“What?” she asked.
He nodded, but said nothing as he kept eating until he’d plucked every morsel of meat off the bone. He placed it on his plate and then looked up at her.
“It’s very good,” he said. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
She shrugged. “I don’t want to hear anything—one way or the other. But I guess I’m glad you like it.”
“Are you?” he asked, suspicious.
She flagged down a waiter, held up her finger for him to wait, finished the contents of her glass, handed it to him, and asked for another.
“Won’t that be your third?”
“Are you keeping count?”
“Well, it would appear someone needs to.”
“Fine, if it satisfies your superiority complex, then I won’t stop you. Contrary to what you might think, it is not my mission in life to make you miserable.”
“And yet you’re so good at it.”
The waiter walked up with her bourbon.
Maybe all that bourbon isn’t such a bad thing, as long as I’m by her side to make certain she makes it back safely to her hotel.
“What did you mean when you said you know I can get rattled and that today was a case in point?”
“Well, I was referring to the race.”
“I gathered as much. But what about the race?”
“You know.”
She picked up her glass and took a long swallow.
“What do I know?”
She emitted an exasperated sigh, as much with the rise and fall of her shoulders as with her audible and forceful exhale.
“You should have won today. You had the win until—”
He could feel himself losing patience—one virtue he usually had no trouble maintaining, except around her.
“Until what?” he snapped.
Her eyes sparked. “Until you didn’t—”
“Didn’t what?” he barked, loud enough that a couple of people at a nearby table looked over at them.
“Have it—won.”
Gritting his teeth, he grabbed his glass. “You are the most fucking exasperating woman I have ever met, and frankly that’s a fucking understatement. I don’t think there’s even a fucking word for what you fucking are. I supposeHomo sapiensdidn’t fucking think it would be fucking necessary to come up with one. Turns out they were fucking wrong!”
Her eyes widened. “Sir Clarke! Language! I lost count of how many times you saidfuck!”
He glared at her. “I did not sayfuck. I saidfucking.” He swallowed the rest of the liquid in his glass and slammed it on the table. “God, that stuff is fucking lousy. I can’t believe they have the fucking gall to call it scotch.”
When he looked at her, she had that smile on her face, the catlike one she had in his dreams.
