And then, because he’d been so damn right about her—scarily right—Grace gave him her best ice-princess smile. The one that ensured drunk guys in bars kept their distance, and that catty women didn’t dare gossip about anyone in Grace’s circle of friends.
But this guy? This guy didn’t seem to interpret her special smile for what it was. Because if anything, his dark brown gaze grew warmer.
No. It grew downright hot.
And suddenly Grace realized that she was playing it all wrong with this guy. Even though she shouldn’t be playing at all.
This guy didn’t need ice from her—he could melt it with that perfect grin and won’t-you-come-to-my-bed eyes. No, this one deserved fire.
Fire was something Grace Brighton had always been a little short on.
But luckily for this jackass, she’d spent the past several months getting over the bone-searing pain of having the former love of her life cheat on her.
And now? Now she was done with the denial. Done with the tears.
The anger had set in.
So yeah. She just happened to have a fresh dose of fire in her arsenal.
“My turn,” she said sweetly.
His brows lifted condescendingly. “Think you’ve got a read on me, huh?”
Oh, I know I do.
See, the guy had been pretty dead-on in his assessment of her, but there was one very important detail that he hadn’t hit on. The job that enabled her to wear her “tight skirts and high heels”? That job just happened to be a career in this very type of thing.
Reading men.
And then writing about it.
Sure, Greg might have pulled the wool over her eyes—maybe stomped her ego a little bit—but Grace was determined to regain her title as Stiletto magazine’s expert on men and the games they played. She wasn’t one of the lead columnists of the country’s best-selling women’s magazine for nothing.
And this guy was exactly what she needed to get back in the saddle.
“So let’s see,” she said, resting her head against the back of the seat and mimicking his posture. “You work out religiously, probably to counteract the scattering of gray hairs popping up prematurely at your temples. I say prematurely, because you’re only thirty-three, but you work hard and you play hard, and you hate like hell that you can’t control your hair as easily as you do your biceps. Your job requires you to be endlessly charming, something that you happily carry over to your personal life, which I’m guessing means your longest relationship is somewhere in the proximity of … four months? Give or take. You fancy yourself a New Yorker, but your accent smacks of small-town Midwest—something you probably hate, though you’d never tell your parents, whom you’re close to.”
Grace paused to take a breath.
“It’s never occurred to you that a woman wouldn’t want to share her cab with you, and now you’ll spend the rest of the day wondering why I wasn’t fishing for a reason to give you my number. Then you’ll forget all about me tomorrow when the next tight skirt catches your eye. Also, your one-night stand with Miss Tribeca guarantees you’re wearing yesterday’s suit, although I’m guessing you drew the line on dirty underwear, which means you’re currently commando, which, in conclusion, I would like to point out is completely disgusting.”
As if on cue, the taxi came to a stop in front of her office building, and she pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and leaned over to tuck it neatly into his suit jacket pocket.
“How’d I do?” she asked sweetly, her hand already going for the door handle.
He moved quickly, reaching out a hand to grab her wrist even as he pried open her fingers and placed the twenty back into her palm. “Not bad,” he said, his voice husky.
Her eyes collided with his, and if they’d been warmly flirtatious before, they were burning hot as hell now. “But?” she asked, more than a little curious about how close she’d come.
His thumb flicked across her inner wrist, making her pulse jumpy. “You got everything right but one detail.”
She gave him a look of sympathy. “So you are wearing the dirty underwear, then?”
“No,” he said, his voice dropping even lower. “I mean you were wrong about the part of me forgetting you by tomorrow.”
Grace’s mouth went dry.
“Something tells me I’ll be remembering you for a long time.” With that, he released her arm, and Grace clawed for the door handle, her composure completely shot to hell by one handsome guy.
Grace 1.0 was practically tittering at the pretty words, and 2.0 was howling at the sky in anger.
Since 2.0 was noisier, Grace clung to disdain instead of swooning, and refused to spare the man a second glance as she tucked the twenty-dollar bill back into his pocket and climbed out of the cab.