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My traitorous mouth started to water. “No thanks.”
“You’re welcome to have some when you change your mind. I think I’ll eat mine while we talk.”
“Get it over with so I can get back to my television.”
“What are you watching?”
I knew this game, and I wasn’t playing. “I’m not answering any of your questions.”Shit. I’d already been talking when I should have refused.
“Fair enough. Let me tell you a story that starts a few weeks ago. I once went on a work trip to Barbados. I say a work trip, because all I’d planned on doing was studying boring books for my job—things that would please Dad. But a funny thing happened while I was there. Want to know what it was?”
“No,” I answered before realizing I shouldn’t even be saying that.
“I’ll tell you anyway. I noticed the most alluring girl watching me from a row back on the beach. This girl pretended not to be watching me, so I pretended not to notice. She was with this friend of hers, also a looker, by the way.”
If I told Sandy that, she’d go nuts.
“But,” he continued. “I only had eyes for the green-eyed goddess. And as luck would have it, she sent me a drink at dinner. That was an invitation I couldn’t resist.”
I had to correct him. “Sandy sent you the drink.”
“That’s not what Diego told me, but regardless, I invited her to join me for dessert.”
I interrupted him. “This is pretty boring. I don’t have all night.”
“What are you going to do instead? Waste the night away watchingBachelorepisodes?”
“I have better taste than that.” I had to at least stick up for myself.
“As I was saying, I thought the night would end well, but then she clumsily fell in the pool.”
“I was pushed,” I countered.
“And there I was without a date for dessert, so we set a date for the next evening.”
“You actually said another time,” I reminded him.
“But the next day, I learned she’d lied.”
“Misspoke is more like it,” I said.
“But even so, the next day turned out to be the best of my life.”
I waited for the explanation of how a near plane crash was a good day.
“At the end, I got to hold the woman of my dreams in my arms all night long.”
My eyes watered with his words. This was going entirely the wrong direction. “This isn’t changing anything. We’re done, over,finito.”
He ignored me. “It also started the most frustrating twenty-four hours of my life. First, I got to hold this special woman in my arms—so special that I didn’t dare screw it up by pushing her into even so much as a kiss.”
I sniffled, remembering how he’d been so much more gentlemanly than I’d wanted him to be.
“I was so scared I’d ruin it if I pushed. And then the next morning, she declared she hated me.”
My gut tightened.
“She wouldn’t believe me when I told her I had only the best intentions regarding her family’s company. I told her once that she only had to look back to Sioux City to determine my character. And she told me then that she believed me. But now she doesn’t.”
