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I opened the door, and he held out a single red rose for me to take.
“You look beautiful,” he said before planting a kiss on the side of my cheek.
He made it hard to continue holding a grudge. He looked gorgeous, too, decked out in a charcoal-gray suit, no tie, and the top button undone on his shirt. The man had no right being that sexy.
The sound of clicking grabbed my attention, and I spotted someone holding a camera not too far away from us. So, that was why Joseph was being all gentlemanly and kind. We were being watched. I forced a smile, took his hand when he offered it, and headed toward the back of a black town car.
“Did you see that guy taking pictures?” I asked, assuming that he had.
“No.” Joseph suddenly looked shocked. “Are you sure?” he asked. He looked around at the neighborhood as the car pulled away.
Now, he had me questioning my own judgment. Maybe the man hadn’t taken pictures of us at all. Maybe I’d imagined things because Kayla had planted the seed in my head.
“I could be wrong,” was all I managed to say in response.
“You probably aren’t.” He shifted in the seat next to me, angling his body toward me. “Are you ready for this?”
I swatted the butterflies flapping in my stomach. “For what exactly?”
“People paying attention. Watching what we eat. How we eat. How we act with one another. If we laugh. If we don’t. Everything about this date is about to be under the microscope.” His eyes pulled together, as if he was worried about me. Maybe he was.
“Can you ever be ready for all that?” I asked because if I overthought it, I wouldn’t get out of the back of this car.
He laughed, and I enjoyed the sound far more than I had any right. There were only a few paparazzi hanging outside of the restaurant, but their attention was focused on us—more specifically me when they realized who I was with. The sound of Joseph’s name being yelled was all I heard until he reached for my hand and navigated us inside. The maître d’ was clearly expecting our arrival and escorted us toward the back, menus in hand.
Some heads turned to follow our movements, their eyes wide as Joseph continued to hold my hand for everyone to see. Other people couldn’t have cared less who we were or what we were doing there. I liked that much better than all the attention.
Once we sat down, it was easy to forget about anyone else and focus solely on my fake date. Joseph became the one constant. Paying attention to him and no one else seemed to calm me. Even though he should have had the opposite effect.
“Tell me about your work at the hospital,” he said as he perused the menu after a “complimentary” appetizer tray was brought out. “Your focus, I mean. You’re in trauma?”
I shook my head. “I am, but that’s not my specialty.”
“What is then?” His fierce eyes met mine and held. “I should know this stuff about my girlfriend,” he added, and I realized then that he didn’t care about me personally. He was only doing his part of the job.
“The burn unit,” I said, feeling confident and proud of my decision. That was, until his expression dropped and he looked down at his pants.
“Is that why you tried to light my junk on fire at the party?”
An annoyed sound escaped my lips. “For the last time, I wasn’t trying to light you on fire.”
“Well, someone was,” he said in response.
I leaned back in my chair, my lips pursed together as I gave him a smug look. “You’re right about that. Someone was.”
He caught on to what I was hinting at instantly, and his mouth twisted into a smirk. “Are you saying that I was trying to light myself on fire?”
“If the shoe fits.”
The waiter chose that moment to walk up and take our drink orders. I still hadn’t looked at the menu long enough to decide and readily agreed when Joseph offered to pick for me. Our waiter disappeared, and Joseph narrowed his gaze on me again.
“So, why the burn unit? What about that drew you to it?” He folded his arms on top of the table, his focus solely on me, as if no one else existed in the room. Hell, the universe. That was how Joseph Martin made you feel when he watched you.
His question was something I thought about every single day. The patches of messed up tissue and skin grafts were all that remained on my body from a night I barely even remembered anymore. I ran my hand across my stomach before deciding that I’d tell him the truth.
“I got burned when I was a kid. My shirt caught on fire, and even though my parents got the fire out fast, I still had really bad burns on my stomach.”
He hadn’t expected that answer. I could tell by the look on his face.
