“Please, come in, the bathroom’s down the hall on the left,” he said, better to keep it vague and let her open the wrong door than for him to send her in the wrong one.
While Mallory was in the bathroom Green took a quick inventory of his living arrangements. Chad’s people had done a great job of making it look good. The ambience was of a guy who was transitioning from no money to one who’d just gotten handed a check with a hell of a lot of zeroes in it. The profile Brackish had given him was a rich relative had died, leaving him a ton of money suddenly. He couldn’t be a nobody and have the attention of a senator. It was a good thing Brackish was great at his job. If they knew who he really was, and the amount of money he had, they’d know he’d never be a warehouse employee.
There was new furniture and a huge television with an exaggerated surround sound system. There was also old artwork of beer signs that had cheap framing, a rather ragged dining room table that had one chair that didn’t match the other three, and a bookshelf containing collectables, mostly encased baseballs, and a few books that had obviously never been read.
As he was reviewing the signatures on the baseballs, he heard his guest leaving the bathroom and turned around, momentarily taken aback. The stuck-up, uber self-controlled, former military officer was actually a beautiful woman.
In the past few minutes she hadn’t done anything to change her appearance, but this was the first time Green was seeing her in normal lighting, away from any other distractions. He looked her over from head to toe, and by the way she looked back at him she was very aware of it.
Mallory had thick hair, pulled back in a tight bun at the moment, but he could tell that when it came out of its binding it would cascade over her back in thick full waterfalls of brown. He’d love to see how that would look against her naked skin while she was riding on top of him.
That thought shocked him. He’d just been with another woman trying to decide if he was going to have sex with her or not, and now that woman was completely out of his mind and this one had overtaken his thoughts and hormones.
What in the hell was wrong with him? Sure, he liked women, but he didn’t court two of them at the same time — and he was straight forward when he went into an affair with one. Would he be with this woman if things moved in that direction? He was more than a little confused with what was going on inside him.
Green’s eyes stroked Mallory’s body in a way that he felt as if he were touching her. And he found he wanted to touch her. She was trying to hide her silver-grey eyes that had a beautiful light green color around them. He barely caught a glimpse of them before she looked down. The business suit she was wearing somewhat hid her body, but he could tell she was curvy yet toned. The senator held nothing on her. He wasn’t ready to let Mallory go, so he quickly devised a plan to keep her right where she was.
“Hey, I hate to put you out but since you’re here, I have a favor to ask,” he said. “My new TV was delivered today, and I have no clue how to set it up. Do you know anything about electronics?” He was playing dumb again. When she met his gaze this time he saw doubt in her eyes. He really tried to sell the idiot act — he was sort of glad she wasn’t immediately buying it. That would say a lot more about him than her.
After a long moment holding his breath, he let out a sigh of relief when she laughed.
“What do you need done?” she asked.
“Everything. I know to hit the source button to change it to the DVD-player,” he said purposely since he was aware few people still had a DVD player. He’d made sure and told Chad to have one at his place. He actually had a bit of nostalgia for the old technology. “But how do I turn on the surround sound? How do I get Netflix, Amazon, and that new one . . . what’s it called?” He paused as he thought for a moment. “Oh yeah, that Disney Plus. My favorite movie is The Lion King.” He stopped and then belted out, “Oh, I just can’t wait to be king.”
This time Mallory really laughed, completely comfortable. He had her hooked. It had to be the DVD comment. Or maybe it was his singing. He’d been told he didn’t have a bad voice.
“My last TV didn’t have any of these streaming services. The world keeps moving forward and I keep trying to shift into reverse,” he shared. There was a lot about that statement that was actually true for him. He was still a fan of Redbox when he could find them.
“I think I can help you,” she said after her laughter stopped. “Let me have the remote.”
Green handed it over, thankful it still had the protective plastic cover on the back side of it, confirming it was new and unused. He then turned to face the massive screen, standing shoulder to shoulder with Mallory. She had a mild sweet scent about her that drifted over him, stirring up his hormones again.
After a few minutes she had the surround sound going, but she was stuck getting the internet to connect. While she fiddled around, Green excused himself and hoped the people who’d set up his kitchen had stocked some wine.
Thankfully, he’d been taken care of and there were a few different bottles to choose from. Quickly opening and pouring two glasses, he appeared next to Mallory and offered her a glass without saying a word. She absently took it while staring at the setting options on the TV then took a drink after a distracted thank you. Once the internet issue was resolved she made quick work of getting a few different apps set up on the home screen.
“Okay, you have Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Disney Plus, and YouTube set on this screen,” she said while highlighting each respective application. “Are there any other apps you’d like?”
“What are my options? Are there sports apps?”
“What kind of sports? ESPN, NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL . . . anything you can think of I’m sure it’s here.”
“Really? Please help me find ESPN for sure, but if there are apps for each individual sport, I’ll take those as well. Do I just click them, and it changes the channel for me automatically?” Green innocently asked.
“Yeah. And this is a great remote with voice command, so you don’t even have to select, you can just push this button and say which channel you want, and it will go to it. If you want to watch a specific team, you can say that team’s name into the remote. I’m sure you’re all about the Seattle teams, so we can get those for you, but if it was up to me, we’d delete them all,” Mallory said with a smirk. He was entranced with the speaking remote. He truly hadn’t known that technology existed. He’d been in the dark ages long enough. He decided not to focus on that, though, instead wanting to taunt her on teams.
“Do you have a favorite team that Seattle beats up all the time? I can see why that might pain you.”
“Well, the Mariners don’t beat anyone, so that isn’t an issue, and the Seahawks only started winning a couple years ago, so there isn’t any history there either. Heck, your basketball team left you. I’d say you’d be okay supporting the Sounders, but you probably don’t know anything about soccer,” she chided.
“I played for fifteen years, was left striker or center midfielder. And, you still haven’t answered, what terrible teams do you support?” Green asked with a big smile while he took a drink of wine.