Page 55 of Resist

“Mr. Lockhart? Ms. Noname for you,” the maître d’ says. My eyes whip to his while Ryker chuckles.

“Thank you,” Ryker says.

“Noname?” I ask.

“Your last name was too personal, remember?” Our eyes hold, an audience of attention weighing our interaction they can’t hear as I try to process how to react.

“Still is,” I murmur as laughter rings out on the other side of the room, drawing my eyes, but his are still on me when I look back at him. “You can’t hang up on me now, so what are you going to do?”

“Cute,” he says with a lopsided ghost of a smile.

“I try to be.” We stare across the space for a few moments. “An event?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I thought we were having dinner.”

“We are.”

“Care to elaborate?” There’s something about his stare—the one that says he’s looking to devour me—that has my throat going dry.

“This is my club.”

“Do you have to do something special to join this club?” I ask as he puts a hand on my lower back and guides me to his table.

“Yes.”

“This is the part where you actually use more than one-word answers so that I know what’s expected of me.”

“Just like it’s important for you to give me answers too.” Ryker smiles at a couple to the left of us as I notice the sly looks others give our way. Either I’m grotesquely out of place or they’re not used to seeing Ryker with a woman.

I’m not sure which answer I’m rooting for most . . . because I’m not sure if I want to fit in here.

“I give you answers,” I say as he pulls out a chair for me at a quiet table in the corner. Glass windows are on two sides of it, the club high enough to see into the distance—the Statue of Liberty, the lights twinkling—so that it feels like we are on our own island in the sky.

“Like Ms. Noname?” he says with a quirk of a brow and a slight smile. I sigh. “A simple answer is all it requires, Vaughn. Last name?”

I give him the one answer I know will make him stop asking. “Lockhart,” I deadpan.

“And Noname is good.” He gives a definitive nod while I laugh. He shakes his head as he takes his seat and stares at me across the short distance.

“So the event? The club? Care to tell me if I was supposed to knock three times while hopping on one foot to gain access?”

His eyes light up as he glances at the extravagance around him that he blends into seamlessly. “It’s a status thing.”

“You’re not answering my question.”

“Your income has to be at a certain level. You have to give a certain amount annually to charities. You have to—”

“Come from the right bloodline?”

He leans back and brings his drink to his lips while staring at me above the rim. “Why do I get the sense if that were the case that this would all bug you?”

“It bugs me even if it isn’t the case.”

“Why?”

It’s a simple question. One I know the answer to.