“Thank you, sir.” She wrinkles her nose. “Actually, I’ll just say Jack.”
“Why don’t you want to saysir?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because you don’t seem like a sir.”
“Oh? What does that mean?”
“I mean, you saysirto someone you respect as a great person. And?—”
“Well, you’re saying you don’t respect me?”
“I’m saying I don’t think you’re better than me.” She grins.
“Are you trying to push my buttons, Katherine?”
“I didn’t know you had buttons to push,” she says. “Please, show them to me, and I’ll attempt to.”
I just shake my head and watch as she sips her wine.
“You like it?”
“It’s good. Thank you.”
Brielle sips hers and makes a loud moaning noise. “This is the best Riesling I’ve had in my life.” She realizes she was loud and giggles in a girlish fashion. “Sorry. That’s so gauche of me, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Levi says, gazing at her.
“Well, I’m glad to hear that.”
“Hey, what’s going on over here? What am I missing?”
Santiago steps forward and grins, his green eyes landing on Brielle. “Are you a model?” he asks.
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I thought I recognized you from somewhere,” Santiago says, and Levi just rolls his eyes.
“Hey, guys, you forget, Katherine’s the model. She used to be a Victoria’s Secret?—”
“Oh my gosh,” she says, cutting me off. “Really, Jack?”
“What?” I ask innocently.
“We both know I wasn’t a Victoria’s Secret model. You can let it go.”
“Okay, I was just checking. Maybe it was true.”
She just stares at me. “You know what? It’ll be true the day that you are a Chippendale.”
“Are you saying you’d like me to strip for you?”
“Hell to the no,” she says. “I would never want that, unless you were going to gouge my eyes out and it was some sort of torture.”
“Seeing me naked would be torture?”
“It would be worse than torture,” she says, nodding.
“I see. I didn’t realize you had such an aversion to me.”
