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I didn’t want to offer him mine, either. I’d made myself vulnerable around Max, and he’d used my deepest emotional wound as a punching bag.
My smile strained at the corners, but I resolutely held it in place and forced myself to remain present with Niko.
“I feel like I’ve spent all this time talking about me,” I said, slightly apologetic. Niko had peppered me with questions about my studies and my internship, taking up most of our time together with conversations about my life. I’d been too overwhelmed and anxious to press back.
Now that I’d seen a flicker of his own pain, my resolve firmed. “Tell me more about what you do,” I requested. “You work for your dad’s business, right? Hedge fund management?”
His grin stretched into something self-deprecating, but his eyes went flat. “Yes, but that’s all very boring.”
I leaned toward him slightly, my anxiety ebbing even more in the face of his discomfiture. “You don’t like your job?”
He blinked at me, and surprise flickered over his features, as though he hadn’t expected me to catch that. He sighed, and the fake smile dropped again. I was glad to see it go.
“I’m good at what I do,” he admitted. “But it’s not the most exciting career in the world. Not to me, at least.”
“Then why not do something else? What would you prefer to do?”
A slight grimace ghosted around his mouth before he could stifle it. “My father expects me to work for the family business. It’s not optional. And I don’t really know what I would prefer to do, so I have no real reason to push back about it.”
“What did you study at Harvard?” I asked. “Was there anything that sparked your interest more?”
He shrugged. “I like Economics and History. I like understanding why people made certain choices and how that shaped the world. My interests aren’t entirely unsuitable for my career.”
His mood was turning almost glum, and it seemed inherently wrong that I’d melted the playboy smirk off his face. I scrambled to fix what I’d darkened with my difficult questions. “If you could do anything you wanted to do tomorrow—not just work—what would you do?”
He shot me a crooked grin, a genuine one this time. “Are you trying to cheer me up?”
It was my turn to shrug, and my cheeks heated. “I’m the one who brought down the mood. It’s the least I can do.”
He released a low, rumbling hum, and the wolfish glint returned to his pale eyes. They roved over my face, dipping lower for half a second before capturing my gaze in his.
“If I could do anything I wanted?” His tone was pure temptation, and molten desire pooled in my belly. His predator’s eyes consumed me, utterly captivating my full, feminine attention.
His hand was still on mine, engulfing my much smaller fingers in a careful but masculine grip.
I shifted in my seat, and his low, amused chuckle rumbled all the way to my core.
“I was going to say I’d take you to Bali and teach you to surf, if you don’t know how.” His grin turned positively wicked as his gaze flicked to my burning cheeks. “But you look flushed. Maybe you’d prefer somewhere cooler? I could take you snowboarding in the Alps.”
Each heated statement stunned me. My own family was wealthy, but his casual descriptions of whisking me off on international vacations with less than twenty-four hours’ notice was a shocking reminder of just how well-off he was.
It was overwhelming. He was overwhelming.
The butterflies in my stomach beat their gossamer wings, making me shiver at the slightly sickening thrill.
Niko eased back in his chair, and his thumb brushed over my knuckles in a small gesture of comfort. “Maybe not tomorrow,” he allowed with a wink. “Date number five. Deal?”
He wanted to go out again? Even after I’d been so awkward?
I released a strangely shaky giggle in a burst of nervous energy. “Maybe. I don’t know about the surfing and snowboarding. I’m not the most coordinated person.”
His smile remained fixed in place, but I saw the brittleness at the edges. “Then you can leave the extreme sports to me. We can go anywhere you want.”
I got the sense that Niko liked living on the edge. I didn’t. In that moment, we both realized that we weren’t compatible in that regard, but he pushed through it.
“Name a place,” he commanded, his tone still light and teasing.
“How about Central Park?” I suggested. “I have my internship. As amazing as it sounds to go lounge on a beach somewhere, I can’t leave the city.”
“I guess I can’t abandon work, either. Fine. Central Park. It’s a date.” He blew out a longsuffering sigh, but there was something affected about it. The real Niko had closed himself off again.
I cut my gaze away, struggling to smother my discomfiture. I was glad that he’d allowed me a glimpse at his true self, even if it had been fleeting. But I didn’t like that my responses had caused him to put his walls back up.
