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“Don’t call me sweetheart,” I say, straining to get even more in his face. “That was as humiliating as it was pointless! She didn’t even see me!”
He helps me by bending his neck ever so slightly. “She noticed you going down the stairs. I had to say something.”
Oh. I don’t want to give up that easily though and search for some relevant barb. Nothing comes.
Sensing weakness, Rhett closes the gap completely, touching the tip of his nose to mine.
“If you think about it, you’ll know I’m right,” he says.
The smell of his breath, minty and laced with a hint of the bourbon he was drinking earlier wakes me up. He is right, irritatingly enough. And as embarrassing as it was, we did manage to pull it off.
Oh, and also this position is way more intimate than it seemed a moment ago. If I extend my lips I’d be kissing him.
Rhett flicks his gaze down, obviously thinking the exact same thing. Our eyes lock again and Rhett’s arms suddenly shoot out and grasp my upper arms. For a moment I think he’s pulling me closer and I’m not sure if I’m even going to protest when he firmly pushes us apart.
“Are you good?” he asks.
I don’t know what I am, but ‘good’ doesn’t even make the top ten. “Yes,” I lie. “Still you should have—” I don’t know how to finish the sentence and eventually just shake it away. Then I realize I’m crushing the Waltons’ place cards in my clenched fist.
“Shit,” I say, trying to straighten them out and glad for the distraction. “This is going to go over well.”
“So I take it the mission was a success.”
“Yeah,” I say, still fidgeting with the cards.
“And it was all thanks to me?” he probes.
I shoot him a look, but I can’t keep up my annoyance. He’s not entirely wrong, but I’ll be damned if I tell him that. Rhett just chuckles: my silence says it for me.
I place the Waltons’ wrinkled cards on Table 107, ask mental forgiveness to whatever poor seating attendant has to deal with them, and leave the room for good.
Rhett is still in the hall. I’m not entirely sure why I thought he’d leave without me. Or why I’m so glad he didn’t.
“We make a pretty decent team,” he says.
My inner fighter doesn’t want to relent, but in the face of his visible pleasure (and my own overwhelming relief), I can’t help it. I smile.
“Not too bad at all,” I agree.
CHAPTER EIGHT
RHETT
Liz is in the bathroom. She escaped there the moment we entered the room with a mumbled excuse about “getting ready”.
We hadn’t talked at all on the walk back up to the room. It was for the best. I’d spent the walk in a near-meditative state; any lapse in control would have resulted in me pushing her up against the wall and thrusting my tongue into her mouth.
I’m not used to this level of impulse control. Typically if I see something I want, I take it. Anyone I want to charm, I’m able to.
Liz is a different beast all together. Physically there’s no difference between her and the women I met in the bar. They’re both unreasonably attractive (though Liz wins points for being all natural). The only difference is that those girls were throwing themselves at me. They’d be happy if I kissed them, while I’m not so certain Liz wouldn’t bite my tongue off.
The choice seems pretty simple. So then why am I sitting on the couch, listening to Liz shower and fantasizing about what it’d be like to join her, instead of going downstairs and finding another girl who acts like she can actually stand me?
Color me confused. And then color me green with envy over the bank — of all things — which seems to have Liz’s immeasurable devotion.
And yet somehow she’s the antithesis of the gray, by-the-book blobs that make up Mother’s workforce, from her quick temper to her stupid coffee to the way she hustled Miranda Lee without a moment’s hesitation, consequences be damned.
In a sense, my feeling aren’t that confusing after all: Liz is dangerous and I’ve always liked to live life on the wild side.
