“Thanks, but no, thanks,” Delaney growled. “I was doing good without it.”
I dipped a pinkie into the sauce and sucked it into my mouth before saying, “You were doing well without it. Wow, this is tasty, huh? Did you want to see the dessert menu?”
“All I am is a bit of entertainment to you,” she grumbled, nursing her anger with her glass of whiskey. “Yourself, yourself, yourself. That’s all you think of.”
“Dangling preposition alert,” I announced, shaking my head in mock disappointment as I clicked my tongue.
Delaney threw her head back and yelled in frustration.
“Hey, are you going to finish this?” I asked her, nodding toward her to-go box. “I think I like it better than my lamprey à la Bordelaise, to be honest.”
Delaney huffed, slunk down lower, and pouted against the lip of the Jack Daniels bottle, which had replaced the empty glass.
“Go for it,” she mumbled. “You people take whatever the hell you want anyways.”
“Well, thank you,” I said. “But shall we not resort to such informal colloquialisms as ‘anyways’? How uncouth.”
This earned a prompt middle finger. I grinned and then looked around the back seat but failed to find silverware.
“What happened to the fork…”
I glanced at Delaney but her stormy face told me I wouldn’t be getting any assistance in finding my missing utensil. With a sigh, I closed the lid of the to-go box and placed it atop mine on the floor of the town car.
“Can I tell you the real reason why you shouldn’t be upset with me?” I asked her. “And it’s not because I plied you with booze afterward or brought you a doggy bag.”
Delaney laughed bitterly. “Let’s see what bullshit he can pull out of his asshole this time, kiddos!”
“Dear lord, I hope you don’t use that language around actual children.”
Delaney rolled her eyes.
I scooted closer to her on the back seat and she glared at me warily out of the corner of her eye.
I lifted my hands. “Woah, woah, easy.”
Delaney’s body remained as tense as a rattlesnake about to strike.
I inched back and raised an eyebrow. “Better?”
I took Delaney’s silence as an affirmation.
“Listen, while we sit here having, obviously, all this fun, there’s a restaurant full of the richest people in Dublin discussing one thing and one thing only: you.”
“Yeah, they’re all wondering who in the world let in the piece of trailer trash.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t see their faces.”
Perhaps it was the seriousness of my tone that muted her tongue. Perhaps the whiskey was finally kicking in. Perhaps I’d intrigued her just enough that she wanted to hear what I had to say next before wringing my neck. But in the dark back seat of the town car, Delaney stared at me with a quiet intensity, suspicion still obvious in her eyes.
“Tonight you weren’t a waitress at The White Room,” I said. “Your outburst wasn’t that of a disgruntled employee.”
With every pause I expected protest, but Delaney continued to listen patiently (though “patiently” in reference to Delaney would always be relative…).
“You were with me.”
“So?” Delaney shot defensively. “You don’t take women out to dinner?”
“No.”
Delaney’s eyes searched mine for any trace of deceit. Keeping my gaze steady under her scrutiny was easy because, for once, I had uttered the truth.
“Sure, I take girls on my yacht or on my private jet,” I explained. “And you already know that I have women over to my humble abode.”
Delaney rolled her eyes at this.
“But I don’t take women to fine restaurants,” I continued. “I don’t do the whole ‘date’ thing: putting on a nice suit, picking up the gal—aka being sober enough to drive—doing the whole talking thing while you wait for your food to arrive.”
Delaney fidgeted with the label on the bottle of whiskey as she considered my words.
“But then why did you do all that with me?” she finally asked.
I grinned and answered, “Because I knew everyone else in that restaurant would be wondering that very same thing.”
Delaney bit her lip. “Even when I slapped you?”
“Especially when you slapped me.”
This time when I reached for the Jack Daniels, Delaney released the bottle without complaint. I tipped it back and then coughed, pounding at my chest.
“Smooth,” I commented sarcastically.
Delaney snatched it back but allowed me to slide closer till our knees brushed with nothing more than a noisy exhale.
“This is your first lesson,” I said, laying my hand on Delaney’s knee. “Your real first lesson, okay?”
Delaney’s smart remark (which certainly would have been flavoured with an expletive or two, I was sure) died on her lips and she looked at me hesitantly beneath those long, dark lashes.
“Your first lesson is to stop seeing yourself as trailer park trash—your words, not mine,” I added quickly to avoid a matching handprint on my left cheek. “Stop seeing yourself as a poor waitress, as a down-on-her-luck, unemployed American, as unworthy of that elusive ‘high class’. Because, I’m telling you, that’s not how the people in that restaurant looked at you.”
Delaney was the most silent I’d ever heard her there in the back of the town car. Even her breath was muted like she was afraid any noise would break the trance between her eyes and mine.
“Because they saw a mysterious woman who put an irritating playboy heir in his place,” I said, my voice growing softer and softer. “Because they saw a woman who’d done what no other could do. Because they saw a woman who must be so rich, so well-connected, so self-assured that it was nothing at all to her to turn down in dramatic fashion the one who turns down all others.”
My hand slid slightly farther up the searing-hot skin of her thigh, my thumb brushing aside the hem of her knee-length skirt. Delaney’s breath hitched in her throat.
“Now you know what they want, the high society you despise so vehemently,” I whispered. “They want a gorgeous, mysterious, spirited woman. They want a whirl of mystery surrounding this unknown heiress. They want intrigue, drama, entertainment.”
The hairs along Delaney’s arms rose as my fingers searched just a little higher.
“And do you know what to do now?” I asked, scraping my nails against her skin. “Now that you know what they want?”
Delaney’s nipples were hard against the thin cashmere of her cardigan. My cock, already half erect, twitched eagerly knowing that all it would take was a flick of my finger to pull back the cardigan and reveal her breasts behind the delicate veil of lace.
Delaney’s voice was strained as she whispered back, her eyes drifting to my lips, “I give them what they want?”
My fingers found the elastic hem of her panties and I leaned forward till my lips were just a hair’s breadth away from hers. I could practically taste the whiskey hot on her tongue.
When Delaney’s long, dark eyelashes started to flutter closed, I whispered, “Wrong.”