Chapter 8
ENZO
Ididn’t mean to say that. The words came spilling out of my mouth, and only once they’d been said did I realize what I’m really doing here tonight. I don’t want Lucy to hook up with some other guy because I want her.
I might not like this woman, I definitely don’t want to date her, but I want her, and the thought of anyone else getting to be the first man who sinks into her is driving me around-the-bend crazy.
Lucy reaches out, and for half a second, I’m convinced she’s going to pull me in for a kiss. My entire body clenches with anticipation as I prepare to kiss her back.
She leans in close, so close, but then drills her pointer finger into my chest before snatching it away as if the contact had burned her.
It definitely burned me.
“How. Dare. You.”
I throw up my palms and step back from her.
She probably wouldn’t believe it, but the last thing I want to do is make a woman uncomfortable.
Ever. “It’s an honest offer. You said you want it to be a random guy, someone who means nothing to you.
What would mean less than sleeping with a man you hate? ”
I barely even know what I’m saying. None of this is coming out right, it’s just…
She smells so impossibly good—like the cinnamon candy we used to get in our stockings back when I actually enjoyed Christmas—and she’s so pretty with her head tipped up slightly to look at me, that long hair curling down past the swell of her breasts.
Standing here with her, even though she’s insulted everything about me, from my manhood to my character, it’s obvious what I want.
It seems like she might actually be considering my logic, but then she gasps, a new fire entering her gaze. “You’re only offering because I said you were a bad lover.”
“So you’re admitting you said that,” I comment, probably hammering a few nails into my own coffin.
“Do you seriously think I’m going to sleep with you just so you can prove your point?”
“I’m glad you think I can prove my point, because I am a good lover.
A generous lover, I’ve been told. But no, that’s not why I made the offer.
” I can tell I’m not forming a strong case for myself.
I’ve been told I have a silver tongue and the ability to turn anything to gold just by touching it, but this woman isn’t impressed with me and never has been.
“So why did you?” she asks, planting a hand on her perfectly rounded hip, pulling the fabric of her sweater taut.
I swallow against a dry throat, knowing already that I’m not going to get what I want, at least not tonight.
“I’m going to be in town for a while, at least until the shop is doing better. I know what dating is like around here. Everyone knows your business. It’s a nightmare. But I also don’t want to be celibate for months. If everyone thinks we hate each other, they’d never—”
“Know,” she corrects firmly. “If they know we hate each other.”
I tip my head in acknowledgment. “Yes. And I’m also trying to protect you from other men who wouldn’t keep their mouths shut. I would never say a word about you. The last thing I want is to end up in that gossip column again.”
“No one wants to end up in that column,” she says pointedly.
I shake my head. “Not true. Some people consider it a badge of honor.”
People like Brandon Wright.
I won’t let her go home with that kind of guy, a known smooth talker who would broadcast everything that happened between them to the entire town.
Maybe that makes me an overbearing asshole—hell, it certainly does—but there it is.
I feel an insistent need to make sure she doesn’t trust the wrong man.
“I’m trying to be a gent—”
“A gentleman?” she challenges, lifting her eyebrows and leaning in slightly, an antagonistic move that still gives me a whiff of her cinnamon scent. “Like I said, whoever tried to teach you failed. Your mother should have put you in finishing school.”
This again. I could tell her what happened with my mother, but I don’t. She’ll find out soon enough, given that everyone in this place knows everyone else. I don’t need pity.
“They refused to enroll me, sorry.”
“Of course they did,” she says, shaking her head, her hair moving with the motion. It’s mesmerizing to watch, but I snap my gaze away to prove my self-control isn’t completely nonexistent.
“Look. I’m not going to sleep with you,” she continues. “That’s a horrible idea, even if you have the whole thing planned out, and you’re…you know.” She waves a hand at me as if the answer should be obvious.
My body heats up as if she’d cast an invisible spell. “Even if I’m what?”
A tiny crease appears between her eyebrows. “You know what you look like. Your stunt yesterday made that perfectly obvious. You knew women would whip open their wallets.”
I can’t help but smile. “And do you know what you look like, Lucy Taylor?”
She blushes. “Twenty-one or maybe twenty-two?”
