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But Lottie still wasn’t impressed.
She leaned back in her chair beside me, her eyes cast somewhere off in the direction of the bustling waiters. Her expression was sour, irritated, hard lines and narrowed brows. “Lottie,” I sighed. “There are people here. There are press here. I need you to not look like you hate me. Can you at least try not to look so miserable?”
“But I do hate you and I am miserable,” she said, turning her head in my direction and plastering the biggest, fakest smile she could possibly muster on her face. If it wasn’t so goddamn awkward, I would have laughed.
“It’s a nice place. Just enjoy being here. Please.”
“There are much nicer places that I’ve been to, Hunter.”
“Look, why don’t we just treat this as, I don’t know, an interview. You were great at that.”
She snorted. “Because I let you fuck me.”
“Because you were interesting,” I corrected.
A man dressed head to toe in white approached the table with two plates of food. We’d decided against the set menu and ordered instead from the chef’s specialties—me, a wagyu steak cooked rare with asparagus and roasted potatoes, for Lottie, a lobster tail with butter and cheddar biscuits.
I might as well have taken her to Red fucking Lobster and let her pick her dinner from the tank.
After thanking the waiter for topping off our wine, she finally spoke again. “I’m not interesting, Hunter. You’re just really boring.”
“I guess I should have chosen someone who’s nicer to me for this, huh?” I joked. I sliced into the wagyu, cutting through it as easily as butter. “Come on. Tell me something about you that I don’t know.”
She sighed as she plopped a bite of lobster on her tongue. “I keep a journal,” she said around a mouthful. “I have since I was five. I’ve got, like, a hundred of them in my room.”
My brows shot up. Although she was strong, controlled and focused, I’d never expected that. “See? That’s interesting. What do you journal about?”
“How much I hate you.”
And here I thought I’d made progress. “Tell me something I don’t know about your dad.”
She snorted around a mouthful of biscuit. “He thinks you’re a pretentious dickhead. Lovingly, of course. And he used to ride a Harley when I was a baby. Even tried naming me Harley, but Mom wouldn’t let him.”
She cracked a smile at the thought of her mom. Even though I didn’t know her well, and I didn’t know what it was like to lose a parent, my chest ached for her.
“And he thinks your dad’s a piece of shit.”
I couldn’t help the laugh that boomed from me. “He’s not wrong.”
She grinned. “He never is.”
I glanced up from my food toward the table to our left, catching sight of a phone aimed in our direction. I hoped it was a video, purely so they could see the last five seconds of Lottie being civil and nice to me. I scooted my chair a little closer to her and set down my knife and fork, leaning in to press a kiss against her cheek.
She went as rigid as a piece of stone.
“The fuck?” she whispered.
“There are people taking photos of us,” I said quietly, keeping my lips just by her ear so only she could hear me. “Kiss me. Just a quick one.”
Her brows furrowed again. “No. You kiss me if you’re so insistent.”
“For fucks sake, Lottie, can you please just cooperate?”
“Fine.”
She turned her head to me and fluttered her lashes closed, lifting her chin just enough to press a light, lingering kiss against my lips. And then she went straight back to her lobster and biscuits.
But I saw the flash. The photographer caught it. The news would be out by tomorrow, and things would spiral perfectly from there. “Thank you,” I mumbled.
