Jay grimaced. “I don’t want to talk about Quentin anymore.”
“Then let’s talk about you.”
“What about me?”
“Well, we could talk about our engagement.” He studied her in the low lights. “Or we could discuss how beautiful you look in your slutty new dress—and how distracting it is, when you fidget like that.”
Jay realized, when she saw his eyes go pointedly to her shoulder, that she was unconsciously fingering one of the straps. It was the one he’d shown her on his phone before he took her out to lunch at Accia, and was every bit as low-cut as he’dthreatened. The structured fit made it look like she was about to spill out of her dress.
Expensive, pretty things.
Jay lowered both hands to her lap, resisting the urge to cover herself. “I’m not used to dressing up.”
“You mean, you’re not used to people looking at you when you let yourself look beautiful.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t analyze me, the way you do everything else. It makes me feel like one of your stock portfolios.”
“I just think it’s a shame. I bet those polite little cuckholds you dated thought so, too. When you walk into a room, you outshine everyone in it. But you always tried to dim your own light by hiding yourself away.”
Jay took a generous swallow of champagne. The bubbles stung her nose and she wrinkled it, feeling an unexpected flare of defiance that flickered through her like a candle. “Sometimes I don’t want to be looked at,” she said heatedly. “I didn’t ask to look like this.”
“Like an angel of sin?” Nicholas leaned back against the booth and the buttons on his shirt strained with the movement. “That’s what you always looked like to me.”
“At least I don’t make people cry on purpose,” she said childishly.
“No, you just choose not to see how you affect people. I’d call it cruel if I thought you had it in you. But it honestly seems like you just really don’t want to see it.”
“You did call me cruel,” she reminded him. “And if I am, I learned it from you.”
“Then you learned from the master.” He picked his wine up again, thoughtful. “I’ll tell you a secret, though. Sometimes, I don’t mean to be cruel. I just don’t care enough not to be.”
“You could pretend. It might even start to feel real if you do.”
“It doesn’t seem worth the effort—my caring. At work, I get paid either way, regardless of whose feelings I end up hurting. In these circles, a bit of emotional bloodbath is a self-fueling spectacle. Entertainment.” He scoffed. “Before you came back here, I figured I’d end up alone.”
“Oh, Nicholas.” She hated it when he was like this. She could never tell if he was trying to paly on her sympathies or expressing genuine despair. His mobile face offered her no clues and she didn’t want to be caught staring, so she turned to study the opulent wallpaper with its bold peacock print, even as it felt like her heart might shatter to pieces. “You really didn’t think someone else would have fallen for you? With all that you have to offer?”
“You mean I should have gotten myself a trophy wife, like my father.”
“You know that’s not what I meant. You have your charms.” She turned to face him, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw that some of the intensity had left his face.Even if he is pretending.“I think you like it better when people are afraid of you.”
He toyed with his fork. “Are you afraid of me?”
“No,” she said, surprised to realize it was true. “I watched you grow up in your father’s shadow. I saw the hold he had on you—and how you tried to escape it. You aren’t the boy you were. I wouldn’t have had dinner with that boy. But Iamhere with the man you became.”
“You don’t think I’m—” He looked up impatiently as their waiter approached.
One glance at Nicholas’s drawn eyebrows and hard mouth made the younger man flustered. “Shrimp tartlets for the gentleman,” he said, grievously breaking protocol and serving Nicholas first in his eagerness to soothe, “and baba ghanoush for the lady?”
“Yes, that’s fine, thank you,” Nicholas said, in a tone that very clearly meantfuck off.
“Thank you,” Jay echoed after him before he could completely flee. It was strange, she thought, giving Nciholas a chastising look. She didn’t need to imagine what it would be like to sit across from this man at a kitchen table for the rest of her life. Because she had already done so for years. Unlike the other men in her life, there was no mystery.
With Nicholas, she knew exactly what she was getting.
“I don’t think you’re what?” she prompted, finding his eyes on her.
Something flickered in his face. “Cruel. Heartless. Selfish.”
