“Men will ask me.”
“Business guys? I highly doubt that. What kind of business dinners are you attending?Great quarterly reports, Johnson. By the way, how does your fiancée like to?—”
“You’d be surprised what comes up after the third martini.”
“Then maybe drink less at these dinners.”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
I leveled him with a glower.
“Not all men are gentlemen. We have interviews, dinners. What if I meet someone who’s been with you and I get it wrong?”
My neck warmed, and I saw his eyes track the flush spreading down my throat. “That won’t happen. Unlike you, Mathew is a gentleman and would never talk about me that way.”
“Well, we have many interviews and fake dinners and whatnot. Who knows who will show up? All it takes is one guy from your past for our story to implode. Just tell me.”
“No.” My cheeks were on fire. I chewed my thumbnail, wineglass forgotten.
“You only do that when you’re nervous,” he noted.Great. He sees right through me at the worst possible time.“Why does talking about sex make you nervous?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Liar.” He leaned forward, the firelight making him look dangerously handsome. “Are you a freak in the bedroom?”
“No.”
That’s when I saw it: the exact moment everything clicked. The reason I saidMathewwould never talk about me that way. Notnone of my exes. Notanyone I’d ever dated. Just Mathew. Axel’s expression shifted from confusion to understanding and then something deeper.
“You’veonlybeen with Mathew.” Luckily, his tone was soft and not antagonistic or humorous at all. At least that was something.
“I know that’s hard for you to understand, but not all of us have a revolving door to our bedroom. Some of us have standards.”
He cocked his head, studying me with an intensity that made me feel naked. “Why is he the only one you’ve ever been with? You’re a gorgeous woman in her thirties. Surely, men havethrown themselves at you. In fact, I saw it in college. Thought about breaking a jaw over it on more than one occasion.”
Holy crap, there was a lot to unpack with that. He found me gorgeous? He wanted to break someone’s jaw for hitting on me? And most of all, he was genuinely curious about my decisions? Not judging me for them?
The confession hung in the expanse of his living room, and for a moment, I forgot we were supposed to be enemies. This felt like … intimate conversation. Real conversation. The kind I’d imagined having with him all those years ago.
“My parents raised me with strict values. That was saved for marriage.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. “And since they’re already worried Knox is going to hell, you tried to be extra good to compensate.”
Stop seeing through me!
“Why didn’t you save yourself for marriage then? I mean, why wait that long just to … not follow through with it?” His tone wasn’t condescending; it was careful, soft.
“Because I loved him.”
Something dark settled over his features. He scrubbed his face, looked away, then snapped his attention back to me with an edge. “Did he pressure you?”
“I’m in my thirties. It’s understandable that a guy in a serious relationship wants intimacy.”
“That’s a yes.”
“No. We talked about it and realized that we either would date for years without intimacy or get married before we were ready. We mutually agreed to a compromise.”
Why am I sharing this with my nemesis? And why does he look like he’s plotting Mathew’s fall from a bridge?But also … why does it feel so natural to tell him these things? Like he actually cares about the answers?
