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It wasn’t exactly a stunning character reference.
The waitress came back, breaking my inner monologue. It took me a few minutes to order given that I hadn’t been paying attention to the menu. I ignored Damien’s smirk as I placed my order and shut the menu for the waitress.
“I thought you’d at least order quickly since you kept me waiting.” He lifted his glass of whiskey to his curved lips.
“Oh, please. Fifteen minutes isn’t late. That’s a minor delay.”
“Was it accidental?”
“Define ‘accidental.’” I grinned, unable to fight my amusement. It wasn’t an accident. I knew it, he knew it. Hell, the freaking hostess who’d brought me to the table probably knew it, too.
“I’ll take that as a no,” he muttered into his glass.
One more thing to add to the list of things I knew about Damien Fox: he didn’t like to be kept waiting.
Surprise, surprise.
I sipped my wine and twirled the stem between my fingers before saying, “Shall we get to the point of this dinner?”
Damien raised an eyebrow. “We will as soon as our food is brought out. Eating is the point of dinner.”
Great. He was a smartass. Like me.
“I mean the reason for us coming here in the first place.” It took everything I had not to roll my eyes. Did we have to be so literal, smartass or no? “There was a reason you asked me to dinner, and I want to know what it was.”
“Do you often ask men who take you on dates for that reason?”
“This isn’t a date.”
“How do you know that?” He leaned forward with his forearm on the table, an action that made his shirt strain over the shape of his tensed bicep. “Maybe this is a date.”
I twisted my lips to the side. “I’d be more inclined to believe that if you hadn’t told me to come to dinner right after you attempted to buy the bar.”
“Touché.” His sexy, little half-smile made an appearance. “It’s more of a business dinner, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to know more about you.”
“Know more about me?” The man was still taking me for a fool. “Don’t tell me you offered to buy Scarlet without finding out everything you could about me and the bar’s history.”
If he was sheepish or embarrassed I had him pegged, he didn’t show it. I wasn’t sure he was capable of such humble emotions, to be honest.
Instead, he laughed. Low and strangely seductive, it filled the small space between us, eliciting goose bumps along my bare skin.
It was one more unfair weapon in his charismatic arsenal.
“You’re twenty-five-years-old and your birthday is June seventeenth. You graduated both high school and the University of Las Vegas a year early, opening you up to study for your Masters from home while working for your father. You were born here in Vegas and have lived in the same house your entire life. You have one parking ticket from nine years ago and are the sole owner of The Scarlet Letter.” He picked up his glass and sipped, smugness radiating off him.
“That’s pretty creepy.” The words left my mouth before I could stop them. “You know it’s not normal to know so much about someone you’ve only just met?”
“Not if you want to buy what they’ve got.”
“Knowing about a parking ticket I got when I was sixteen is slightly excessive. So is knowing that much about my education.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “To be fair, I didn’t know you’d done your Masters until you mentioned it. I was interested. Looking you up on the university website wasn’t hard.”
That was slightly annoying.
All right, that was a lie. It was really freaking annoying.
“What does my parking ticket have to do with anything?” It was the lone blot on my record, a total mistake, and I hated it when it was brought up. I’d paid the damn thing within twelve hours, for goodness sake.
“Nothing. It came up when I checked your criminal record.”
“I don’t have a criminal record.”
“The parking ticket says otherwise.”
I went to respond, then stopped. He was grinning—he was freaking well goading me into annoyance. “You’re the most annoying person I’ve ever had dinner with, and I’ve spent the past three months living in a house with four kids under the age of eight.”
“Why, thank you.” He grinned even as he took another sip of his drink. When I didn’t back down from his amused stare, he sobered, a heavier look flashing in his eyes. “Listen to me, Dahlia.”
Dear God, even the way he said my name was hot. Deeper and lower with a weirdly sexual inflection at the end.
Aside from his obvious personality flaws, was there anything wrong with this man?
“Yes, the point of this dinner was originally to discuss The Scarlet Letter.” Damien twirled the glass between his fingers. “I’m not going to change that, but it’s not a lie when I tell you I want to know more about you. Like I’ve said a hundred times, you fascinate me.”
