Chapter 5 #2
Heat rushed me again. I raised my eyebrow. “Why not me.”
“No.”
I tilted my head like he was one of my fifth graders back when I taught. “Because if your family believes you pursued me, your mother starts planning grandchildren by Sunday.”
“She was already planning grandchildren by dessert.”
I tapped the pen against the page. “You made the first move, but I didn’t say yes .”
“Believable.”
I looked up sharply.
He did not smile.
I wrote anyway because my body had decided that being irritated and being aware of him were now one combined event.
“What was the first move?”
“It can’t be getting you into bed.”
“That’s not realistic.”
He thought for half a second. “I asked if you wanted to get out of one of Charlie’s stories before it killed us both.”
I laughed. That was annoyingly plausible.
I wrote it down.
“Why keep it secret?”
“You answer that one,” he said. “You’d be the one that thought of it.”
I stared at him. “Why?”
“Because I’m not subtle, so if you answer it, it sounds believable.”
I hated how correct that was. I looked down at the page and let myself think.
“Because,” I sucked in my lips and then let them out and said slowly, “we both know what your family is like and I don’t have family so I’m wary to rock the boat on yours as you now have all my friends.”
When I looked up, he was watching me in that unreadable, attentive way that made my skin pull tight. He reached out and brushed my arm gently. “Go on.”
I hated more that I wanted to. I liked his touch.
“We didn’t tell anyone because your family turns everything into a production,” I said. “And I didn’t want to be made into entertainment.”
Something moved behind his eyes.
“That works,” he said.
I wrote it down before I could think too hard about why that answer had felt true enough to bruise on the way out.
“What about the girls?” I asked. “If they ask why I didn’t tell them?”
“You didn’t want them in it before you knew if what was happening between us was real.”
I looked up. He got it.
I wrote the sentence anyway because it was the best answer.
“Fine,” I set down the pen. “Britney is my best friend. I am not doing this if the price is looking her in the eye and acting like I’ve lost my mind completely.”
His gaze narrowed. “What are you asking for.”
“If she corners me,” I said, “I reserve the right to tell her enough that she doesn’t feel like I’ve betrayed her.”
“Can you keep her quiet so she doesn’t blow this plan out of the water?”
“Well, this will be a growth experience for both of us.” I nodded and said, “I told her we were meeting today for terms and this is important for me. I will ensure we stay on track.”
The server appeared again, this time with some little bowl of olives and warm bread no one had asked for.
I stared at it.
Because that he’d drawn a line there told me more than he intended. He wasn’t worried about Britney. He was worried about loss of control.
I wrote the rest of the rules, then looked back over the page.
No sex. It looked sane.
Except I wondered if I should break that rule with him. No other man ever tempted me to think like that.
He scooted closer. “Now we make it believable.”
Something low in my stomach tightened. “Excuse me?”
His gaze moved over the page, then back to my face. “If this is going to hold through the weekend, we need to know what we look like together.”
“We look deeply unfortunate.”
He ignored that barb with maddening ease. “You react physically when you’re surprised.”
“I do not.”
“You do.”
I sat back. “What exactly are you suggesting?”
“That we decide what public touch looks like and how we react before someone’s watching.”
I froze. Kissing him was a distant long forgotten dream I’d stuffed so far down as impossible I’d never thought it.
“No,” I said and shook my head.
One side of his mouth moved. “You’re thinking about it.”
“That’s because I have a functioning imagination and bad luck.”
I pointed the pen at him. “Don’t.”
“Stand up. We are practicing not stealing.”
“Okay, fine. Let’s get this over with quickly.”
I should have said no again. But I stood.
He stood too. The table between us felt smaller than it had any right to.
“Relax,” he said and brushed my hair behind my ear.
“Not sure that’s possible.”
His gaze dropped briefly to my hand. “Give me the pen.”
I handed it to him because holding it felt ridiculous.
He set it on the table and came right back to me.
“Public baseline,” he said. “If we’re entering a room together, if someone greets us, if my mother is watching too closely, this.”
And he stepped in and placed his hand on my back.
My body instantly ached for more. Heat followed and damn, he smelled clean, expensive and faintly like something woodsy I wanted to be offended by and wasn’t. His hand lifted.
“That’s all?”
The question itself hit me harder than the movement.
My skin pulled tight everywhere as he brushed against my fully clothed skin.
“Maybe just the lower back,” I said, because apparently that answer was waiting in me, alive and ready to betray me. “But not my waist.”
