as low tech as she could get away with and still be up to code. They would share a wall, this woman with the dark eyes and throaty laugh. The one who thought he was destroying society with his frivolous company. The one who had already grabbed his heart and squeezed it so hard he wasn’t sure if he’d known her for a day or for a year.
Her gaze locked on his. A small smile touched her lips, as if she were daring him to back out now. It was silliness to think being next door neighbors would even matter. He desperately wanted to prove to her, and the rest of the Natchitoches elite, that he belonged here as much as she did. But staying within feet of each other might be last the drop of awkward to fill the bucket of bad feelings, spilling over into hate.
He held her gaze until she started wrapping up the box once more. As she reached for a larger box, he saw the bookshelf behind her. It was the picture she’d sent, with the colorful mysteries, the big science fiction with the dragon, the worn copy of Austen’s Emma and the collector’s edition of Wind in the Willows. And next to it was the little leather volume that he had on his own shelf. He felt the room tilt, as if the axis had shifted, and he looked back at this beautiful woman who sent personal bookshelf pictures to anonymous book-loving men. He thought of how the emails had made him laugh, made him feel as if he’d made a real connection with someone new for the first time in years.
It didn’t matter if this apartment was a throwback to the Paleolithic era. He was going to take it.