“Where’s Templeton?” he asked.
“Nowhere,” she snapped.
Adrian held up his hands in exasperation. “We don’t have to do this. We can just go.”
She glanced off to the side, struggling with her annoyance. “It’s literally nowhere. An exit on I-35. Nothing but outlet malls and frontage roads.”
That hung in the air for a while as Adrian processed everything he now knew about her. None of it added up to a woman who had to spend a thousand dollars on a dateto the theater. Or even one who wanted to spend a thousand dollars on a date to the theater, a little light conversation about the arts, and then sex. A woman who looked like Caroline could find sex in any bar in town. If she was willing to be discerning, odds were she’d find at least one guy in the crowd who wanted to seeHadestownwith her before or after the sex. Where Adrian fell into this sequence was not at all apparent, given her pronouncement that they were not going to be having any sex—
“Is this for television?” Adrian asked.
Her blond eyebrows drew together. “What?”
“If it’s notTo Catch a Predator, is this a different reality show?” he guessed.
Her expression was silently hostile.
“If nobody’s going to jump out with a camera, I don’t get it. Are you trying to recruit me as a drug mule? Or steal my kidneys? Is this a con?” He had uploaded an uncomfortable amount of personal information on the website, theoretically for a background check. “Identity theft?”
That last pissed her off enough that she leaned across the table on her elbows.
“If I wanted a new identity,” Caroline said, beautiful eyes heavy-lidded, words dripping with the sugar of her accent, “I could probably get a better one thanmiddle-aged hooker.”
Adrian choked. It was a good thing he didn’t have a drink yet, because he would have spat it out. He closed his eyes and drew in deep breaths through his nose, willing his breathing to normalize and his fists to unclench. God, did she ever have his number. That was what he was doing here, and he was just as bad at it as circumstances suggested he was at anything else. Abruptly, he started to laugh, the chuckle emerging from deep in his chest and then finally working its way out through his throat.
He opened his eyes to see Caroline stiff and tense, her face gradually shifting from angry to mortified as he laughed at himself. He probably was middle-aged, from her perspective. And sure, a prostitute too, because wasn’t that the point of the sugar-baby site, no matter what Tom tried to say about it?
“I suppose I deserved that,” he said. “But I’m only thirty-three. And since you just said we’re not having sex, I’m not sure I qualify as a prostitute just yet.”
She squirmed in her seat, chewing on the inside of her cheek.
“I don’t think you’re a prostitute,” she amended. A flash of guilt crossed her face. “Or, really, I don’t care if you are or you aren’t. I’m just not trying to hire you for—” She closed her mouth, distressed.
Adrian huffed out an exhale, shaking his head to clear his mind. “It’s all right. I’ll take you at your word that no sex will be had. That is really”—he took a deep breath—“really acceptable to me.” He couldn’t feel anything but relief, in fact, that he was not going to be crossing that particular bridge for money.
He tried to meet her eyes. “But if not—that, what do you need me for?”
Caroline looked at a spot just over his shoulder with a fierce mix of uncertainty and bluster. She’d picked up the cocktail napkin under her water glass and was twisting it in her lap.
“I thought—I thought this was going to be a date?” she said, her tone making it a question halfway through.
Adrian blinked, because of all the reasons that someone might want to hire him, he had not really believed that one of them might be his company. Not that she was likely interested in it at this point. It had been a long timesince he’d cared what anyone thought of anything about him except his artistic abilities, and yet he found himself wishing this had gone even a little better.
However bad it was for him to sit on display, waiting for his bad date, it had probably been scarier to be her, when she did not seem like she’d been on many dates at all. And she’d probably expected someone more charming than him. It wasn’t her fault he was in this situation; he should have been kinder to her, no matter her reasons for meeting him.
Adrian propped an elbow on the table and stuck out his hand for her. “I think we got off to a poor start. Can we try again?”
She looked at his palm with suspicion, but she eventually took his hand, shaking it gently.
“Adrian Landry,” he introduced himself, taking her slim, firm fingers in his own. “Starving artist. Not a prostitute.”
That finally got a hint of a smile out of her, absurdly gratifying for him.
“Caroline Sedlacek,” she replied. “MBA student. Not a john.”
Caroline eyed her date over the rim of her highball glass, glad to have something to do with her shaky hands. Adrian had finally gone up to get their drinks, returning with two glasses of red wine (he was right; she didn’t like it) and her Midori sour, which she supposed was meant to be an apology.
They’d talked about the bar, the neighborhood. Some restaurants he knew nearby. He’d kept up the conversation smoothly enough that she was convinced he could manage that any time he wanted to, even with someone as awkward as she was. Whether he wanted to keep up a conversation was the question.
