Page 17 of Resist

But when he just eyes me and then begins to eat without furthering the conversation, my frustration gets the better of me. Wasting my time annoys me.

I lean forward and lower my voice. “If I’m only here for one thing, then why don’t we do that one thing, and you can then come back down here and chat up your friends.”

“Chat up my friends?”

“Yes. Your friends. Acquaintances. Whatever they are . . . because it’s not like you’re including me in any of your conversations with them, so it seems I’m not needed here.”

He sets his fork and knife down and leans back in his seat, those eyes of his back on mine again as he weighs whatever it is that he wants to say. “Friends? Acquaintances? I wasn’t aware that our date meant I had to fill you in on every person who stops by. That was an old friend of mine,” he says with a nod to where Colton walked off to. “Colton’s a race-car driver. You might have heard of him before. But it doesn’t matter if you have or you haven’t because he’s my friend, in town for a few nights, and it wasn’t like I was inviting him to join us.”

“That’s not what I was implying,” I say, frustrated with him for not understanding what I mean and wanting to do a double take in the direction of Colton now that I know who he is. “I meant—”

“You’re pretty forward for a woman in your position.” There’s a bite to his voice, annoyance lacing its edges and matching how I feel.

“My position?”

“Am I boring you, Saxony?”

“No, but let’s just say the fact that you’re not paying me for conversation is overly apparent . . . as is what you think of me, and so I was just thinking we could cut the pretenses and awkwardness.”

Careful. You’re sounding way too much like Vee. A madam and not an escort.

“And what is it that you think I think of you?” he asks.

“You tell me.”

He laughs. It’s a low rumble that vibrates in the tense air between us. “That’s not how this game works, Saxony.”

“I wasn’t aware we were playing a game.”

“Isn’t everything a game, though?”

It’s my turn to hesitate in response, and then I decide to be honest. “I think you see a woman who you can’t figure out. You assume she’s uneducated, uncensored . . . and unrefined. She has no self-worth and therefore turned to this profession to make a quick buck doing the only thing she’s good at until she can wrap her tiny brain around what else she can do better.”

With our eyes still locked on one another’s, he picks up his tumbler of whiskey and takes a sip of it. There’s something about the intensity in his eyes. They make me feel like they can see right through this lie when I know there’s no possible way he could know.

None.

His nod is even and measured. “And I think you’re wrong. We all choose our careers for certain reasons. I spend hours trying to make men happy. I pore over their history, their assets, their everything and try to find a way to extricate them from their marriage with the least amount of collateral damage to themselves and their financial well-being. You spend hours trying to make men happy too. The way I look at it, we’re no different. We’re both getting paid very well to screw one person to satisfy another.”

“That’s an interesting way of putting it.”

“Would you rather I sugarcoat it?”

“No.” I look down to my steak, barely touched, because while I may be fine with having sex with him later, it doesn’t mean I’m not nervous about it.

“Both are business transactions with our endgames in mind.”

“And what’s your ultimate endgame?” I ask, curious if it’s to win the case. Make millions. Or I don’t know, gain satisfaction knowing he’s screwing over women.

“I could ask you the same question.”

Our eyes meet—hold—until we both realize that neither of us is comfortable answering that question just yet. I glance down to where my fingers are running up and down the stem of my wineglass before looking back at him.

“You said men. Do you always represent the men in your cases?”

“Yes.”

“Even if the divorce is their fault?”