It made me more determined to try things the way Barbara suggested, the way that Henry did things.
I didn’t need to trust him to have sex with him, right?
I ignored the voice screaming in the back of my mind: Wrong!
It was Joe’s voice. I’d called him the evening before to relay my thinking to him.
“No, no, no,” Joe had cut me off. “Nadia, you are not the one-night-stand kind of girl.”
“We don’t know that,” I’d argued.
“Yes, we categorically do. Don’t do this, honey. You’ll get hurt and you know I hate seeing you cry.”
“Joe, I’m older and wiser now. Maybe this is the path my life is supposed to take.”
“It’s not. One day you’ll meet a man you’ll instinctively know you can trust. If you do this… I think it’s going to take you back to a bad place. You’ll start hating yourself again and I can’t watch you do that to yourself.”
Uncertainty and unease, and maybe even a little bit of panic, settled over me at Joe’s words. He was the only friend I had left from college, the only one who’d stood by my side, so he knew what he was talking about. Yet, I was tired of standing in one place. “Joe, I need to make a change.”
He was silent for a while. “You’re a grown woman, honey. You do what you have to do and you know I’ll be here. But I am officially worried about this strategy.”
“Barbara thinks it’s a great idea.”
“Barbara doesn’t know what I know.”
We’d ended the conversation soon after, and for a while I considered taking Joe’s advice. But then I thought about my limitations as a girlfriend, and about Henry and how much I wanted to scratch that itch.
Then again, I might have been getting a little ahead of myself. Henry, when he wasn’t being a villain, was naturally flirtatious and charming. That didn’t mean he was attracted to me. This lunch could merely be an attempt to make amends and assuage his guilt over the way he’d treated me.
At one o’ clock on the dot, I found Henry waiting for me at reception. He drank me in from head to foot in a leisurely, decadent way, like he was savoring every minute of watching me walk toward him.
Okay.
So maybe he was attracted to me.
He held out his elbow and gave me an arrogant half smile that was much more attractive than I’d like. “Ready to go, Sunshine?”
For a moment I was caught off guard, not only by the nickname but by him. He was like a completely different person to the one who had burst into my home and threatened me against hurting his friend. This man was way more complicated than I think most people even realized.
I tried to shrug off the butterflies in my belly—they’d been there since lunch yesterday—and ignored his offered arm. “Sunshine?” I yanked open the reception door and held it for him.
Henry shook his head, laughing at my rejection, and wandered through the open doorway ahead of me.
“Well?” I said.
“Well what?”
But my query was lost in the feeling of being overwhelmed as the elevator doors closed me in the small space, alone with him.
My cheeks flushed. I could cook bacon on those things.
I shot Henry a look out of the corner of my eye seeing his continued amusement.
“What now?” I huffed.
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “You’re adorable when you’re angry.”
“If you knew anything about women, you would know that is the last thing you want to say to one who’s angry.”
“Actually, considering how adorable I find you when you’re angry, it would make sense I’d want to keep you that way.”
I rolled my eyes. “Very cute.”
He nudged me playfully with his elbow. “We’re just two cuties then, huh?”
The elevator doors opened and I strode out ahead of him. “I’m cute. You… I’m thinking undiagnosed multiple personality disorder.”
Henry’s laughter rang out behind me and I had to suppress a smile at the compelling sound. He hurried to my side. “I’m growing on you.”
“Like a wart.”
He grinned and rushed to open the exit door. As I passed him, his blue eyes twinkled mischievously at me. “This is going to be fun.”
I wasn’t at all surprised to find Henry drove a silver Mercedes S-Class Cabriolet. He had the top down and as he opened the passenger door for me, I almost balked at sliding against the pristine ivory leather seat in case I marked it. Sinking into the luxurious car, I could only stare at the incredibly sexy interior.
Henry got in next to me and threw me the kind of excited grin a child might at Christmas. “Ready?”
“This is quite the car.”
“The words say impressed; your tone does not.” He observed as he pulled on his seatbelt. “Is it the top? Do you want it up so it doesn’t mess your hair?”
“I don’t care about that.” I frowned, annoyed that he’d think I’d be that concerned with my appearance. “I care about how weird this is.”
As we pulled into traffic, Henry slipped on a pair of aviator sunglasses. “What’s weird about two adults having lunch together?”
“Because forty-eight hours ago, we were enemies.”
“So melodramatic. We were merely mistaken about one another.”
“You were mistaken about me. I think I have you pegged accurately.”
“And that’s why we’re going to lunch because you don’t.” He shot me that sexy smirk. “You don’t know the good stuff.”
“Has anyone ever said no to you in your life?”
“Yes, frequently.”
“Have you ever listened to them?”
Henry chuckled. “Rarely.”
His laughter and the sight of him driving this beautiful car with lazy confidence, his strong hands lightly resting on the wheel, those ridiculously hot sunglasses—it all affected me. Greatly. A sensuous ripple fluttered in my lower belly.
Dear God, I really wanted him.
The realization caused my breath to escape from me in a shudder, drawing his attention. Quite abruptly, I made a decision. “I’m just going to put it out there in case you’re planning to take me to a stupidly overpriced restaurant for lunch.”
“Okay.” He drew out the word, sounding amused and wary at the same time.
“I don’t particularly like you. In fact, you have become one of the villains in my story so far. I don’t want to date you and I doubt very much that you are interested in dating me. However, I also doubt that you feel so guilty about your treatment of me that you merely want to turn around my opinion of you. No, sir. I’m here because you’re attracted to me. That’s okay because apparently, I’m attracted to you too. You’re hot and it’s obnoxious but I can’t deny it.”
Henry’s mouth twitched like he was trying to suppress a smile. “Okay.”
“We’re attracted to each other or you wouldn’t have asked me out and I wouldn’t have let myself be manipulated into saying yes. But let’s not pretend this is something that it’s not with chivalry and a date. You want to fuck me. And I’m amenable to the idea. So let’s cut all the bullshit and just do it.”