10. Matt #3
I knew she was dressed for revenge, dressed for combat, but I didn’t want to share her. I didn’t want to give them that.
At least not tonight.
My feet dug into the wooden walkway as I pulled her to a stop. “Do you want to go to this?”
She raised a brow as she looked up at me.
“Are you seriously asking me if I want to make small talk with people I don’t know, eat overpriced mass-cooked seafood, and stare at my ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend all night?
” she asked, the breeze pushing her little waves across her cheeks and lips. “Because the answer is no. God, no.”
I reached up and caught the strands with my finger, tucking them behind her ear. “Let’s ditch it.”
“I spent three hours getting ready?—”
“Let’s go somewhere else,” I said, cutting her off. “Not back to the villa.”
Her eyes flicked between mine, her brows shifting almost imperceptibly.
“Just you and me,” I added, my voice a little lower. “Real food, real drinks, zero Ryan and Lauren.”
She blinked and turned her head back toward the spot everyone else was heading to, hesitating, before turning back to me, her gaze dropping just briefly to my mouth before locking on my eyes again. “Yeah,” she breathed. “Okay.”
That was more than enough confirmation for me.
I slipped my hand around her waist and led her away from the main building, down the opposite path toward the taxi rank and private vans. She didn’t ask where we were going. She didn’t even look back.
————
The restaurant was tucked behind an unmarked gate on a winding road, fifteen minutes from the resort but far more upscale than anything Ryan could dream of conceiving.
Dark wood, low candlelight, and a wrap-around terrace that overlooked the ruins of a Mayan pyramid, the cliffs, and the water, like it belonged to us alone.
Our server, a woman with a thick accent and a friendly smile, took one look at us and offered a quiet table for two on the terrace. No menus, just drinks and chef’s choice small plates.
There was an ease to the way we settled in.
It wasn’t awkward or overly charged like when I’d met her in that first-class lounge, and it certainly wasn’t as stressful as it had been last night with Ryan’s gaze trailing us.
It was simple, calm, like we weren’t two people actively trying to ruin my brother’s weekend. Like it had been all day.
By the time the first course arrived, we were halfway through our second cocktail. Sienna leaned in, chin resting on her knuckles, the dim and flickering candlelight twinkling off the greens in her eyes.
“I keep waiting for this to feel weird,” she said casually.
I quirked an eyebrow at her as I set my drink back down on the table. “And?”
“It hasn’t.”
“Disappointed?”
Her lips twisted up at the corners. “Mildly.”
We fell into a rhythm — easy, strange, and dangerous in its simplicity.
She asked about Zach’s favorite movies. I told her about the time he’d tried to mail his dinosaur back in time.
She told me about her classroom, about how her students were already planning to stage a mutiny because they were expected to do math differently now.
I told her I was surprised she hadn’t gone for something easier and more financially stable than wrangling hormonal pre-teens for a living.
She shrugged as she looked at me, her gaze holding far too much in it. “They’re honest,” she said. “They haven’t had enough time to learn that the world rewards you for lying.”
The next round of drinks came — a high-end scotch for me, something with lavender and gin for her. She sipped it, made a bit of a face, then took another sip anyway.
The silence that followed wasn’t awkward, though. None of this was. I’d been sitting here just like her, waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the moment everything shifted and one of us got irritated or ran out of things that engaged us. But it didn’t come.
She leaned back, her eyes on mine, her voice a little quiet. “So…”
I waited, resting my chin on my palm. “So?”
She swirled her drink, her eyes catching on the lavender sprig dancing against the rim of her glass.
“You’re forty-seven. You own an airline.
You’ve got a kid who adores you. And I highly doubt you have trouble finding someone to sleep with.
” Her eyes flicked back up to mine. “ So … what’s the catch? ”
I let out a slow breath as I sat back in my chair. “Why do you think there has to be a catch?”
“Come on. Men like you don’t just float around from woman to woman unless they’re hiding something,” she smirked, one brow raising as she sat a little further forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, a laugh already being suppressed.
“So, what is it? Tax evasion? Blackmail? Pending SEC investigation? Erectile dysfunction ? Tell me, Matt, is that why you waited two hours on that flight to ask me to get a drink with you, so you could pop your Viagra with dinner?”
I nearly choked on my scotch, a laugh bursting out of me before I could hold it back. “Jesus?—”
“I’m serious!” she chirped, fully beaming now, her shoulders shaking with giggles, her hand flitting about as she spoke.
Fuck, she’s cute. “Don’t tell me it’s something weirder like, I don’t know, funding and running a whole cult on the side, or maybe you’ve got some private island where all the monkeys have dubbed you king ? — ”
I caught her by the wrist, grinning, my thumb dragging along the base of her palm.
“I don’t have a private island. I don’t run or fund a cult,” I chuckled, smirking at the way her cheeks warmed just a hair as her gaze flicked to our hands.
“And I sure as hell don’t have erectile dysfunction or any of the ridiculous ideas your brain can come up with. ”
She sat back with a huff, her hand slipping out of my hold, and crossed her arms over her chest. “There’s got to be something ,” she said, nudging my foot with hers beneath the table.
“Sienna James, are you playing footsies with me?—”
“ Shut up ,” she hissed, but she was still laughing, her cheeks and neck still warm. “What are you hiding?”
I watched her as I rolled the words between my teeth, tempted to let them out, tempted to see what she’d do with them. She lifted her glass again, her eyes boring into me in a way that screamed curious , like she wasn’t going to let this go until I gave her something.
And fuck if I didn’t want to reward that.
“You want the honest answer?” I asked, lifting my head from my palm and wrapping my fingers around my drink instead.
“Obviously.”
“I don’t let people in.” There. Said, done. “I don’t do relationships. It’s cleaner that way. Easier.”
She blinked at me, her smile faltering, but she didn’t interrupt this time.
“But you,” I huffed, pausing as I tried to find the words, my tongue dragging over the back of my teeth. “You were chaos in a yellow sundress, sitting in a seat that should’ve belonged to someone else, looking like you didn’t give a damn what anyone thought when you clearly did.”
Her lips parted, her brows knitting together like she wanted to cut in.
“I didn’t plan this outside of showing up, making my brother feel small, and going home.
I didn’t plan to sleep with you on that flight.
I sure as hell didn’t expect to like you, but now you’re here, at a dinner with me that neither of us planned on attending when we could’ve just stayed in the villa in our respective rooms for the evening,” I said, the words falling out easier now that I’d said the hard part.
“Hell, Sienna, I could be watching T-Rex Time Jam with Zach curled up in my lap if I wanted to. And I’m not. ”
The silence stretched for a beat, her eyes searching mine, her chest rising and falling just a little bit faster. “No,” she said softly. “You’re not. But you don’t know me, Matt?—”
“Maybe not yet. But if I’m being entirely honest, I want to.”