“I’ve been watching,” he confirmed. “But not as closely as you might think.”
“Maybe keep some of that distance,” I suggested, thinking about how his son and I had gotten each other off in a public parking lot. Then again, I knew he wasn’tliterallywatching us. He’d have some lackeys spying from a distance or something, probably. Still, he probably didn’t want those kinds of details even just relayed to him, I imagined.
“We’ll see,” he said lightly. “For now, I don’t see a reason to pry.”
“I guess you and I have different definitions for what’s considered prying,” I said, and he chuckled, taking a sip from the short tumbler of top shelf bourbon he’d ordered. I glanced down at it, and then quickly away. I hated being around people who were drinking alcohol.
Like he could read my mind, he tapped his fingers on the polished wood of the table, giving me a serious look.
“Not everyone’s desire to have a drink stems from a place of addiction,” he reminded me. “There’s no need to fret.”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” I answered flatly. Discussing my mom’s alcohol dependency with an entitled billionaire who could only look down on her was the last thing I’d ever do.
“That’s fine,” he acknowledged. “Though I’ll say I am grateful for your obvious disgust. If it weren’t for that, I’m not entirely convinced that Caelyx would have dropped that particular method of coping quite so easily.”
He was giving me way too much credit again, but I only stared. I didn’t want to talk about it, and I wasn’t going to.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed this, but he lacks quite a bit of self control, and tends to be impulsive.”
“Yeah. I noticed,” I said, fiddling with the straw in my drink. I didn’t like talking smack about Caelyx when he wasn’t around to hear it. I only liked insulting him to his face so he could give me puppy dog eyes and pout until I gave in and praised him for something else.
When the waitress with the sleek ponytail came up and asked if we were ready to get food, Faulkner urged me to order something.
“Don’t worry about the cost of anything,” he said, because I’d balked at the price of basically everything on the menu. I’d never had lobster, so I didn’t know if I even liked it, and I knew I didn’t want anything weird like snails or whatever. I ordered the short rib ravioli with the wild mushroom demi-glace, because I recognized almost every word in that listing.
The waitress seemed to find our exchange cute, and chuckled a bit when I finally decided.
“Is this your son?” She asked Faulkner, once she’d turned to him.
“Son-in-law,” he corrected her lightly, causing me to choke on the mouthful of soda I’d just sucked up.
“Are you alright?” She asked, watching in alarm as I coughed to clear out the liquid from my lungs.
“He’s fine,” Faulkner assured her quickly, before ordering some expensive steak. Once she’d retreated from our table and I could breathe again, he gave me another serious expression. “Future son-in-law,” he tacked on, like that clarification made the statement any less psychotic.
“You’re insane,” I responded, but at least now I knew where the hell Caelyx had inherited his audacity from.
“We’ll see,” he said again. “I can tell that he’s rubbing off on you.”
Wishing that expression didn’t sound quite so weirdly sexual, I frowned. The idea that this guy I barely knew would have even the slightest inkling of what was going on with his son and I behind closed doors made me want to squirm in my chair. And not just the sex stuff either. Caelyx was ridiculously good at making me forget myself and do embarrassing shit like cuddling. When he slept over, he liked to throw a whole arm over me and snuggle into my chest like the world’s most perverted teddy bear.
“What do you mean by that?”
“He was smitten. Now you’re smitten.”
My brows furrowed together as I flicked my gaze off to the side.
“I’m not smitten. We’re hanging out. That’s all.”
He stared at me for a few moments, considering. “At first I was worried that he’d scare you off, you know. His personality isn’t exactly easy to deal with.”
Tired of all the little snipes about Caelyx’s personality, I felt myself starting to bristle. “I told you I’m not going anywhere.”
“Well, no, I can see that,” he agreed with a slow nod. “Even if he gets on your nerves, it must be tempting to stay around, knowing that he’ll eventually come into his trust fund.”
Intensely offended and taken aback, my hand smacked down onto the table as my shoulders stiffened. “That has nothing to do with it!”
“No?” He asked, blinking innocently.
