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“Love the city,” I said. “Miss it.” That one was a bit of a lie.
“I like New York,” he mused, thumbing through his phone like I wasn’t even there. Typical. “Whenever I’m in town for business, there’s this restaurant I always go to. It’s insane. Genius. Like some kind of fusion between Mexican food and Korean food. Amazing space, too.”
I laughed. “I know what you’re talking about, but you’re a sucker.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what I meant.” I slung my bag over my shoulder. “That you’re a sucker. Everyone knows that place stole its concept from a groundbreaking food truck.”
“I wouldn’t take clients to a food truck,” he said after a beat, pausing in his scrolling to look up at me. “That wouldn’t go over well.”
“Good.” I flipped my hair over my shoulder. “We don’t want your kind there, anyway.”
“My—what?”
“Tourists,” I sniffed before smirking. “Have a good one.”
“No, no. You can’t just leave like that.”
“Bye.”
Graham followed me outside to continue his pointless protest. “I’m not a tourist when I go to New York. It’s like another home.”
“I’ve heard that before,” I said, waving him away as I tossed my bag in my rental. I chanced a glance in his direction and was not disappointed. How was it possible that he was even sexier with a pout? Maybe it was just the lighting. “If you don’t live in New York, you can’t claim New York. It’s a rule.”
“Says who?”
“Says New Yorkers,” I said, preening. “Anyway, see you tomorrow.”
I got in the car only to find Graham settling into the passenger’s seat.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” I asked him.
“Not letting you leave until we settle this,” he said, grinning at me.
“Settle what?” I threw my hands into the air, painfully aware that the compact car pushed us closer than we’d ever been before, I had a teleconference in less than an hour, and I still had to go through all of my crap at the house and figure out what to throw away. All of it? Close the California chapter on my life for good? Or leave it all to memories?
“Settle this bullshit of you thinking I’m just some tourist whenever I go to NYC,” Graham said. Oh, Lord. I could see where Collins got her pretty pout from, but I wasn’t about to let up on him.
“See? Nobody says ‘NYC,’” I gloated. “You are an absolute tourist. Don’t lie. You get lost on the subway and take selfies in Times Square. Go on, confess.”
“If we were in New York right now, I would take you places you couldn’t even imagine,” he said, his voice going dark. “Places you couldn’t get into without me.”
“What, like strip clubs?” I popped my elbow onto the steering wheel and propped up my chin on my fist. “I don’t need you. I could get any guy off the street to act as my escort and find my way in just fine.”
“That’s not what I was talking about,” Graham said, clearing his throat with more dignity than I could give him credit for. “If we’re ever together in New York—”
“Extremely doubtful,” I said cheerfully. “And I wouldn’t go to that fusion restaurant. Not in a million years. So better get going.”
I started the car and revved its tiny engine for emphasis.
Graham reached over, his fingers grazing my thigh as he turned the key in the ignition to kill the engine. “You make a lot of assumptions,” he said, the entire energy in the car changing dangerously, the air charged with challenge and dominance.
“This is ridiculous,” I said, my voice smaller than I wanted it to be, suddenly feeling so unsure of myself. My God, we’d been flirting. That’s what this was.
We’d been flirting, and I wasenjoyingit.
How soon was too soon to move on from a failed engagement? Was there a prescribed time I had to wait? It had just been a couple of weeks since I’d been literally planning my marriage to the man I thought I would spend the rest of my life with.
