It isn’t heavy. It isn’t to stop me from leaving. It’s just the right amount of pressure to bring me back to the moment and also let me know that I should in no way feel threatened by him.
“I know I can come across as harsh and I just wanted to apologise for my rudeness. We had a rough business night the night we picked you and your friend up. It doesn’t excuse my silence or that I made you feel that you were an inconvenience, but I’m sorry.”
I’m definitely in some kind of twilight zone, right? This man can’t be apologising to me. Surely a business man like him has much more important things to be dealing with and have on his mind to even consider the fact he needed and wanted to say sorry to me. And the way he said my name in that Russian accent? Goddammit, I need help.
I pull myself together, letting go of the door handle and turn to face him.
“Uh, thank you. I wasn’t entirely my usual self that night either and I was a bit harsh with you when I shoved you and swore at you. I don’t know what came over me.” Except for the fact you're the most stunning man I have ever seen in my life and you’ve riled me up to no end… I finish that sentence in my head.
“You don’t need to apologise. It was all on me and I know I offered you a ride home to talk about this morning, but I was hoping you would like to have dinner instead?” He asks as he looks at me with fire in his eyes. I feel like I’m burning under his gaze and that’s when I realise he still has his hand on my knee and I feel like I’ve been scorched there too.
He notices me looking at his hand and his eyes widen just a fraction more before he removes it and settles it on his own thigh in a fist.
I don’t know how to take him. I don’t even fucking know him. Is he always this hot and cold? Surely this is a little toxic considering this is my second time meeting him.
I look out the window debating on whether to say yes when I’m brought back to thoughts of my ex. He would never have even considered the idea of buying me a new phone if he broke mine and definitely wouldn’t have showed up outside my workplace to bring me home safely.
I shake my head a little while I take a deep breath and sigh before turning back to Dragna hoping that my decision to say yes to him won’t come back to bite me in the ass.
“Okay, sure.” Oh god. The lover girl heart in me is racing a hundred miles a minute right now and just when I think it can’t possibly beat any faster, it ramps up to full blown cardiac arrest material when this gigantic man gives me a soft smile. It is the complete opposite of how he looks on the outside, yet it looks so perfect on his face.
Distracting myself from just staring at him, I pull out my phone to text Alina what’s happening and to let her know I won’t be home for dinner. She replies instantly with just emoji’s that I don’t even want to sit and decipher and then another text comes through.?
I groan and put my phone back in my bag while also fighting back a smile.
I can do this, I can act like he isn’t the first guy since Fred who’s stirred something in me. I can sit in this car with him, I can sit across a table from him and I can act like the normal, semi-sane woman I am during dinner with him.
———————————————————
I was wrong. I was so wrong.
He was a gentleman helping me out of the car, he held the door to the diner open for me and as if that wasn’t sweet enough, he placed his hand lightly at the bottom of my spine to guideme to the booth we’re currently sitting in. A booth where we are sat beside each other, not across from each other, making it feel way more intimate than it should be and I can physically feel the heat radiating off him. Or maybe it’s just me sweating from his closeness.
He ordered us two waters and since then we have been sitting in silence waiting for our server to return with them.
He suddenly clears his throat and I jump a little not expecting the sound so close to me.
“You can relax Willow. I know we don’t know each other and I’m not the most approachable looking man, but I promise I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t want you to be scared of me.” He says while looking down at me.
“I’m not scared of you.” I narrow my eyes back at him.
“I’m cautious of you, there’s a difference. I don’t know anything about you other than you’re obviously a well-off business man.” He tongues his cheek to hide a smirk at my words and I feel my stomach jump at the sight of it.
“Smart girl. Well, I’m thirty four, a multi-business owner, half Italian and a quarter Russian, quarter Serbian. I part own the club you and your friend enjoy so much with Lev, who is my business partner and irritating little cousin but who’s more like a brother to me. My father is deceased, my mother is very much alive and involved in my life and I have never taken a woman out for dinner before. Is that a good enough catch up?”
I blink at him, taking in the information overload. It’s very clear he’s never taken someone out for dinner before if this is how he thinks you get to know someone. I hold on to that specific piece of information and want to dig a little deeper because if he doesn’t do dates then that must mean he just gets around. Which means he must think that’s where this is heading.
“You’ve never taken someone for dinner before? So like, no dates, no getting to know someone, no relationship? What do you do then? Because if you’re only after one thing, it isn’t going to be from me.” I blurt out and have to stop myself from cringing at the blatant irritation in my voice.
He must sense the disgust in my tone because he suddenly looks nervous. Where the hell is our water because I’m definitely hallucinating from dehydration if this beast of a man looks nervous because of me.
He clears his throat again while he looks around the diner as if he’s thinking of how to word his next sentence.
“I haven’t done any of that no. I also don’t sleep around. I like to focus on business and looking after my family. Lev, my mother, my grandfather. I don’t make time for distractions.” He says with a crease in his brow and now my lover girl heart and mind are reeling, because if he doesn’t do dating, doesn’t sleep around and doesn’t do distractions then what the hell is this with me.
I may be naive when it comes to love, but I’m not stupid. What man picks a girl up from work and then takes her to dinner just to talk about a car she thought was following her? He’s clearly after something and I don’t know what to think or do about it all.
Finally, our server brings our waters to the booth and I grab mine and gulp half of it down, plucking up the courage to ask him what the hell he wants with me.
