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Six
One Eighty was named for its half-circle shape. The restaurant hovered over Dallas, on the eighty-eighth floor of one of the city’s most shimmering skyscrapers.
Outside the smudgeless windows, deep blue skies were losing their light and the moon was making its nightly appearance.
Pen had stopped working at five, unusual for her, but then so were billionaire dinner dates that were personal rather than solely business.
“How are your prawns?” Zach, fork and knife in hand, leaned over his steak dinner to ask.
“Delightful. How is your strip?”
“Fantastic.”
They shared a grin over the low candlelight, and a ping of awareness that started in Pen’s stomach radiated out until it created a bubble around her and Zach.
Along with that ping of awareness came a lower, subtler thrum of warning.
She liked him. A lot.
Their chemistry was off the charts in bed, but also out of it.
She could’ve easily dismissed him as a playboy—a charmer who knew what to say to get a woman out of her clothes. Admittedly, Zach had done just that. But along with getting her out of her clothes, he’d also made a point to keep her in his life.
After what went down with her ex-boyfriend, Cliff, in Chicago—where she’d quite literally been bamboozled by a smooth-talking charmer—she should be wary of Zach.
But she wasn’t wary.
Maybe it was because she’d gotten to know his brother, the mayor, and Stefanie, his sister. Maybe it was because of the way Zach had asked her to dinner when he full well could have invited her to his place.
She’d have said yes either way.
Did he know that?
She sliced into her shrimp dinner—buttery, garlicky, lemony heaven. “I contacted Yvonne today and let her know you were willing to talk about—”
“Penelope.”
Fork hovering over her plate, she hazarded a glance at her date. Zach didn’t look perturbed as much as patient.
“Sorry,” she said. “I want to get this over with.”
His eyes narrowed, eyelashes a shade darker than his hair obliterating his gorgeous green stare. “With Yvonne, yes. You and I? Not so much.”
When she’d called him a caveman at the mayor’s party, she hadn’t been far off the mark. But she saw no reason to argue the point. The fact was she would wrap up the issue with Zach’s ex-wife and then they’d have no reason to see each other. She’d make her services available for Chase or for their party-loving sister, but Pen and Zach had an expiration date.
So why are you here?
Excellent question.
“Did you pack a bag like I asked?” Zach lifted his wineglass, which was as foreign as the black shirt and black suit combo. She’d been so sure at that jazz club that she’d run into a blue-collar guy moonlighting in slacks. Now that she’d seen him in tuxes and suits, her brain scrambled to make sense of it.
He’d seemed safer when he was a contractor. Before she learned of his bank account or his heritage.
Nevertheless...
“I packed a change of clothes, yes.” She took a dainty sip from her own wineglass. While she wasn’t sure how to define what she and Zach had or to know how long they had access to it, she wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to fill her head and heart full of sexy, vivid memories that would last if not a lifetime, at least a few years.
“Good. I want to show you my place. I think you’ll like it.” He took another bite of his steak, but not before dragging it through his mashed potatoes. A steak and potatoes guy. She shook her head as she tried to merge the two versions of Zach she thought she knew.
