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“It’s a good thing I did. He had a hand on your leg, when I got there.”
“It wasn’t on my leg. It was my knee, and it was only for a second. And it was a friendly gesture. He saw that I was upset when the waiter put that plate in front of me...”
“And why did that happen?”
“Because I couldn’t read the menu,” Emily said coldly, “and I was too proud to admit it. Any other questions?” “Did it ever occur to you that Jennett should have told you what that dish was when you ordered it?”
“He just assumed—”
“He assumed you were as innocent as Little Red Riding Hood, and that turned him on. Dammit, you don’t need to learn about menus, you need to learn about men.” Jake moved closer to her. “I looked at you tonight—hell, I looked at you last night—and I felt...” What? What had he felt watching her laugh at another man’s jokes? Smile into another man’s eyes? “I felt as if I’d tossed a sparrow into a room filled with hawks.” His voice roughened. “There are things you need to learn, Emily.”
Emily shuddered. The wind had shifted; it was blowing in over the East River, chill and forbidding. Surely, that was the reason she was shivering. It couldn’t have had anything to do with Jake, with his proximity, with the sudden crazy desire she had to fling herself into his arms again.
“Is that the reason you kissed me?” she said quietly.
“Yes. No. Dammit, Em—” Jake drew a ragged breath. “Look, I can help you. I can teach you about men. What they want from women. What they look for, what they expect. The male-female thing, the thing you don’t seem to understand at all.”
Emily stared at Jake. He was right. He could teach her. He already had.
“Is that what you want to do?” she said huskily. “Teach me about the male-female thing?”
It seemed a long time before Jake answered. When he did, his voice sounded low and far away, even to his own ears.
“Yes. Yes, I do. And I promise you, Em, I’ll teach you all you need to know.”
Everything came to a stop. The whispers of the city night, the moan of the wind, even the thump of Emily’s heart as she lifted her eyes to Jake’s face.
“Jake,” she whispered. “Jake, I don’t think—”
No, he told himself wildly. No, she wasn’t thinking. Neither was he. He felt as if he were standing in a dark tunnel, trying to find his way out only by feel.
He took a step back, jammed his hands into his coat pockets, knotted them into fists. “It’s too late to think,” he said gruffly. “It’s been a long day for both of us. We’ll talk tomorrow morning. Ten o’clock.”
“Ten...” Emily cleared her throat. “Ten o’clock?”
“Right.”
He took another step, backed carefully down the stairs. Did she have to look at him like that? With her eyes so wide and dark, her lips parted? He could kiss her now. Hell, he could have her now. Take her in his arms, lead her upstairs, let it all happen, everything they’d both been fighting the past days or maybe the past year; he was beyond trying to figure it out.
But he wouldn’t do it. What he’d do would be to teach her the things she needed to know about men. How to talk to them. How to see a pass and head it off. Nothing else, because Emily wasn’t his kind of woman, or maybe he wasn’t her kind of man. She was innocent and sweet; she had no idea how the game was played. She’d open her heart to a man, offer him everything and expect everything in return. Not little blue boxes from Tiffany’s or long-stemmed hothouse roses but an intimacy that had nothing to do with what two people did together, in bed.
And that wasn’t his thing.
He wanted her, yeah, but if he had her, what then? It would be over for him but not for her, and it wasn’t his ego talking now, it was reality. Emily was a forever kind of woman but he wasn’t a forever kind of guy. She’d look at him with those big eyes, she’d probably cry, and he’d feel like the worst kind of SOB as he walked away.
It was better to walk away now.
Jake took a deep breath.
It wouldn’t kill him. Years from now, it might even make him feel pure and righteous to look back and remember that he’d done it. He’d walk away from temptation. Hell, he’d do more than that. He’d see to it Emily really did meet a man, not just one to date but one who cared about her. A guy she could be happy with.
It was the right thing to do.
“Ten o’clock,” Jake said gruffly.
Then he did the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. He turned his back on Emily, got into the waiting taxi, and rode off into the night.
