It had always seemed that way to her. As though a guy needed to know her race in order to know which bucket to stick her in, which racist misogynistic stereotypes he could use against her. Noah had done it, and she’d expected it from Jack.
“My mom is white, and my dad was black.” She looked down at her glass when she said it, not able to help but worry that it would change what Jack thought about her. “I’m biracial.”
“Cool.” She looked up to find Jack smiling at her. It was seriously just a piece of information about her that he thought was interesting.
He was actually perfect, and she almost wished she wasn’t just using him to get a promotion.
She could have slipped into maudlin worries about how she would feel once this was over, but their first course arrived—a “salad” made of five different kinds of jellied vegetables arranged in a row across a rectangular plate. They looked like something that could have come out of some nightmare of a midcentury cookbook, and she looked at them skeptically for a moment.
Then she looked up, wanting to see Jack’s reaction. She’d figured him for a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, not necessarily up for culinary adventures. But he looked at her with mischief written across his face as he picked up a piece of the dish with a spork-like utensil and took a bite—and it made her think of him taking a bite out of her.
She followed suit with the green jelly square, and the flavor of an honest-to-God Caesar salad exploded in her mouth. Her eyes widened, and her gaze caught Jack’s.
A total surprise. Hannah didn’t normally like surprises, but both this meal and Jack promised to be full of them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AS THEY WALKED ALONG the quiet West Loop street after dinner, Jack wanted to put his arm around Hannah despite the fact that this was a first date and a strange one at that. Even though there had been some awkward moments while they were eating—normal getting-to-know-each-other stuff—that didn’t dim the connection between them.
And mostly, they’d been distracted by the food experience. It was more than just good; it was surprising and transcendent. Almost like experiencing a moving piece of art for the very first time. Each dish looked like one thing but tasted and smelled like another—everything from the jellied veggies that had started the meal to the lobster thermidor that had the protein wrapped in a bubble of sauce.
There was no one he’d rather have shared it with than Hannah. She compelled him more than any other woman he’d ever met, and he would likely die from his attraction to her before he’d finished writing this article. Because there was one thing for certain: he couldn’t sleep with her while he was lying to her. He hadn’t planned to, going in—he’d wanted to make sure she liked him enough to hang on for two weeks while he put her through the wringer, but he didn’t want to get so intimate with her that he’d break her heart when he revealed the truth.
Before tonight, he’d thought he could walk that balance, but now he wasn’t so sure. Every moment he spent with her made him like her more, made it harder for him to justify lying to her for a stupid article—even a stupid article that could totally change the trajectory of his career.
But he always did this in relationships. He found a girl he was attracted to, and then he gave her everything she asked for to make her happy. Projected his own feelings onto her. And she always left him anyway.
Hannah would be no different. It didn’t matter that she turned his crank like no other woman before her. It didn’t matter that the look on her face as the ravioli brittle cracked between her straight white teeth had made his cock stand up like Willis Tower. Didn’t matter that her sucking on an edible sugar balloon had nearly made him need to go to the restroom and relieve some of the pressure in his groin.
She might turn him back into a fourteen-year-old boy, but he wouldn’t forget the hard lessons he’d learned from every other woman he’d let in. Being in her presence might be a delight now, but her absence would surely hurt more than anything he let grow between them.
And he’d almost convinced himself that it was the truth when they got to the entrance of his building. That should have been the moment that he pivoted toward the objective of this exercise. He’d fully planned on kissing her cheek and calling her a car.
But then she turned those pretty hazel eyes up at him, and he let himself glance at her mouth. He had to stuff his hands into his pockets to keep from touching her. Everything inside him wanted to grab her by the shoulders and haul her into his body for a kiss. The vulnerability seeping out of her with every breath mixed in with his desire for her as the moment stretched long, like the cheese inside the squash blossom they’d been served an hour and a half ago had stretched as she’d taken a bite.
Her tongue darted out as she licked her bottom lip, and that put the final nail in his coffin. Just by existing, she tested his willpower and shorted out the motherboard of his better angels. “Want to come up?”
She smirked. “I thought you weren’t trying to seduce me.”
“I’m not.” He looked down, feeling his skin get hot. “I just want to spend a little more time with you.”
That was the truth. Not the one that he’d meant to come out. It would have been a good way to go about losing her to be inconsistent with what he said. He’d always found that women responded well to his general sense of personal integrity. Apparently, it was rare.
As a practice, he never said he would do something and then did the opposite. He never said he was looking for a relationship if he was really just trying to screw around. And—maybe it was just his nature—but he was never looking to just screw around.
The one-night stand had never been his thing. In fact, the whole story that he’d told Hannah about what he would do if he were trying to seduce her into a cheap fling was bullshit. Not the part about how he would try to seduce her, but the cheap fling part.
She was worth so much more than that. So much more than this.
That was why he hated himself a little when she stepped into his body and said, “Yes, I’d love to come up.”
That was why he hated himself even more when he smiled and wove his fingers with hers before opening the door for her.
* * *
—
HANNAH WAS GOOD AT her job because she had a great memory. Where most people needed lists and spreadsheets to keep track of the million-item to-do list, she needed three Post-its and her own mind. The only time she displayed forgetfulness was when she was really into a guy.
If a guy warned her, as guys so often did, that he wasn’t “ready for a relationship” or wasn’t “looking for anything serious” on a first date, she could forget it by the third. She wouldn’t remember until the only thing left of the relationship was an STD test and regret.