“Are you kidding?” She laughs. “Of course! And thank you again.”
“I appreciate that. And you don’t have to keep thanking me. Have a good day.” I hand the phone back to her.
“Tess?” she says. Then she wrinkles her brow.
Tessa must have hung up.
I stare at her. “Seems you’re free for lunch after all, Skye.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Tessa said you sent the dress to her office,” Skye says to me after we order our meal at a little French bistro. “How did you know where she works?”
“That kind of information isn’t hard to find,” I reply.
“Not when you can pay for it,” she says. “Just out of curiosity, how much did that dress cost you on such short notice?”
I try to stop my lips from twitching into a smile. “I never discuss personal purchases.”
“Oh?”
“No. It’s no one’s business how much I pay for anything.”
She drops her gaze. “Well, it was nice of you. Very nice.”
“I said I’d replace it.”
“I know, but I didn’t expect you to actually replicate it. Why would you do that?”
I take a sip of water. “Because I can.”
She doesn’t reply right away. An adorable look of confusion spreads over her face instead. Why does it surprise her that I don’t discuss purchases? I have the resources to replicate a dress in twenty-four hours, so I use them. I got to tear the dress off Skye, and Tessa gets a brand-new one. A great deal, as far as I’m concerned.
“Skye,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“It might interest you to know that I had my tailor make two dresses.”
She swallows the sip of water she just took. “Oh?”
“I did. You’ll be wearing that dress again, but the next time you’ll be on my arm, and there won’t be any question as to who you’re with.”
“Will you destroy it again?” Her lips quiver slightly.
I stare at her. “Yes. Definitely.”
Her cheeks go red, and her brown eyes darken slightly. “When exactly will I be on your arm?”
“You decide.”
She lets out a short laugh. “It’s a cocktail dress, Braden. It might surprise you to know that I don’t frequent a lot of formal affairs.”
“You will now. I’m invited to a lot of them, and since you insist on dating, you’ll be accompanying me.”
“If I insist?”
Oh, she drives me to drink. Those eyes. Those lips. Those needling words that tumble out of her mouth.
“I want you in my bed, Skye. If taking you out sometimes is the way to make that happen, I’ll do it.”
“What if I want more than that?”
“What more is there?”
“A…relationship.”
I tap my fingers on the table. “I’ve told you I can’t be in a relationship with you.”
“Yeah, but you haven’t told me why.”
I wrinkle my forehead. She’s not the first woman to ask why I won’t begin a relationship. But she is the first woman I want to actually answer.
Except my only answer is that I know I’m not wired for long-term. I’ve never met a woman who challenges me enough to make me want to commit.
I don’t let my mind get to the inevitable suggestion it wants to make.
Instead, I say, “The only reason I can give you is that I don’t want a relationship.”
“Why?”
I rub my temple. “You’re persistent. I’ll give you that. But there is no answer.”
“You mean there’s no answer that will satisfy me.”
“Semantics, as you like to say.”
“I like you, Braden.”
I want to smile at her words. But I hold back. “I like you, too. I don’t sleep with people I don’t like.”
“You didn’t let me finish. I like you, but why me? You can have any woman out there. You must know that.”
“I’ve told you.”
“Yeah. You like my lips and my breasts. So do plenty of other men, and sexy lips and big tits aren’t that hard to find.”
“I won’t deny that those are fine features of yours, but I also told you the thing I like most about you. Your need for control.”
She takes a sip of water and sets her glass down harshly. “So I’m a game. If I give you control, you win. Is that it?”
How wrong she is. I don’t play games. I’ve made that clear to her. But this isn’t a conversation to have in a restaurant. I can see how she might perceive some of what’s between us as a game. Soon, though, she’ll see it’s something much more exciting than any game.
“If you give me control,” I say, “we both win.”
“And how long do you expect this arrangement to last?” she asks. “Until you get tired of me?”
This time, I can’t hold back my chuckle. “As long as you want it to.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Why is that?”
She huffs softly. “Because you can have anyone. You’ll get tired of me long before I get tired of you.”
“Don’t be so sure of that.”
“Why do you say that?”
“You’ll see.”
The waiter brings our meals, and she stares at the coq au vin on her plate.
A minute passes. Then another.
I take a bite of my sole and swallow. “Nothing to say? That’s not like you.” I know how to break the ice. I rise and lay my napkin across the back of my chair. I remove my phone from my pocket, crouch down next to her, and snap a selfie of us. “What the hell? Let’s get them talking.”
“You’re Instagramming?”
“Kay will have the whole city talking about us within a day anyway, so why not? You’re not embarrassed to be seen with me, are you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then there’s no problem that I can see.” I edit the photo slightly to adjust the lighting and then post it.
Her phone dings in her purse.