This date—this is something else.
“Can I ask you something?” I say to him as I fan myself and Quincy Thomas giggles across the room.
“You’re welcome to ask me anything.” He winks. “But I might not answer.”
“Do you ever get mad?”
His smile spreads broader across his lips, but it doesn’t hit his eyes.
My stomach grumbles.
And it’s not the champagne.
And it’s not that it’s been six hours since I ate anything.
It’s a gut feeling that Simon Luckwood isnot, in fact, the happy-go-lucky man he presents to the world.
And he might not be happy right now.
Because he feels obligated to be here and put on a show?
Or is it something else?
“Certainly,” he says smoothly. “Everyone experiences anger at times.”
“Have you ever been so mad that you do something you regret?”
His blue eyes flicker over my face. “Is there something you regret, Bea?”
“No. Yes. Maybe. I?—”
There’s a muffled squeak at the side of our table, and we both look up to see my ex standing there.
Clearly having overheard.
I gulp and use my champagne flute as a shield against the death lasers flying at me from Jake’s eye sockets.
He looks at Simon, stutters something incoherent, looks at me again, glares harder, and then he finds his spine in the face of having to talk to the only man in the universe who could make him stutter.
“Mr. Luckwood. I didn’t know you were joining us, or I would’ve greeted you myself. Welcome to JC Fig. We’re delighted to have you.”
Jake’s voice is shaking and too high-pitched. Sweat beads on his forehead. He’s in black slacks and a white button-down, and you can already see—and smell—that his antiperspirant has failed.
My heart starts beating faster.
This was a mistake.
I shouldn’t have done this.
It’s cruel, and I don’t like to be cruel.
“Thank you,” Simon says. “I’m sorry, old chap, I missed your name. Are you the maître d’?”
He shoots, he scores.
And he doesn’t even know it.
“I—I’m the owner,” Jake stutters.
