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“And your take on Oskar and Emilie?” she prompted.
“Emilie is spoiled and was never allowed to grow up,” Hale said. “She also suffers from pretty-girl syndrome, erroneously operating under the assumption her good looks will get her everything she wants. This might be the case, at her age. But she’s going to run into some ugly truths when society deems her unworthy after she hits thirty-five. And she isn’t going to be prepared to face those, since she hasn’t put any effort into being more than what genetics gave her at birth.”
“Agreed,” Elsa replied.
“But I’ll never in my life understand a man like Oskar. He’s a chauvinist and a bigot. He obviously didn’t get that from his dad, and he’s educated, so he has no excuse not to be more enlightened. For his part, I think he has much deeper issues he’s grappling with that my amateur analysis can’t decipher.”
“Pity,” she said.
“Or maybe some men are just born assholes,” Hale went on.
That made Elsa laugh, genuinely, no-holds-barred, and Hale found the dichotomy of it sounding both cultured and abandoned fascinating.
When she sobered, she really sobered, because it was heartfelt when she said, “Thank you, Hale, for taking my back tonight. I’ve never had anyone but Dad do that, and none of them respect him, so it never really had an effect. I know I wasn’t appreciative of your offer to do it, but please know now how much I appreciate you being with me tonight.”
“My pleasure, sweetheart.”
She dipped her gaze as she took a sip of her wine, and the gesture was conspicuously shy.
It was also so not her, but he liked it so much, he felt it in his chest and his dick.
“Don’t eat too much,” she told him, putting her wine back on the table. “There’s a bakery a block up that has the best lobster tails you’ll ever eat, and they stay open until two in the morning, putting out fresh all day.”
Another advantage of New York.
“That’s a plan,” he agreed.
She smiled at him, and there was something shy about that too.
And it was confirmed.
He liked that ambitious, together, focused Elsa Cohen got shy around guys she was attracted to.
He liked it a fuckuva lot.
CHAPTER7
ALL ELSA COHEN ALL THE TIME
Elsa
My alarm sounded, my eyes opened, I turned and stared at it, confused for a moment because I was groggier than normal, and the numbers didn’t make sense.
And then I remembered my studio was in Manhattan now, so I was waking up an hour earlier. That was why the clock said it was 4:30, not 5:30.
I needed to get up.
I did not get up.
It was Wednesday after my Saturday night with Hale.
He was leaving town today, I knew, since he told me after I sent him the final cut of our interview yesterday, and he’d approved it.
But I hadn’t seen him since he walked me up to my apartment after he drove us to Pebble Beach, where we sat in the cold, ate our lobster tails and talked until after midnight.
At the time, I wasn’t paying attention. I was in a haze of all the wonder that was him.
I was in the haze of finding myself in the best date I’d ever had in my life.
