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“A fling, or an affair?” she asked after a moment.
He gave her a half-smile. “Perhaps a mix of both? A tryst?”
She turned away from him and looked out into the dark. “And why would I agree to do that?” she asked, her heart squeezing so tight she was surprised she hadn’t hit the forest floor. Why did she always fall forthistype of man? Anton had been wrapped in prettier packaging than the rest, but here it was, all the same. And what had that look she’d fallen for been? The one she’d thought was magic? What had it been truly made of then?
Lust?
Probably, now that she thought about it. A man who wanted her, but only for a moment.
“I’m a lot of fun,” he said.
“So I’ve heard,” Grace quipped, earning her a sigh.
“It’s all lies, you know,” he told her, his voice a touch too earnest for her liking. It had no place in a conversation like this, asking her to be a fling. Where did he get off sounding so sincere now? So like the man she’d fallen for over phone calls and email?
“I find that hard to believe when you’re proposing we have a-what did you call it?” She snapped her fingers in recollection and looked back at him over her shoulder. “Ah, yes, an affair.”
Anton wagged a finger. “Ah, ah, ah, that was not my word choice. I said a tryst, which is known the world over to be a far classier engagement. We could even term it a rendezvous, if it suited your mood. Keep it interesting.”
“Still doesn’t make me believe the rumors about you aren’t true,” she pointed out.
“I can see how that might paint me in a certain light, but what I’m proposing between the two of us would be civil, consensual, and respectful.”
She bit her lip and looked out into the night. The tram cars were just up ahead, the lights at their back. The party was in full swing now, but she couldn’t hear any of it. Didn’t think of any of it. Just this.
“For how long?” she asked him.
He raised an eyebrow. “How long what?”
She crossed her arms. “How long would this civil, consensual, and respectful rendezvous go on for?”
“The duration of my stay in Geneva,” he answered, and then said, “or it could be even shorter, if you wanted.”
She didn’t want to hear the answer, but she asked her question anyway. “And then what?
“Then we go on our separate ways, an-”
“And just pretend it never happened?” she interrupted him, barely able to conceal her irritation. Why she was mad she didn’t know. She stepped back from him and he moved quickly, trying to close the distance he could see her putting between them.
“Well, yes, that is generally how these things go,” he explained gently.
“That’s crazy,” she said with a snort, emboldened by the champagne.
“How so?”
“You don’t just...sleep with someone and then pretend it never happened.”
“You...don’t?” he asked, and he sounded genuinely confused.
Grace shook her head and took another step away from him and glared into the night. “Of course not. Who does that? This is real life, not some romcom movie. People don’t have relationships with determined dates of completion. How can you go from sleeping with someone on a Friday to cutting them out on a Monday? That would be actual torture, Anton.”
Anton looked puzzled. “It would?”
She threw her arms out at her sides and spun around to face him. “Yes. If you like someone-if there’s, I mean we have chemistry, okay? From day one, there was something there. I nearly died the first time you called me.”
A smile lit up his face. “Really?”
“Yes. Really,” she gritted out, and then sucked in a deep breath, plowing on ahead before she lost her nerve. “We’ve got chemistry by the bucketful. And if there’s chemistry, and you like them and sleep with them, then feelings happen. Feelings make things complicated, and you don’t just walk away easy-peasy from that, okay?”
