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Matthias pushes my hand away and runs his tongue along my lips before dabbing at my face gently with a napkin.
It's a sweet moment that makes that spot between my legs throb.
I clear my throat, and take another sip of my mimosa. "You're going to make the Koalas jealous."
"Good, think how I've been feeling watching you suck those things down."
Heat flares in our shared look, and I have to look away before I feel consumed by it.
We eat and he asks how the club has been the last few days. We're coming into our fourth full week of being open and it's going better than I had imagined. He laughs when I tell him about how the piano guy showed up and almost everyone in the neighborhood has come to ask when he was going to be there.
"You know, I wish we could get his piano inside, but I'm not sure how we could swing it. It should look gimmicky but it's not."
"Let me have a look at the club tonight. Maybe we can sort something out," he says. As if it's the most normal thing in the world for him to just find a solution to every problem I have.
"He said something strange, he said that his fee was 'sorted.'"
Matthias doesn't say anything, just pops another grape into his mouth. It's a suspicious silence though.
"Matthias, what do you think that meant?"
"I think it means that his fee is sorted." He holds up the sugar bowl. "Some more?" It reeks of distraction, I should know. It's my favorite method of evading.
I knew it. "What did you do?" I ask my tone accusing.
He grins. "Nothing, I asked a friend for a favor. And now you have a great entertainer and he's getting his name out there."
"Andyou're paying his fee." Unbelievable. But also, unbelievably sweet.
"Eh, let's just say I'm providing financial compensation for him doing you a favor."
I think about arguing, but judging by the way his jaw is set, it's just going to be wasted breath. I'll pick a time when he's feeling more amenable to me arguing with him. "What about you, what did you do in the last few days?"
"I'm looking for a farm. Well, a ranch."
I didn't expect that. "For Baxter Enterprises?"
He shakes his head and wipes his mouth after taking the last bite of his food. "Nope. For myself. It's just something I've been thinking of but... well, since I was getting out of the city, it was as good a time as any to look at some of the places I've been thinking about."
He pours a little champagne into his glass and swirls it around. "The longer I live in Manhattan, the longer I realize I need a place to get away from Manhattan. Damien has Baxter winery in Barossa Valley. Kylian has his island in Ko Kaeo, Thailand. And even though Kingsley's least favorite thing is leaving the office, even he has a place just out of Edinburgh to get away when the doctor tells him he needs to take a break. I have properties in Houston and Chicago, but those are mainly because I don't like staying in hotels long term when I'm there for work. I've just been so busy since I moved here, I haven't really had time to turn a place into a home. A place I can fly to just for the weekend, you know?"
"Sure." I imagine everyone wants that, but not everyone has that luxury. Even if it's just the luxury of time.
He seems a little sheepish that he talked so much, but I wish I could tell him that I liked it. I like listening to him, I like learning more about him.
"Did you ever go to Baxter Winery?" he asks.
"Damien never invited me." I answer.
"Clarissa, I'm sorry. He should've been better to you than that."
I wave his words away. "It's fine. We... should never have gotten into the arrangement, I see that now. We were so naïve making that decision, when we didn't even really know who were as people yet, let alone what kind of people we wanted to be in the future. We both were hyper-fixated on what we both thought we wanted out of life. Turns out we were both wrong."
"You don't have to answer this but..."
I already know what he wants to know, I'm just surprised he didn't know.
"Yes. We slept together once." I rub my hand, anxiety rising in my stomach, but I know this is a conversation we need to have. "You're not going to like me very much after this. We came home from a gala and he had had a lot to drink. We were joking around about something, and we ended up kissing. And then it just happened, even though I knew that if he was sober, he would never have gone through with it. It was stupid. And instead of it making us closer... that day was when he started pulling away. He never blamed me, but I think he didn't want to give me the wrong idea. He didn't have any romantic feelings for me. Anyway, he broke it off a month after that."
