I shrug. “Nickname. There’s a lot of Carpenter’s hanging around and when I was younger, my parents called me Penny. Plus, you were a stranger. A strange and very beautiful one who was crashing my party. I needed you to understand that the company party wasmycompany’s party. Most people think the business is Roman’s since he’s the guy with all the money, but I’m the CEO and COO.”
She rolls her eyes. “Well, if you’d just said that your name was Gabriel, that could have all been avoided.”
“Ah, but then I would have missed out on being assaulted by you.”
Her cheeks flush and I laugh. “I’m kidding.”
“I’m… I’m really sorry about that. I’m mortified.”
“How about we restart, yeah?” I suggest.
She nods slowly, way too cautious. I sit back in my chair. “Tell me a bit about yourself.”
Her eyes narrow. “Why?”
Jesus, this woman.
I chuckle. “I want to learn more about you. A woman working as a PI in New York City seems like a pretty dangerous gig.”
That must hit a nerve I didn’t realize she has because her suspicionturns into a scowl.
“Okay we don’t have to talk about that then... Tell me something different about you. Natasha said you were divorced.”
She nods. “I am.”
I point to my chest. “Me too.”
“I know.”
“Ah. Didn’t realize Natasha told you that too.”
Is she going to make conversation this damn difficult all night? Because if so, maybe this was all a gigantic mistake. I should just pack up my food and eat it at home alone. I’d prefer sitting in the silence more to whatever this two word answer mess is. I don’t have the time or the energy for it. Not to date someone who keeps their walls up. And definitely not to spend weeks trying to coax a closed-off woman into opening up to me when there’s no real reason to. Not when we both know this isn’t going anywhere.
She exhales sharply, like she’s wrestling with her words. “Look… I’m a little jaded when it comes to men. When I first started private investigation work in college, I’d take on any case. Then I got divorced, and now I only follow men who are suspected of cheating on their girlfriends and wives.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. “I see.”
“Aren’t you going to ask what happened between me and my ex-husband?”
I shrug. “If you want to tell me.”
Her eyes narrow, like she’s trying to figure me out, but she won’t. I’m a man with two younger sisters, one of which I raised since she was ten years old. I know that sometimes you gotta let women sit in their silence until they come to you with the details. Forcing it out of them will only cause them to collapse inward on their selves.
Her tongue darts out to wet her lips nervously. My eyes drop tothem immediately—like they do every time she does that—because I want to kiss her again. Defensive or not, I want to see if kissing her might crack those carefully built walls she’s erected around herself.
“We were trying to get pregnant for all five years of our marriage, and it never happened,” she says flatly. “Then I found out he was cheating on me. And guess what? His mistress was pregnant.”
“Damn.”
Her brows shoot up. “Aren’t you going to tell me you’reso sorry? That’s what people always say when I tell them what happened.”
I lean back, keeping my tone neutral. “I’m not sure if I am sorry. Sounds like you’re better off without him. Dodged a fucking bullet.”
She stares at me, her big, round, brown eyes—eyes that remind me of the lake behind my house in the autumn. Full of leaves that cover the surface and dot the bottom—studying me like she’s trying to figure out if I’m for real. I’m being honest and anything she wants to know, I’ll tell her the truth.
“Maybe I did, but it hurt like hell to find that out.”
“I bet it did,” I say, agreeing with her.