His eyes held mine for one rough second before his hand settled, warm, at the small of my back.
I forgot how to breathe and my body reacted like a fool. Heat skated down my spine. I went hyperaware of every inch of myself at once.
“Too much?” he asked.
I sighed but tried to meet his gaze.
“Not if you’re trying to ruin my life,” I said.
One corner of his mouth curved. “Good. Your reaction reads well.”
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t.” He was right, and he didn’t remove the hand.
Old wishes for kisses surfaced.
“What now?” I asked too breathy for my usual tone.
“Like we already know each other’s breathing patterns.”
I was never more hyper aware of him in my life.
He leaned in, not enough to touch anywhere else, enough that the illusion sharpened. If anyone glanced our way now, they would see intimacy.
He was close and whispered, “Eye contact.”
God. I trembled. He noticed that too.
“Kelly.” He whispered.
I held him closer and asked, “What.”
“Look at me like you know what I taste like.”
The air changed completely.
Everything in me slammed into the same wall at once, anger, humiliation, attraction, panic, something darker and meaner and so much less manageable than I wanted it to be.
“That,” he said quietly, “works.”
I stepped back so fast his hand dropped away.
I snatched the pen off the table and nearly stabbed the legal pad with it out of pure self-defense.
“We need to add kissing to the list.”
He sat back down as if he had not nearly short-circuited my central nervous system on a public patio in broad daylight.
I stayed standing for another second because sitting felt too much like defeat. Then I sat too.
I drank half of my glass.
Xerses watched me over the rim of his own glass and said nothing.
That was somehow worse than if he’d smirked.
I could still feel the ghost of his hand at my back like my nerves had decided to become sentimental.
He watched me and I wrote in the margin of the legal pad.
NO PRACTICE IF I AM UNPREPARED
Then I crossed out if I am unprepared because that sounded like there might be a version I would be prepared for, and I refused to admit that to myself on paper.
Xerses saw the words I wrote and stared at them and back at me.
I put my hand over the page. “No. Don’t think too much on that.”
He lifted one shoulder.
“Let’s talk about Friday,” I said, because I needed to drag this back into logistics before I lost the plot entirely. “What am I expected at.”
“Dinner first. Family only.”
“And then?”
“Something at the house. Drinks, probably. Charlie making noise. My mother pretending restraint.”
I made a face. “Love that for me.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth at the phrase like he’d heard it before and liked that too much.
I ignored that with heroic effort.
“What do I wear,” I asked.
His gaze came back up. “Whatever you want.”
“That was the wrong answer.”
“How.”
“Because your mother has probably already started mentally dressing me in a white gown.”
“True.”
“Wear a dress to make it harder for me to think.”
My breath caught. Damn him.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I looked up against my better judgment.
“If my mother touches you, approves of you, folds you in, don’t recoil.”
That tightened something sore in my chest. He was lucky to have his mother. Roxanne did fold people in. Roxanne approved of me like I was important to her.
And if she did it to me while I was pretending, the part of me that wanted family warmth like some secret vitamin deficiency I had in life, I’d probably break.
I leaned back. “That’s not a rule.”
“No.”
“A warning.”
I looked at him for a long second. Then nodded once.
Our fingers brushed. And Jesus Christ, maybe I was doomed, because even that was enough to send a clean hard pulse through me.
He let go first as the bill came. He took out his wallet but I pressed against his knee. “It says no gifts.”
He stared at me like I was crazy. “I made you order the wine. You don’t owe me if I invited you.”
I took the check out of his reach. “Watch me.”
His eyes held mine for one half-second too long.
“No one has ever paid for me. It’s kind of sweet.”
I paid.
But my heart pounded. I wasn’t trying to be sweet though we left without another word.
We stopped on the sidewalk.
“Tomorrow?” he asked. “Will you be ready?”
“Yes.”
He waited. Something changed in his face. Then he nodded once. “Fair.”
I took a step back.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “And if you show up at my apartment again, uninvited, I will make your obituary hilarious.”
One corner of his mouth moved. “I believe you.”
I turned before he could say anything else. My heart pounded as I walked to my car, got inside, and only when the door shut did I let my forehead drop against the steering wheel for one second and admit the full, ugly truth.
The rules were good, the terms were smart, and the timeline was clear.
And absolutely none of that had done a single thing to fix that standing too close to Xerses Norouzi made my knees weak and for me to wish for impossible things.