She nibbled her bottom lip. I wanted to do that so badly, I bit my own lip to stop myself from kissing the fuck out of her.
“If I say no, will you drop this continuous flirting and accept my decision?”
“Yes. I won’t pretend to like it, but if you say no and mean it, I’ll back off. I’m not in the habit of chasing women when they’ve given me a clear no. I tell my sister this all the time. No is a complete sentence, nothing further needed. Although you have to mean it, Aspen. Call it intuition, experience, or whatever you like, but I think you like me, and the only thing stopping you from pursuing this attraction between us is this set of rules you’ve decided you need in order to be taken seriously in what is, let’s face it, a misogynistic industry.”
She angled her head to one side, and for the longest time she said nothing, her gaze somewhere over my right shoulder. I lether sit with what I’d said, unsure if I was way off the mark or right on the money.
“Thank you,” she eventually said, her voice so soft, I barely heard her over the noise of the engine and the tires on the asphalt.
“What for?”
“That.” Her hand did a lazy whirl in my direction.
“I’d say you’re welcome, but I’ll pass until I know whether I’ve just shot myself in the foot.”
Her lips quirked up. “You are nothing like I thought you’d be.”
“And what did you think?”
“Oh, you know.” Another flick of her wrist. “A bit like I accused you of being when we first met. A bit like almost every star I’ve ever come across.”
“A prat?”
She laughed, her eyes crinkling around the edges. “Yes, a prat. God, I love how the English speak. You have so many more descriptive words than American’s, especially curse words.”
“That’s why we write the best music.”
She arched a brow. “And have the biggest egos.”
“Guilty and proud.”
The car came to a stop outside the restaurant. A flashy sign above the door read: Theo’s. Aspen unclipped her seat belt and gripped the door handle.
“Wait.” I touched her arm. “You haven’t given me an answer.”
A mischievous expression crossed her face, and she dipped her chin. “I know.” Climbing out of the car, she ducked her head back inside. “Coming?”
“I wish,” I muttered, following her onto the pavement. She slid her hand into the crook of my elbow and gazed up at me.
“Then, you’d better be a good boy, hadn’t you?”
I groaned, my dick getting immediately all too excited for a classy joint like this one. This woman was going to be the death of me.
Chapter 12
Aspen
If flirting was an Olympic sport, Joz Raynor would win the gold medal.
If one ofmy friends had sat me down and relayed the past few weeks to me as though it were her experience, I’d have advised her to stay as far away from Joz Raynor as she could get. It was well documented that rock stars made terrible partners, and who needed that kind of angst in their lives? Not me, that was for sure. I had enough on my plate fighting for my place at a table built by and for men.
Except a nagging voice deep inside me kept harping on and on that Joz was different. Sure, he’d had his fair share of women. Show me a rich, successful, gorgeous celebrity who hadn’t, especially one in his mid-thirties. Besides, like he’d said, it wasn’t as though he was proposing marriage. It might be kind of fun to shake off the shackles I’d tied around myself in a bid to be taken seriously by industry titans I didn’t give a shit about, anyway. Who cared if some privileged, white CEO thought less of me for having a sex life?
The question I had to answer, though, was whether it was ethical for me to have a relationship with Joz, even if only a casual fling. There was no question I found him attractive, and he’d made no secret of his feelings toward me from the first moment we met. I saw no use in asking my brothers, either. To my knowledge, neither of them had ever dated anyone that worked for them.
But my cousin Asher had. And his brother, Johannes. And Kadon, another cousin of mine. They must have found a way to square the circle. Tomorrow, I’d call Asher. He was probably the one I’d get the most sensible answer from.
All I had to do was survive this evening without giving in to Joz’s considerable charms.
