Everything But Perfect Read Free

child standing too close
to an unsupervised candy dish, from just two tables away.
     
    ****
    Amusement reached the shadowed
features of cheeks covered in a day’s worth of stubble, as Mitch Lavede waited
with coffee in hand until certain she would order nothing further. He rose from
his seat and headed directly to her table. Perhaps to repent his earlier sins?
Then again, perhaps not. After all, the day was still young. He had plenty of
time to make the most of it, and sin like hell if needed.
    She pushed away her plate and
leaned back against the well-worn upholstery, her heavy sigh bringing a smile
to his face.
    “Don’t tell me you’re not
ordering dessert?” he said, startling her.
    She visibly jumped, her clouded
gaze raised to his. “Excuse me?”
    Mitch had no trouble looking at
her, as she seemingly had trouble looking at him. Rather, he looked her over,
head to toe. He stopped on certain points of interest, and then continued,
undaunted.
    He had to push himself to make
conversation with her, when he’d rather be taking her back to his sleeping car
and using his time wisely. Women on trains in foreign countries were into doing
wild and crazy things on the other side of the world; the farther away from
home, the crazier.
    He sat down and introduced
himself. When he wanted something, he always took the lead in order to get it,
brazen or not.
    “Mitch Lavede…and you are?”
    “Not interested.”
    Her words said this, but her eyes
could not back up the lie.
    “I am not asking you on a date. I
only asked what your name is.”
    Spit and venom came quickly to
mind. That, and how much fun she would be under the sheets, given the chance.
    “My name…is none of your damn
business.” She hurriedly rose from her seat, severing off an easy conversation
with an English-speaking woman.
    Mitch smiled. Prickly brittle .
These words came to mind, too. Damn, they would definitely describe her to a
‘T’. Half porcupine, half part thin glass—ticking her off, and the quills come
out. Push her too hard, she easily breaks. He dealt with far worse than a mere
wisp of contradiction over the last two months.
    If she wanted nothing to do with
him, he had ways of changing her mind. Women bend to his will every time.
    She grabbed her duffel, mad as a
hornet with its stinger bent the wrong way, and stormed out of the dining car.
She forgot to pay for her meal. She halted, stood tall, squared her shoulders,
and then turned back around. It looked as if killing her to come back to him.
    Mitch rose from the table before
she reached it, withdrew his wallet, and tossed a few bills on the white cloth.
Women also complicated a well-run, well-ordered life. Substantially they ruin a
good thing, making it fall apart at the seams. Although tempting to the eyes,
and definitely to the loins, she was a complication he needed to avoid. He
turned and walked away before she had time to react to his good deed.
    Once inside his sleeping car, he
tugged off the sweaty shirt on his back, and donned a dry T-shirt. He brushed
his hair with his fingers for lack of remembering a comb. Never again would he
do such a mundane task as to check on the progress of a building. If, indeed
there was a next time, and somehow, dammit, there always was a next time in
this business.
    He would have done so this time
around, had it not been for complete boredom to what his life was turning into—endless
nightclubs, endless setups with easy women, monotonous corporate meetings,
followed by extremely monotonous after-meeting parties, just to wine and dine
the elite. He was sick of it all. He felt stagnant, for lack of a better word.
He needed something different to occupy his mind.
    Now that he could take a step
back and look at the last few months of his life, his smile came quick. Not
only had he been away far longer, and traveled farther than intended, he
discovered shoddy work that was intolerable and downright dangerous. If his
name was going on a building, it had