“Hey, don’t diss pizza.”
“As if I could. It’s your favorite.” His glittering blue eyes bore into mine over the menu. A perfect Manhattan playboy smile on his face. “And to answer your question, Penn Kensington realized that he can be both people with you. Weren’t you the one to say that you liked it?”
I flushed all over again at the memory. “I did, didn’t I?”
The waiter came over, and Penn swiftly ordered us an exorbitantly priced bottle of red wine. He got a steak with all the trimmings, and I forced down my apprehension about money and ordered the lobster. The sommelier appeared shortly and poured our wine.
I brought the glass to my lips and took a small sip. My eyes closed briefly at the exquisite taste, and I sighed. “That is…delicious.”
His eyes widened. “Are you trying to convince me to leave early?”
“Oh no, I’m eating that lobster.”
He took a sip of his own and then smiled sadly. “This was my father’s favorite wine. He always had it in the house.”
“You don’t talk about him often.”
“No. Well, not many pleasant memories. It’s kind of amazing that he could even taste it after all the cocaine,” he said nonchalantly. “But he did have excellent taste in alcohol. One of the few good things about him.”
“I’m sorry that you never had a real relationship with him and that he died before you could work it out.”
Penn shrugged it off, setting the glass down. “We wouldn’t have worked it out. And anyway, him dying was the main thing that set me on a better path. In some way, it was a blessing.”
“Still, not great.”
“No,” he said carefully. Then his eyes met mine. “Are you going to tell me why you’ve been jittery and fidgety since I picked you up?”
God, I’d hoped that he wouldn’t ask again. That he’d let it go. “I’m not jittery.”
His foot settled over my own, which had been tapping incessantly and I hadn’t even noticed.
“Talk to me.” A command, not a request. His sexy alpha voice made me want to do exactly what he’d said. But damn, I did not want to ruin dinner.
“You won’t like it.”
“I don’t have to, but if it gets it off your shoulders, that’s all that matters.”
“My agent called today,” I said with another sigh. “She said that Warren called back, and Gillian wants to acquire my next book. They’ve offered to match my last advance.”
Penn’s lips pursed. “That’s…coincidental.”
“Is it?”
“Lewis?”
“Yes. I mean, she didn’t say that. She probably doesn’t know. But I do. I know that I yelled at him in the doorway of my apartment, and now, they’ve made an offer on my book. As if he thinks that he can fix his mistakes and that will fix us.” I paused over the words, anger boiling in my veins. I took a gulp of the expensive wine, hardly tasting it this time. “He wants to control me.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I know,” I said softly. “I told her to turn it down.”
“Oh, Natalie.” His voice was so tender that it cut through me like glass.
“Yeah. I mean, it’s one thing to have my career stolen. It’s another entirely to have to throw it away on your own.”
“This is just with Warren,” he assured me. “You can go with another publisher. Then you won’t be trapped under Lewis.”
I shook my head and glanced away, blinking away the tears that threatened to spill. Talking about it like this was way worse than when I’d told Jane. Penn knew how much this had destroyed me. He knew my hopes and dreams and how they were now crumpled to ash.
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
“That motherfucker,” Penn said under his breath. “I cannot believe he’s doing this to you.”
“Why wouldn’t he when there are no consequences to anything he does?” Fire replaced the despair in an instant. “When he never has to pay for the way he treats people?”
“I can make him pay for his actions.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Please don’t do anything stupid. I can handle this myself.”
“You wanted lessons on the Upper East Side, Natalie. Sometimes, you need to let others take care of things for you.”
“No,” I said sharply.
I didn’t want Penn involved. Not when I didn’t know what Lewis’s next move was. I wanted to be one step ahead of him. That was what I’d learned from Katherine. She was always ahead of me in some way. And I planned to stay ahead of both of them. So that this looked like a small misstep in the grand scheme of things.
“Can we talk about something else? There’s a reason I didn’t want to tell you about it.”
“Well, it was all over you. I couldn’t ignore it.”
“If this is our first date, then I don’t want to spend the entire time talking about Lewis,” I said, leaning forward. “Let’s talk about something else. Your book? How is that going?”
Penn looked like he wanted to say more about Lewis, but then he effortlessly switched topics. Ever the charmer. “I finally got a date for it. Looks like it’s coming out this fall after all. Supposedly, I should be getting copies at the start of the summer.”
“And is it the life-changing philosophy work you always wanted to do?”
Like my love of writing, ethical philosophy was where Penn’s passion rested. He’d wanted to write a groundbreaking book about sex and morality. Especially looking at the standard view that said only relationships could equal safe and moral sex. Unsurprisingly, he argued that relationships were hardly necessary as long as it was consensual sex between adults. He said more about diseases and pregnancy, but the gist was the same. One-night stands were A-okay in moral terms and, even further, could bring about real Aristotelian happiness.
But Penn didn’t answer right away. I was surprised by that. Even a year ago, he’d been adamant that this was the only route.
“I don’t disagree with my central argument. I think that people can be moral and achieve happiness outside of a relationship.” His eyes settled on mine as if he’d come to a deeper conclusion that he wasn’t sure he wanted to share with me. “But I’ll be honest and say that I can understand the standard view, too.”
I nearly choked on my wine. “Since when?”
“About a year ago,” he admitted.
“But you…you slept around after me.”
“I did. It wasn’t for moral reasons, and it brought me no real happiness. If anything, it brought me further from my intended result. Especially when it was clear that I was just trying and failing to forget you. That you were my happiness, and I’d lost you, like an idiot.”
My mouth dropped open at his admission.
I’d known that he’d slept around to get back at Katherine. That he didn’t do it out of any real pleasure. But it still hurt to find out especially since I hadn’t been with anyone else while he’d been getting his dick wet with whoever walked by. It was part of the reason I’d ended up giving Lewis a chance to begin with.