My chest tightens. I don’t know what it is about this guy that throws me off-kilter. “Maybe I find poets more engaging than hoteliers.”
“That would be an oversight.” He rests his arm behind my head again and swirls the amber liquid in his snifter, swilling it like a regal monarch. “They’re one and the same. Both provide space for you to be whoever you need to be.”
I pop one of my extra cherries in my mouth, suddenly conscious of how erotic the act seems, but too invested in both the flavor and the wolfish glint in his gape to relent. “And you do that for everyone here?”
His jaw tenses as he does the Mr. Darcy hand flex, like he’s raring to fight someone—possibly the cherry I just stuck in my mouth. “To different degrees, yes.”
The rebellious green-eyed monster inside me juts out her chin toward Miss Hannigan, who is draping herself on someother wealthy fool. “Let’s take her, for example. What do you provide to her?”
His lips quirk up, and he leans close, his scent thrusting me into a fog of delusions, his scruff brushing my cheek, his breath fanning my neck, inflicting a blaze of goose bumps to sprout on my heated flesh. “You’re too skilled for that. Don’t go showing all your cards so soon, Zara. Remember the house edge.” He pulls back, his eyes latching to mine and briefly dipping to my mouth as he adds, “She’s lonely. All I’m providing is a place for her to belong.”
We’re so close. A dare away from devouring all the loneliness in the world with a single kiss. Except I already sense he’d never do that. Not when he thinks I’m Beck’s.
What does that matter? This is a mission. Get your priorities straight.
He’s several steps ahead in the manipulation game, roping me in with food, seduction, and an understood vow to ensure I’m not lonely. Being myself muddles things that generally feel robotic. It’s always just business, which is separate from me. I’m the arms of the client and nothing more. So, this is … baffling.
“And how do you know she’s lonely?” The breathiness of that query is a sorry alternative for my traditional boldness.
“Most of us are,” he says simply, and I think I believe him that hospitality moguls and poets are the same.
Did you know my mom? Do you know what happened to her? Tell me you weren’t involved. Or tell me you were so I can dismiss this attraction and do my damn job. Fuck.
“Like ‘Eleanor Rigby’?”That’s great, Zara. Woo him with your name-those-lyrics trivia.
He laughs, gliding his hand over his mouth and perusing the bar. “I think The Beatles often had profound ways of viewing the world. So, yes.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. Talk to me.“Are you lonely?”
“I am never alone. And I am not lonely.” He swallows, his Adam’s apple rolling in a declaration of vulnerability. “That suggests a perpetual state. But I’m human, so I feel loneliness. I’m too much of a dreamer to stay there though. Like John Lennon’s ‘Imagine.’ ”
His use of music reminds me that his mom was a singer here. I saw her picture with a plaque about her at the Corpse Reviver Cabaret last night. It must have been my subconscious answering in song. At least part of me is centered.
“You’re a dreamer?” My pulse goes haywire, and I’m not even sure why. Maybe it’s discovering something that could never be noted in a file. “I wouldn’t have thought that.”
“Most wouldn’t.” He sips his drink, his unexpected perspective falling like slow-motion dominoes. “People assume businessmen are analytical, which is fair. But the best of us are also visionaries. It keeps me humble. My mother wanted me to be humble. She was a hopeless romantic, enthralled by how big the world was.” He slants his head, studying me. “What about you, Zara? Do you dream?”
“Not lately.” Or ever. Dreams are dangerous, but I don’t volunteer that. “I’m in between dreams, I guess.”
“Ahh. And when you aren’t between them, does Beck contribute to your dreams?”
There it is. An invitation.
“Beck is busy with his own aspirations.” My chest heaves, like I’m fleeing from a completed mission when we’re only getting started. “But he was telling me a bit—ambiguously, of course—about the membership. He’s leaving in a few days, and I …”
“You want to stay?” he surmises.
“Need to.” I gather some of the sugar from the rim of my champagne flute and swill my cocktail, feigning more nerves than what I actually have. Deception is an easier cloak to wear. “Imean, it’s not dire exactly. I’m hoping to hide out from my father for a while longer.”
“La Lune Noire makes a good hiding spot. Beck is okay with you staying behind without him?”
A second inquiry. Persistent. Interested. Good—for the mission. Exhilarating—for that girlish part of me that is swept up for some inexplicable reason. Maddening—for the voice of reason inside me that is rolling her eyes and huffing at my pitiful crush.
“We’re just friendly”—a fluttering in my ribs steals my response for a beat when the slightest trace of relief washes over him—“so he doesn’t have much of an opinion about it.”
“But youneedto stay?” Intensity rolls off him with that request for confirmation, a glimpse of what I imagine would pale in comparison to the possessiveness he has over his people. He’s probably protective.
“Yes,” I assert.
