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She hesitated while locking the door, her key partially inserted as she looked up at me with a question in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
“You didn’t say where we were going and you’re dressed... like that,” she gestured to my sport coat and dress slacks, then back to herself. “Is this okay?”
“It’s perfect.”
My head cocked to the side as I regarded her reaction, but I frowned when she suddenly looked uncomfortable. I had no idea what I’d done, but I wasn’t all that surprised. It’d been a long damn time since I been on a legitimate date. I was bound to screw up a couple times.
“So... are you going to tell me where we’re going?”
“Oh. Oh! I—oh shit, I thought...” I trailed off, not willing to say that I had convinced myself she was about to turn tail and run. “I thought we’d have dinner and go from there.”
She nodded before locking her front door and I could have laughed from the ridiculous amount of relief I felt. I managed to subdue it with just a smile as I silently led her to my car, opening the passenger door for her before going around to the driver’s side.
“Wow,” she said after I buckled my seatbelt. “This is nice.”
“Thanks. You like cars?”
“Enough to know a Maserati when I see one,” she said with a soft laugh before she curiously asked, “What do you do for a living?”
I turned over the engine and it roared to life before settling back to a low purr. Her fingertips trailed over the dashboard and I could tell she was doing it in curiosity, not in an attempt to tease. Yet I could feel my own motor revving as I imagined those curious fingertips trailing over my—
“Ethan?”
I hummed and jerked my head toward her, noting the alarm on her face. I softened my expression, but the mental image of her hand snaking into my pants wouldn’t leave no matter how hard I tried.
Her tongue darted out to moisten her pink lips—a nervous tick, I realized—and my dick twitched in my slacks.
It’d been way too long since I had sex. It was going to be a long fucking night.
“What was the question?”
“I asked what you do for work.”
“I’m the CEO of Adam’s Gym.” When her eyebrows raised in mild disbelief, I continued. “I started out by owning a single gym after I retired from bodybuilding. We got so popular I was forced to open a second just to keep up with demand. Word traveled and before I knew it—I was running a corporation. That’s pretty much all I do now. I handle all the boring crap like management and marketing from our main office. I don’t do anything in the actual gym anymore, unfortunately.”
“Doesn’t Adam’s also make products?”
“Yeah. That was kind of by accident.”
“How so?”
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that she didn’t need to pretend to be interested in my work—that I’d be perfectly happy discussing something she wanted to talk about—when I turned away from the road for just long enough to catch sight of her enraptured expression. I didn’t know whether she was fascinated in general or if it was something more insidious, but I pushed my paranoia to the side for the time being.
After all, it’d been a long time since someone looked so genuinely interested in me. Whether she was faking it or not—I was going to indulge in the opportunity.
“I never intended to do anything besides expand the gyms. A buddy of mine started up a small company specializing in protein powder and did fairly well, but his wife passed away and he was left raising his kids alone. When he mentioned selling his company so he could have more time with them, I bought it. Mainly because I wanted to help him out, but it turned out being a good business move.”
“Wow. That was really nice of you. I didn’t know people actually did stuff like that.”
I shrugged. “Quite a lot of people do stuff to help out others.”
“Not like that, though.”
“I had the means to do that for my friend, but most people would never make enough money to help someone on that kind of scale. I don’t think it’s fair to compare one good deed to another. Anyone who does some good with what they have—however little it may be—is a good person in my book.”
When it got deathly quiet in the car, I wondered if I had said something wrong and silently cursed at myself for thoughtlessly droning on. I was thankful I had the road to focus on instead of having to stare directly at her. God only knew what she must have been thinking.
