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“Staring at you, you mean,” I say. “I’m starting to think you’re embarrassed of me, Jamie Jensen. It’s like you don’t want the paparazzi seeing Mr. Famous with little old me—Whoah.”
I let out a little moan when he grabs me by the shoulder and pushes me up against the golden doors, his face turning savage again as he leans in close.
“It has nothing to do with that,” he snarls. “I don’t give a damn about their opinion. I just want you all to myself. I’ll take you down there right now and proclaim to the whole damn restaurant – the whole world, since people will be recording – that you’re mine and mine alone. I mean it, Jade. Look at me and tell me if I’m lying.”
I’ve never seen anybody look so certain as he stares at me. Now it’s not like I’m the only woman in the world. It’s like I’m the only woman who’s ever lived, anywhere, as though the very word woman to him means me.
On a womb-fueled whim, I take his face in my hands and kiss him, hard, tasting the rough sureness of his lips, the way they make me feel like I belong like nothing else ever has or ever could.
“I love how confident you’re getting,” he breathes huskily, whispering close to my lips between stolen kisses.
“I don’t know how,” I admit, my cheeks pricking red. “I just … I don’t know. With you, Jamie – when it’s just the two of us – it’s like I can pretend that I’m somebody else. Or maybe there’s been this person living in me all along and I’ve always been too nervous to let her out and …”
I let go of his strong jaw and throw my hands up.
“Does any of this make sense?”
“Yes,” he growls. “You’ve been waiting for me just like I’ve been waiting for you.”
He takes my hand and opens the gold gilded doors for me, presenting a private dining area that overlooks the Chaleur properly. The floor is quite bare, a massive statement in a city where real estate prices are so high. A single table and chair sit in the center of the room, elegant crystalline furniture that catches the light and reflects it back at us. A clouded glass vase sits on the table, holding a rose so that the stem is partially visible through the material.
“It looks like something out of a fairytale,” I murmur.
Jamie strides over to the table and pulls my chair out of me, smirking warmly.
“That’s fitting,” he says, “because you’re my princess, my queen, my…”
“Empress?” I offer with a giggle, loving how we can slip into our banter despite everything.
“Does that make me an emperor?” he smirks as I take my seat.
He walks around the table and sits opposite me, looking huge at the relatively minimalist table, like a giant come to dinner with a regular sized human, completing the fairytale theme.
“I think you’ve been an emperor for a long time,” I say.
“How so?” he asks.
“Well, you’re a billionaire, so there’s one. Also, I’ve watched some of your MMA fights online. So you’re a king of the cage, too …”
“And now I’m your king,” he teases. “Maybe you should curtsey to me every time we see each other.”
I giggle and I’m about to reach across the table to give him a playful slap – one of my favorite things to do since it means I get to feel his hard muscles – when the waiter appears as if from nowhere.
He wears a suit and an expression of neutral detachment, as though he’s trying his best not to intrude on our scene. Being a waitress myself, I smile a broad thank you to him when he places our menus down on the table, and I manage to get a small smile back.
I turn to find Jamie staring at me, an intense quality in his summer sky eyes, as though a storm is coming.
I swallow as nerves lance through me, wondering if Jamie thinks I was flirting with the waiter, wondering if I’ve just gone and ruined our first real date before it’s even really started.
Or could it just be the same intensity that captures his expression every time he looks at me?
“Can I get you some drinks to start, sir, madam?” the waiter asks.
“We’ll take some non-alcoholic champagne, thank you,” Jamie says, with a brisk nod.
The waiter retreats with a nod of his own and I’m left with that swirling uncertainty in my belly as I turn back to Jamie.
Jamie tilts his head at me and his eyes take on that perceptive quality, as though he’s looking through me and directly to my hidden emotions.
“Is something wrong?” he asks.
“That’s funny,” I murmur. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“Why?”
“Because … Well, I sort of thought you were angry at me for smiling at the waiter.”
