Silas chuckled. “Not usually for dinner with women.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re incredibly cocky?”
Silas rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “Most of my dates would describe me as cocky, yes.”
Katherine ignored the involuntary clench the look that accompanied that statement brought on. “Well, I apologize for my tardiness,” she said. “It was just good ol’ Los Angeles traffic.”
Silas tutted. “Come on, give me something better than that.”
Katherine hesitated. Bantering with him seemed like opening a door that should definitely stay closed, but the stress of the last few days had fried her desire to keep her defenses up. She wanted that moment of fun and normalcy—even if it was with Silas Khatri.
Finally, she said, “Attacked by a unicorn.”
“Scary. How’d you make it out alive?”
“Drove its horn into an electrical socket. Fried the beast.”
“Bloodthirsty.”
“Now that’s how my dates describe me.”
Silas laughed at that, a genuine belly laugh, and Katherine shifted in her seat at the real, true happiness that radiated from him in that moment.
The waiter saved her, walking by with menus and a too-long speech about the night’s specials. Silas ordered a bottle of wine for them both—white, at her request; a sauvignon blanc, at his; the most expensive one they had, at the waiter’s, clearly having clocked the money wafting off Silas like perfume—and they spent a quiet couple minutes perusing the menu before the waiter came back with their drinks and a chance to break the awkward silence with murmured pasta orders.
Silas lifted his wineglass to her, his blindingly white teeth showing as he smiled. “Cheers to a mutually beneficial partnership.”
Something about the way he saidmutually beneficial partnershipdid not call up boardrooms. At least, it did not call up being in boardrooms while still wearing proper business attire.
Katherine cheers-ed. “To your trip in LA being easy and uneventful.”And brief.
Their glasses clinked. Katherine took a sip. This bottle cost half her rent and it tasted the same as the one she picked up on her weekly Trader Joe’s run.
“Expensive wine…” Silas said, and Katherine steeled herself for the annoying faux-sommelier rant. “Tastes like shit.”
Katherine snorted, some of that expensive wine getting caught in her throat. “So why’d you let the waiter talk you into it, then?”
Silas shrugged, running a hand through his black waves. He pointed to the wall, where a teenage version of their waiter stood with a man and a woman—his parents, it looked like—in front of the restaurant, aGRAND OPENINGsign tacked over the door. “His family needs the money more than mine does.”
Katherine’s heart fluttered involuntarily. “That’s actually… decent of you.”
“Sorry for shocking you. Would you like me to go back to being a rich prick?”
“Please.”
“You would not believe the insolence of the staff on my yacht last week.”
Katherine snorted. Again. It was deeply unflattering.
“You’re cute when you snort.”
“Cuteis one way to describe it.”
“Would you prefer hot?”
God, he was a flirt. He was known for it, she reminded herself. He wasn’t the only one who had looked into his opponent’s reputation over the last couple of days. In the research she’d been gathering since his arrival, she’d heard of a dozen women who’d hadfunwith Silas as he traveled across the country. All the reports were the same—funalways highlighted (alongside other words that Katherine tried not to think too hard about, likegenerous, andenthusiastic, and “Jesus Christ, hismouth”), with the caveat that you shouldn’t expect anything more out of him. That when you scratched the pretty surface, there was nothing underneath.
She couldn’t reconcile that description with the man who had talked to her about magic and held her hand through the start of a panic attack. But it didn’t matter—whether Silas was the surface-level player everyone described or the smart, insightful person she thought might be hiding underneath, she couldn’t afford to let this be anything other than professional.
