We're standing very close now, both breathing hard, and if I look closely I can see the pulse jumping in his throat.
Vic or Victor or The-Grinch-Who-Stole-Italian-Wool or whoever-he-is is now towering over me, that stupidly overbuilt body of his sending wafts of his bergamot, cotton-smoked scent into my blood stream.
My chest is practically heaving, as he sniffs, leaning towards me.
“Mm. Exactly what I suspected,” he muses.
“Suspected what?”
"You're going to be a liability."
"I'm going to be a WHAT?"
"A liability, Harper Beaumont. It’s a term that means?—“
“I’m familiar with the definition. Please keep the condescension to a level three, thanks. My brain is already hurting enough.”
He grins, but the expression is more a grimace—tinged with bitterness. “You’re a tiny brunette grenade, ready to blow up my company, my company, my reputation, my?—“
“So, now I’m a bomb? Great. I’ve always aspired to be a?—“
“—you have no idea what you’ve done, the havoc you’ve wrought.”
“Oh, awesome! First, I’m a grenade, then I’m havoc. Any other insults you want to throw at me, Victor Kade? I hear ‘whore’ is really popular around these parts, and I?—“
He reaches for me, snatching my wrist, his gray eyes burning. “How the hell do you know my name?”
I blink, my body buzzing, skin humming.
"Because you just told me you're the head of StreamEats, and I'm not an idiot!" I'm shaking with rage now. "Victor Kade. The Victor Kade. The Ice Prince of Silicon Alley. Forbes 40 Under 40. Billionaire media mogul who?—"
"Stop."
"—apparently thinks every woman he meets is trying to scam him.”
"I said stop."
“I’d rather not. Look, you don't get to investigate me and then tell me to stop!” I lift my chin towards him, meeting his dark gaze. “I don’t care if you’re richest goddamned man on the planet. You don't get to look at me like I'm some kind of con artist when I woke up just as confused as you are. And you don’t get to insult me because you’re angry at your own lack of self-control.”
He flinches, as if struck, and for a second, I imagine that this is it, that I’ve done it.
I’ve insulted a man powerful enough to make me disappear and that’s what he’s going to do—disappear me. Call in his well-paid, probably-all-black-wearing goons to throw me in the sea or into an incinerator.
And all that while be left of me is my Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs, my grandmother’s favorite ring, and this Heart-of-the-Ocean diamond on my lefthand finger.
In the meantime, Victor’s jaw is clenched so hard I'm worried his teeth might crack. "You don't remember anything from last night."
The words are soft, almost a whisper, and they draw me in.
I shake my head. “No, I do not. Do you?”
He's quiet for a while.
"Pieces," he says finally. "The arcade. The chapel. The—Other parts."
My gut does a somersault. “What other parts?"
"That's not important right now."
