“Why? Do I seem like an asshole who doesn’t want to have his hands all over his woman?”
She laughed, but thrilled inside—against her better judgment—at the use of his. She wasn’t his woman. She had no plans on being his woman. But she was his woman for another fourteen days. Happily.
“I just would never have thought you were that type of guy.”
“You didn’t think I wanted to have you in my lap, either. But yet I did,” he said, stopping to bring their clasped hands to his mouth for a quick kiss as they passed a florist, the front of the shop teeming with flowers in bright orange and yellows—late summer shades. “How else am I surprising you?”
How else?
In so many ways. He was not what she would have expected from the first night, or from what she suspected people saw on the surface—his gorgeous chiseled good looks, his sharp well-dressed style, his cool blue eyes, both warm and distant at the same damn time.
He had more contradictions than she’d ever have suspected, and she was someone who trafficked in contradictions. Who was accustomed to them. Who had come to expect them. But Jack was tender and sweet when he could have been removed; he was removed when he could have been calloused; he was self-protective when he could have been cruel.
“Well?” he asked, prompting her as they darted past a group of teenage girls hanging onto each other and their phones outside a yogurt shop. The girls clearly weren’t going to move. And Jack clearly wanted her opinion. “How am I different than what you expected?”
She parted her lips to speak, her natural instinct, her professional desire to speak the truth plainly kicking in. “You’re sweeter, kinder, and more affectionate than I would have thought, given why you were in my office,” she said, looking him square in the eyes.
He stopped in his tracks, forcing her to stop too. “You didn’t think I could be affectionate?”
“Well,” she said as if the answer were obvious.
“I so can,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her waist, and tugged her close, dropping his forehead to hers. They stood in the middle of the crowded sidewalk. Men and women in suits and clickety-clack heels with determined looks on their faces, rushing to catch trains and buses and cabs home, were forced to walk around them. “With the right woman . . .” he said and brushed his lips ever so gently against hers so that all thoughts tumbled out of her skull, leaving her with nothing but feelings. The fresh bloom of feelings for this man.
“Who’s the right woman?” she asked when he pulled away.
“You,” he whispered, in a voice that was clear and direct.
And cut straight through the walls. He couldn’t possibly be suggesting there was more to them? Could he? They were nighttime. They were deadlines. They were the city after hours. They weren’t more. They weren’t a couple. Whatever affection he felt for her was clearly borne of sex. So she turned the conversation in that much less frightening direction as they resumed their walk uptown.
“By the way, Jack, I’ve noticed that filthy mouth of yours was much more refined the first night I met you.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
She nodded. “Yes. Now the way you talk to me is blunter. Rougher,” she said, and she’d seen the slight changes the more they were together. He seemed to let go more with that dirty mouth, using words he hadn’t used the night they’d met, asking rougher questions, demanding answers.
“Maybe it’s part of my plan to woo you,” he joked. “Is it working?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
He leaned closer, brushed her hair away from her shoulder, and whispered hotly in her ear, “I think you’re a very dirty girl beneath that good-girl exterior.”
His words sent a rush through her. He was right. He was so right.
She tilted her face to him, and answered with a curve of her lips. “And you like it that way.”
“I love it that way,” he said in a husky voice that gave away his desire.
She tensed, wondering if he’d been like this with Aubrey. If he’d thrown her down on his desk, if he’d demanded answers about her dirty fantasies. She wished terribly that the thought had not touched down in her head, but now that it was there, it worried away at her. There was no way she’d ask him if he’d been like that with other women. That was too personal. Besides, it was a rude question. Michelle Milo aspired not to be rude.
Instead, she simply sighed.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked, as they turned the corner onto a quieter street lined with trees and a mix of pretty brownstones, some white, some brick, all beautiful.