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It never happened.
I looked at him with a small smile, and he laughed. The sexy way his mouth curved up and the flash of his perfect, white teeth had me hurtling dangerously close to panty-dropping territory. I squeezed my thighs together. My panties weren’t going anywhere.
Making himself a little more comfortable, he turned his body to face me and by the jiggle under the table, I knew he had crossed his ankle over his knee. “So how did a girl like you end up living with two escorts?”
A “girl like me”? Why did I desperately want to know what he thought of me?
“Gra—Jade has been my best friend since we were nine. She moved in six months ago.” What I didn’t say was that it was while my grandmother was dying and didn’t tell anyone. “And Stella is her co-worker, so…we’re all living happily ever after.” I also didn’t say it was because I didn’t want to live in a big house alone.
“So you’re cool with their choice of…occupation?”
I understood why Grace had turned to being an escort. It wasn’t something we’d fantasized about when we were in high school, but she knew she wouldn’t make the same amount of money anywhere else. And she liked sex, plain and simple. She liked calling the shots. She liked the way it felt to make men fall to their knees. At least that’s what she’d told me. Unfortunately, those weren’t the skills they taught in law school.
“I might spend the rest of my life working within a system that is black and white, but I know for a fact that life is full of gray. And it’s the gray that makes everything worthwhile.”
Or so I’m told. I had never, not once, dabbled in the gray side of life.
He eyed me from across the table and I had to suppress the squirm. Even in scrutiny those eyes were overwhelming.
“Stella and Jade are…beautiful. Smart. Sophisticated.” I sighed. “Well dressed. They are more than their occupation.”
Despite Grace also working her way toward a degree, I was nothing like them. They shopped at Holt Renfrew. I wore grocery store jeans and Costco comfortable tops.
He eyed me with those gorgeous brown eyes and it was all I could do to keep myself from crawling into his lap and mapping every fleck of gold that stared back at me.
“You know, it’s not the clothes that make the person.”
He was right. I had much more to offer than a mediocre wardrobe and unassuming looks. I was in the top five percent of my class and had competed and won an articling position at Sutherland, Sutherland, and Marks, one of the most prestigious firms in Toronto.
This was now the second time he’d surprised me with a thoughtful, sympathetic comment. While I was an advocate for women being able to freely choose their career path, this man made his living off ogling women. Literally.
“Just please don’t tell me you buy your panties three in a bag.”
I laughed, because I did. “Maybe those are the best kind.”
He leaned forward and clasped his hands on the table. “On you they would be, sweetheart.”
I sighed, shaking my head. “Let’s not play this game.”
I knew my place in the hotness hierarchy, but that didn’t mean I would hang my head and bite the sleeves of my sweater whenever a hot guy came into my vicinity. I was comfortable and confident in my body, my brain, and my plans for the future.
My future. Or so I kept telling myself that. My parents and I had mapped it years ago, before I was even in high school.
“What game?” he asked. He looked genuinely offended.
“The game where you use all your best lines and I leave here thinking you’re the sexiest, nicest guy I’ve ever met and that my life just wouldn’t be complete if I don’t sleep with you. Essentially, charming me right out of my pants.”
There was something in his eyes. I’d noticed it earlier when he’d deliberately ogled me. It was the same haze I saw darken Grace’s eyes every time she turned it on. The look that told me she was present, but not real. Max looked at me the same way. “There’s got to be more under that well-fitted suit.”
If I hadn’t been already looking at him, I wouldn’t have noticed the two-second moment when his mouth dropped open. I had penetrated that charming veneer, but he recovered, changing the conversation to something he was more used to. “So you think I’m sexy and nice.”
He was incorrigible. “Now you’re putting words in my mouth.”
“They were your words.”
I huffed. “If we were in a courtroom, I would object. Badgering the witness.”
He leaned forward with a small laugh. “I have no chance at winning an argument with you, do I?”
