Page 23 of A Dangerous Kind of Love

“What’s good here?” I ask.

“Everything.”

I raise a brow. “Everything?”

“Trust me. I’ve had nearly everything on this menu, and it’s all good. You can’t go wrong.”

She doesn’t look up when she says it. Her attention stays on the menu, and for the first time tonight, she seems a little less tense. A server steps up to the table.

“Hi, I’m Megan. How are you tonight?”

Her attention lands squarely on me.

“We’re good,” I say. “You?”

“I’m good. It’s a little busy tonight, but that’s Saturdays for you.” She smiles again—at me.

Katie might as well be invisible. I reach across the table and take Katie’s hand. The server’s eyes finally flick down to where our hands are joined.

“I bet,” I say.

When I look back at Katie, she’s grinning at me.

“I’ll take a Dr. Pepper,” she says.

The server finally shifts her attention to her. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

“And for you, sir?”

“Water with lemon.”

The server walks away, and Katie says, “That was fun.”

I’m still holding her hand. She hasn’t tried to move it, so I lace our fingers together. She lets me.

“Yeah?” I lean toward her across the table. “I don’t need another woman thinking there’s even a possibility.”

“Okay, stalker. I might sort of like you,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me.

“Give it time, Doll.”

We order. She tells me about her job, and I give her the legitimate details of mine. The sanitized version—CEO of Amato Operations, real estate, development, port shipments, investments. She only insults me a few times.

By the time the check comes, she’s been talking for ten minutes straight about a summer she spent in Spain through a travel-abroad program in college. I’m barely listening. I’m watching her. Everything about her is goddamn mesmerizing. Her eyes. Her curls. The way she scrunches her nose when she’s trying to remember something she wants to say.

She’s telling me about a cafe in Barcelona and how she wants to go back someday. The last time I was in Barcelona, I was there to collect a debt from a man who thought he could ignore me. He learned otherwise. Of course, I can’t tell her that.

So I settle for, “I’ve been there a few times for work.”

“I bet you get to travel all around,” she says as we stand to leave.

“Yeah. I’ve been pretty much everywhere.”

It’s true. My job takes me to every corner of the world.

“I’m so jealous.”

We step outside, and she slips her arm through mine. I smile to myself. I knew it was only a matter of time.