I did say that at the café, didn’t I? I realize now that it’s not her appearance that made me think she was that young.
It’s her new soul quality. Life hasn’t stopped surprising Lucy yet.
She’s not jaded like I am. Life ceased to surprise me a long, long time ago.
I lost joy in the little things even earlier than that.
I cross my arms. “It’s not like I have a thing for younger women. I was trying to—”
“Be condescending?”
“Kind of like finishing someone else’s sentences,” I respond pointedly.
She shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “Are we done here? Because it feels an awful lot like we’re done here. Eileen’s probably worried about me. She definitely should be.”
“If she were worried about you, she’d be in here.
She may not be friendly with Nonna right now, but she knows us.
She babysat for my sister. She was friendly with my mother.
” Someone should give me a medal, because I managed to say those last words without sounding bitter. “She knows you’re safe with me.”
She gasps, and then her lips flatten into a taut line. “You’re trying to remind me again that I’m not from around here. That I don’t get it. That I’ll never be a Hidie.”
I smile, shaking my head. “No, but it’s not the curse you think it is. Consider yourself lucky. It’s not so easy to get out of this place. It has a gravitational pull that should be studied by NASA. I’m convinced that’s the real reason the Wi-Fi sucks.”
“I don’t consider myself lucky,” she says fiercely. “It’s not fair that you don’t value this town but you get to have it.”
“And it’s not fair that I don’t want this town but can’t escape it. Life isn’t fair, and it never will be. That’s a certainty.”
“And the other certainty we can count on is that you’ll take any possible opportunity to be condescending.”
I sigh, suddenly tired. It’s this season.
All the forced merriment wears me out. And it’s also her, so tempting and infuriating and out of reach.
“That’s not what I meant. I just wanted you to know you’d be safe with me, and even if we don’t see eye to eye personally, I find you very attractive. Stunning, actually.”
Her lips part, and for a moment, I think she takes it as the very genuine compliment it is.
I knew she was beautiful the first time I saw her, but Rachelle had just broken up with me, and I didn’t fully register her beauty.
My pride had been bruised, my ego fractured.
But I’d felt the full force of her beauty like a smack with a wooden spoon last night.
Lucy quickly composes herself. “You’d say anything to get your way.”
“There you go, making assumptions again.”
She studies me, her gaze moving over me in a way I can feel.
It’s as if her hands are tracing me and trying to decide whether I’m worthy.
Finally, she says, “You think you’re the first man I’ve ever come across who’s obsessed with the idea of being my first?
That’s why I’m going to sleep with someone who doesn’t know.
I’m sick of it being some big thing. It’s not a big thing.
It’s just something that happened because I had too much going on in my life, and now every guy who finds out acts like it’s a huge deal.
Either he gets obsessed with being the guy, or he acts like I waited this long because I wanted to give it up to my soulmate. It’s bullshit.”
“I’m definitely not worried you’ll think I’m your soulmate,” I say wryly. “And I know better than to think physical attraction has nothing to do with emotional attraction.”
She groans. “Of course you’d say that. Of course you’d think that. What I’m telling you is no. Just no. It needs to be—”
“I know some of those guys out there,” I say, waving at the door. My blood is hot, pounding through my veins, in my ears. I’m upset. Angry, even, but not at her. “They’d talk about you. Spread rumors. I wouldn’t stand for that.”
“Why do you care?” She gives me an incredulous look. “The only reason people were talking about me before tonight was because of what happened at the coffee shop four months ago. And that was your fault.”
“Not yours for questioning my sexual prowess in front of my neighbors?”
I already know I shouldn’t have said it, but there’s no taking it back now.
“We’re done here,” she seethes. “You’re definitely done here. It’s time for you to leave. And you know what?” Her hand, which had fallen to her side, returns to her hip. I watch it, wishing things had gone down differently.
“What’s that, Lucia?” I say, not meaning to call her that, but it fits. She’s too fiery to be a mere Lucy.
Her gaze burns into me. “You’re banned from Love at First Sip, effective immediately. I’m sure Eileen will back me up.”
Surprised laughter spills out of me. “Are you going to put up a flyer with my photo too? Maybe design it with Eileen?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? It would feed your enormous ego.”